(How) can I rotoscope against a movie in the background?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level.

Intermediate

First I set a Background Movie, either via the menu File > Import > Background Footage:

or via the Material Room directly, connecting the BG Movie node with the background node:

The BG Movie node is completely compatible to the regular movie node. Note that I first have to connect BG Movie to the Background node, and then I select the video. When any video is already selected before the connection is made, then that selection will get lost and has to be re-established again. This also is the case when BG Movie is setup properly, gets disconnected for any reason, and is re-connected again.

Then I switch ON the use of the movie in the render, via Render Settings:

That is: do use Background Picture or Current BG shader. See the overview on background nodes in general.

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(How) can I add a background picture in my render?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level.

Intermediate

First I set a Background Picture, either via the menu File > Import > Background Picture:

or via the Material Room directly, connecting the BG Picture node with the background node:

The BG Picture node is completely compatible to the regular image_map node.

Then I switch ON the use of the picture in the render, via Render Settings:

That is: do use Background Picture or Current BG shader. See the overview on background nodes in general.

When I’m still having problems with the Background, I just check:

  • Whether the GROUND object (or any other object) is obstructing the view
  • Whether I’m trying to load an 16-bit-per-color image (don’t)

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(How) can I use a reference picture in the preview only?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level.

Intermediate

First I set a Background Picture, either via the menu File > Import > Background Picture:

or via the Material Room directly, connecting the BG picture node with the background node:

The BG Picture node is completely compatible to the regular image_map node. Then I switch off the use of the picture in the render, via Render Settings:

That is: do NOT use Background Picture nor Current BG shader.

In Material Room the associated BG Color and Black nodes can be dressed up with any node-tree. So I even can connect a different image to them, and have a picture in my render different from the preview. See the overview on background nodes in general.

When I’m still having problems with the Background, I just check:

  • Whether the GROUND object (or any other object) is obstructing the view
  • Whether I’m trying to load an 16-bit-per-color image (don’t)

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(How) can I make a “green screen” shot, to add backgrounds in post?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level.

Intermediate

1) Either I put an object at the relevant place in the scene, and give it a uniform (green) texture,

  • The object material should be Ambient only. It should not support Diffuse, Specular, Transparency, Reflection, Bump/Displacement, etc. (unless I want to have the effects of the scene lighting on my backdrop replacement as well)
    makes
  • The object should not cast shadows (unless I want them on my backdrop replacement as well), nor should it act as a light emitter in IDL lighting conditions, nor should it be visible in raytracing (reflections!). Those properties should be switched OFF.

2) Or without any object obstructing the background, I export my image in a format which supports transparency (like PNG),

3) Or without any object obstructing the background, I activate Background Color and assign it an appropriate color.

Either
Or
Or
will do the job.

See the overview on the background nodes in general.

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Poser Materials V2 Background

The second group of articles is on Background. I can preview as well as render against an image (photo’s or mattes), against footage (rotoscoping) or against a color (green screen shots).

(How) can I create volumetric spotlights in my scene?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level.

Intermediate

Spotlights with a volumetric effect need a foggy atmosphere to come into existence.

As Depth Cue relates to the camera, so does Volume relate to the lights. Volume effects can be switched on/off themselves too, so they can be set independent of the Depth Cue effects.

The main parameters are Volume Color, and Density (*). When a direct light illuminates a volume in the scene, that volume acts like a transparent fuzzy object with that specific internal color. The lower the Density the more transparent it seems.

(*) Volume Color is referred to as Ambient Color in the Simple interface, while Density is shown in the Highlight column. This confusing presentation is known as an issue, and might be addressed in later versions of Poser.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next to all this, each light can have its own Atmosphere Strength parameter:

So some lights can interact more than others. For example:

One infinite white light, Atmosphere Strength as low as 0.000010 plus one white spotlight, angular falloff from 10 to 20 (narrow light bundle), Atmosphere Strengths as high as 0.100. From the different Atmosphere Strength settings of the lights one can discriminate the spotlight from the overall scene lighting. The bluish color is from the Volume settings.

