I have found doing production-quality renders both tricky and frustrating. About half the time Poser simply freezes. As for the other half of the time when I do manage to get a Production quality render, getting the lighing right is difficult, to say the least, and I have only had success with lighting if my target figure is in the default location of the set.

I am wondering two things, first, what makes Poser freeze with some of my Production renders, and second, if Poser 6 has improved the lighting and Production quality render features.

Edward -EC-

The production quality render settings are a general render setting, not a "works for all" setting. THey need to be adjusted both for draft and for production according to the specific needs of the render itself. In this case, it is likely that your settings are not ideal for the image you are rendering, as you are likely running out of memory for calculations or encountering some issue for which the settings are not suited. Based on the scant information provided and reasonable extrapolation of the images provided thus far, it would appear that there is a great improvement to the lighting toolset in Poser 6, but that the learning curve will remain (meaning that effective use will require learning to light scenes properly still) and that, indeed, they have set up Poser 6 so that more than the two presets ("draft" and "production" in Poser 5) can be saved -- reducing the confusion caused by the misleading labels of the Poser 5 presets.

I'd echo what's been said above. There is no hard and fast universal solution to optimise render settings with different machine specs and varying scenes. However, whenever I find it necessary to reduce render quality in order to alleviate freezes attributable to memory... I find a good place to start is by de-selecting "Use Texture Filtering" in those scenes where I'd been using it. Makes a tremendous difference.

Can you give more detail about your system specs. It may be that you need to increase your available RAM or increase your Virtual Memory or page file.

Increase your bucket size. That helps with the freezing. also what size are you rendering to? My own system can't handle anything above 1200x900 from any program.

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html

Increase bucket size? I think you mean you mean decrease? Incidentally, Stewer's (linked) Firefly tutorial offers a lot of very useful general advice.

I thought DECREASING (not increasing) the bucket size helped, by reducing the amount of memory needed. Am I wrong?

caligula20171,

Lighting:

It would be best if you would post an image so we can see what is going on. Even before seeing your image, however, I will say that despite the Poser default of lights with color in them, it is best to take out all the color in the lights. Only white light. It's difficult to control lights on textures as it is, without adding in the complexity of COLORED lights on textures.

Also, as hard-edged as it might sound, getting a good render is not going to be easy. It is hard. And there is nothing wrong with Poser5 in this regard, and nothing in Poser6 that will make it easier to learn how to render easier. But stick with it and work thru your frustration...as you develop skill it will eventually at least SEEM like it becomes easier!

::::: Opera :::::

P.S. DECREASE bucket size to aid in memory usage.

Message edited on: 03/13/2005 11:43

OK. I am attaching the file I consider my best production quality render. The figure is centered and I positioned the background objects around her. I used the default Poser lighting adjusted to spot and brightened by about 30%. Keep in mind I consider this my best render, since many of my others are too dark.

In case you are curious, the picture is the main character for a graphic novel I am working on. Most of the scenes are being done using the complex global lighting from DAZ, but if at all possible I would like to do some more production-quality renders with the default lighting.

Edward -EC-

Edward....Nice image! I can really visualize this as a panel in a graphic novel, well done and expressive. I think the lighting is quite good, but you have to tell us if you think it is or not. I assume you moved from Complex Global to default because your system was having trouble dealing with all the lights involved with CGL. Can you comment on that? So...if you only problem is that Poser is balking during render, I would say your ambitions and your talent are high enough for more hardware power. In other words... you deserve more RAM! Meanwhile, how can we help you. What question, specifically, do you have? And if it's the slow/crashed render issue, please give us your hardware setup. Most of all, please tell us how long the pictured render required. Thanks. ::::: Opera :::::

Acutally increasing the buckets size helps. The default for production is 9. I keep mine at 64. The bucket is the size of the little boxes during render. A 9 increased render time greatly for my last picture (see the p5 and bryce thread or my website fnproductions.net) a 64 brought the render time to just a couple hours. Try it. Also with an increased bucket size the cancel button works.

btw: i Have 512 ram and 1gig processor. Same computer I've always ran p5 on.

