Comparing Hearts

Recently *ken1171 made a journal comparing 3D rendering engines, showing the same model rendered in each. Since I've yet to acquire a third party rendering engine or even make use of a third party light set, I figured I'd share a few thoughts myself.

As mentioned, I'm still using Poser's Firefly engine to do the renders. The three hearts above were rendered separately, using a different light set each time. Originally I wanted to keep everything Poser supplied, using just a simple color + highlight combo for the materials, since that would be enough to show some of the main differences between the light sets. However, I'm running Poser under WINE (for my own convenience), and it turns out that Poser's color selection dialog doesn't work in this environment. Thus I instead used some materials from my collection to provide the color for the hearts.

The heart on the left uses Poser's default light set. While this does show the details and shininess of the piece, it also tints the entire thing and leaves the shadows a little dark. It's not a favorite as a result, and I've only included it here as a sample to compare with the others.

The heart in the middle uses Poser's "Country" light set. This light set gives results that are very close to the default lights, most notably it has the detailed reflections seen in the original render.

The rightmost heart uses "Sun Right" from Poser's Image Based Lighting sets. This is definitely the favorite of the light sets I have. I prefer to have my things resemble cartoons over realism, and this light set gives the renders a rich color that pops. Unfortunately, it also doesn't have the reflection effects seen in the other two light sets, and so sometimes falls short. Yes, the heart on the right uses the same materials as the other two, but it sure doesn't look like it.

Hopefully this gives other Poser users a bit of a helpful nudge when it comes to their lighting. Thanks for reading!

Color Credit: Tabala's P6 Latex