I don't think that Poser is currently capable of translating node based textures through OpenGL. It should be somthing on CL's to-do list. (IMHO)

Mine too - even a simple guess of the average colour would be useful. At the moment it appears to be the image map and diffuse colour and little else

Let me ask this question.... Goal: most highly sophisticated render of still or animation in the least amount of time. Naturally. But, isn't the purpose of videocard-advantaged real time for Poser so that your posing and keyframing show as much as possible as you are moving things around, so you can see what you are doing -- better than before but no where near final? Not as a final render solution? Therefore, why the emphasis on more features in work mode thru OpenGL? Wouldn't running everything needed into the video card be LESS advantageous time-wise than more and more optimization for the true render engine either thru the CPU or a purpose-built PoserRenderCard? Trying to have the screen display system be the render engine....isn't that a dead-end? ::::: Opera :::::

OpenGL is real time and doesn't exist raytracing in real time, so no reflections, mirrors, refraction, real shadows in real time.

Thats not really what I want - it already puts textures on, but if I've added a simple node to lighten the texture, it doesn't show in the preview mode, so if I have two people with different skin tones (or clothes or hair), I don't see the difference. The material room preview window does take all of these into account, so it shouldn't be too hard to had a simple colour change to the OpenGL - it would make it much more useful for me. THe same used to be true of materials that used the alternate diffuse setting in Poser 5 - nothing showed, so lots of figures appeared white. All I want is my bone-white figure to look white in the preview, so that when I come back to the scene after a few weeks, I don't have to render to get an acurate result. That way, I don't waste as much time rendering materials to see if my changes have done what I want them to. One serious use of this would be the toon preview mode, which people are using for animation - if it displayed even a little more of the true colour, that would be very nice.

Interesting MiarcioAB. How does your OpenGL preview compare to the normal working preview wtih full texture display on? Ive got a Radeon 9800pro & the only difference I see is with the transparency. Aso interesting what Operaguy says with regard to realtime previewing & animations i.e. keyframing. Ive tried an animation with 5 figures WinterQneen x4 & male figure. Pluse walkpaths for all & 300 frames. Using keyframe editor is unusable. It takes about 8secs to fully display & any action within the keyframe editor takes just as long. It does not matter whether its OpenGl or Scree software. But guess what in P5 the respose is imediate. I am in discussions with CL at the moment their first response was update graphic drivers. Did that before I installed P6 & did it with the latest. Still the same problem. Not inpressed with the OpenGl so far.

Regard performance, CATIA also has an interesting approach. The geometry is tessalated (triangles) and you can control it. So when there are too many parts in the scene, and the graphics card starts to slow down, I just reduce the tessalation level.

Kingfisher, not sure if I understood. With your 9800Pro, do you get that "light reflection" on the eyes ? Thanks

Nvidia NV43 (6600 and up) can actually do ray-tracing in realtime, as well as displacement mapping, bump mapping and depth of field. I can whip these shaders up in Nvidia FX composer in about 10 minutes for each one, so applying them to the core coding of the openGL section of code wouldnt have been too hard. that said, I dont think its needed, I just like the fact that when viewing the textures in the document window preview it actually runs smoothly! it would have been nice to be able to up the texture size that the preview uses to decrease the blockyness and why did they go for OpenGL? DirectX 9c has much cooler features, and runs much better on ATI cards, only NVIDIA holds the OpenGL crown (and is the only reason OpenGL is still around!)

MarcioAB, You are now reporting that in CATIA, "the graphics card can do it and alot more". Is this the best/only way of rendering in CATIA? Your point cannot be extrapalted, IMO, to "users graphic cards can render final images and animations in Poser at this time." I am also trying to urge the idea forward: is this what people are driving at? Having received an interface that can display the UI and working window in better-than-before realization, do people now expect that the current implementation of OpenGl is SUPPOSED to be a fully capable render engine? ::::: Opera :::::

I don't expect OpenGL to be anything other than a preview mode. I would just like to be able to preview the colour of things a little more often

MarcioAB: Now I understand what you mean, you are refering to specular high spots. OPenGL and real time rendering don't calculate the illumination in all points, only in the vertices of the polygons, then the illumination in all the polygon is interpolated from the vertices data.
If you have materials with high sharp specularity the interpolation fails to illuminate correctly inside the polygon because the highlited are is so small and falls within the polygon.
This can be solved increasing the number of polygons used so there are many polygons inside the highlited area with the drawback of increased rendering time.

Message edited on: 04/10/2005 15:59

and why did they go for OpenGL? DirectX 9c has much cooler features, and runs much better on ATI cards, only NVIDIA holds the OpenGL crown (and is the only reason OpenGL is still around!) There is no DirectX for the Mac.

