Okay, did a search. Searched for "Kerkythea" AND "hair". I'm getting shoddy results:

Whilst Firefly does a bloody brilliant job rendering, given the right lights and everything, I've been wanting to expand my horizons a bit - no one wants to be stuck with just one tool, right? Kerkythea is awesome... anyone here use it yet? More importantly, has anyone got any experience with transmapped stuff, like hair?

I've gone from Blender to Poser to Max (and away from Max, when I saw the price!) and now to Kerkythea, and the conventions they use are always just a wee bit different. In Poser 7, we have a Diffuse material property for a given mesh that we can link a texture to. In Kerkythea, textures can also be linked to the Diffuse material property (along with a colour) but one has a different sense about how it all works. Translucency and clip map are a new term for an old concept - and how they are used and how they relate to what Poser 7 uses is anyone's guess.  Lights are different, anti-aliasing is different... rendering is seriously different. Tackling this, I feel Like I Should Have Studied The Theory Of Light And Particles, and well, this might be what I need to do. In the meantime, perhaps someone has a quicker answer than RTFM (which doesn't discuss transmapping at all - that's the irony about the manuals: they never discuss what you really want to know!) for the question of: How Do I Render Transmapped Hair In Kerkythea?

I have not used Kerkythea yet - i downloaded it and have much interest to understand it, but I haven't had time.

So - I'm not speaking from direct knowledge, but rather general knowledge.

The problem you're experiencing here is called aliasing. There are very fine lines in the color map and transmap. When you do a render, you're coloring each pixel based on a point in space, rather than the true area that fills that pixel. This is a hit-or-miss proposition as to whether a given pixel hits a hair or misses a hair. Because of the grid-like pattern produced by digital renders, we get inconsistent presentation of these fine lines.

The general term for dealing with this problem is called anti-aliasing. There are several common techniques for anti-aliasing.

One way this can be solved is by "super sampling" the scene, that is instead of doing one sample per pixel you instruct the renderer to subdivide each pixel, render each, then average those together to make the final pixel. Obviously this is expensive. If you subdivide by, for example 3, to make 9 sub-pixels for each pixel, your render time increases 9-fold! This is the "Pixel Samples" setting in Poser render settings. (I think)

Poser also has Min Shading Rate, which is to say that overall the image can have a different super-sampling rate for the shaders, while the 3D raytrace hit-or-miss follows another rate. Quite often, we get good enough results by super-sampling the shader without super-sampling the geometry.

Finally there is Texture Filtering - reducing the resolution of the texture images (color and transmap) before they go to the renderer. This effectively super-samples the images, but in an intelligent way based on how far you are from the rendered object. For example, your hair might have a 2K by 2K texture map, but on your render it is only covering 200 by 200 pixels. Texture filtering would super-sample 10 by 10 pixels to make one pixel for the render. Thus the small-scale variations would be averaged up front, so that you get less aliasing noise.

I'm pretty certain that Kerkythea at least has pixel super sampling and texture filtering, but I have no idea how/where you set those things. It may also have shader super sampling.

Where is this Kerkythea?

Attached Link: Kerkythea Home Page

I've only played with it a tiny bit. I don't yet know how to import Poser figures and such. I've only played with the built-in primitive shapes. RobynsVeil is way ahead of me on this.

One thing I'm not clear on is how/if it does polygon smoothing. For example, when you load the built-in library sphere, it is very low poly. You can see this on the edges. I'm not sure that it has micro-polygon smoothing built in. Something to think about.

But what is very exciting is how it handles light! This is the number one reason to consider using it instead of Poser's renderer. Check out some of the gallery images on the site. The interiors really show off the sophisticated lighting model.

Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a single human figure rendered in their gallery. Maybe we can correct that? :)

Attached Link: http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_easyfaq&task=cat&catid=15&Itemid=41

"I import my scene but some of my objects are not looking smooth. Is there anything I can do inside Kerkythea?
 
Written by Administrator

Yes and in fact there are two different smoothing operations that you can perform. The former operation corresponds to smooth shading and is related to having smooth normal vectors in your objects. To achieve that, a parameter that represents the maximum angle between two neighbour faces of your object is used to perform smooth lighting transition between these faces. In Kerkythea, after selecting your object to be smoothed, select and right click it on the models tree view, and Smooth with the appropriate angle (usually an angle of 45 degrees suffices)."

