More realistic renders in Poser 4 and Pro Pack

Author: Vadlor

Tools Needed

• Poser 4 or Pro Pack

This is something I discovered when analyzing how the Sub Surface Scattering works in Poser 6. This simple technique will achieve similar results in Poser 4 and Pro Pack. While this won't be as perfect or as accurate as the SSS that Poser 6 has, it will make your renders look much better.

Load your Figure. For this tutorial I'm using Victoria 3.

Load your figure a texture of your choice. I'm using Trixie. Render a headshot for future comparison.

Open the Material Dialog Box. Now you have to change the reflective and ambient colors in the skin and nails materials. Applying this to the eyes and/or teeth will spoil what you're trying to achieve.

For this example, I set my materials like this:

Object Color: R255 G255 B255 (White)

Highlight Color: R0 G0 B0 (Black)

Ambient Color: R128 G64 B64

Reflective Color: R255 G221 B221

Highlight Size: 89%

For the lips, I went for a glossier look, so my settings are a little different.

Object Color: R255 G255 B255

Highlight Color: R255 G221 B221

Ambient Color: R128 G64 B64

Reflective Color: R255 G255 B255

Highlight Size: 0%

Note that for different ethnicities, the color you must set in the Highlight and the Ambient must be shade of the desired ethnicity (golden hues for Asian skins, browns for African-American, etc…).

For the redder areas of the face (Tongue, Lacrimals, gums and inner mouth), the color must be redder as well. These are the settings I used in them.

Highlight Color: R255 G128 B128

Ambient Color: R128 G0 B0

Render it now so we can compare the two of them. You can see that the second render looks more alive than the first, because its shadows are not grey. That is because of the change in the ambient color.

Here's a full body shot of the results for further comparison.

Hope you find it useful.

Happy renders!