Curious Labs, a question for you. What is the point of adding all these wizzy new features such as ambient Occlusion, IBL, sub surface scattering if the BASICS are broken???

OK first of all here are the render settings

Try turning off texture filtering? That may help with the jagged edges and lines?....

11 hours!! What kind of system do you have and how complex is your scene? Try these settings: Leave texture filtering on. You could reduce max size to 1024, but 2048 should be OK. Increase your bucked size to 32 or 64. Decrease you pixel samples to 3 and your post filter to 1. Check Smooth Polygons and Remove Backfacing Polygons.

I had that problem in P5 already. No one could really come up with an solution, so I only render automatics settings in P5 and the presets in P6. I think that rendering in firefly takes a deep look into the manual.

i dont click "full render" now, as i dont trust my comp i do area renders, and since my latest pic i made was at 16384x12288 (2^14, 4:3) i figured my comp would die lol so doing area renders, and its a simple paste job in psp each pic new layer, white background is transparent worked great now you may ask why so big? no idea ^_^ i blame insanity anyways that might help you out with long renders so it wont stop in middle, plus you can go with stronger settings, and save between renders to avoid uh x_x

Actually the scene isn't that complex. 1 Poser figure, a reflective vase and a reflective chair. I have a 3.2HT P4 machine with 2GB of RAM. Yes 11hrs seems a bit excessive but I was putting that down to a fault with Poser6. Also, if I incerase the bucket size then I get the out-of-memory error! Needless to say I'm very frustrated. I didn't have nearly as much problem with Poser5 and it was definately quicker.

WOW! Thats really big, I do max renders at 2400 x 2400 and that it only if theres going ot be a lot of post.

Also change the shading rate to 0.5 or lower and set the minimum displacement bounds to 1 or 2 (pixels) as that may remove the lines in the image if they are an artifact of displacement on the materials. I probably wouldn't increase the bucket size more that 8 or 16 if its a very complex scene. Bill

2.8E GHz cpu, 512mb ram, win98, 1 girl, 1 chair, 1 mirror raytraced shadows, raytrace at 6, bucket at 32 30 pixel samples, cut into 8x8=64 parts, 9 hrs total not one problem entire time :)

Hmm and I notice the same thing in all other P5-P6 comparisons.. the P5 version is sharper!

You think Gareee??? See I look at these and see more sharp and vivid colors on the P6 render.

stealth1701, Can you start with something very small and simple? Just a shot of your female character with no props, maybe even nude, turn off texture filtering, turn off raytrace (unless you have some raytrace lights) and just render out to a small final size, like 300x500 or something? Just to get a successful final and see if you effects are working? What lighting do you have in place? I just find that in a new environment to create a small success and guage the neighborhood, then gradually increase the complexity. ::::: Opera :::::

operaguy I am using ambient occulsion and image based lighting which is maybe why the render takes so long. i can render without raytrace etc. without a problem but obviously I need it for reflections. Problem was, from the time it was working to the time it started looking like this, I just changed some lighting to spot light and then back. For some reson whatever I did upset the firefly renderer. I think I need to go back to a working version and try changing things one at a time. I don't think I can get rid of the lines as it is a throwback to P5, but I'm very annoyed CL hasn't fixed this yet.

Yeah Candee... look at the buttons specifically.. the P5 ones look sharper and more detailed then the P6 ones. I do think there's more depth and vibrance in the P6 version, but also a loss of detail. Looks like either transparency or translucency is a bit different in P6 renders, based on her shawl

It looks that the vibrance is caused by the 'bleed' or bluriness of the texture. You lose some vibrance with sharpness, but you get sharpness. :) Personally, the P5 render is better. I've been noticing that the P6 Firefly renders appear more like paintings because of this bleed.

Yeah I kinda prefer the P5 render as well. I can always add blur in photoshop, and kick up the color some to make it hotter. There may be a setting we're al missing as well, that might eliminate the blurring. Also, rendering "up" to a larger image, and then downsizing might be a good P6 option.. that might look better thjen the P5 version, too.

I don't know if this is on point or not, but I'm thinking that the renders are different because the render settings or the scenes aren't the same. A while back, I made a small scene to look at some new purchases. For grins, I made the scene in P5, saved as a pz3, then loaded it into P6 and rendered with the saved settings. There was absolutely NO difference, not even a pixel (that I could find). I timed each render, and even that was the same. FWIW

In P5, decreasing the bucket size made the render faster. Why would increasing the bucket size in P6 decrease render time?

"I've been noticing that the P6 Firefly renders appear more like paintings because of this bleed." Changing the kind of post filter type you use might help increase overall sharpness. Box is probably the worst to use, and gaussian is best for animation, but many people don't bother to change it from the default. All my final renders, for instance, are done with sinc, and I think they come out quite detailed and sharp.

"In P5, decreasing the bucket size made the render faster. Why would increasing the bucket size in P6 decrease render time?" It's always been that decreasing bucket size helps save on memory, but sacrifices speed. At least that's what I recall Stewer saying a few times.

I notice the difference but I also think it's a matter of learning the new version.

Yeah I noticed my renders were far more vibrant in P6 than P5 using IBL with default..But there was a loss in detail crispness in my characters facial features... I wish I could have both maybe its going to take some tweaking which I hope I or someone else will figure out because I really love everything else about it...

No reflections? I'm not surprised, you have to enable raytracing to have reflections. The amount of pixel samples is pretty high, that means a lot of antialiasing, up to the point of blurring the complete image. For a sharp render I usually use a value of 3-5 pixel samples. The black lines are often eliminated by checking displacement maps and setting the displacement bounds to 1.000. Choosing another bucket size also often helps. Gaussian or sync filter are also better than box filters, though they are slower. Gaussian gives the best results in my opinion, though sync is better with strand-based hair. I'd suggest looking up the render options in the manual and see what they do. By applying a balanced set of options the renders usually look fine.

Stealth wrote: "I have a 3.2HT P4 machine with 2GB of RAM." Your issue may be related to hyper-threading. As far as I've seen most render-oddities with P6 are happening to people who have hyper-threading processors. If hyper-threading is causing Poser difficulties to render, I'd say you're out of luck until a service release is made available by CL.

I wonder if it isn't texture filtering that is causing all these blurry comparison shots? I noticed that the highest auto settings automatically turn it on, which Ronstuff at least would say is a no no. (and will mess up V3 texture seams if you don't doctor the textures your self.) I also noticed that the default shading rate in the top pic was set WAAAAY too high. Try .5 at least. I also agree about the post filter setting. Box sux bigtime. as for black line artifacts, these have just shown up in some of my shots in Poser 5. Nobody has come up with a reason. It seems very random as the same exact setup shot from a different angle may have no artifacts. On the plus side It doesn't happen very often. also 11 hours sounds INSANELY too long. I've rendered whole animations with multi figures and raytraced reflections in that time. admittedly that was at 853x480 though.