BB

It looks interesting but, as a bit of a correction, the preview on the main page shows one scene in what appears to be a lobby with a receptionist. (Could be Vicky, too.)

Vince

Smoothing? That's working fine but it doesn't change the fact that the object isn't round. All that does is interpolate the surface normals so that the lighting of a polygon makes it appear rounded instead of flat. The polygon is still flat, though.

Poser's Firefly renderer (and many other renderers) can actually change the geometry itself, so that things that are supposed to be round are round.

This lets you use low-poly figures. You may think that's ok - V4 is high poly. Well she's not THAT high poly. If you render a head shot, nice and big, you'll see the non-roundness of the edge of her head and ears. Turn on smoothing, and she's all round and soft-edged.

Quote - BB

It looks interesting but, as a bit of a correction, the preview on the main page shows one scene in what appears to be a lobby with a receptionist. (Could be Vicky, too.)

Vince

Are you talking about the animated slide show? Yes I saw that - if you select a slide show of "Interiors" that shows up, but it isn't in the gallery.

The slide show "Interiors" says there are 29 images, but the "Interiors" gallery only has 13.

Anyway, I "suspect" the receptionist. If you can find it again, freeze the slide show. (Move your mouse up from the bottom-center of the show - a little control panel shows up.)

Now look at the render closely. There is a guy in the hallway to the right. He looks like a Poser 3 render. Whereas, the receptionist looks totally real. My suspicion is that she is a "cutout" - a photo that has been inserted into the scene on a square prop, or she was added in postwork.

I'd certainly love to believe that the receptionist is a 3D render, part of the actual scene. But I don't think so.

Regarding smoothing, from their FAQ:
And you said something for another smoothing operation?
  Written by Administrator

The latter smoothing operation corresponds to smooth geometry and is related to the density of the wireframe of your objects. In Kerkythea, you can perform a Loop Subdivision (can be found on the tree view, Modeling > Loop Subdivision on your selected objects) where each triangle of your mesh is subdivided in four new triangles (the process can be repeated for further smoothing). It is essential that your mesh objects are modeled properly – one thing you can do for greater safety is to perform a Vertex Welding (can be found on the tree view, Modeling > Vertex Welding on your selected objects) before subdivision. Note though, that there is a trade off between increasing the object density and rendering time – you should be conservative at how many times you perform subdivision on an object.

This is quite different from Poser's smooth polygons feature, and be warned that many models that are designed for Poser will go nuts when subdivided as described there.

Thanks PJ - I found that myself about half an hour ago. It works on the sphere, but try it with the cylinder - LOL.

After exporting my Simon figure as a 3DS file, it imported perfectly into Kerkythea. That was the end of my seamless transition.

In Kerkythea, every single body part gets its own material. They seem to know that they have a shared material name (our material "zones") but I can't seem to get it to apply the shader I'm editing in one part to all the other parts. Yes, I clicked on the cryptically named checkbox "Apply to same name materials." It doesn't seem to do what I want. No matter, moving right along, I'll just work with the head for now.

I turned on translucence and set the scattering properties. No SSS. Come to find, you have to enable a rendering option or it gets ignored. It is under Settings/Advanced Options/Ray Tracers/Standard Ray Tracer/Sampling Criteria/Trace Tranlucencies=on. Whew.

SSS definately works nicely, but you pay the price in render time.

I'm also having issues with aliasing. I have global AA triple sampling enabled. But I seem to have to do some more with the texture maps. I'll find it.

One thing is glaringly wrong about the gamma correction, something that Poser Pro got right. Unless I'm just not seeing it, there is no option in Kerkythea to un-gamma-correct the input texture. The result is that the skin shows no detail at all and is very pale. Basically, the input texture is already gamma corrected (by the person who edited it to make it look like skin on the screen in the first place) and so Kerkythea is not starting with a linear color space. So that skin color map is being double-gamma corrected, resulting in a very featureless pale skin.