I posted this image because I consider it by far the best of my production-quality renders, and it is one of the few I am satisfied with. I am satisfied because the character is posing for a professional portrait, but obviously the lighting would be inappropriate if I were doing an outdoor scene. The portrait is one of my lightest production-quality renders, which leaves me wondering, how on earth do people make production quality renders for outdoor scenes? I have discovered that if my composition has any more than two figures I cannot do a production quality render, period. Most of my images use the complex global lighting, which I gather is a "one-size-fits-all" for people like myself who just can't get lighting right. I am enclosing a typical render made with the "true globals" setting. The figures are modified Sp3 and M3, with a car I got from PoserWorld. I like the picture, except it has one major flaw, the characters don't have seatbelts. Edward -EC-

Tirjasdyn I agree that to reduce render time you can attempt to INCREASE the bucket size. However, Edward is reporting render bailout or freeze....this usually means the bucket is set too large and the memory management cannot handle the size of each 'chunk', so in that case it is recommended to try reducing the size of the bucket as one element to attack the freezing. ::::: Opera :::::

I am assuming "bunket size" is that scale you get when you adjust your production setting. I always tried moving it down, assuming that the smaller number meant fewer calculations, but what you're saying it that it is the opposite? The the smaller numbers actually are bigger? By the way, I'm not sure I made clear that the second picture I posted is one of my better ones made with complex global lighting. I never use complex global lighting for production quality renders because invariably the images are WAY too dark. Edward -EC-

caligula20171 Your scene has two hi-density characters, clothing, the car and a background image. Then, you are adding (or not adding) a set of lights that emulate Gobal Illumination in an attempt to impart skylight or daylight. This is an ambitious scene. We can help you, possibly, but we would like to have a little more information. 1) what do you mean, exactly by "I cannot do a production quality render, period"? does your system freeze and need reboot? Does Poser simply stop rendering it? Or does it take so long that you think it is doing nothing (while meanwhile it will eventually finish hours later) 2) can you give us your hardware setup. We really can't give you hard edged suggestions unless we know your cpu, ram, HD and Poser version. Thanks. To give you a preliminary general answer, to achieve daylight illumination, many poser people DO use 'light domes' consisting of many (18/24/36 etc.) lights, each dialed way down in intensity. Others experiment extensively to achieve such results with fewer lights at various angles, combining spots with general. Some reccomend combining Raytrace with Depth shadow lighting. See post 6 above...that link to stewar's tutorial is a good one. With many lights, you may/can turn off shadow casting on most in order to save render time. Everything is a tradeoff, and finding the 'sweet spot' is a challenge. In poser6 we will have Image Based Lighting and other improvements, and you will see a leap forward in approaches to to daylight illumination. Frankly, that will still take a lot of computing power. ::::: Opera :::::

caligula20171 please report as requested: exact 'freezing' difficulties and hardware first, then it will be easier to help with the bucket setting.

Quote: caligula20171 please report as requested: exact 'freezing' difficulties and hardware first, then it will be easier to help with the bucket setting. end quote. Very true. computer details always help. Answers to questions: Yes I have found, consistantly, that increasing the bucket size helps. Poser 5 doesn't generally freeze as much as the memory management tends to hog all the processing power. In windows if you open task manager you should see it at 100% when poser seems to stand still. Now with time(as in days or more) it might correct itself. Same thing happens with Excel and pivot tables. The bucket is the set of squares that poser renders on the first pass of the image. At 9 you get a page of 9by9 pixel squares. If you are rendering a large image...say 1200x900 that is alot of squares. In my aiko render with lots of raytracing and shadows, reflections with both glass and metal mats, poser maxed out my 1gig cpu at 100% after only the first row. Keep in mind that I have 1gig processor and 512mb ram and that not even PSP can handle anything above 1200x900 at 300dpi on my computer. It just runs out of memory. Upgrading won't be an option till the end of the year. Now I managed to cancel the render. I changed the bucket size to 64 (point: I forgot to change it, that is why I have this current example from this past weekend.) which is what I usually set it too. In 1 hour I have a 1200x900 field of 64x64 squares rendered and the top row completely rendered out. Imaged based lighting: We have some of that in p5. Light gels can be used in p5. There are some examples in a couple threads at Daz...I took a gradient gel that veritas made for vue and used it p5 along with some material room sample renders to show how one texture (in that case ghost of macbeth's v3 male tex) can be used to make many different skin types.

