I hate this. I collected tuts, notes, articles ... and when I need something in special I cnt find it. Grrr

Well I wanted to do a supposely easy render with P4 render an a lildisplacement. But ... I have seen this scars here in the forum. How the hell I correct thissssss??????

Hmmm. The P4 renderer doesn't do displacement. At least not correctly. If you're using displacement, you need to use Firefly.

Okay. I hate Firefly. But if is necessary ...

WHy hate Firefly? It's a much better renderer than P4.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=FS

The mainly answer is "fast food". I need a quick render engine. I need to render some pics in a day. Poser4 render allows nice results but not realistics. Poser5/6 is better on lights, surfaces ... but is slow slow slow. In the same time that I render a pic in Poser5/6, I have rendered it in Poser4 render, correct the light mistakes in Photoshop and finished a second one. And oh, of course I could have better render times with a fastest processor. But I cant to buy a new computer nor update my actual one. I dont need a render that stop my 3D work during hours. Oh, yes, I have nice Poser6 Firefly renders in my gallery. But I pushed the RENDER button, crossed the fingers, went to bed and waked up the next day to see the masterwork ... or the disaster. Gimme a fast machine and probably Ill love FireFly. But today not And the hell ... seeing the results with P4 render of some people ... AND WITHOUT POSTWORK ... is necessary FireFly?

"And the hell ... seeing the results with P4 render of some people ... AND WITHOUT POSTWORK ... is necessary FireFly? "

If you ever want realistic reflections/refractions and displacement it is. Things like realistic water, for instance, or glass, or some metals (like chrome), just look so much better when raytraced.

Try rendering a glass of water in P4 using reflection maps and no refraction, then try it in Firefly with raytraced materials, and see which one looks more realistic. ;-)

Raytraced soft shadows in P6 are more realistic than standard P4 shadow maps as well.

You're right, though... if you want fast renders and don't care about realism as much, then P4 is great for that. Edit to say: Not to mention 3D depth of field and motion blur are impossible with P4 renderer without postwork. :-) Message edited on: 06/08/2005 16:10

Casette, I've managed to get this effect - in FireFly. From memory, I think it was caused by having a very small displacement with a depth map shadow size too small. So increase your map size to 512 or 1024, or fiddle the Dispalcement Min Bounds (although I'm not sure the P4 renderer has this). As for render speed - most of my production renders take < 30mins on FF. You just need to get the settings right.

"fiddle the Dispalcement Min Bounds (although I'm not sure the P4 renderer has this" Paul, there's no displacement settings at all for P4 renderer.

From the The FireFly/Material room FAQ 1. FireFly is so slow, how can I make it faster? In order to get faster FireFly renders, you can do the following: * decrease the number of Pixel samples * increase the value for Bucket Size * increase the Minimum shading rate * check Remove backfacing polygons * uncheck Use texture filtering * uncheck Raytracing on

"* increase the value for Bucket Size" I thought we decreased bucket size for speed?..or is that just for a more receptive response when cancelling a render?

"I thought we decreased bucket size for speed?..or is that just for a more receptive response when cancelling a render?" Increase for speed, decrease for stability. The larger the bucket size, the more info is contained in each render "area", so it requires more resources. Smaller bucket size is easier on resources, but takes longer because there's less information in each render area. For people having problems with renders not finishing or stalling out, sometimes decreasing bucket size can help solve that.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=975357

So that: decrease, decrease, decrease ... lose definition, blur your render ... I usually do tests with P4 versus FireFly. Check my gallery: I tried both in my last portrait uploaded past night. No test with FireFly got this definition. First FireFly crashed; second without texture filtering and reduced texture map was finally finished (size test 400 X 300, I cant lose more time with bigger sizes): strange shadow in the middle of the foreskin, hair blurred, eyes without bright ... Same test with P4 was perfect. Oh, one difference is that I can do tests on P4 at the same size of the finished work; a 1200 x 900 Firefly test stop my work render until the next day (all night rendering)

My pic was four minutes of render: God Save P4 render
FireFly would have to be easier. Or with a tag of "only for supermachines"

Message edited on: 06/09/2005 08:51

Message edited on: 06/09/2005 08:54

Casette - sorry you are having problems with FF. The FF settings I use are: Texture Filtering OFF Shadows ON Raytracing OFF (unless I've got Ambient Occlusion, R/Trace Shadows or Eye Reflects). If so, use 2 bounces. Min Shading Rate 0.5 (lower if hair is rendering grainy) Pixel Samples 3 Max Texture Size 4096 Max Bucket Size 64 Smooth Polys ON Use Disp Maps ON DOF usually OFF 3D Motion Blur OFF Remove Backfacing Polys OFF These setting produce crystal clear renders (check my gallery - they are all no postwork). Based on these settings (r/trace off), with 1 or 2 lights with shadows ON, at 900x900 I wouldn't expect a render to take much more than 10mins - and that's with really BIG texturemaps. Once I add AO and r/trace eye reflects I'm looking at 30mins. And DOF will (depending on the fStop) blow that out to a couple of hours. In the last 6 months, I haven't had a render crash - not once. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the tips, Paul. Ill try it