Tutorial on Lighting in Poser 6

Lighting has been revolutionized in Poser 6 with many additions. Image Based Lighting with or without Ambient Occlusion has been added. The user can choose from a number of Light Probes. Spot lighting has been improved with a choice of whether the light will rotate around its own axis when moved in the environmental sphere or revolve around the whole scene.

What is Image Based Lighting? IBL takes a light probe and uses it as a map. A light probe is a 360 degree light distribution contained in a map. Poser comes with a number of light probes and others can be downloaded for free or for a sum from the internet. The ones in Poser 6 are shown below. Notice they all have different patterns.

In order to get realistic shadows, the Poser 6 manual suggests using Ambient Occlusion. For this effect, Raytracing must be activated in the render setup.

Aiming lights, I believe, is the key to lighting. No matter what light you use, if it is not aimed properly, it will not accomplish its task. I found a few tricks that worked with spot lights and point lights in respect to aligning them to the figure or object. Let's stop here and look at the placement of a figure. The default position of Jessi is the following. Notice the X, Y, and Z axes. They are designated by xTran, yTran, and zTran. Notice everything is at zero.

Now I moved Jessi a plus 1 along each respective axis. I moved the figure +1 unit along the X axis, +1 unit (up) along the Y axis, and + 1 unit (forward) along the Z axis. The position of Jessi is now, 1, 1, 1.

Once you position a figure, look at the X, Y, Z, Tran dials for the Body of the figure and that will tell you what the person's or object's place is in that particular space. Then you can place lights accordingly.

The zTran of the object is especially important. It describes where the image is on the stage in respect to what is in front or in back of the image. If you can line up your lights with the image, then you can also move them to the front or to the back. I will discuss the Point At option (object>point at) later.

An easy way of doing this is to set up lights initially at right angles to Jessi's body.

.Once they are placed initially in a square formation, it is much easier to move them.

I have found it easier to use the transform controls to set up my lights. If one has an understanding of how they work in relation to a figure, it is easier to set them up.

The controls above are for the right light while the controls below are for the left light. Notice how the numbers relate to each other. This might seem unimportant if you are going to just move the light anyway. It is understanding the relationship between the position of the lights and the object to be lit that is important.

Let's say I wanted to set up a key light and a fill light in front of Jessi to sort of imitate Studio lighting. The easiest way to do it would be to use the transform and rotate dials. Lets say Jessi is at 0, 0, 0. I need both light to be +Z, +Y, and one each at -X, and +X. The following pictures show the positions at started up and at completion.

Both lights started out at rotations of zero (0) for all angles. For light 2 (see below) the starting positions or coordinates were:

Z=5, Y=5, X=3. The starting coordinates for Light 1 were Z=5, Y=5, X=-3.You can see the final coordinates in the picture above or in the image below. Light 1 was left at its starting position while Light 2 was moved and rotated. (To make Light 1 a fill light it would have had to be repositioned and the intensity of the light evaluated.)

With everything set at zero to begin with and then moving and rotating the lights on their axes in relationship to the figure, it was very easy to position Light #1 and, then, reposition Light #2. A quick change I made was also to change the End Angle of the light so it would shine on a greater surface. The default is an angle of 70 degrees. This setup is not finished at all, but it is a starting place and it is easy to visualize and accomplish.

Even though I first mentioned spot lights and directional lights, Image Based Lighting (IBL) with and without Ambient Occlusion is at the heart of lighting in Poser 6. Before going any further with the tutorial, the reference manual and tutorial manual for Poser 6 are installed automatically. They can be found with the Poser 6 installed files. These topics are discussed in different sections of both the tutorial and the manual. In the two PDFs that are on your system, click on the binoculars and do various word searches.

The best way I found to understand IBL with and without Ambient Occlusion is to look at examples. The first example below shows where the Image Based Light was situated in respect to the image and some of the light settings

When one uses Ambient Occlusion, one does not have to check the shadow box. However, notice the difference when one uses IBL and does not use Ambient Occlusion. The picture was lit only to demonstrate the shadows; it was not lit to demonstrate any other facet of lighting.

Next, I will take the model with the one IBL light and Ambient Occlusion and add two more lights.

I recommend adding 1 light at a time and looking at various combinations. Since I only wanted shadows from one direction, I turned off shadows for the spot light and the infinite light.

Ambient Occlusion has a number of settings. Page 310 in the Poser 6 Reference manual describes them. To visually see some of the differences, I changed the settings one at a time, always going back to the default setting.

