Building a render farm with 1000's of PC's has never been in the budget.

GeForce now has real time render video cards,thay our with in the budget.

I currently have a older PC but gong to build or buy a new PC with a real time render card.

I currently have Poser 5.

Does Poser 5,6,7 support real-time Renders ?

If Poser supports real time renders does this include dynamic hair ?

With dynamic hair and cloth you still spend alot of time while Poser calculates the dynamics.

So at the moment I do not know about using dynamics in Video's.

If a person built a little render farm say with 5 striped down PC's,Could you use a render farm with Poser ?

Any and all suggestions on how to make fast Video's would be appreciated.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

poser allows hardware shading via supported cards, but the client may not have the card, poser files, software or VRAM in question, hence such a pz3 file will not likely be portable. somebody here may volunteer the info that poser (with supported card) will play back a real-time frame rate of 2 or 3 hardware-shaded frames per second; if not, ask colin at e-frontier.

The fastest way is NOT to render in Poser (maybe this is cheaper too).
If a faster renderengine is used, you can save the cost for several members of your renderfarm (and the cost for the many required Poser licenses).

Poser ins't designed to support renderfarms. But there is a way you can do it anyway:

One machine must act as a fileserver. The other machines have to mount a networkdrive from this machine and use this drive as runtime folder.

All machines have to load the same scene.
A little python script running on each workstation synchronizes which framenumber is rendered next.

If you can use a VPN this could also be done with some friends using the internet.

One thing about Poser 7 is that at least now it supports multiple core/processors albeit in a way that doesn't always use the cores/processors in the most efficient manner.
With regards to a Poser renderfarm, Sixus1 had a product that enabled a Poser renderfarm, but it did require multiple licences.

Quote: Any and all suggestions on how to make fast Video's would be appreciated.

Get a video camera. Invite some artistic friends over. Roll tape.

The original real-time rendering!

Sorry, couldn't resist. :tongue1:

At the moment, the only way to speed up animation rendering vis-a-vis Poser is using another app. The two that have -native- import ability are the Shade modeling app, and the Vue product line. Shade requires you to get the Professional version for the network rendering ability, and has a significant learning curve. The easiest would be Vue, and the best would be Vue Infinite. You get a 5 node liscence included, have the option of 32 or 64 bit (the caveat there is if you use 64 on your main system, you have to use 64 bit nodes. However. You can assemble a 64 bit box cheaply, getting one with onboard video). Eon sells expansion liscences in +5 and +25 increments, so you can expand as needed. The current caveat with V6I is that it isn't ready for prime time at the moment; a major patch is due any day now.

Couldn't stop think about this.
What about something like a "NET Community Renderfarm"?

Anybody who owns Poser can register on a webpage.
 
Whoever needs to use some computers to render just has to look over this webpage, selecting some Poserusers owning the products needed to render his project.

Even if a fee has to be payed something like this would be mutch cheaper than buying a complete renderfarm for only one or two projects.

I think the software needed to realize such a farm isn't that hard to do. Anybody interested to work on such a project?

adp001 -

What you're talking about seems more like a SETI@home or Folding@home type of app. It'd be a screensaver/backround app that Poser users could run on their computers and dedicate spare CPU cycles to the "render farm". The only thing would that it would be a two-way link - you could take cycles form the farm as well as give them.

Not really easy to do, though. Are the Folding@home type apps open source? If so it might be possible. Hooks into Poser would be a big issue. If you could get it to work, there would be lots of interest form users of other types of apps as well.

I'm somewhat familar with SETI etc.
A Poser renderfarm project is more different. Rendering just one single frame with Poser takes time and may need lots of resources. Running Poser as a background task is not so good.

No reason why the job owner shouldn't pay for the service. To render 1000 Frames may cost between $100 and $200 or something like that.

I'm a programmer with a good knowledge about distributed computing. I see no problem with a project like that. Poser has Python, so it is quite easy to control a job from a central server.

The problems I see are with Poser's infrastructure, and with the law.

For one thing, a Poser scene is highly runtime-dependent. I don't know how many PZ3s I have lying around that I can't even use anymore because my runtime isn't in the same state as when I created them. One misplaced geometry or texture file and the whole thing breaks down.

So you'd need some kind of runtime-leveling piece - a way to make sure that anyone involved in the rendering had all the resources needed to render the scene.

And that's where you run into the law, because the distribution of meshes and textures that this would require cannot currently be done legally.

Might be possible with some kind of DRM for the distributed files, but you'd need to convince vendors to sign on, and I can't see it working without being built right in to Poser. An add-on would have to decrypt the meshes so that Poser could use them, at which time they'd be unprotected and ripe for the pickin'.

