My intention in starting this thread is twofold :

1. To include screenshots of useful atmosphere settings, with explanations and renders showing what it does.

2. To include links to anything useful that's related.

If anybody else has any suggestions, observations, settings, etc please feel free to add them. I'm sure there's lots of stuff about this already, so please add links !

. . . . . . . . . . .

To start with a quick 'reminder to self' of where I'm at with the Poser atmosphere. Screenshots and more detail in later posts with any luck!

Since I first discovered how to get visible glowing lights in Poser (Connatic's thread), I've been using the 'Volume' bit of the Poser atmosphere a lot in conjunction with spot/point lights.

Since I discovered that I could do postwork depth-of-field in GIMP using its focus-blur plugin (it was difficult finding it - I think that's the link I downloaded it from), I've been creating Z-depth renders (I know there's a thread here at Renderosity about that, but can't find it) of most of my scenes using the 'Depth Cue' bit of the Poser atmosphere. Then in GIMP I use that as the 'Depth Map' with for the Focus Blur plugin to do the depth-of-field - each change takes just a couple of seconds, instead of needing a complete re-render.

I also realized that the Z-depth render could also be used to apply a postwork distance fog effect, although I ran into some problems using postwork Z-map based fog and postwork focus blur together - the fourth image of my "Dust Storm" picture at ShareCG shows the problem and a sort-of solution.

Then I read over at RDNA about fast-rendering atmospheres (no link - their TerraDome is a commercial product), and I've been using the 'Depth Cue' bit of the Poser atmosphere to create distance fog/haze effects in the main render. I haven't noticed any "Dust Storm" type problems.

Snarlygribbley's SnowMachine and EventMobil's Dust Shader (3rd page of "slightly soapy water" thread here - nudity warning!) started me wondering about creating height-dependent fog, and then I found an old (castleposer.co.uk - 2008?) site that explained what the P-node actually does (the site also explains a few other nodes too).

I've just started playing with plugging the P-node into the root Atmosphere node...

Here's the result of my first sort-of-successful "plugging the P-node into the root Atmosphere node". Poser 9 render with auto settings (halfway between draft and final):

And here is the associated Poser atmosphere setup:

I used just one light - an infinite light at 50% intensity, xRotate = -26, yRotate = about the same as the camera, the light's atmosphere strength setting is 0.3

I think that if 'Volume_Color' is black then there is no interaction between the light and the volume.

I think that the output of the Color_Ramp is Color1 if Input=0 (or less), Color4 if Input=1 (or more), and some sort of blend if Input is between 0 and 1.

(I don't know why I have the Math_Function brick there - I think I could take it out, change the 'Y' value of the 'P' node to 0.006,  plug the 'P' node directly into the 'Input' of the 'Color_Blend' and get exactly the same result.)

With the 'P' node I think that setting x and z to zero and only y to non-zero means that only the y (height) value is used to set the Input value for the Color_Ramp. The 0.002 value I used was basically trial and error.

So I think I can see why this does what it does, but I'd really love it if somebody who knows would explain...  :)

Here's the same scene from a slightly higher viewpoint:

And the first viewpoint again, but with no atmosphere (depth cue and volume both unchecked):

Bagginsbill had a thread (or was in a thread) which explained how atmosphere and volumetrics worked in Poser... and his experiments with such. This was a while back, can't seem to track down older threads anymore. Perhaps someone out there knows of the thread and will link here? 

Looking at the stuff I've posted I wondered why only Color3 of the Color_Ramp was non-black. When I started playing with this all four colour inputs were non-black. I think it's because I was tweaking every parameter that was tweakable and multiple colours were confusing me. But now that I've got a set of parameters that sort-of work I tried adding some colour back (also turned off the depth cue)...

We definitely have a layered fog there !But why are there bright white patches in the archway?

Here it is from a higher vantage point:

The pink seems very muted, and the blue appears to have vanished.

Thanks primorge - I can't seem to find ANY forum threads via Google search any more !? Posted a note on the Community Center forum about that.

Just realized that the title of this thread can be read in different ways:

1. As a plea for help: that's not quite what was intended - I've been using the atmosphere for quite a while, and I think I know how it works (although I'm probably wrong about a lot of it). But yes, a good explanation of "How The Poser Atmosphere Works" would be very useful (and what's in the Poser Manual doesn't come close to fitting the bill!)