Do note that especially Volume effects take some time to render. A larger stepsize speeds up the calculations at the cost of quality and detail. Increasing the Noise parameter helps to improve on the quality especially at larger stepsizes. Noise and Stepsize are available in the Advanced interface only.

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(How) can I create a smoky or foggy atmosphere in my scene?

Although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface, this topic is considered Intermediate level. Next to that, managing the details of a scene Atmosphere requires the use of ‘cloudy’ nodes from the 3D Texture group, which by themselves are considered Advanced.

Intermediate

First, be aware that atmospheric effects can be created in post as well, while when done in Poser it might imply a serious extension of my render time.

A tutorial on Poser Render Passes, including atmospherics post work, can be found at http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=388 A tutorial on Poser atmospherics can be found at http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?p=3093

Second, Poser atmospherics reveal themselves only in front of an object in the scene. Any object bouncing light towards the camera will do. But in front of just a background color, a background picture or a background movie frame, the atmospherics remain invisible. Poser atmospherics do need a visible object facing the camera to get uncloaked. The color of the object is irrelevant, or better: the darker the object, the better a whitish fog will be visible.

For example: a nearby and a faraway character, a B/W colored box, the default ground floor and an “empty” background make:

So, how to do it? I enter the Material Room, click the [Create Atmosphere] button and select one.

How to alter the settings? In the Material Room, I use the list next to Object and select Atmosphere.

When using the Simple interface, the material looks like:

Note that the Simple Interface contains some bug (all Poser versions up to Poser 10 / Pro 2014), see below.

How to switch it off? The Atmosphere main node supports DepthCue as well as Volumetrics. Both can be switched on and off independently.

What about DepthCue and Volume? DepthCue is a quite uniform haze effect which colorizes the scene, depending on the distance of the surface to the camera. Volume is a smoky, cloudy fog effect which is located within the scene, not related to the camera position. Tip: in order to make an object or character disappear into the darkness, a dark fog can be used instead of a whitish one.

Advanced interface

When using the Advanced interface, I learned that

  • Volume Step-Size and –Noise are not supported in the Simple Interface. These are quality-settings for better render results (at the cost of longer render times).
  • The [Create Atmosphere] button can produce quite some node-tree to define such a material. ‘Cloudy’ nodes from the 3D Textures group will be present to drive the look and feel of fogs and alike.
  • From the Simple interface, Ambient matches Depth-Cue and Highlight matches Volumetrics. But I also find a bug (Poser 10 / PoserPro 2014 and before): the color and image-map assignments are reversed.

=>

(The bug is reported to Smith Micro and will be addressed, some day).

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Poser Materials V1 Atmosphere

The first group of articles is on Atmosphere. I can create haze and fog, and volumetric effects for (spot)lights, at the cost of increased render time, of course.

Poser Materials V Materials for Non-Objects

The articles in this section discuss properties for Scene Atmosphere, Scene/render Background and Lights Coloring. These are not objects with a surface, but do have properties which are handled in Material Room. These properties can be accessed via the Object selector.

Most of those topics are considered Intermediate level, although various configurations can be setup via Material Room menus, and can be managed through the Simple interface. On the other hand, managing the details of a scene Atmosphere requires the use of nodes from the 3D Texture group, which by itself is considered Advanced.

This section concludes with some varied, advanced topics like mapping for IBL , Gamma Correction (GC) and GC on Transparency. The Appendix lists all Material Room nodes and relevant Render Settings, and their availability in the various Poser versions.

What are the HSV and Gamma (Math) nodes used for?

Nodes are the essential building blocks in the Advanced interface to the Poser Material Room. They are the graphical representation of mathematical function calls, that is: calculation procedures which turn parameters (inputs) to a result (output).

Advanced

The Math group offers various nodes that can adjust and combine colors, images and other texture elements. This article discusses:

  • HSV
  • Gamma

which modify image characteristics like brightness and saturation. See the overview of the Math group.

HSV

This node takes a Color from its input, usually an image, translates is into HSV mode, adjusts it according to the node settings and delivers the result back as a regular RGB color.