There may be a way to do it, though. I'll just have to faff about some more.

The image above is what I have so far. Not very good. It also took an age to render this small 600x600 image with a single spotlight.

That's not too different from what I went through with trying to get Cinema 4D imported content materials to act in the ballpark of Poser's native shading.  I didn't take it all that far, basically to the point of "OK".

Docs on the Kerkythea material editor (in case you had not found these already):
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=42&func=fileinfo&id=49

I think you may find that there aren't all that many 1:1 corelations between Firefly and Kerkythea.

Wow, what a great explanation of the whole process of rendering and anti-aliasing. I'm a self-confessed newbie, so a lot of these concepts are still a bit nebulous - hence the unnecessarily long render times

Quote - It is a very capable renderer. It supports global illumination, caustics, soft shadows, IES lights, lots of neat stuff in the lighting model. It has a pretty sophisticated material model, too.

I've only played with it a tiny bit. I don't yet know how to import Poser figures and such. I've only played with the built-in primitive shapes. RobynsVeil is way ahead of me on this.

"Way ahead" may be a bit of an overstatement. Actually, what I have done is what all of us probably do with new software: try it before reading the instructions. So, importing Poser figures was a bit of an issue, because the orientation is different.
Really Quite easy to use - simply export your model as a Wavefront .obj, making sure all your texture files (including bump and transmaps) are in the same folder as the obj file, and then just open the file in Kerkythea - it reads it natively. You actually have to turn your object 90 degrees on the x-axis for it to import properly. You can turn it once you get it into your scene, but it's easier to turn it in Poser first before you do the export to .obj, since Vicky has so many body parts.
Skin is rendered beautifully - as is any other texture. The only dramas I've run across is transmapped stuff, but only because I've never understood the magic. (I believe eyelashes also work on the same principle...)

Quote -
One thing I'm not clear on is how/if it does polygon smoothing. For example, when you load the built-in library sphere, it is very low poly. You can see this on the edges. I'm not sure that it has micro-polygon smoothing built in. Something to think about.

But what is very exciting is how it handles light! This is the number one reason to consider using it instead of Poser's renderer. Check out some of the gallery images on the site. The interiors really show off the sophisticated lighting model.

Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a single human figure rendered in their gallery. Maybe we can correct that? :)

They do recommend Daz and Poser figures on their forums. Since most of the Kerkythea users seem to come from Sketchup (architectural) and Blender (some Silo as well), the objects of render are more scenes with inorganic matter. Subsurface scattering and IBL as well as polygon smoothing seem more an organic model thing, perhaps... I don't know. 

Quote - That's not too different from what I went through with trying to get Cinema 4D imported content materials to act in the ballpark of Poser's native shading.  I didn't take it all that far, basically to the point of "OK".

Docs on the Kerkythea material editor (in case you had not found these already):
http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=42&func=fileinfo&id=49

I think you may find that there aren't all that many 1:1 correlations between Firefly and Kerkythea.

Accurately put. I've only just got my head around some of the material room concepts in Poser, and none of this appears to apply in Kerkythea. Coming as I am from Blender as well (and the material [F5] editing and assigning methods there are as different to Poser as Kerkythea), you can colour me totally confused...

This has all served to give me a better understanding of Poser's way of generating an image. I didn't realize until just today, for instance, that when you tick "Smooth Polygons", it actually changes the geometry. I've had to untick that option on props I created in Blender and imported into Poser, as it gave the prop a strange bulbous shape - and ticked is on by default when you import obj files.

Might go post over on the Kerkythea forum and ask the experts if the developers of this renderer had any solutions for organic modelers with regard to SSS and polygon smoothing... I'll have a good read of the material editor guide first, tho....

Poser's method of polygon smoothing is very specific to REYES style renderers; you can take advantage of it, but it requires specific modeling techniques.  It does not behave at all like Catmull-Clark subdivision, and has both advantages and disadvantages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyes_rendering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catmull-clark_subdivision

I think most people who model low-poly Poser content basically try to avoid using it at all (by breaking all edges everywhere, like Stonemason does) or turning off the Smooth Polygons property for the imported model.  For high-poly content it is much less of an issue, and models tend to behave in a way that appears similar under both methods - although at a low level some very different things are going on, the rendered result looks much the same.