2. As a question to any Poser user who already uses the Poser atmosphere - "How do you use the Poser Atmosphere?" -  hoping to pick up some ideas for new things to try out.

I have a feeling that the thread you mentioned will cover both - hope somebody has it bookmarked...

Well, part of atmosphere is depth of field ... so here is what I found concerning that:

At RDNA (and bagginsbill is involved here) http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?72822-DoF-in-Poser-Pro-2012

And a short one: http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?47974-help-poser-8-dof

For beginners: http://www.3dfantasyart.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/DOF-in-Poser-Pro.pdf

For Poser Atmosphere, Here is what I found, some go back to Poser 5, but it can give a ground-base.

From Nerd3d: www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=7

From Content Paradise, P5: www.contentparadise.com/productDetails.aspx?id=4841

And on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=74iDEqDuaKA

at ShareCG is an Atmospheric Sensing platform that could be useful: www.sharecg.com/v/35443/Poser/Atmospheric-Sensing-Platform

I hope you find these helpful.

Boni

Just had a look at the Poser 9 Reference Manual, and found a bit on page 300 about the "Create Atmosphere Wacro" which has fog, smoke, smokey room, and depth cue options.

Also found a note on page 319 that I'd forgotten about - "Bright infinite lights can wash out volumetric effects unless you use a very low density. Volumetric effects are most successfully used with both spotlights and carefully controlled density numbers."  So I think that my inifite light is causing the bright white patches in the arch, although I don't really understand the why of that. reducing the volume density may fix that, but I guess it'll also destroy the nice fog that I have elsewhere.

Think if it as driving in dense fog with bright headlights on, the dispersal is very intense and bright.

How very cool.  An actual teaching thread on something that cofuzes the heck out of me!  Thanks, folks.

I did a tutorial on Poser Scene creation (link) including atmosphere (link) while my tutorial series on Poser materials (written on Rendo request) pays some attention to the Atmosphere node as well (link). Enjoy.

Excellent info posted so far - for more,

<<< Try clicking on this search >>>

Some things you will see discussed:

He He ... the platform is NOT an aide but a Star Trek inspired prop.  Sorry guys ... ok, back to your thread.

Big thank you to everybody who's replied so far:

Boni - I love the Atmospheric Sensing Platform, it gave me a good laugh!  :D  Haven't had time to check out the other links properly. And I think that including Poser DoF stuff here too is a good idea - other people may prefer it to postwork DoF.

hborre - nice concise explanation of the bright white bits in the renders I posted - thank you! That made the bit on p139 of the manual that I quoted click.

cedarwolf - great to know that I'm not going to be the only one getting something out of this thread.

aRtBee - your tutorials on other Poser stuff have helped me get to grips with things in the past. I'll be checking your atmosphere ones later today. many thanks!

bagginsbill - I tried a very similar search yesterday and got nothing, even with Google (posted on the Community Center forum about the problem). Looks like it's working today - your link is like a gold mine! :)

Some great info here!  Sorry I had dropped out of the discussion of Lighting Effects for a while, but had to get a new computer.  

Thanks Connatic, hopefully it'll continue to build up. So I'll keep the ball rolling with a bit about...

Creating A Depth Map Using The Atmosphere 'Depth_Cue'

This is handy if you want to do postwork depth-of-field, postwork depth-fog, etc. But remember that both depth-of-field and depth-fog can actually be done directly in Poser. Boni's already added included some links for doing depth of field in Poser in an earlier post http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2888795&#msg4193643 . It's all down to personal preference.

1. Here's a link to a bagginsbill post halfway through the "Turning a 3D object into a displacement map. Extreme "duuuh" content." thread - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053#msg3760022 .  That post has a link to an 2007 RDNA "Depth Map" thread ( http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?26700-Depth-Map ) which covers the basics of creating a greyscale depth map render of a scene in Poser. Look at the two previous posts on that thread as well at least.  msg24_7's 5-step process (with bagginsbill's extra step) is this:

• turn of all lights
• activate "DepthCue_On" (Atmosphere material)
• set DepthCue_Color to white
• set DepthCue_Start and _End distance*
• disable glowing materials**
• render***

A couple of suggestions:

• I gave up using the focus distance control. I now always do a first pass with DepthCue_Start=0 and DepthCue_End=1000 (inches). Then open the resulting render in GIMP, find out what the darkest grey and lightest grey (ignoring white) in the image are (I found Color>Threshold ideal for checking this), and then a tiny bit of maths (divide by 256 and multiply by 1000) to put those values back into DepthCue_Start/End and re-render
  ** ambient, reflection, and alternate diffuse channels are the ones I've noticed that 'glow'. SnarleyGribbley's free SceneFixer script has a 'set all ambient to zero' option, but you'll have to manually check for the others. I started writing a script to do it all but never finished.  Alternatively, try option 2 below.
  *** if your main render uses SSS or IDL, turn that off for the depth map render - it's not necessary, and disabling it will speed up the render.