Tirjasdyn, I am going to suggest we cease the discussion of the bucket until we hear exactly what symptom caligula20171 is experiencing. I don't agree with you that 'increaseing the bucket size always helps." However, rather than agrue it theoretically and thereby confuse the discussion here, I suggest we wait to see if his renders are freezing the computer, simply stopping, rendering garbage, crashing poser....etc. ::::: Opera :::::

ok, mine used to do this all the time as well. It seems that sometimes FireFly runs out of memory even if your computer does not. The fix from CL: When rendering complex, highly detailed scenes, the Firefly rendering engine can get overwhelmed when the textures being used are too large. This will often present itself as a render progressing to the "Loading Textures" stage and then stalling, with CPU usage and disk swap usage dropping off to zero, although this effect can happen at other points in the render (during the "Adding Objects" stage, for example, or even during the actual "Rendering".) The cure is surprisingly simple. In the Render Options palette, set a fairly low maximum texture size (around 1024, perhaps even lower depending on your available RAM.) Firefly will subsample the textures down to that level before beginning the render, saving memory and preventing lockup (although you may have to try several maximum size settings to get it to work right.) Setting the maximum texture size higher actually risks runing Firefly out of RAM as it loads the textures at full size. Turning Texture Filtering on may improve the appearance of some textures, especially repeating textures that are prone to causing moirpatterns, but it uses considerable extra RAM and should be avoided except when necessary. This technique generally won't impact your image quality, as very few renders actually make use of the full high-resolution texture (exceptions would be extreme closeups of faces, etc., rendered at or close to Poser's maximum resolution of 4095x4095 pixels; renders such as these would fully utilize detailed textures on the items they were depicting.) Realistically, when your rendered image is 2400x1800, a 4000x4000 pixel texture map on a single figure in the scene is massive overkill- the detail will be lost anyway, so setting Firefly to subsample the texture is not going to affect the quality a bit. http://www.curiouslabs.com/article/articleview/1230/1/345/ This worked for me. I put mine on 2000px when doing 1000px images if I experence freezing/render stoping on the first run.

yes, again, that is a great strategy and maybe the solution for this thread, but in my opinion we still do not have much to go on... besides the lighting questions, we have been told his render 'freezes' half the time in post 1, and in post 13 "I cannot do a production quality render, period" with no explanation, so I think the facts are not in our posession yet. ::::: Opera :::::

OK. Here is the info on the computer which I use to create the pictures. It is a HP Pavilion PC - Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz - 3.00 Ghz - 512 MB of RAM, so I don't think that is my problem. I think my problem is I haven't learned how to use lighting properly, that I'm missing something in terms of knowledge. When I say I can't get a decent render from Complex Global lighting, what I mean by that is the picture invariably is extremely dark, sometimes so dark you can't even see the figure. I use Complex Global lighting all the time at the draft level, simply because I always get a fairly decent picture with little effort. When I use the Poser default lighting and the system crashes, what I mean by that is the program simply stops, usually when the caption reads "adding objects" or "adding shadow for light ##" The program simply stops, although I now am wondering if I need to leave it going longer, given a comment from above about renders taking over an hour. Usually I cancel out of the action if the render goes on for more than 30 minutes and shows no sign of advancing. I am attaching another illustration done with Complex Global lighting at the draft setting. The figures are two Sp3 models, one with the "Kimmie" morph from Renderosity, and another from the "Ivey" morph, which I think I got from DAZ, if I'm not mistaken. The hallway was created from two Room Creator rooms put together. I am aware there is a lot wrong with the picture, starting with the figures' hands. I have not found any good sets of hand poses for Stephanie and the Vicky ones seem not to work that well. I have since changed the hall carpeting to light blue to make the figures stand out better. Edward -EC-