I tried it and liked it, but not enough to switch over from Povray.

Too much work for me!

Quote - Too much work for me!

I can appreciate that :)

But - it took me two years before I had a decent looking skin in Poser, and another yet before I had great skin.

If I get to the same point in Kerkythea in anything less than a year, I'll consider it a win. It's not a tool for 5 minute renders. But if you've run a 12 hour render with Poser, as I have, and found it looking about the same as a 12 minute render, you start to wonder if you've hit a limit that is holding you back. Thus another renderer (especially a physically accurate, and FREE one) is appealing.

There are quite a few freebie renderers that are better than Poser's. I've found Povray to give the best results and it's really easy for my to use.

It's in the lighting and the way it behaves in Poser. Shadows are unpredictable in any kind of cornell box type render. It does OK if you're rendering against an image background.

POVray surely is a capable renderer, I have used it a lot. With PoseRay there is a good bridge to it too. But I found the material system quite limiting. There is no SSS as far as I know, and no displacement unless you subdivide the model a lot. The last stable version I know isn't multithreaded, so it's a bit slow on a multi-core machine.  But a capable render for sure.

FireFly has no GI and no radiosity, so a cornell box type renderer will probably fail to produce a good result. Still the shadows were predictable enough for me.

I will have a look in Kerkythea too. I already have Vue so it will have to be better than that to justify the time - since Vue can use Poser's Shader tree, Materials tend to be easier there.
 

bantha,

All that you say is true - I find POVray fascinating, but there's no opportunity for accurate/interesting shader construction. Since that is my passion, POVray is dead to me.

On the other hand, Kerkythea has a very powerful shader system. You can construct multi-layer shaders that obey the laws of physics with very little work. You can preview them.

It comes with several powerful specialized shaders. And it comes with an SDK, which would permit me to design new specialized shaders myself. This is really interesting to me.

More than that, I found a vibrant community there, where people are deeply interested in the construction and re-use of procedural or semi-procedural shaders. Quite a few free shader libraries are available that are of excellent quality. I think I'd have fun working with it.

I have no reason whatsoever to do CG - its just an interesting puzzle to find what you can do with shaders and I enjoy seeing other people find delight in them.

I can see why you find Kerkythea interesting. Now, a good renderer with a pretty complete lighting toolset and a good shader system is really a good thing. I don't know if Kerkythea does displacement yet, but if it does it could become a serious rendering option for me - if I can find the time to learn it properly. I still struggle with Vue.

I will test Kerkythea as well. I will see what I manage to get from there. From what I have seen, a bridge would not be that hard to do. Kerkythea uses OBJ files as well, and if the material system is as versatile as you say some kind of material conversion should be possible as well.

What I read up to now looks better than POVray.

Quote - There are quite a few freebie renderers that are better than Poser's. I've found Povray to give the best results and it's really easy for my to use.

I was thinking about this for a while. Well, every rendering software has strengths and weaknesses. If you know POV, you can do good pictures with it. I seriously doubt that I could make good pictures with mental Ray or Photorealistc Renderman, without learning for half a year or so. FireFly works for me, most of the time.  

I'm pretty certain K does not do displacement. Yet.

Not surprising, since K is a raytracer. Displacement is much easier for a REYES renderer. Yafray cannot do displacement either, IIRC. Hopefully it will be implemented at some time.

Quote - bantha,

All that you say is true - I find POVray fascinating, but there's no opportunity for accurate/interesting shader construction. Since that is my passion, POVray is dead to me.

On the other hand, Kerkythea has a very powerful shader system. You can construct multi-layer shaders that obey the laws of physics with very little work. You can preview them.

It comes with several powerful specialized shaders. And it comes with an SDK, which would permit me to design new specialized shaders myself. This is really interesting to me.

More than that, I found a vibrant community there, where people are deeply interested in the construction and re-use of procedural or semi-procedural shaders. Quite a few free shader libraries are available that are of excellent quality. I think I'd have fun working with it.

