i've played around with poser for about a year now, but have only recently started to work with it in earnest. as i understand it, the poser 5 renderer is supposed to be better than the poser 4 version. but i've been having a couple of problems with it. 1. when rendering a figure with a more complicated hairstyle (like morning mane), the program completely locks up. i have a pentium iii 800 and 512 mg of ram. i end up having to revert to the poser 4 renderer. 2. the neck area on any figure, using any texture, looks very mottled and ugly, usually with little green blotches, using the firefly engine. it looks especially bad since the face texture right above it renders fine. attached is a comparison: firefly at the top, poser 4 at the bottom (the green blotches aren't so obvious in this one). anyone have similar problems, and is there a cure? thanx.

Attached Link: http://www.enmeshed.com/shadermagic/

OK. First install the latest patch, if you havn't. Then go into the material room and attach the bump node to the "bump" channel (NOT GRADIENT BUMP) turn that down to like .1 or .2. Check out the URL for a very helpful tutorial

To be honest with you, it doesn't seem like your system is going to handle Firefly very well. A P3 800 isn't exactly a powerhouse system (no offense), and 512MB isn't much RAM. So I think you might see more memory and speed problems than people with newer systems.

As a fix for your problem with the neck, you might want to try reducing the Minimum Shading Rate (pixel area) value in the Firefly setup menu from it's default value to 0.2 or so. That helps clean up textures on render, but will cost you some render speed. If you find your machine can't handle the render fully after you make that adjustment, you can try reducing the Bucket Size from default value of 32 down to 20 or so, which again will put a dent in render speed, but will make the render less memory intensive, and might help your system handle the render better.

The P4 renderer is a "no-brainer" so to speak. It's programmed to give you the best result it can without having to tweak any settings. Basically, there's no flexibility with that renderer. It's all or nothing (aside from some minor options). Firefly is much more advanced, and requires you to learn some actual render skills (rendering is an art in itself). It has a great deal more options, and allows much more render flexibility to the user. Hardcore users will like this added power, but most people just want a simple solution, and couldn't be bothered with the wingdings Firefly has. ;-)

Message edited on: 06/11/2004 09:52

Poodle,

Are you sure your program is actually "Locking Up" or is it maybe just taking a long time?

I tried using the Firefly Rendering with everything checked, presuming it to be "full bells and whistles".

The rendering process actually took 40 minutes.

I thought the program had locked, but when I checked my Task Manager, saw it was still running.

Heck of a long time to wait, but the finished product looks stunning.

Chloe

Attached Link: http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17060

The link here introduces a fix for Neftis hair to render in FireFly - maybe that one helps with your hairstyle too?

"The rendering process actually took 40 minutes." Considering you checked every option in the settings panel, and probably had the renderer trying to calculate for things it didn't have to in the scene, that's not a very long rendertime for Firefly. :-) Off topic: Stewer, I didn't try Pixie yet. Probably will do it this weekend, and might need some assistance. I'll contact you IM if I do. ;-)

Try memturbo. You're probably out of available RAM when your system locks up. In the meantime, play with Firefly with less ambitious hair and get the hang of it. It's worth it. And try this link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/renderer.html

Just wanted to say that i made a render with depth of field: it took me over 20 hours... So be patient... Also, i know some hairs are very very high polygons... For example, the Mihai Hair at DAZ don't work with the FireFly engine...

I have a 1.1 gigaherz computer and only 128 megabytes of ram and I can use poser 5 okay. You don`t actually need a huge ram to use it.

i have a 3.2 P4 with 2 gig ram and i have the pixelation or whatever problem like in picture 2 also. I am really pissed about it and cant fix it, regardless of render options.

" i have a 3.2 P4 with 2 gig ram and i have the pixelation or whatever problem like in picture 2 also. I am really pissed about it and cant fix it, regardless of render options."

It more than likely has to do with your render settings, but make sure you have the latest service release patch. Perhaps post a screen shot of your render settings so people can better evaluate what can be done.

My first suggestion would be to make sure the minimum shading rate is set LOW enough, and that you don't have texture filtering enabled. Message edited on: 06/11/2004 16:10

I've had the same issue with textures in firefly... I think it may have something to do with the bump maps.. never could fix it though!

Hmmm. If you tried all of the suggestions above, the next thing I could think of is to reduce the strength of the bump map you're using, and make sure the bump map is actually a greyscale bump map and not just the color texture plugged into the bump channel, which may not provide as good a result. Also, make sure the Maximum texture resolution, which is the option under the minimum shading rate, is set high enough for the texture you are using. If it's set too low, it will make a hi-res texture render like poo poo.

disabling texture filtering fixed it for me just now, but sometimes it doesn't...?

thanks for the suggestions. going to go fight my way into the material room now and see what happens. as for the hair rendering problem, i think i'll just set the computer to rendering overnight and see if it has been actually locking up or just taking a loooooooooong time to render.

Ok, I used to get this.

Texture filtering in Firefly (to fix hair issues) will cause the mottling of the skin texture. But if you take it off, then you have to seriously tweak your hair to get it to render half way decent.

Some things that might help:
Plug the hair texture into the displacement node and set it to something like 0.0002. Displacement, NOT bump.
In the render settings, make sure that 'use displacement...' is ticked and texture filtering is off.
Set the minimum shading rate as low as you dare (I use 0.1 for hair usually) Basically the lower you go, the finer the result on things like hair and fur. This will usually only work if you have a decent trans map for the hair, and it will take your render time by n'th degrees. But trust me, it's worth it.

Firefly Bit by Bit This is an excellent guide to what the stuff in firefly does. (Thank you Stefan, its one of my permanently bookmarked ones.)

Also check out Poser Material Room RDNA Thread for Material settings and what each node does.

Hope some of this helps :)

Silke