Well got my poser 7 today and thought il load the car and do a nice huge render, hahahaha, I dont think so.

Ok thats start with my PC specs which I dont think is at all bad.

Dfi LP NF4 Ultra D.
AMD FX 57 (water cooled)
2 Gig kit OCZ Gold memory.
2 x 250gb WD Sata 2 HDs
Nvidia 7950 GX2 Dual core-1GB memory.

I loaded the car, it took 1min 39sec.  Loaded HDRi from poser and sellected the red colour for the car.  I put the firefly render settings to a preset  full and sellected a very very small area to render from a 600 x 600 screen. So far 20min later its rendered 10%?

Il keep this updated.

Single core or dual core processor?

Single core processors take a long time with HDRI lighting because they can't use multiple threads.

My system stats:

PC Pentium 4 - 3.0 Ghz Single Core Processor
2 Gigs DDR2 PC 3200 Ram, 800 FSB
2 350 Gig IDE Internal Hard Drives
2 300 Gig SATA Internal Hard Drives
2 250 Gig IDE External Hard Drives on USB 2.0

Even with the 2 gigs of DDR2, HDRI takes a while.

Im using a single core processor.  I can render in Mental Ray extreemly fast compared to this.

Poser just would not render any more.  At 30min I cancled it.  Remember this is just a area of about 120 x 120 and it had done only 10% of that in 20min thats is crazy.

Try something other than the car.  The car has an insane amount of polygons.

 - Noel  

Thing is iv been demoing the high end programs Max and Xsi and see nice results but the price tag is huge.  When I saw that poser 7 is rendering cars i thought that this could be a cheaper alternitive.  I cant wait this long for renders, its gona slow me down too much.

Il try a render on a G2 and see what it produces. 25min for a high quality render I can handle but the same results in Max would take about 4 min to do.  Now I like to make machanical models as well as characters so this car is a good test for me.  My car I made is over 3 million polys and renders in max in 7 min.

Quote -

Il try a render on a G2 and see what it produces. 25min for a high quality render I can handle but the same results in Max would take about 4 min to do.  Now I like to make machanical models as well as characters so this car is a good test for me.  My car I made is over 3 million polys and renders in max in 7 min.

***And what did you say was the price difference between Poser 7 and Max??????

***I see this so often - Max or whatever does this in such and such - well I guess Poser is a case of you get what you pay for, which in my opinion is more a lot of bang for my bucks.

So we won't see Poser being used to make any major motion pictures anytime soon - but it's not aimed at the high end market.

My question to you is - if you have all these high end programs - why would you want to render in Poser?

I dont have them I am using a demo.  I wish I did have them and I know they can not be compared, but at the end of the day, results are results and time is time. I was hoping that it would render a tad quicker than it is.   As I said above I dont mind waiting 25min to achive about the same results for a render than would take 4 min using Mental Ray.  I have seen some nice renders in Poser 6 and have been playing with poser for the last few weeks.  My expectations where that the render side of poser 7 was better optimized.  St this time in speaking I cant get a render done at all.  It gets 50% and then freezes. Im sure once the update is done alot of things will run smoother.   

As for the car, great car but I think its pusing it for poser.  Polycount is too high and theres no way at this time I have 4 hours to render one picture to see that I dont like it and sellect another lot of settings that will give me the results im after.

The price difference is huge but then 3ds Max dose everythink at  professiional level.  Modling, Rigging, Hair, Fur, Dynamics, Aninamtion, and Rendering.   All I need in my pipeline is Rendering, Hair, Cloth.  Poser does so much more than just rendering and is a extreemly good value for money, but if I cant crank thoes settings up in the renderer then im at a total loss.

Hello tez12,

My P7 hasn't arrived yet so I can only speak as a P6 user for now.

Maxing the firefly render settings is something of a mistake, it adds days to the render without any visible bonus to the finished render. Using HDRI as well as full settings is probably a bit like committing suicide:)

In my experience, customize your render settings. Start somewhere low, where you can still use HDRI and work up the settings from there.

Once I found a render settings level that suited me for both speed and results I saved the setting and just load it when I'm ready to render. Don't rely on E-Frontier to have the render settings all worked out for your convenience.

Cheers,

I only use custom settings in the Firefly anyway - just something I learned with P5.  Actually, I was pushing the edge of the envelope to test settings so I'm not upset about it.  This is how I learn things, like save -> save -> save!  I save pz3 files all the time so I can just open them again if this happens.

early reports indicate that one may need a state-of-the-art system (see attached image). it's used by at least one old-time member here (chud), who swears by its efficacy --- or should I say "swears AT it" :lol:

As an adage to my earlier post, I'd just like to make it clear that I'm not trying to defend the slowness of Poser renders.