I have no reason whatsoever to do CG - its just an interesting puzzle to find what you can do with shaders and I enjoy seeing other people find delight in them.

With the extension Povman, which I use, you can compile and use renderman shaders. Good stuff.

Quote - > Quote - Too much work for me!

I can appreciate that :)

But - it took me two years before I had a decent looking skin in Poser, and another yet before I had great skin.

If I get to the same point in Kerkythea in anything less than a year, I'll consider it a win. It's not a tool for 5 minute renders. But if you've run a 12 hour render with Poser, as I have, and found it looking about the same as a 12 minute render, you start to wonder if you've hit a limit that is holding you back. Thus another renderer (especially a physically accurate, and FREE one) is appealing.

I can appreciate that, but I can get my Poser content into too many other programs that render better with much less effort. I'm a lazyboy hobbiest. :tt2:

I can load most of my Poser stuff into Carrara at this point if I want a fancy extra special realistic render. I can also get it into Bryce if I take it through D/S, so learning not just a new render engine but how to convert  the content isn't something I want to spend my time on. Just not enough hours in the day.

Quote - Okay, did a search. Searched for "Kerkythea" AND "hair". I'm getting shoddy results:

.......... different sense about how it all works. Translucency and clip map are a new term for an old concept - and how they are used and how they relate to what Poser 7 uses is anyone's guess. 

In poser the transparency is masked by a greyscale image, so you get the benefits of built-in anti-aliasing where there is a smooth transition from black to white.
Clip mapping, on the other hand, uses a black and white image to mask out transparent areas and as such there is no anti-aliasing of the edges (a pixel is either black or it's white, there's no grey to smooth the jaggy edges in the masking image).

A renderer like modo allows you to use an image either as a 'transparency amount' mask (looks smoother on things like close-up hair) or as a clip map (faster on things like distant leaves where you don't notice the jaggies).

Not sure if Kerky allows you both options but if you put in a feature request you'll find Giannis to be very obliging.

A big advantage of clip mapping is that you don't get unwanted shine or reflections on the parts of the mesh which are supposed to be invisible. In modo if you use the greyscale image for 'transparency amount', you also have to use it again for 'specular amount' and 'reflection amount' to kill the shine on the clear bits. With clip maps that's handled automatically.

Sheesh, I have learned so much about the whole rendering process these past few days! Thank you, all of you for your brilliant input! Copied and read and re-read and studied and researched...

The question begs asking: am I the only Poser / Daz Studio user that might be looking at an alternative renderer beside POVRay/Poseray? When I see what is available for Kerkythea in terms of settings and like that, the idea of placing my figures into these settings is incredibly enticing. There is no question most of the figure renders beautifully - the lights are as good (if not better) as what I'm able to in Poser, so the skin is quite on par with what I've done in Firefly.

About the only issue is with transmapped objects requiring some sort of anti-aliasing to look right, like hair. Whilst there are a fair few clothing props that use this too, the level of detail is no-where near that of hair.

So, is it more reasonable to go with a different hair construct, as in particles? Or is there a technique that I've missed in Kerkythea that will give me the results I want? IOW, when one sets antialiasing in Kerkythea, is it for every object in the scene, or can it be set for just a specific material?

K has texture filtering which would solve that problem exactly - you need to find where you set that.

The author is working on the new material editor guide, so there's no docs to point to right now.

I'm sure its in there. I don't have K with me today so I can't try myself.

I would suspect it would be in the material editor.

Click on the label for the Clip mapping Texture (if that's where you attached the transmap image.)

Look down in the Texture Editor box. There should be a little icon for the image itself. Click that.

This will cause some parameters to display that are similar to our poser Image_Map node parameters; U_Scale, V_Scale, U_Offset, etc.

Maybe among those things dispayed are settings for texture filtering.

Look under render options, too. Particularly the Advanced settings having to do with AA (anti-aliasing).

Hi BagginsBill,
Thanks so much for your patience with me on this!

