Poser Firefly Candles ?

[3dcheapskate]

Ah ! I'd forgotten that the two topics had different titles, and this one was "Poser firefly candles ?" not "Candle Flame Shader For Firefly... (Use Postwork Answer Is For Cowards!)" - that's the Renderosity one.

Anyway, for anybody else who might be interested we now have several different attempts at a candle flame shader over on that Renderosity thread - here's a screenshot of my summary post

Think you can do better ? Then post your shader and a render here or on the Renderosity thread.

Have some observations or suggestions ? Then post them here or on the Renderosity thread.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Lots of stuff going on over on the associated Renderosity topic.

I need to post an additional morph target for the candle prop in post 25 of this Hivewire topic, so I'm doing that here. Just unzip the attached file (it just contains a single OBJ, load the candle prop and do a Load Morph Target.

 

[3dcheapskate]

My latest...

 

[3dcheapskate]

I've created a brief (2 seconds) video of an animated candle flame using a modified version of my candle prop, the flame shader above, and a blue-zone shader as explained on the Renderosity topic here

Have a look at it on Youtube:

Poser Firefly candle flame test - YouTube

 

[3dcheapskate]

And a slightly longer 5 second video - just a pointlite that I manually animated to match the movement of the flame:

Another very short Poser Firefly candle flame animation - YouTube

 

[3dcheapskate]

Ah ! I forgot that I can embed (I think?) media on this forum.

So here are those first two test animations again:

Here's my third test animation of the candleflame. This time no morphing, just animating a selected few of the node inputs in the flame shader.

I think that by combining flame morphs, material animation, and corresponding positional/colour/intensity changes to the point light will be a big improvement.

 

[3dcheapskate]

This annotated screenshot of the flame material indicates which node inputs I animated

 

[3dcheapskate]

Looks like I forgot to mention that I released the version 3 candle as a freebie yesterday (I think?)

Link to item in Renderosity Free Stuff: Candle flame shader (3D mesh) for Poser Firefly

Alternative link to item at ShareCG: Candle flame shader (3D mesh) for Poser Firefly

Alternative link to item at DeviantArt: Candle flame shader (3D mesh) for Poser Firefly

 

[3dcheapskate]

Currently struggling with ShaderMixer to try and get a DAZ Studio 3Delight version of this going.

 

[RAMWolff]

Never had any luck with ShaderMixer, so good luck!

 

[3dcheapskate]

ShaderMixer's really no different, in concept, from Poser's material room. But whereas Poser's nodes take up very little screen space, each ShaderMixer brick takes up far more (even when collapsed to its minimum size). I usually find it relatively easy to lay out a 20 or so node Poser shader such that I can take a (relatively) easy to understand screenshot. With ShaderMixer I can't even see the whole network on my screen, so I have to take multiple screenshots and composite them ending up with a huge image. Not being able to see everything at once when I'm working on it is really frustrating.

Since I usually start with a Poser shader I try to recreate each Poser node in ShaderMixer, often requiring multiple bricks per Poser node and adding to the complexity. Of course, if I did it the other way round, starting with ShaderMixer, I'd probably end up with multiple Poser nodes per ShaderMixer brick. To get the best results it probably needs the basic concept to be implemeted independently in both Poser and ShaderMixer

 

[3dcheapskate]

Anyway, I need to take a break from ShaderMixer, so I took the CandleV3 prop freebie into the Setup room to have a go at actually putting the LightEmitter ellipsoid to use.

However, a completely different idea struck me - explanation on the video page itself.

Here's a couple of Firefly renders of individual frames. I've also zipped the scene file for the Youtube animation and attached that.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Minor sidetrack - on the first of those three Firefly renders there are what appear to be mesh lines on the top of the candle. I noticed them on the SSS pass.

Not sure what's causing them.

 

[3dcheapskate]

The movement of the flame in that animation is purely using xRotate, zRotate and yScale - all the morphs were lost when I took the candle into the setup room. But when I do get round to putting morphs back in... morphs are linear - so I think a bit of clever ERC might allow the point light to move correctly with the morphs too !

 

[3dcheapskate]

Minor sidetrack - on the first of those three Firefly renders there are what appear to be mesh lines on the top of the candle. I noticed them on the SSS pass.

View attachment 74342

Not sure what's causing them.

A few more tests show that's definitely the mesh of the top of the candle - I moved the point light so it's away from the rest of the mesh.

It seems to happen when the point light gets too close (however Poser judges that) to the top of the candle. Not sure if it's the inverse square falloff of the light or the milkman Andy material of the candle, or both.

Not sure whether there's a way round it - I think it's a case of being aware and avoiding the cause.

 

[3dcheapskate]

I've just posted the sidetrack above to the Renderosity Poser 11 forum - Close point light causing mesh lines to appear in Firefly render | Renderosity

 

[DanaTA]

What's that ring in the first image? Looks like the shape of the flame when it's not morphed.

Dana

 

[3dcheapskate]

That'd be the LightEmitter mesh/actor. It's identical to the flame mesh, but slightly shrunk. I'm intending to have that as an alternative illumination source, but I'm ignoring it for now - I think I made it a completely invisible material in the 'CandleV3Bfigure test' file.

Since I've mentioned the LightEmitter bit (and Seachnasaigh had suggested that approach back in post #36) I tried it and ran into a problem, which I planned to work on after I get the point light sorted. With a realistically sized candle and flame, having the LightEmitter the same sort of size as the flame doesn't cast enough light. If I crank up the ambient until it does it's in the thousands and the candle itself is blown out. An obvious solution is to make the LightEmitter bigger than the flame - but it has to be many times bigger, with the result that illumination is coming from places it shouldn't.

 

[3dcheapskate]

Just a few test renders using the candleflame shader with the Superfly mod (which makes the flame looks more-or-less as in the Firefly render). The wax is the milkman Andy material (Firefly).
I think I was using a CandleFlame figure (with no wick or candle) here along with a very simplistic candle prop.
Left two renders are Firefly, right two are Superfly. Left one of each pair uses a point light, right one uses a light emitter.
Clearly I don't have a clue about Superfly !

Regarding the joint Firefly/Superfly material - I found that I just had to add two additional nodes and change one PoserSurface parameter to get Superfly to render the flame more or less the same as Firefly. Details on the Renderosity topic here.

 

[3dcheapskate]

I also find myself trying to make a fake wax shader for Poser 6. This seems okay when rendered in Poser 11.
Now to see if it renders okay in Poser 6 (I already know that the flame does)
(I've reworked the candle so that it is cylindrically UV mapped, specifically to allow me to use the V texture coordinate this way. Also added extra edge loops near the top and bottom of the cylinder to allow me to use Firefly 'Smooth polys' without ballooning the candle )