No need to worry about this :)

Workstations have to register with the server. The server knows which workstation owns which packages and which packages are free. Only workstations with all packages needed for the current job are asked to be part of the "render-willow" (part of the render-farm working on a certain job). Free packages may be downloaded manually or offered from the server if this is allowed.

So an initiated job on a workstation knows the names of all original packages (ZIPs) needed. Workstations have to create job-folders (all done automatically via Python) with the content of the original packages before the job is started. This folders will be delete after the job is done. Poser 5/6/7 are able to use full pathnames. No need to hold the files needed for a job in the standard runtime.

The content allready installed on the workstation must be ignorded. At least because perhaps somebody has changed the original for his own needs.

The PZ3 used is manipulated from the server before it is distributed so anything will address the correct folder.

No problems with licenses as far as I can see.

sorry if somebody already mentioned this, but did Poser 7 SR1 re-introduce network checking? if so, that would make it difficult to use poser in render farms, even if it weren't already one of the slowest renderers, hence a poor candidate for a render farm.

Poser doesn't allow several installations with the same serial in one network. This is checked via SMB.

Using a VPN is one way to go (works across the internet), using Linux with SAMBA as a central fileserver is another simple way (SMB communication only with the server not between workstations).

32 Frames a Second

230,400 Frames in 2 Hours

If it takes 1 minutes to render each frame would take using 30 Day Months 5 Months 10 Days to Render the Video.

If it took 3 minutes to render each frame it would take 16 months using 30 Day Months to Render the Video.

If it took 5 minutes to render each frame it would take 26 months 20 days using 30 Day Months to Render the Video.

If it took 10 minutes to render each frame it would take 53 months 10 days using 30 Day Months to Render the Video.

20 minute a frame rendering ya pushing 8 years.

So real short render times.under a minute or real time renders or a render farm is a must have.

Half to do one of the 3.

With a real time render 3D card can you skip rendering with out dynamics in Poser?

With a real time render 3D card can you skip rendering with dynamics in Poser ?

Ya could import Poser in to Vue,LW,C4D for render farms.

I know Vue supports dynamics do not know if any other app does.

Currently do not know if I will have the time to use Dynamics.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Creating 200.000 Frames with Poser tooks how long? Another 2 years?
Whoever has to do a 2 hour animation surly would not create it in Poser.

Quote - 32 Frames a Second
230,400 Frames in 2 Hours

 
Why do you think most independent CG films are barely 10-15 mins long. Even films from places like pixar, which do have access to 2000 node render farms.

My suggestions:

1. Get a better render engine then poser. It will save you time and money in the long run. Poser's renderers, both firefly and the old one, are absolutely the slowest renderers of any 3D app out there. Even free ones like pixie, 3delight, yafray and povray beat the pants off em, much less the high end ones. No point in throwing hardware at poser.

2. Aim for a realistic movie size, say 2-3 mins for your first work. That is more then enough to tell an interesting story. Typical TV ads tell a whole story in 20-30 secs, no reason you cant do the same in 6 times that. You can get as ambitious as you want for your later projects after you have a better understanding of the process.

3. Make storyboards and lists of everything before you even touch a computer, and more important stick with them once you do start. If you don't you will be stuck revising stuff again and again.

Poser with something like a "NET Community Renderfarm" may be a good starting point for CG films with reasonable quality (rendertime: up to 5 minutes per frame) with the length of a song (2 to 3 minutes or round about 5000-6000 frames). Perhaps a way to go for independant music labels with low budget.

5000 frames * 5 minutes = 416 hours rendertime for a single computer (17 days).
416 hours divided by (being optimistic) 50 workstations = 8 hours.
Add some overhead and the film is still rendered within one day.
Or 2 days with only 25 workstations.
Or just half a day if you can hire 100 workstations.
And so on.

Even if 25% of the frames needs dynamic clothing and/or hair (double/tripple rendertime) such a film will be rendered within 2 days (with 50 workstations).

But...

Using dynamics in a renderfarm needs more logic for the software. I think it is possible if the fastest machine computes the dynamics and creates morphs for each frame (hmm - I see a problem with hair). This needs some testing (probably the most complicated part of the software). Seems that this part should be done from the job owner or at least from a trusted workstation (no interupts allowed, if this machine stops working all other machines have to go idle).

I agree with those advocating a different renderer. Poser is just way too slow. I render in Cinema 4D (on a Mac using plugins), and most of my renders take a minute or so, usually less. I recently rendered a 150 frame scene at 720x480 with one V3 and two M3s with Hi maps, hair and Uzilite clothing, and it took about a minute/frame (2.5hrs), on a single Mac G4 dual (I wouldn't even attempt that in Poser). Earlier today I rendered a scene with a single V3 with hi maps, Kozaburo hair and Uzilite clothing and it took about 10 seconds/frame.