I also use Vue Esprit 5, Shade and Bryce 6 to render, depending on what I need and I wouldn't call any one of them more than 'pig slow' when you start upping the ante on render settings.

There's a lot of hype around at the moment about "increased render speeds" from E-Frontier and e-on software, now they both have new versions being released, but as far as render speeds are concerned I'll wait for solid evidence of that before I believe a word of it.

I've never rendered with the big expensive programmes so I've no comparison to make, especially with the likes of 3DMax.

I'm surprised your HDRI renders are so quick with it. Maybe it IS the money. But I also know for a fact that Vue Pro, or whatever it's called takes around 6hrs to render a fairly minimal  HDRI scene and that programmes not cheap. So how do you figure it?

Seems each programme has it's "good things" which we all want, but they also have their "bad things", like a ridiculous price tag. Pity we can't get all the "good things" in one affordable programme instead of having to have a suite of mid range programmes on our hard drives, each one compensating for the lack of features in the others:)

EDIT: - I've looked into the "Ray" free programmes but I was turned off by them ((looking) not being user friendly), by that I mean it seems everything has to be programmed into them, struck me as being a bit DOSy. But, because of that, I never gave them a try so maybe it's my fault. I don't feel geeky enough for all that. Maybe someone who gets on with it could enlighten me, I'll be happy to be convinced otherwise.

Cheers again.

Somethings to consider with P7:

If you are doing an area or "spot" render, make sure you are not using the "render in separte process" setting.  Presently this not only is incredibly slow for that purpose, but it is also unreliable for spot renders.

On the other hand, for a full render, definately use it, it is a great many times faster.

Also be aware that it is a bit deceptive.  It takes a while to load in allt he textures and such and when it starts rendering it is very slow, but the process bar does not seem to match where the image is in the rendering.  (ie: the bar looks like you are two thirds of the way done, but the picture is only 10% done.)

Don't get frustrated at this point and cancel.  I've found that it might take a long time for the first half of an image, but then it suddenly flies through the second half.  In other words, what is displayed doesn't entirely reflect what is being done.  During the rendering, it will often look to have a bunch of artifacts, too, but then when it is done they will be gone.

This is not the case when you don't have "separte process" chosen.  If the scene is a simple one, you will get no preformance increase using the separate process as a matter of fact, you will slow yourself down.

I have found that HDRI is dog slow.  Incredibly slow, so slow I don't think I'll ever use it, slow, but I'm on a single core processor too.

I also have 3D Studio Max and I know it flies in comparison, but I've never done any benchmarks with the same scenes.  I use 3D Studio Max for work for very simple animations.  I've never used it with HDRI or anything as complex as what I do in Poser.  (I've never bought anything to help me bring things across from Poser and I've never had the patience to try doing it myself.)

(Carrara and Bryce are dog slow compared to 3D studio as well, but again I've never done the same things.  I guess having all this software I should do some benchmarks.)

Anyway, Having used Poser and having had every version since 4, I can honestly say the rendering speed and reliability is vastly improved in version 7.  Is it going to approach other software on the market?  Probably not, but Poser's strengths are other software's weaknesses, so it's all a matter of how much money you have and how much time you want to invest.  (Taking a scene from Poser to Carrara for me is too much time wasted as I have to redo all the texture shaders, for example.)

When using mental ray, I'll sometimes lower the HDR's resolution using HDR shop to 512x512 for draft renders, especially if the image has one super bright spot and lots of shadows.

Is that the actual size of the render or did you scale it down?

This was rendered at 640x480
The lights seem a bit bright so I re-rendered with a darker set of lights (posted in the gallery)
which took roughly the same time

Id like to try the same scene and see what my system does.

Firefly - final settings (separate render process, 2 threads)

AMD FX60, ATI X1950XTX , 2Gig Ram.

But as others have said, Poser is a relatively low end and cheap application.  P7 is some way better than P6, so for the money paid, I'm reasonably happy.

one simple trick to double (or better usually- in Bryce ESPECIALLY)  render speed is to turn off antialiasing. Especially for test renders, Ditto for shadows, helps to a lesser degree.

Tez,

Poser 7 is a resource hog and is IMHO very slow.  I have a top end workstation and it absolutely crawls.  Bear in mind that I am running all settings at max, something I could not do with P6, but I was hoping for something with a bit more bang.  I am still hoping that EF will wake up to the modern world and go 64bit so I can take full advantage of my memory and processors.  My only advise, render while you are sleeping. 