I've actually posted to the Kerkythea forum as well, and Fletch from the KT team indicated that I needed to put the clip map (transmap) in the refraction box instead of the clip box. He didn't indicate any other settings, so I'm having a bit of a play to see how I can get it to work. I'm rendering on my desktop whilst answering you on the laptop, so there'll be no processor interruptions. At this point, I've got the following settings in the Material Editor for the hair material:
Reflectance:
..Diffuse--hair texture bitmap
..Specular Attentuation--Frsnel
..Shininess--0.100

Transmittance:
..Refraction--clip (transmap) bitmap
..Index of--0.200
..Transmitted Attentuation--Cosine
..Transmitted shininess--128.00

All other settings in the material editor were left at default.

For render settings, I used:
..06. Photon Map - Medium + AA 0.3
The image I got is:

I'll keep you posted how I go...

Try Vue, instead ;)
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/wildspace/characters1realism.jpg

Quote - Try Vue, instead ;)
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/wildspace/characters1realism.jpg

Well, I'd love to, but my budget won't allow it for the moment. Kerkythea 's price is quite appealing, and its capabilities even more so. It's just a question of getting a few answers sorted...

I am saving up for Vue... it's my next major software investment. Which renderer does it use?

Vue has it's own renderer :)
Top versions of Vue have: Global Illumination and Radiosity, as well as Ambient cclusion, depending on what you want.
Plus quadratic as well as normal lights and "area" lights. Also, on radiosity renders, materials with "Illumination" actually light the surroundings.

That pic was doign using Chipp Walters "InteriorPak" in Vue6 Infinite, he's figured out probably the best way to get indoor scene renderings to work, in Vue.

No offence, but Vue's renderer blows the SOCKS off Poser's :p

This is Maxwell render, from Rhino, I render up models as I build them, helps a lot with my design work :)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1650606
I got Maxwell cheap bakc in it's ALpha test  ;)

Lot of Maxwell renders on my Rhino modelling page:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/rhino/rhino3d.htm

maxwell was offered as eventually having Vue and Bryce plugins, which have NEVER materialized, grrr!!!!

Not sure where you got the Refractive index of 0.200 from but it's bound to give you really funky results. Set it to 1.0 (= R.I. for air/vacuum) for stuff that's supposed to be completely invisible.

See attached image:
Apply the hair texture to Diffuse
Apply the Trans map to Refraction
Click the word 'Refraction' - A
The image appears in the Texture editor box at B
Click it and the texture properties open at C
Check 'Inverted' (because in poser transmaps white means solid, whereas in Kerky white means transparent)

Same thing for lashes, only you can probably use a colour for Diffuse instead of the map.

I would use no specular while you're getting the trans stuff to work. Then if you apply specular you'll probably see a filmy effect appearing in places where the mesh should be invisible (like at the tips of the hair). You'll need to apply the trans map again as a mask so that the specular is limited only to where the actual hairs are visible.

Quote - Not sure where you got the Refractive index of 0.200 from

...default value - not sure what to set it at. Sure glad you've had some info on this - I was in the dark.

Quote -
but it's bound to give you really funky results.

Oh, ya betcha, mate - they were wonky!

Quote - Set it to 1.0 (= R.I. for air/vacuum) for stuff that's supposed to be completely invisible.

See attached image:
Apply the hair texture to Diffuse
Apply the Trans map to Refraction
Click the word 'Refraction' - A
The image appears in the Texture editor box at B
Click it and the texture properties open at C
Check 'Inverted' (because in poser transmaps white means solid, whereas in Kerky white means transparent)

Same thing for lashes, only you can probably use a colour for Diffuse instead of the map.

I would use no specular while you're getting the trans stuff to work. Then if you apply specular you'll probably see a filmy effect appearing in places where the mesh should be invisible (like at the tips of the hair). You'll need to apply the trans map again as a mask so that the specular is limited only to where the actual hairs are visible.

This is exactly what I was looking for - I wasn't getting all the parameters from Fletch on the Kerkythea forum, and I had nil clue what to be setting things at.  There is no information - or at least, I have not uncovered any! - about the white/black visible/transparent disparity between Poser and Kerkythea - how the heck did you find this out?? Hats off to you, mate - this is a key discovery! ... a major shoulder-up.

