I've never really been sure what that was exactly. All I know is that you need to have it on when making reflections and using metal.

Under what circumstances can it be turned "Off".  I've always had it on no matter what I am rendering, but I'm on an older computer right now and I need to get a handle on more efficient ways of rendering because it doesn't have a whole lot of RAM to work with.

When is Ray Tracing needed, and when isn't it?

Raytracing need's to be turned on when you are using:

-Raytrace Shadows
-Reflection and/or Refraction
-Ambient Occlusion

I am not quite sure about some of the other nodes like the Gather Node or Probelight.

If you're not using any of the above, you can turn raytracing off.

I don't know what raytrace shadows are so I guess I'm not using  that.  The other two I don't use often either, so I guess I'm ok to turn off raytracing in my render settings.

Thanks :)

Acadia, you won't really need raytracing on for the hair as you don't see any benefits ( I think) plus it will make your render times alot quicker if you turn it off for this.

Every light has a choice of depthmapped shadows ("rendering shadowmap...") or RayTrace shadows. It's on parameter box tab of every light. Depth maps are prettier shadows with blurry edges and great fot interior lighting (simplistic example) RayTrace are sharper and hard edged and better suited for exterior shots. In the right hands they can compete with each other on quality.

In other words, you're not telling Poser to do raytracing when enabling it, you're saying it has your permission to use it if called for by a shader or a light. The way you tell Poser to do raytracing is by using one of those nodes or by using a ray-traced shadow on a light.

If you aren't using ray-tracing features, it really doesn't matter whether or not you enable ray-tracing.

However, I frequently have those elements in my scene but am not ready to do a final render. For example, I may be adjusting light strengths, and I don't need to take the extra time for ray-tracing in a test render when all I care about is general lighting. In that case, I do a lot more than turn off ray-tracing.

You should use the "Save Preset" feature of the render settings dialog. Make one you like for final and have ray-tracing turned on there. It won't waste time if you don't need ray-tracing. Make another called "SUPERFAST" or something. But remember, this setting also means CRAPPYRESULTS.

Here are my FireFly SUPERFAST Manual Settings:

• All checkboxes turned off.
• Min shading rate: 5.0
• Pixel samples: 1
• Max texture size: 1024
• Max bucket size: 64
• Min displacement bounds: 0
• Post filter size: 1

At these settings, I can see what my lights are doing just fine. The above render was made in 3 seconds.

Forgot to say that that render, at settings consistent with high quality, takes 29 seconds on my machine with ray-tracing on or off.

I do have a saved preset for draft renders to check my lights.  I don't have poser open just now but  when I do I'll compare the settings to what you've listed.  I do have to lower my bucket size to 32 though.  64 is a bit too much for most scenes on this machine.

Quote - Every light has a choice of depthmapped shadows ("rendering shadowmap...") or RayTrace shadows. It's on parameter box tab of every light. Depth maps are prettier shadows with blurry edges and great fot interior lighting (simplistic example) RayTrace are sharper and hard edged and better suited for exterior shots. In the right hands they can compete with each other on quality.

Actually you can "fuzz" up a raytrace shadow with your bias and distance settings in
the light parameters.  You can also make it a lighter shadow by setting Shadow
in the light parameters to something less than 1.000.  Ray-traced shadows are
more versitile than depth mapped shadows plus you don't have to wait for Poser
to calculate a shadow map, though it does take a little longer to render.  But
overall I think you can save some render time by using ray-traced shadows
and get more realistic shadows too.
Also in Poser 6, the Point Lights have no other option than raytraced shadows.

Quote - Here are my FireFly SUPERFAST Manual Settings:

• All checkboxes turned off.
• Min shading rate: 5.0
• Pixel samples: 1
• Max texture size: 1024
• Max bucket size: 64
• Min displacement bounds: 0
• Post filter size: 1

At these settings, I can see what my lights are doing just fine. The above render was made in 3 seconds.

 

Actually if your machine can handle it, I find increasing the bucket size to 256 or even 512
gives a faster render.  At 1024 my machine chokes, but somebody with a faster machine
and more memory might even want to give that a try. 

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytracing

the Link will tell you waht it is and then you'll see when your're going to be usin it and why...

Attached Link: My Home

Have you ever seen what nice shiny metals Bryce and Vue can do(See attached link,) REALLY easily?

Bryce is a Ray Tracer engine, Vue must be too.

Back when Metacreations owned Poser 3, and Bryce 3, thay also had a program called Ray Dream, which was like the worlds first affordable modeller(, known today as Cararra.)  My guess is they put alot of work into raytracing. 

Poser just got this recently though.  It had always been just a different flavor Render Engine  To be honest it still has a way to go, as I hav'nt seen any really nice metals out of Poser yet still....

=  )

I think these metals look pretty good. I made the materials myself out of a few nodes. It took me far longer to find a few freebie objects that make sense as metals for an indoor still life image. Maybe we don't see metal renders in Poser because everybody is doing skin and hair and clothes. I was really surprised I couldn't find at least 10 sets of silverware. All I found that was decent was that one spoon.

Poser is perfectly capable of doing metals, but I will say this: Compared to other renderers, it is excruciatingly slow. This simple render took 97 minutes.

This was done with 2 raytrace bounces, so we get reflections of reflections. In addition to the metals, I also used reflection on the glass in the picture frame, and on the wood table.

Quote - I was really surprised I couldn't find at least 10 sets of silverware. All I found that was decent was that one spoon.

Maybe you should have a look at the downloads at www.nessrepros.com

Not silverware, but there is lots of nice stuff that can be made even more interesting with some nice shaders.

Attached Link: http://www.nessrepros.co.uk/

Quote - Correct link attached.

Thanks !
I knew it wasn't .com and did have look for the proper link...
Don't ask me why I did type .com anyways.

I've tried out some bounce-settings in the past:
If you need only shadows or AO 1 bounce is enough
For reflections of metals, mirrors or other reflective surfaces you need at least 2 or more             bounces, for simple reflections 2 is enough, but for more complex ones, like two opposing mirrors you need more.
For refraction you need at least 3 bounces, I've tried to render filled glasses with 2 bounces but the fluid inside turns into a black ink.

When you use point lights, you have indeed no other option than to use Ray-tracing, because for depthmap-shadows you need a specified direction of the light and pointlights shine in every direction.

I wasn't finished with my reply, but I had to walk the dogs.

Some other things you can do to speed up Ray-tracing are: keep the amounts of lights that have  Ray-tracing enabled as low as possible, just one infinite light is enough to similate sunshine, but produces very hard shadows.
If you have complex objects in your scene that aren't reflective (like hair) you can uncheck the "visible in ray-tracing" option in the properties(unless you want a shadow of it, but it will increase your rendertime)
Minimize the amount of reflective or transparant objects in your scene.
On the other hand: if you want an interesting picture with shiny, reflective and transparant features ray-tracing is in my opinion the best you can have, and you have to take the extra rendertime for granted.