What are your favorite light sets for Poser?
Llynara
Posts: 4,770
I'm trying to get a better handle on Poser and was wondering what everyone preferred when lighting their scenes. Are there certain sets you go back to again and again? I find that's true in DAZ, wondering if there are certain sets in Poser that are "must haves."
Post edited by Llynara on
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For the Firefly render engine, I simply put actual lights where lights would be in an interior scene. For exterior scenes I use an environment sphere with an single infinite light if it's sunny. Bagginsbill's Envirosphere is free...
https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere
As is Snarlygribbleys' EZ SPhere, which adds more features to the Envorpsphere...
http://snarlygribbly.org/snarlyspace/ezdome.html
Very like I work with the MildBoreal-lights by fabiana (Renderosity.com)
Colm Jackson's Render Studio 2014 modules are quite nice. There's a large choice of them, varying from studio portrait settings to hazy summer day settings for large outdoor sets.
For older characters, I'd like to put them through EZSkin 3 to improve on the shaders, before rendering them.
I'm a bit disappointed that there's hardly any light sets for the Superfly renderer. Colm Jackson seems to be doing iRAY sets only nowadays.
Some questions have a very simple answer: Open your front or back door, or open your window, or go outside: How many suns do you see in the sky?
=> All you will ever need for an outside render is a single Infinite light inside a dome to create the IDL. ALL other light sets are faking something that does not exist in real life.
Outside renders answer : A single Infinite light to "play" sun, and a dome to create the IDL is all what's required for outside renders.
For inside renders : Where are the light bulbs and what do they do?
Neon light or TV/Computer screens=> Set an ambient
Sport light => Set a Spot light
Normal lamp bulb => Set a Point light.
But bear in mind that most photographs and videos shot with the natural (or normal artifical) light don't look that good. Photographers and film-makers use additional lights and reflectors to enhance the look.
Absolutely.
And, further on that, it's possible to use a flat plane, or anything else, as a reflector or even an ambient light source without having it appear in the final render. This can really spruce up a render in Firefly. (Just uncheck the "Visible to Camera" button on the object.) Some fine-tuning may be necessary, here and there. (Turn off "Casts Shadows", if it's an ambient, it has to be an emitter/racetracing, if it's a bounce, it has to be that as well, but both may interfere/block IDL bounces, so you have to fiddle with it in Firefly) But, it can have great effects on what might otherwise appear as a pasty, dull, portrait render.
On point lights in Firefly - Even with Snarlygribblies wonderful EZSkin3, point lights may not always yield good speculars in Firefly. Use the old "trick" of a point set very close to the figure and set to project black, IIRC, to boost the specular from point lights further away. (They tend to spread out too much or not enough, YMMV.) Play around with other options, too, if specular or SSS effects aren't otherwise looking good with some point-light setups. (Just my experience at times, may be different for others.)
Thanks for the tips. I need to dig into Poser more. There's a ton of features I'm not using or even aware of. It just takes me ten times longer in there than DAZ, but learning DAZ took time too. I love both programs, they really offer a lot of different options, and I'd like to get more out of my Poser renders, that's for sure.