N.B. If you do start changing your materials make sure you save a backup copy of your original scene first. Or before starting the changes save it as "whateverScene-DEPTHMAP.pz3" to avoid overwriting your original - I learnt that the hard way!

1. bagginsbill's post also mentions a method of creating a depth map of any Poser scene by simply applying a small node network to the atmosphere. That is detailed in the subsequent posts on that thread - you could just look at the screenshot of the network a few posts later ( http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053&#msg3760699 ), but I'd advise reading the posts in between.

(picture added just to highlight what this post's about - i.e. depth maps)

(this post's got far too many words in it! Sorry!)

Creating A Depth Map Using The Atmosphere 'Depth_Cue' (shorter version of the post!  :)

( Doing DoF inside Poser already covered - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2888795&#msg4193643 )

1. The usual 'turn off the lights' approach:
    http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053#msg3760022
    http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?26700-Depth-Map

• turn of all lights
• activate "DepthCue_On" (Atmosphere material)
• set DepthCue_Color to white
• set DepthCue_Start and _End distance (try 0 and 1000 inches, open result in GIMP/whatever, check min/max grey, put those figures back into Start/End, and rerender)
• disable glowing materials (ambient, reflection, alternate diffuse, others???)
• render (disable IDL/SSS if you use those to speed it up)
  N.B. Don't forget to back up your scene first if you start changing the materials.

1. Plug a P-Node into Atmosphere depth cue, leave the lights on, and don't touch any other materials...
     http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053&#msg3760699

Great collection of information, thanks.

Sorry if you mentioned it, but in all this discussion of clever ways to do a z-depth render, I didn't see anybody mention that it's now built into Poser (maybe only Pro). Are you guys aware of this? All those old-time tactics are not needed anymore. With a simple checkbox in render settings, you can get it directly, and it can be stored with much more precision than 8 or 16 bits.

Just checked in Poser 10, looks like it only has Ambient and Occlusion passes.

Also, keep in mind not to over populate or over light your scene.  Atmosphere takes up a lot of power to produce.

I've been having fun looking through bagginsbill's atmospheric goldmine link (in his first post on this thread, a link to a forum search URL), but noticed that sometimes the results change. So to make sure I don't lose the really interesting threads I've decided to link directly to the main threads for various atmosphere-related topics

Using Poser Atmosphere To Create Underwater Scenes

These are the main threads I found on this topic:

helgard's "Underwater Submarine" - 9 pages. Seems to be the main thread in this forum covering the subject. Also covers getting big waves that look good from above the surface.

AnArdvark's "Water surface from below: shader advice" - 1 page, worth a look

(momodot's "Refraction node question" - 3 page thread, mainly about getting a realistic water-air surface when viewed form the air side)

(image is the underwater one bagginsbill's used in his first post in this thread - just a visual cue for what this post is about!)

I've been having fun looking through bagginsbill's atmospheric goldmine link (in his first post on this thread, a link to a forum search URL), but noticed that sometimes the results change. So to make sure I don't lose the really interesting threads I've decided to link directly to the main threads for various atmosphere-related topics

Using Poser Atmosphere To Create Underwater Scenes

These are the main threads I found on this topic:

helgard's "Underwater Submarine" - 9 pages. Seems to be the main thread in this forum covering the subject. Also covers getting big waves that look good from above the surface.

AnArdvark's "Water surface from below: shader advice" - 1 page, worth a look

(momodot's "Refraction node question" - 3 page thread, mainly about getting a realistic water-air surface when viewed form the air side)

(image is the underwater one bagginsbill's used in his first post in this thread - just a visual cue for what this post is about!)

The posting/editing facilities on Renderosity forums are driving me to despair! I was definitely editing my post, to add the picture (which I know I'd included when I posted, but for which some reason didn't appear). I have no idea why it created a new post   :oS