I've found that mixing shadow-map shadows and raytracing tends to slow renders down tremendously. I've also found that ray-tracing is almost as fast in P7 as using shadow-maps was in P6. (About the only reason I can see for using shadow maps now is to take advantage of being able to render over existing shadows.)

Also note that having max undo's set to the default 100 will definitely slow P7 down, as it has to write to, and reorder the undo's every time you change just about anything.

Turning it down to something like 20 or 40, allows you to take advantage of it, without creating a drastically noticeable slowdown in responsiveness.

I've not noticed a speed loss due to multiple undoes.  I do know that IBL and ambience occlusion take the longest to render, especially with a large image size.  If you are rendering in a separate process it definitely helps to make your bucket size smaller.  I have a Core 2 Duo processor with an intel mortherboard and 2 gigs of Ram memory.   While e-frontier reccomends increasing the number of threads to 4, I've found and other users as well with a Dual Core that using 2 threads actually is faster.

I also have a dual core machine and have it set to 2 threads and not 4. I can't see the need to have it set to 4 threads. Now if I had a quad core CPU then I'd set it to 4 threads. Another things to turn down is the irradiance caching setting.  There really is no purpose having it set so high it just eats memory. Also, you really can't see the difference in the rendered image from the very high settings as opposed to the lower settings I have mine set a 7 and use lower bucket settings, Min. shade rating and between 6-8 on the pixel setting.

Because of the way Poser divides the scene for rendering with multiple threads (2 = half each, 4 = quarter each), using 4 threads is actually beneficial whether or not you have 4 (real or hyperthreaded) CPUs.

I've been saying this for a long time...Poser users NEED to be able to "turn off" certrain aspects of the program. If I'm not using dynamic cloth in a scene...then why do I need to eat up valuable system resources by having it running all the time? The same thing goes for dynamic hair...and even the face room should be a seperate application that comes with Poser...not a built in resource eating elephant that never works as well as it should.

It's hard for me to say anything about Poser7. I will not be buying it. I've used Poser since the beginning, but I do not like the direction that it has been going in since version 5 (though I did buy P5 and P6 hoping for the best). It's a sad commentary on any program that I need to have Propack, P5, and P6 all loaded onto my computer to support the varying needs of rendering. Most of the time I still use Propack because the rendering speeds are about 1/3 that of P6. Granted, that's only using the P4 rendering engine...but my point still remains: All of these dynamic bells and whistles are great...and even neccessary to be competitive in the 3d market...but to have them all running at the same time without the option of turning them off is just silly. And adding things that most people already have like a talk-designer (AKA Mimic) seems much more like a jab at the competition at the cost of it's users' resources than the addition of a useful tool.
these things make the program run like a slug, and it ruins the usefulness of an otherwise exquisite tool.

Don't get me wrong here. Poser IS COOL. And in the right hands, there is no reason why it can't be a professional tool. I've both seen and done enough work with it to know...but EF has to do a better job with understanding system resource management before it will ever transcend the boundaries of being a toy program and take it's place as an incredibly useful tool for hobbyist and professional alike. Until then, I'm afraid it won't make any difference if you have a system with dual multi-core processors and 8 gigs of ram. The next version of Poser will just find a way to eat that up uselessly too.

My apologies for jumping in to vent here. It's just been a very frustrating slide from P4 to P6...and now to see that the issue of system resource management continues with P7 makes me very sad.

Anyway, onto happier things...

?

I could be wrong, bit I don't think the rooms in Poser add that much overhead to resource usage, unless you're actually using them.

The Cloth room, for instance, doesn't utilize the processor and ram when it's not calculating a simulation, for the very reason that it isn't doing anything.

Talk Designer doesn't slow P7 down, the only thing that's really a feature that slows Poser 7 down is the Undo option. Having 100 levels of undo that get written to with every change to something in the Preview Window does slow Poser down, but you can lower than number and regain at the least the same responsiveness that P6 and earlier have.

I find it interesting that you've labeled Poser 7 a resource hog simply based upon people talking about how much of a drag the P7 roadster is to use.  The issue with the car isn't with Poser and the features built into it, it's with the mesh of the car. You'll find the same problems with it (if not worse problems) trying to load it into an earlier version of Poser.

P7 isn't a horrible resource hog, no more than P6, and IMHO, it's much better at actually using the resources many modern computers have, like multiple processors and more than 1 Gig of RAM.