DirectX is only for Microsoft. OpenGL is an universal format specification that can be used with any operational system or computer, PC, Mac, SGI, Iris, Linux, Unix, Windows, etc.

Operaguy: CATIA has a Photorealistic render application for final render. And the RTR (real time render) for design, like here in Poser.
The most RTR gets closer the Final Render, the better.
And there are many features (not being used) on current hardware/drivers today to acomplish that.
But today, RTR is not substitute of Software render.

Kingfisher: My system is able to render @ 4 fps (frames per second) in OpenGL (preview) a WinterQueen's animation. That means a scene with 4 WinterQueens will render only @ 1 fps in preview mode. And it gets difficult to work (too heavy).

Jimmy1: Thanks. Even that way, results are very different.

kawecki: Thanks. Good information for me.

Thanks, Stewer, for pointing out the obvious. We also had the Mac version at the same time as the PC version (yippee!) and not a year later. Folks wanted OpenGL. Folks demanded OpenGL. For a first go, this works smoothly. But this is a preview window and an aid to working, not a substitute for the final render with all its layers of calculations. Carolly

I am getting lost here. I am aware that OpenGL does not effect the final render using Firefly or Poser 4 engine. But is for a preview render. Now as I see it you have the normal preview window where you can view your figure(s) in a varity of displays. i.e. wire frame,shaded, shaded texture etc. What you can also do for a quick render is use OpenGL render. What I would like to know is what the differnce bet. this OPenGL render & the normal preview display when set to shaded texture. The only difference I can see is with transparency. Apart from that it looks the same as the working preview when in texture display. What am I missing?

The OpenGL render option is to allow you to render hi resolution versions of the preview window, bigger than your screen could cope with.

Surely that is not what openGL is all about? I`ve just played about with what you say. The OpenGL preview render is no different to the textured display in the normal window. What do you mean by hi resolutions versions? My display is 1280 x 1024 at 32bit. What more do I want?

At that size, not a lot. Doesn't do much for me either, but if you had a smaller screen and wanted a hi-res version of one of the renders - perhaps the cartoon mode - then it could be useful

We all know Poser6 now has 2 render engines for the "Preview render" - ScreeD and OpenGL.

As pointed by Kingfisher, I agree the only difference in terms of quality between Poser5 "Preview render" and Poser6 "Preview render" is the Transparence (unless I'm missing something). But such introduction came with a price: Performance slowdown.

Now, in terms of performance, for a nVidia 6600 graphics engine, OpenGL render is 60% faster than ScreeD (using the WinterQueen as reference: ScreeD renders it @ 4.2 fps and OpenGL @ 2.6 fps).

My point is that I was expecting an improved quality and performance with the OpenGL render compared with the ScreeD, starting from the "eye higlights".

Sorry if my comment triggered a discussion about OpenGL render can replace FireFly render in Poser6 version. (It may in Poser9 ... lol)

Thankyou MarcioAB. I wonder now many have tried large animation files. I`ve used 5 figures i.e.winterQueen x 4 & standard male. All have walk paths with animations and frames set to 300. When launching the keyframe editor it takes about 8 secs to fully display. Any action within keyframe editor also takes about 8 secs to update. making it unuseable. This happens in both OpenGL & Scree software mode. No problem in P5 works a dream. What going on?

Kingfisher, Yes several others have reported that exact issue...now takes forever to move around in animation pallet. No one knows exactly what is going on. I reported it to tech support as a bug. Have not had a response back. We all hope it is an issue with the general memory problem in Poser6 which will be alliveated with SR1. ::::: Opera :::::

I`ve also reported it & the response was possible graphics driver problem & to update with latest drivers. I did that but I had already updated them prior to installing P6. Even so I installed the latest drivers & quess what no change. So I updated CL & still waiting a response. I did suggest that they tried themselves & let me know how they got on. If they did not have a problem then I would like to know what system spec. they are using.

Yes, considering these major issues, lets leave my minor point regard "expecting more from Poser6 OpenGL" for the future.

I will be installing Poser6 this weekend and will report my animation impressions in a fresh thread early next week or sooner. All the animators can pounce in and report problems and we can email it to CL as a general issues issue. ::::: Opera :::::

Same slowdown here. And I have a modern nVidia card (6600 GPU with 256 MB) and using the very last drivers from nVidia.
6 WinterQeens (Jessica) are consuming my 1GB memory.
Any action I execute (anywhere) is also consuming 100% of my AMD64 3200.
In the Keyframe Editor, I see a similar slowdown as yours.

I use CATIA (a heavy CAD to make airplanes and I don't see CATIA puting this system on the knees like Poser6 is doing).

Just what I suspected nothing to do with my Radeon 9800Pro. with 128 MB. It looks to me that CL did not Beta test very well with large animations!