Digital Art Zone

Maybe I had that backwards… I forget if it is black or white that is transpartent, I’ve only made a few parts that were transparancies… but yeah, thats what they look like… I also noticed that if you look at the ground in the preveiw image the shadows on the floor are all there… BUT… for squarish/rectangular objects.

PS… here are some images from a thread at another site’s forums that I was recently following, they sort of show how a leaf would be handled…

one side of my tree would look like the first preview after the cats got into it?
also it may have been too close to the fire

Wendy…. your new avatar is seriously feaking me out… nice though.

lordvicore - 26 November 2012 10:55 AM

Looking at that again, it does appear to be made out of billboards… if you look on the left side some of the planes are tilted slightly to and fro.
My amateur guess is that the preview mode does not see the light interacting “properly” and perceives the whole part as transparent.

Could be - I don’t know much about how this stuff works internally.

By the way, you are just asking why this occures (sorta like “is this normal?) and not trying to solve a problem… like you don’t actually need this to appear “normal” in preview mode for some reason… right?

Well it doesn’t matter that much in preview mode, but it was difficult to get some good lighting in the renders so I wanted to know if this was normal or if something could be done about it. 

wendy♥catz - 26 November 2012 11:16 AM

one side of my tree would look like the first preview after the cats got into it?
also it may have been too close to the fire

Maybe the Millennium Cats in my runtime have been playing with it…

Ah, I see… Yup, that is a big problem with Poser… I hate having to fiddle with the lights, and that damn little ball with the pins sticking out of it is virtually useless (to me- some like it)...
You could try subsituting a primative cone of equal size maybe, to get a better idea where shadows will fall and then swapping back to the tree when you are satisfied… but as far as I know, there is probably not much you could do to change that…
You could also try making a simalar thread like this one over at Renerosity in the Poser Q&A section… this would double your chances of getting a better answer if there is one.

I don’t know if you do this or if this is of any help, but I mostly postition lights manually by selecting them and them placing them roughly where I think they should go,  using the TOP, LEFT, RIGHT,FRONT,BACK and or Bottom cameras.
Its a pain in the butt, yet it works better than that stupid ball.

Also… I think there is a way of “looking through” the light when using spotlights (if you are)... I forget how to do it and I don’t have Poser with me or my Poser books either, at the moment…
This method lets you get a better idea where they are aimed… Yeah, I really hope I’m not hallucinating this feature, or its not in some other program.

Kids… always wear a helmet, or you’ll end up like me when you get older.

i think you’re referring to the shadow cams

AH YEAH! Stoooooooopid me. I knew it was something you see all the time but I’m always too lazy to really check out. Probably works real good and makes your life easier too. HA!

lordvicore - 26 November 2012 11:35 AM

Ah, I see… Yup, that is a big problem with Poser… I hate having to fiddle with the lights, and that damn little ball with the pins sticking out of it is virtually useless (to me- some like it)...
You could try subsituting a primative cone of equal size maybe, to get a better idea where shadows will fall and then swapping back to the tree when you are satisfied… but as far as I know, there is probably not much you could do to change that…
You could also try making a simalar thread like this one over at Renerosity in the Poser Q&A section… this would double your chances of getting a better answer if there is one.

Well the problem here wasn’t really the lights, it appeared. After I checked the Normals Forward boxes, they lights not behave normally with the tree. So no problem here.

I don’t know if you do this or if this is of any help, but I mostly postition lights manually by selecting them and them placing them roughly where I think they should go,  using the TOP, LEFT, RIGHT,FRONT,BACK and or Bottom cameras.
Its a pain in the butt, yet it works better than that stupid ball.

Yea, I do that too sometimes but I’m usually too lazy to do it. The ball is sort of okay for me, I just wish it - and the dials as well- could be easily fine tuned. If it’s a heavy scene everything is delayed and jumps forth and back and it’s difficult to hit the right setting. It’s probably difficult fine tuning the light ball (though I have some ideas for how to do it) but with the dials it would be easy to make it so the sensitivity was increased or decreased x10 or whatever you choose, if you press ctrl or something. You can actually change the sensitivity but you have to open an annoying dialog box every time so for all practical purposes it’s more or less useless.

Also… I think there is a way of “looking through” the light when using spotlights (if you are)... I forget how to do it and I don’t have Poser with me or my Poser books either, at the moment…
This method lets you get a better idea where they are aimed… Yeah, I really hope I’m not hallucinating this feature, or its not in some other program.

AFAIR Carrara has that feature also though I haven’t used it yet. Will check the Poser manual to see if I can find something about it.

At this point I don’t know if this info is relevant or useful anymore, but I found some info in one of my Poser books… basically go to the render settings window and click the preview tab, in the next window and in the “transparency display” section you can try fiddling with those settings to see if it helps your situation any.
I haven’t tried fiddling with these settings yet myself… Sorry if you know about this already or is this is useless.

lordvicore - 28 November 2012 10:27 AM

At this point I don’t know if this info is relevant or useful anymore, but I found some info in one of my Poser books… basically go to the render settings window and click the preview tab, in the next window and in the “transparency display” section you can try fiddling with those settings to see if it helps your situation any.

This setting doesn’t seem to have any effect on the tree in the preview. But how the preview looks doesn’t mattter so much - the real problem was with the render, but that has been solved. But thanks anyway!