When I decide to light a figure or a scene, I always ask myself the following questions:

1 - Am I creating an indoor or an outdoor scene?

2 - Am I lighting more than 1 figure?

3 - What mood am I trying to capture?

4 - If applicable, what time of day?

I normally use Poser for creating nude figures to use in other programs. I like to light them in Poser before I bring them into another program to see how they can look or, if I am using them in their rendered state, to bring them into Photoshop, and not have to make too many changes. I either light them evenly, for example, if I plan to light them in a program such as Vue or I light them for mood and, then, bring them into Photoshop where I continue the mood. I have found even lighting is the hardest to accomplish because of the overlap of lights in the center of the figure. However with Image Based Lighting in Poser 6, it is much easier. The key is the light probe that is chosen.

In the following tutorial, I will try to go step by step using a light probe. The following tutorials assume, however, that you know how to accomplish tasks such as deleting lights.

Lighting a Figure Evenly

1 - Delete all the lights. The sphere and figure will be black.

2- Add a white Imaged Based Light centered to shine on the whole body. The light probe that you choose is very important. Also whether you decide to use Ambient Occlusion or not, make sure that the light is pure white (for this exercise) and centered. Notice the xRotate and zRotate are -360 and the yRotate is 0. The screen capture on the right shows how the IBL is placed using the settings shown.

3 - The properties for this light were: IBL, no shadow or Ambient Occlusions, and the rest default.

4 - The following were three images all set up in a similar manner except in the choice of light probe and whether Ambient Occlusion was used or not. You can notice the differences between all the figures. Notice how on the last figure on the right the shadows appear where her neck and collar bone meet. Notice on the first figure how much darker her face is than on the second. In my opinion, the second figure basically is evenly lit.

In order to access IBL and IBL with Ambient Occlusion, under light properties (see above), click on Advanced Material Properties to take you to the Material Room's Advanced Property's tab. If you want Ambient Occlusion, check it even though you can access it once you are in the Material Room. Click on IBL to bring up a screen and, then, browse until you come to where your jpg light probe files are stored. Those that are part of Poser 6 can be found by going to: Poser6>Runtime>Textures>Poser6 Textures>LightProbes>LagoonShoreandSky.jpg.

After you have chosen the Light Probe Texture, a screen asking whether to use Ambient Occlusion will pop up. If you do not want to use it, click no. Even if you have not chosen it initially, this screen will pop up.

The last screen shots for this series show the two LightProbes used: LagoonShoreDesaturated.jpg and lagoonShoreandSky.jpg with their respective Material Room Image Maps. LagoonShoreDesaturated.jpg texture map is on the left while LagoonShoreAndSky.jpg texture map is on the right

Remember, I have only shown you where to begin. The rest is up to you!

Creating Dramatic Lighting

1 - Start out by deleting all the lights as you did in "Lighting a Figure Evenly".

2 - Add an Image Based Light with the LagoonShoreAndSky.jpg Light Probe without Ambient Occlusion as you did in "Lighting a Figure Evenly". Initially, the default intensity of the light is 100%. Leave it at that setting for now.

3 - Position a yellow spot light so it lights half of the face. Set it to Revolve by clicking on the arrow to the left of the Light Controls, and when the drop down menu appears, choose Revolve. Then, place the spot pointing at the left eye. If you cannot set it to your satisfaction, the following is a trick that should work. Select from the top menu Object>Point At. Then, select Left Eye.

4 - If it is hard to see the Spot Light, move the icon circled in red back to make the figure appear smaller. The Spot Light should come into view.

5 - Once Left Eye is selected, make a note of the x, y, z positions - the xTran, yTran, and zTran positions and the angles of the light. Also, make a note of the zTran position of Jessi's body. To do this, select Jessi as the figure and then body. Once you have noted these positions, Select Object>Point at>none.

Also notice that the Angle End was changed from its default to 60%.

6 - Then move the light so it reflects the basic position when it was pointing to the eye. But since you released it, you can move it more freely. Make sure the spot light's zTran position is greater than that of Jessi's body so it will shine more from the front than the side. The Diffuse IBL has been there all the time. It just wasn't selected in the earlier pictures so that emphasis could be on the spot light.

7 - Change the intensity of Light 1 (IBL) to 75%. Keep Light 2 (Spot Light) at 100%.

The above is just a general example of how two lights can be used for a dramatic effect.