For example: Here is an image of Marvel Comic's Tigra. When rendered in Propack, this image took 36 seconds to render,  Poser5: 1 minute and 4 seconds, Poser6: 1 minute and 16 seconds. Now, I understand Poser7 is supposed to be a slight speed improvement over Poser6...but does it cut the time in half (or even close) for a given render?

Back to the matter, it's the same file in each case, I'm not using any dynamics whatsoever, and it's essentially the same rendering engine. So I have to ask, what has changed? The only thing I can figure out is that the additional pull on system resources from Poser's newer features has bogged the program down. Keep in mind, I'm not saying they should do away with these features. I like them enough...but I want to turn them off and render at a speed that is at least in the ballpark of Propack with the P4 rendering engine. I'm mostly an animator, so when we talk about doubling render times in seconds or minutes for a single image...we're talking about hours or even days when it comes to animation.

It is a dream of mine to one day delete Propack from my computer, and carry on with a newer version of Poser. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen with Poser 7, or with any other version that I'll shell good money out for before EF recognizes the need for better system resource management. On the other side of that, I'd be willing to pay quite a bit more for a version of the program that let me do just that. Perhaps there is a need for a Poser Professional version of the program and Poser Hobbyist version?

Something I notice is that P7 takes a lot longer to render raytraced shadows than P6 did - with the same settings I might add.

*Quote - "

It is a dream of mine to one day delete Propack from my computer, and carry on with a newer version of Poser. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen with Poser 7, or with any other version that I'll shell good money out for before EF recognizes the need for better system resource management.*

How can you be sure it hasn't happened with Poser 7 if you don't try it?

While I can't exactly state whether P7 will render faster than P4 (as I don't have P4 anymore to test it), it is a better version of Poser. I do know that Firefly can render slower, but that's because of the more advanced features it has compared to the P4 renderer.

I did a scene with 5 Vicky 3's, with hair, high-res textures, clothes, and about a half-dozen lights, put together in P7, rendered in minutes with the Firefly renderer, with shadows. And the Firefly didn't even use over 1 Gb of memory.

I tried doing that same scene in P6, first with Firefly, then with the P4 renderer, and both gave me the same "out of memory, reduce texture size, blah, blah, blah" error message (which I haven't seen once in P7), and ultimately failed to render the scene.

And while having Firefly using both threads on my processor slows everything else down, it does reduce overall render time, so I feel the trade-off is worth it.

*"How can you be sure it hasn't happened with Poser 7 if you don't try it?"

Can anyone with Poser6 and Poser7 both installed help me out here? Can you take the same file (preferrably a V3 with a bikini, some hair, and maybe a few props - nothing fancy) and render it using the P4 rendering engine in both programs, and tell me if Poser7 can do it in half the time? Or even close?

Seriously, if anyone here can testify that the answer is an "honest" yes, then I'll eat my words and head on over to EF and place an order today. I'd actually like nothing better :)

I'm actually really interested in hearing the results others have had. At this point there's no need for computer specs since the comparison is only between 2 versions of the same program on the same computer (actually, if anyone has P4, Propack, or P5 installed, I'd be interested in comparing those with Poser7 as well).  I'd like to know how long a single framed image takes to render using each version using the P4 rendering engine? (with all the options turned on - shadows, antialiasing, etc.)  ...and of course, it wouldn't hurt to see the image.

Thanks!

There is one aspect in which Poser 7 outshines every earlier version: its ability to render really complex scenes.
I found out that the FFRender process can use more than 2 GB of address space. While it's still a 32bit program, it has used up to 2.5 GB on my WinXP64 rig while rendering a scene that had P5 and P6 choking with OOM errors - even at the lowest render quality settings.
Fast rendering? Depends on the machine and the settings. See the Poser 7 benchmark thread. In general, P7 renders faster when using Firefly.

I don't use Poser that often for final renders. Most of my scenes are VERY big and complicated (easily 20 human figures, plus lots and lots of environment props) so I render in Vue 6 Infinite 64 bit.
Does Vue have a fast render engine compared to the big guns like 3DS Max? I don't know. What I do know is that I have been able to render over 10 billion polygons in Vue, with over a hundred hires (2000x2000 and more) textures, where Max (I have 6.01, without additional render plugins) flunked out at less than a million, with less than a dozen of these same textures.

Quote - While it's still a 32bit program, it has used up to 2.5 GB ...

For P7, both Poser.exe and FFRender.exe have been set as "Large Address Aware", so you can use the "/3GB" boot option for WinXP to get extended memory use.