Poser Lights?

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Does anyone have ANY idea where the blazes I can find a decent lighting tutorial for Poser? It does not need to be version-specific. Lights in this program are probably the MOST HATED part of the whole program for me. They are frustrating as all hell and I can't ever seem to get a decent output no matter what the heck I do. I've been all over Rendo's tutorials, I've dug through RDNA's forums looking for tuts, I've hit ShareCG even looking for light sets, I've web-crawled doing google and other searches trying to find a decent lighting tutorial. Where am I not looking that I should be looking? LOL

I don't understand these lights and I never ever have. I can't figure out how they work - nothing about them seems logical, let ALONE intuitive - yes I know the basics in regards to things like shadow bias, raytracing, etc... but for the life of me no matter what I do, I can't get an even remotely decent light rig set up in this program, and right now it's making it VERY difficult to do materials work! I also can't FIND any decent light rigs, either.

Does anyone have any ideas at all? I really HATE Poser's lights, and right now trying to do materials work, it's really frustrating trying to get a decent light rig set up to work with for checking things like bump/normals and seams, etc... I really need a good tutorial here, and I can't seem to find THAT, either. >.<

Thanks. I'm as far out of my element in this software as a fish on land here, and it's driving me up the wall! LOL

 

[phdubrov]

Re: version specific
Superfly and Firefly lights are different. Can answer/make something for SF. Never can make FF lights right myself too.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Yeah, I'm working with Firefly at the moment... but I need lights for both Firefly and Sueprfly. >.< Or at least a tutorial so I can understand how to set up a decent light rig.

 

[Pendraia]

I use a Fabiana set that was recommended that comes with developers lights from Rendo. I wouldn't know how to go about setting them up myself...

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Do you remember what the set was called? I don't mind buying a set like that... I can sometimes learn more from reverse engineering another person's item to see how it functions, too...

 

[Pendraia]

Try here... MildBoreal Lights Lights OR Cameras fabiana

It's a nice set but it's from before Poser 11 so I'm not sure how well it works for Superfly.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

It's a nice set but it's from before Poser 11 so I'm not sure how well it works for Superfly.

It's alright. I'll look at it definitely. I need to get lights set up for both render engines anyway. I'm having no luck with either one so far, so I'll take anything I can get at this point. Thanks, Pen.

 

[Miss B]

I use a Fabiana set that was recommended that comes with developers lights from Rendo. I wouldn't know how to go about setting them up myself...

Yes Pen, I think I'm the one who suggested them to you. I have several of Fabi's lights, but I really like her MildBoreal Lights, especially the Develop lights she has at the top of each set.

Two sets have Depth Shadows, one with AO and one without, and two sets have Raytraced Shadows, one with AO and one without. I generally use the Ratraced w/o AO. I happen to like these lights because they're nice "overall" lighting, and they're the ones Fabi uses during her development process, and we all know how good that is.

 

[Carey]

Forget the tutorials, you will go nuts trying to properly use poser lights to light a scene. I used to spend hours and hours trying to light a scene the way I did in byrce...I think that is where one of my nervous twitches came from. spend a few bucks, buy yourself some good IDL lights, might I suggest you run don't walk to runtime DNA and pick up the "IDL studio" all of them if you can afford it. you can pick up HDRI lights for free all over the net, they are worth every penny and not one penny more in my mind.....

while you are at runtime pick up EZ skin and learn to use it. Might want to stop over to YUR 3D and pick up fredricks IDL light set for lights you can easily move around a scene and place just where you need them. I have special reason for suggesting them as I helped develop them, but to be honest I think you will like the combination of ez skin and the IDL studio series..

Hey been doing this for twenty years, I don't know it all, but I stand by what I say with the work I produce. If you like my work, simply used my tools, course it wouldn't hurt to listen to some of the bull I talk too...lol

 

[Pendraia]

I think you're right Miss B but I think someone else also recommended them. They're quite a good price at the moment too.

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Carey, thanks. I do have EZSkin2, I have to pick up the one for Poser11, though, since I didn't have P11 at the time the new one was released.

As far as learning to use... believe me, that's what I'm in the middle of doing with all of this... I am not a Poser user anymore, and I am so far out of my element in this software that it's almost laughable. So, basically, everything I'm doing is by youtube or written tutorials to get an idea of "how" first.. LOL

I did pick up the IDL Studio and am looking it over now. Also grabbed Fabi's package, too.

 

[Carey]

I am an open book, course I only know how to do one thing and that is how to be me, to create and render as me and inside poser, If some one finds some value in that then I am more then glad to help...I spent more years lost in poser then you know, I used to be able to work for a living and all I had was spare time for poser. Then after I became disabled I spent many years feeling sorry for myself. Here is an example of what can be done with just poser lights and believe me I spent many hours to get the lighting right...

Now I click through my light collection and there the lighting is done, no tutorial, now many times with idl lighting I will add a point of light from objects and set intensity to around 10 to 25 as a sort of fill light as IDL can produce too deep a shadow in some places....such as I did here..

Hope my advice is helpful to one and all, but again I can only show people how I do things, if you don't like my work, my advice is worthless, but my advice is cheap and I have plenty of it...lol

 

[Carey]

Oh also Frickricks lights come when an illustration on how to set up IDL lighting in the render room, be sure "smooth polygons" is turned off and transparency doesn't work well with frekdrick's light but work fine with IDL Studio. Fredrick's lights are the lights I use for close up portrait type renders...

Now one more thing and I promise to shut up for a while. Runtime DNA's "TERRADOME" comes with some pretty good IBL lights, though again I tend to add a small point of light to my renders....

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

I do have both the first and second Terradome products. I haven't had any luck whatsoever with the light sets in them.

Noted on Frederick's lights - thanks for all of your suggestions! Much appreciated.

 

[Carey]

OKay, did you try terradome with EZ skin?

This was done in terradome, using their lights, would it help if I try to answers questions if any on terradome lighting?

Now like me get this one question out of the way, see I don't use the lights for terradome located in the lights library..I use the lights that are in the material library under "skydome"
those lights there have the light built into them, atmosphere too...

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Mmm... I haven't tried the EZSkin combo... I thought that was for materials work? Not sure how it relates to lighting?

Let me get EZ3 installed; I'm working in P11, so the older EZ wouldn't work too well in it, I think...

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

And a (maybe) stupid question... okay, two.

- What is IDL exactly? I know it stands for indirect lighting, but what IS it?
- And what the heck is an HDRI light, and why are they such a big deal? (Or seem to be a big deal from what I see talked about around the 3D-verse.)

 

[sanbie]

Seliah...pdg has lighting tutorials at pfd... and he has made the lights and target lights and they are there as a download

 

[Seliah (Childe of Fyre)]

Seliah...pdg has lighting tutorials at pfd... and he has made the lights and target lights and they are there as a download

I'll try to find them, Sanbie. I have a really hard time with the navigation over there. But I'll try to find them, thanks.

 

[sanbie]

Just in case...it's here Login and pdg has checked them out for poser11 and they work...

Hope that link works