Hello all,

I tested the P7 render speeds using PhilC's CPUTest scene, and compared those with P6

Here are the results:

Poser 6 render: 2 min 57 sec (177 sec)
Poser 7 render: render in separate process, 4 threads: 1 min 52 sec (112 sec)
Poser 7 render: internal renderer, 4 threads: 2 min 11 sec (131 sec)
Poser 7 render: render in separate proces, 2 threads: 1 min 45 sec (105 sec)
Poser 7 render: internal renderer, 2 threads: 2 min 30 sec (150 sec)
Poser 7 render: render in separate process, 1 thread: 2 min 35 sec (155 sec)
Poser 7 render: internal renderer, 1 thread: 3 min 36 sec (216 sec)

Hardware: Athlon64x2 4400+, 4 GB RAM, Windows XP 64 bit.

Conclusions: using the separate render process certainly speed things up, even when using only one thread (which means the second core is not being used).
4 threads do not have an advantage on a dual core machine. The results seem to indicate that using a separate render process and exactly as many threads as you have cores will give the best performance.
And Poser 7 renders faster than Poser 6 SR3, except when using only one thread and the internal renderer.

Thnx ...what scene is that ?
I think i like to test the difference between MAC and PC ... 

Ps what version of P7 do you got ? downl or boxed ?

Chris

Made a mistake: the CPU test scene wasn't made by PhilC, it was made by Jim Burton.

You can download it from 'rosity freestuff, just search for the user Jim Burton. He's got two CPU test scenes, I used the P5 scene, and I rendered to exactly 800x800 pixels.

I have the download version of P7, by the way.

 

Not a particularly scientific approach in my case, but I've been rendering a simple scene using a reflective sphere (reflection node), a skydome and a checkered textured ground. Lights were 1 IBL with image map attached and 1 infinite light (NB - shadow mapped shadows just don't work with reflections in P6, in P7 they did but took over an hour and a half for the scene to render!).

In P6 Firefly with no texture filtering and 1 raytrace bounce the scene rendered in about 5 minutes.
In P7 Firefly with no texture filtering (darn that default image node setting!) and 1 raytrace bounce it rendered in closer to 8 minutes (1 thread, seperate pass).

It could just be my machine, but I noticed that in P7the render got progressively slower in the bottom half of the image regardless of whether it was dealing with reflections or not. This wasn't the case with P6, where although it took longer to render the areas where reflections were happening as opposed to other areas, the relative speed looked about the same from top to bottom of the image.

Conclusions for me - my machine favours P6 over P7 for rendering relective/refractive surfaces.
Other scenes without reflective surfaces have rendered faster however.

My machine: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1.79GH, 1.00GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce 4 MX 440 with AGP8X, running Win XP Home.

I have a core 2 duo and have been using 4 threads as the manual suggests.  I will try two threads.  It's all so confusing.  Rendering in a separate process definitely greatly enhances performance.  What about bucket size?  Rendering in a separate process doesn't use adaptive buckets I think I've read.  I had a problem with a IBL/ambience occulsion scene when I cranked the settings up to 100%.  There were terrible artifacts on the image and after about 15 image the picture was only half rendered.

I've been keeping my bucket sizes down to 32. 
I haven't quite been able to work out what Irradiance Caching is doing either. The manual is typically vague.

I didn't think it would ever actually be slower...

I wonder how long it took to convert the P6 manual into the P7 one?  It's nice to get a printed manual, but I have't seen much in there yet I hadn't read in previous versions.  But it's those pics that get me, prop-head-guy and no-joint-blend-guy especially.  Personally, I think the manual should be one of those things that if you saw it and picked it up, and had never seen the program before, you'd want to try it.  Poser's manuals never do that, whereas I always thought that TrueSpace's did.  (I do like the reference card though)

At least Poser 7 includes a manual, a printed one to boot, but I am somewhat dissapointed that the new features weren't covered in depth.  Other than in the "what's new in Poser 7" few topics are discussed further.  They did go through a good deal of explanation about the new improvements to the library pallate.  

As far as the light set ups, material nodes, and definitions of what renders features do, there is little help where it comes to actually how to set up a node for realistic skin tones for instance, or what render settings to use for the new imaged based lighting system.  That is why I have strongly relied on 3rd party books to help me with things--they are often better than the included documentation.  I love video training because then I can actually see and copy what they are doing.  

Practical Poser 7 is a wealth of helpful insights into Poser and so it The Secrets of Poser Experts.  One of the artists explains her approach to IBLs, but the screen shots are so small I can't tell what node is attached to what.  I would buy Poser 7 Revealed, but Poser 6 Revealed was so very basic that it didn't go far enough in many cases to answer my questions.  If P7 Revealed covers the new features in detail I'll buy it.  It's wonderful that Secrets of Poser Artists and Poser 7 Revealed are so reasonably priced.

Hardware: Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC, 2GB RAM, ATI 9600XT
Mac OS X 10.4.7

CPU - Test P5 (400x400px)
Render time: 1:26 (Separate process, 4 Threads, Bucket size 32)
Render time: 1:17 (Separate process, 2 Threads, Bucket size 32)

And since I normally use a big bucket size:
Render time: 1:11 (Separate process, 4 Threads, Bucket size 256)
Render time: 1:12 (Separate process, 2 Threads, Bucket size 256)

Interesting.

CPU - Test P5 (800x800px)
Render time: 1:51 (Separate process, 4 Threads, Bucket size 256)