All images from Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide by Kelly L. Murdock.

This is the next in a new series of excerpts from the Thomson Course Technology book Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide. In the next few months, VFXWorld readers will develop the skills needed to create, render and animate scenes and projects using the amazing tools offered by Poser 7. We will offer step-by-step tutorials for each task, followed by projects that allow readers to apply each new skill.

What You'll Do

In this lesson, you learn how to work effectively with lights.

If a scene contained no lights, all scene items wouldn't be visible, but Poser has three lights that are enabled by default. You can easily add more light sources to the scene. Poser works with four light sources -- infinite lights, spotlights, point lights, and diffuse image-based lights (IBLs).

Learning the Light Types
Infinite lights shine from a distance, so all its rays are parallel when they strike the scene objects. This causes all scene elements to receive an equal amount of light. Spotlights are focused, casting light only to those scene objects that are within the cone of influence; objects farther away receive less light than closer objects. Point lights cast light in all directions from a single point, such as a light bulb or a candle in a room. Diffuse image-based lights (IBL) lights define the scene lighting by building an image of the scene that holds all the lighting information.

Creating New Lights
All scene lights are displayed within the Light Controls. New lights can be created by clicking the Create Light button. By default, the Create Light button creates a spotlight, but you can change the type of light using the options in the Properties palette. Poser lets you switch easily between the various light types. You can select the type of light to create if you right-click on the Create Light button and select the light type from the pop-up menu or use the Object, Create Light menu.

New Poser 7 Feature: The ability to create each of the different light types using the Object menu is new to Poser 7.

[Figures 1 & 2] Light Controls (left). Light indicators appear in the Document Window (right). 

Using the Light Controls
The Light Controls offer a convenient way of creating and positioning lights, as well as setting light properties. To open the Light Controls, select Window, Light Controls. The Light Controls, shown in Figure 1, include a large sample sphere in the center that shows the lighting effects; surrounding it are three smaller circles. These smaller circles are the lights. You can change their locations by dragging them about the larger sphere. When you select a circle representing a light, controls for changing its intensity, color and properties appear. There are also buttons for removing the selected light and creating new lights.

If you click on the title of the Light Controls, you can access a pop-up menu of options. Using these pop-up menu options, you can select a specific light, as well as create and delete lights and access the Properties palette for the selected light. There are also two positioning modes.

The default mode is Revolving. Dragging the smaller spheres in the Light Controls around the larger sphere with this mode enabled orbits the selected light about the larger sphere, thus changing its position. Dragging the smaller spheres with the Rotate mode enabled keeps the light in its current position, but rotates it about, which changes where it is aiming.