In (its internal) HSV mode, hue determines the color from a 0.0 to 1.0 value. 0.0 represents Red, 0.5 represents Cyan, and at 1.0 we’ve made full circle and are back to Red again. This node takes the hue from the input color, and adds (Hue -1) to its already existing value. So when the Hue value is set to 1.33 it will turn Red (hue= 0.0) into hue= 0.0 + (1.33 – 1) = 0.33 is Green. A value 0.67 will turn Red into 1.0 + (0.67 – 1) = 0.67 is Blue. So an input value 1.0 is neutral, has no effect.

In (its internal) HSV mode, saturation and value determine the mixture of White and Black respectively, with full color pigment. A 0.0 value means no color, a 1.0 value on both means full color. As with Hue, the node values of 1.0 for Saturation and Value have no effect, the difference from 1 is added to (or subtracted from) the original input value.

Gamma

The Gamma node helps me to apply or undo Gamma Correction on specific images and colors, next to an eventual Gamma mechanism applied to all of them (Render Setting). See the fundamental and advanced articles on details, but for short: the images, movie frames and colors handled by Poser are ‘in order’, for input as well as output, and need no adjustment as such.

Poser is using the Gamma ‘thing’ for correcting on its own flaws:

  • Direct lights and especially point- and spotlights produce far too deep shadows, while in nature indirect lighting and atmospheric scattering soften shadows a lot. In a similar way, shading effects like Lambert as standard applied in Poser Diffuse are too strong and too dark. This is a generic issue in all CG rendering, not only Poser. Unfortunately, the darkening makes images loose contrast and detail in de darks, which is disliked a lot by most people. That’s a deep down natural thing: the darks hides hunters as well as prey, and we like to be aware.
  • Material channels like diffuse and specular are simply added up, multiple lights are simply added up, and all this contributes to overlighting and far too strong highlights (reflections, etc.).

So, as discussed in this article as well, Poser (*) first applies (**) Inverse Gamma Correction to darken (the midtones from) images, frames and color swatches (***), then it renders, and then it applies Gamma Correction to brighten up the result. This leaves the main coloring intact, but softens all effects from shadows, shading and highlighting, and produces a far more pleasant and more natural result which is favored especially in photorealistic render styles.

(*) from Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2010 up, by checking the appropriate Render Setting.

(**) it should not be applied to images which define Bump, Displacement, Transparency or any blending. For those, the neutral / no effect value of 1.0 should be used. For all others, any other value is appropriate, the larger, the stronger the softening effect. The industry standard value of 2.2 is recommended but actually, as images handled by Poser are ‘in order’ and Poser is using the mechanism for its own purposes, any value will do. Values over 1.0 will soften shadows and highlights, values around 2 make a natural impression, and really high values (4.0 and up) might cause artifacts. Render styles which require hard shadows, like comics, do not need the adjustment at all.

(***) Value slot are not affected. As a consequence, a Diffuse (Color, Value) set to (white, 50%) will produce a result different from (50% white, 100%). Also, the output of the Simple Color node will be affected, but the output from the User_Defined node will not, and the image plugged into the HSV node will be adjusted before (!) the HSV adjustment is made itself.

The image plugged into Color can be color-filtered, and Gamma values over 1.0 will brighten the midtones as the node is applying regular Gamma Correction (in math: output=input 1/gamma ). This is to take any Poser adjustments on the input out again before further handling. With Inverse checked, midtones will be darkened as the Inverse Correction is applied (in math: output=input gamma ). This is to put the regular Poser adjustment into colors etc. which are missed by Poser itself, like a User_Defined color. Or to undo the adjustments of a Gamma node applied earlier in the materials node tree.

Use Custom Gamma means: use the Gamma value as explicitly defined in the node. Unchecking this option will use the value as defined in Render Settings. As the latter is recommended for consistency within the scene, checking is meant for introducing Gamma effects in case Poser does not.

Note: although Gamma Correction is available from Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2010 up, the Gamma node itself is around in earlier Poser versions as well. The node can be used to adjust the brightness of image maps used in the scene (like the HSV node), and to build elaborate node trees that address the first portion of the Gamma Correction procedure as supplied in later versions. The node cannot perform the final Inverse correction, as is applied by the renderer to the result.

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