And believe me, the Poser community will thank you for this, too. I'm going to have a go tomorrow morning - this is a Sat nite with my workmates (nurses, yes, we like the grog!) and whilst I'm obsessed with this, I think I need a clear mind to be nutting it all out.... see ya in the morning, and Happy Blummin' Mother's Day, hey?

Cheers,
Robyn

Also remember that you only have to set up these materials for a figure once, then you can save them to a library for that particular character . Next time you load that figure (or hair prop, or item of clothing) you can select its various materials from the saved library and apply them to the model without having to set them all up again or track down every texture.

Once you have all the figure's different materials set up nicely (including 'smoothing' in the right-click menu) go to the 'Material Workshop' (Menu>Settings>Materials). You'll see the 'scene materials' listed on the left and a library on the right (probably empty - right click and clear it if it isn't empty). Just select a bunch of materials on the left and right-click, pick "send to library" and they'll appear on the right. Then save that library with a suitable name.

Next time you import that figure into Kerky you can open the Material Workshop and open your library, then select a material in the left (scene) pane, select the corresponding material in the right (library) pane, right-click it and pick "Apply to left Pane". Your saved material will be applied to whatever is selected in the left pane. I believe this has to be done one material at a time, there's a 'sync by name' in the context menu, looks promising but I don't know what it does.

Also, go to the material editor and at the bottom left check 'Model shape in Preview', this gives you your actual bodypart instead of the silly ball, so it's easier to pick the material you want without having to read every name.

Remember to make use of the 'Merge' feature. If you have a scene set up to render really well you don't have to start from scratch setting another one up next time. Open your good scene and 'merge' your new geometry into it (Menu>File>Merge, the options are fairly self-explanatory) so you can keep your environment, lighting, render settings etc and just replace your old figures with new ones. Or 'merge' just the lighting from another scene into your current one.

Kerky is a superb little application and it would be great to see more Poser users enjoying it, and with more users Giannis is more likely to improve support for Poser.

Okay, we are getting closer... and as added benefit I'm gaining a bit of an understanding about material properties. Decided to download and have a read of the Kerkythea Material Editor Guide, and found the section on Refraction and IOR. The interface seems to have changed a bit, but the principles remain the same.

So, anyway, having a play with the settings: first I did exactly as recommended and got:

as you can see, it made a huge difference in the detail - the hair feathers out beautifully now. Now I've got to figure out how to keep from seeing the geometry. I tried another render with Refraction index set at 1.2 (instead of 1.0 - apparently 1.56 is glass) but nil difference in the render. The ghosty bit looks like the underlying mesh is being highlighted somehow. Anyone have an idea how to get rid of this?

So close, and yet...

You're seeing that ghosty bit because while your hair trans map is 'cutting' out your texture, it's not affecting the specular. Those white ghosts are the specular showing on the invisible mesh.

Try applying the trans to specular also.

Quote - The ghosty bit looks like the underlying mesh is being highlighted somehow. Anyone have an idea how to get rid of this?

Looks like specular or reflection (see my earlier posts in this thread, I mention exactly this problem in 2 posts) - make sure you have nothing in those channels for all the hair materials (you might have removed specular for the outer layers but not an inner layer, if they are different materials).

Which hair prop is this? I don't think I have it, but I'll try it if I have it.

Quote -
Looks like specular or reflection (see my earlier posts in this thread, I mention exactly this problem in 2 posts) - make sure you have nothing in those channels for all the hair materials (you might have removed specular for the outer layers but not an inner layer, if they are different materials).

Which hair prop is this? I don't think I have it, but I'll try it if I have it.

This hair is a classic by Kozaburo called "Short Bob". You can get it for free from his website:
digitalbabes2.com/dload1.html

It was originally designed for V3, but using Hair Conversion System I got it to fit V4.

I've had a look at the mesh in Blender - the hair model is comprised of several layers of mesh. However, in Kerkythea, there is only one hair material. For an image of what my material editor settings are, please click www.tightbytes.com/images/Poser/Kerkythea/Settings.jpg .

As far as I can tell, I've got nothing entered in the specular or reflection areas except what was there by default. Perhaps those need changing or something? I'm so sorry to be such a thick newbie, but I'm really in the dark about things like Fresnel and Cosine and how or if they affect the render and my study of the material editor guide leaves too many holes in my understanding of this.