In terms of how long it takes to produce an animation, once you get the rendering time down, you'll quickly learn that that's the least of your problems. ; )

--Tim

http://www.auroratrek.com

There our places that have render farms with 1000's of PC for app's like LW,C4D that you can pay them to render your videos.

But render times is becoming a thing of the past,

Realtime renders our becoming a reality.

At this point I do not know how practical a 2 hour long video even is.

My be doable may not be,we are collecting information at this point.

But if you could do a 2 hour long video then that would be all ya ever needed.

I am currently working 2 jobs to get the hardware software needed.

So at the very lest where going to have something even if it's only a 3 minute video,it's going to be a killer 3 minute video ;)

tvining

I know I have to get app's like premier,after effects, a sound app.

spend alot of time editing the video.

What else do I half to worry about ?

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

RorrKonn -

A Music app? Unless you are a musician or are going to use canned music, you might want something like ACID or SmartSound to create music for your sound track.

Depending on the video editor you pick, After Effects might not be needed. After Effects is s a killer program and does some very high-end things. But it might be overkill for the sorts of projects you have in mind, and it has a big learning curve and is a lot of money.

Many editing programs include compositing features these days that are probably good enough. Take a look at Sony Vegas.

Poser is not the answer for animation. It's too slow & clunky. Best to switch. I made the switch recently to Studio Max & my animation render speed has never been faster, instead of hours & days, it's minutes.

Get yourself some other tools as well to help you.

You'll need something to edit & compress the AVI files down.

P5 is the slowest for rendering speed. I gave up trying to make movies with it.

If animators weren't so transfixed on struggling with Poser, they'd see it's not the only app out there for animators. Poser is great for art rendering not making frames in my opinion.

Think out of the Poser box, not in it. ;)

To render out a 2 hour movie soley in Poser IS impossible don't care how many computers you got set up. Not doable in Poser.

Musician ?, I can play the radio ;) I'll look in to ACID, Smart Sound, Vegas.

Currently have no idea if I even need After Effects at all,just know that it's out there.

Thinking out side the Poser box.

There is Poser, DAZ Studio, IClone,Make Human,You could buy character at sites like Turbo Squad.

Model,Texture,Rig my own meshes.

I get Poser is bad for animation but for really good looking character seems to be faster and cheap to use Poser/DAZ characters,and sites like Renderosity have affordable cloths and props.

Sites like Turbo Squad prices strains the budget

I am trying to find a way to do this with a real time video card.

Don't have Max but I do have LW,C4D just don't have a real time video card to test all this stuff yet.

LW,C4D does render farms.

Also I was looking at Vue,do not know about a renderfarm yet but it has a floating node.

Going to get the demo check it out.

But for now it looks like the video will be done in LW or C4D or Vue or a combination of the 3.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Poser is okay to use for animating (primarily using the Graph editor), and you can't beat having access to the gazillion figures, props and clothing that are available, just never try to render finished animation in Poser. I compose the animation in Poser, and render preview animations in it to see the movements, then bring the animated models over to C4D.  RorrKonn, if you're like me, your most precious commodity is time, so anything you can do to save time is a major plus, and that definitely includes buying/downloading as many characters and props I can rather than building them myself.  When it comes to animating, the thing that should take up most of your time is animating, since that's where the rubber hits the road. The rendering time, as long as you can get it to a reasonable amount of time, shouldn't be your biggest concern--what I do for longer renders is just let them run overnight, which makes the rendering time a small concern since I'm asleep anyway--most decent packages will allow you to gang up animations if you have more than one ready to roll, but realistically that rarely happens, for me at least. Animating one character for a scene is usually about as much as I can do in an evening, and often it takes a couple evenings to get one ready to run. I agree with earlier comments that you don't necessarily need After Effects, editing programs like Premiere or FinalCut are probably fine for what you probably need, since 99% of what you're going to do is probably going to be just cuts, dissolves and compositing.

Anyway, that's my 2¢.--Tim

I for one will never go back or struggle with Poser animation for real movie rendering. I just did a test render in Studio Max. 500 frames in under two munutes. Simple walk scene. If I had done the same scene in Poser no matter what version, it would have taken me a week. What's the diff with each program? It was a breeze to animate in a 3D modelling program, Poser is by far the worst to animate in, too slow. Why struggle?

Rendering art with it is ok but for serious animators I still say get something better. You will see a huge diff. I did.

500 frames in Poser would have taken me 10 hours tops. Not with Studio Max. In no time at all I had a scene rendered.

So, it's not my machine afterall, just Poser being slow. I will never bang my head against the wall trying to animate with Poser ever again. ;)

Nor will I ever be fooled by it's slowness. I render speedily in other apps except Poser. I imported my Poser figs just fine in Max & rendered it out without freezing, lag or hangups.