Well that does help, thanks. The only thing I will say about hardware for the moment is that the second 512MB of RAM to get you to 1GIG can make a tremendous difference. Realistically, you are attempting ambitious scenes, each with a few high-poly models (Stephanie), clothing, hair, backdrops and props, plus massive lights. It sounds as though you have not yet successfully rendered a complete image with the Complex Global Lighting at production quality. Therefore, you are not getting the beautiful reults promised by this light set. Is that correct? Here is an experiment you can do to begin getting a feel for what your given system is capable of. Make a very much simpler scene. Perhaps one Stephanie, naked or with little clothing, without hair, but WITH the global lighting. Then render production mode to a modest size, say 500x600. See if your sys can get all the way through. NOTE: with that global lighting, it has to "add shadow" for each of the lights in the set that has "cast shadow" turned on. So be patient. We have to tell you that sometimes production renders can take HOURS overall. If that is successful, at least you will see what a simple scene with this lighting looks like. Then you can start adding elements, hair, another stepanie, clothes, backdrops, etc. The other advice on this thread is also good. 1) Change the size of the texture per post 20 2) change the "bucket" setting. 3) uncheck "Texture filter" as in post3 above. Tirjasdyn is saying to increase bucket size to lower the OVERALL render time (because you bite off larger chunks each time) but if you can't even get past the "adding shadows" portion, or if once you get to the actual render Poser THEN bails out....you should LOWER the bucket size because your sys can't digest the 'chunk.' I hope this helps. ::::: Opera :::::

"(because you bite off larger chunks each time) ... ... because your sys can't digest the 'chunk.' " I love that anology BTW, I guess the system then poops out your pic? lol.

OK. I very much appreciate the input, because it gives me some specific things to try when I adjust the settings in my renders. I feel that lowering the complexity of the items in many of my pictures is not really an option, because the pictures are illustrations for stories I am writing. I think that the production renders will have to be used for character portraits like my first posting, and for my general illustrations I'll be stuck with draft-level renders. The picture posted earlier, for example, is of two college girls who just got busted for plagiarism and are waiting to talk to their professor. To give an idea of what I am trying to do with my work, I posted another picture with this message from another story I am working on, where my main character gets arrested for smoking pot. Once again, this is a render using Complex Global lighting (true globals) at draft resolution and the police officers are a Judy and a Don figure with clothing I got from Phil C. Edward -EC-

Edward, we are having a problem of communication. You did not grasp my suggestion properly. Thus, a huge waste of energy. I have to say I am losing my enthusiasm for helping you because we are not really connecting intellectualy, and others may be able to help you better.

You have a fine idea of what you want to do, purpose for your redenr and talent. But in problem soloving with me personally...it is not working.

My intention on having you go WAY simpler was just A PRACTICE EFFORT to see if you could get ON THE GROUND FLOOR of High-Res production render WITH Global illumination. I explicitly explained that idea, including the idea of THEN adding back complexity. You read it the wrong way and threw the idea out the window. So be it.

Good luck to you, will watch this thread to see if others can help you.

Sincerely,
::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 03/17/2005 01:23

Opera: I am under the impression that a lot of Poser users only want the lighting to do erotic figure studies, and I was trying to emphasize that my ultimate goal for using Poser is different, hence the picture samples. However, your suggestion to begin experimenting with the lighting was not lost on me. I have copied all the suggestions from the thread into a single document and will systematically try them out this weekend when I have some time. I do appreciate what people have suggested here and will apply the ideas to lighting settings with single figures and items once I have an uninterrupted couple of hours. Once I create some successful renders, I will start adding and see where my systems limits are. A follow-up question I have to all this is pointing a spotlight. Is there any way to determine where a spotlight begins and ends prior to rendering? For example, if I move a figure away from the default position, is there a way to point lights at that figure and know for sure the lights are focused on the figure and not somewhere else? Edward -EC-