Also, I'm rendering using Photon Mapping and Final Gathering (SW), with ray tracing set to Extra pass 3x3... not sure if that plays a role.

Thanks so much for your patience!

Quote -
I would use no specular while you're getting the trans stuff to work. Then if you apply specular you'll probably see a filmy effect appearing in places where the mesh should be invisible (like at the tips of the hair). You'll need to apply the trans map again as a mask so that the specular is limited only to where the actual hairs are visible.

By this I take it to mean that I should go ahead and set the transmap just like I did for Refraction? Just because I am seeing that ghosty outline?
I'll do that, and let you know...

Ok, I'm trying it with short bob. Strange, I have those same ghosted mesh shapes and I can't get rid of them. I'm pretty certain they're not caused by specular or reflection.

Quote - Ok, I'm trying it with short bob. Strange, I have those same ghosted mesh shapes and I can't get rid of them. I'm pretty certain they're not caused by specular or reflection.

Thank goodness - it's not just me, then. Would it make any sense to try those transmaps in other areas, like Translucency? As far as I know, the mesh itself has nil colour properties - it uses purely a UV map.

I looked for a dokumentation about the XML-format K uses. It should be possible to write some kind of exporter, at least for geometries, lights and camera. You will have to fix the materials, and probably the lighting as well, but it would be a starting point.

I have played with the renderer on the last weekend, and I liked the results. Nothing I would care to publish here, but that's fine considering that I did not spend that much time for it.

So, if I get the dokumentation and find some people here which would do some testing, I would give it a try. I'm not that fluently in Poser Python, but I do have some programming experience and I'm willing to try it.

So are there some people around who would like to have some plugin?

I would be interested, Bantha, particularly if it includes some method to integrate transmapped hair methods into Kerkythea. At this point, I'm having a bit of a trial getting it to work properly. Got the experts on the Kerkythea forum trying to nut it out, though. The issue appears to be: clipmapping renders a very clumpy hairline, whilst putting the transmap into the refraction field in the material editor for the hair material renders a very fine hairline, but there seems to be mesh ghosting:

There's got to be a solution just around the corner to this - perhaps you might have an idea?

If I found one, I would have posted it already. I am quite new to Kerkythea.

A transmap in the refraction channel sounds wrong to me, since it's not glass, there should not be any refractions. Did you set the IOR to 1.00 (Air)? Could you post a picture how it looks with that?

Things are moving so fast - me learning to shut up and read the manual - that it'll take a few to totally explain things, but here's the short version. For this particular model, Kozaburo's Short Bob, this appears to work the best. For the hair material, in the material editor, under the thumbnail of the image, replace Matte/Phong with Layered Material, and immediately add two Matte/Phongs to that.
For Layered Material, click fill weights, and for weight#0, use the transmap bitmap. For weight#1, also use the transmap bitmap, but when you click on it in the Texture Editor, under Bitmap options, tick Inverted. Get rid of the default white coloured boxes too for both Fill weights, leaving just the transmaps..
For Matte/Phong #0, put the texture bitmap in Diffuse and for Matte/Phong#1, use the colour white for refraction.
And your result should be:

I know, not a brilliant image, but you get the idea. You have to adjust for the eyelashes, too... anything that uses a transmap will need tweaking.

Also, I was told that my model was too small - so I made a change in Settings-> Advanced-> Modellers... OBJ Modeller, I upped the Import scale to 1.8. We'll see how accurate that is when I import a chair or something made in Sketchup.

Anyway, time for bed... have fun with this! It shows great promise!!!

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/scripts/poser2yafray.py

If you want to, you can use my Poser->Yafray python script as a starting point:
http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/scripts/poser2yafray.py

Getting basic camera, light and geometry support shouldn't be very hard. Translating material and lights properly can be more tricky, but odds are most users want to use K-specific light and material setups anyway so you won't need to get that 100% right.

Do you know if it supports any other primitives than triangle meshes? If it supports cylinders, translating dynamic hair will be easy, if it doesn't you'll have to come up with a scheme to turn hair curves into polygon meshes without having the polycount explode.