Dajadues, are you using Poser figures in Max? Do you compose the animation in Max as well, or do you animate in Poser then render in Max?

Thanks--Tim

RorrKonn; Is there any reason you chose 32 fps? Film standard framerate is usually 24-25 fps, which is more than sufficient. Take a look at the Vue demo reels; they were done in 25 fps. Right there is a saving of 7 frames for every second you render. You have to set yourself a budget for time per frame (just an average, obviously), and work your scene to fit that budget. And if you apply film concepts vis-a-vis lighting and camera work, your human eyes will never be able to tell the difference.

Dale B,32 frames our the most one would use so if I know 32 frames our doable then I wouldn't sweat 28,24 frames.

I think

Holly Wood uses 32 frames on the big screen

old timey hand drawn cartoons like bugs bunny our 28 frames.

I was actually thinking of using 28 frames.compromise between 24 & 32.

tyining I don't have Max so Dajadues might no something I don't.

don't have XSI either but I do know XSI has a auto rigger so if ya imported V4 in to XSI  it would rig her for you.Max probably has stuff like that.Max has a plug for everything.

Max has alot of Rendering Plug some of them our built for speed.

LW has a $500 plug that just makes LW render faster.

then ya pose keyframe,Pose key frame, pose key frame etc etc.just like ya can in Poser.

do not see how that part would be faster in any app.

Do not think you could import all the poses in Poser but even if ya could it takes time to find set each every premade pose in Poser.

C4D has Cactus Dans morphs you could make V4 bend better then in Poser but takes alot of time to make morphs.

C4D,LW renders alot faster then Poser.if ya just imported everything to C4D,LW for rendering

Time, I have none of, no time to sleep that I should be doing right now.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

tyining, yes I have. But, it takes alot of work to do it. As long as you don't overkill your scene, Studio Max renders super fast, you can import Poser figs. I imported Poser people, Daz people but not with a lot of fluff, I just wanted a simple scene to see if it would work. I'm not sure where to post animation just yet. I have an older version of Max. It's a bit tricky to import everything but once you get the hang of it, it gets easier.

You can build the scene in Poser & export as 3ds so it saves the textures, import into max and save it as a max scene. The one draw back maybe Poser morphs. I haven't imported a morphed figure yet. I'm still learning how to get them to walk. in Max. ;)

I just lack some of the plugins at the moment.

Quote -
You can build the scene in Poser & export as 3ds so it saves the textures, import into max and save it as a max scene. The one draw back maybe Poser morphs. I haven't imported a morphed figure yet.

Mutch too complicated, IMHO.

There is a plugin for C4D able to read anything Poser can read. Including light and camera. Including morphs. Additionally: seperate pose files and mutch more.
All "dials" you have in Poser are available in C4D also.
Currently no shaders.

For myself, Im getting desperate for speed. Poser takes me 5 hours to render out a hundred frames or more. I've tried to render in Daz Studio but it's just as slow sometimes.

C4D isn't that slow, really not :)

I use XSI for much the same reason... it renders so much faster then poser its not even a choice. In fact I cant afford not to render in it or i would lose all my clients that want their stuff finished yesterday LOL.

About the rigging, MAX and XSI don't (AFAIK) have one click solutions to rigging, but they do make it a lot easier then something like the setup room. In XSI eg i have a low rez mesh rigged to a skeleton that i have tuned to my needs. And i just morph the char i need in poser, export as OBJ and import into XSI. I can then quickly transfer the rigging from the low rez fig to the poser one and with a little tweaking it works quite well. I don't need the morphs to be animatable in XSI cause i mainly do stills but a friend of mine uses a similar approach to transfer those as well. Basically he has the major face morphs already applied on a low rez head in XSI (various expressions, phonemes etc) and he transfers them to other figure heads as and when needed.

Though i haven't used MAX, it probably has similar tools as well.

For Cinema 4D I use the old OS9 free plugin and Kuroyme's InterposerPro, and both work really well. The OS9 plugin only allows you to host the Poser animated character and render it there. Interposer Pro actually brings the Poser content into C4D and allows you to open it, manipulate it, and compose characters and animations in C4D through the Interposer Pro interface, tho, the graph editor in Poser is still a lot better for creating the animations. What I generally do when I use IPP is I'll create an animation in Poser, save it as a Pose, then go into C4D, create or open a saved character (with all the clothing, props, etc) and apply the saved Pose animation to the character. The only thing that keeps me from using IPP exclusively instead of the OS9 plugin is that IPP doesn't honor "Point at" (but he's working on it) which I use all the time for closup characters to keep their eyes focused on an object, but I can use it for more distant characters, and they render very fast, so it's really great for groups of background characters.

Hmm, what would be the easiest one for rendering frames then, CD4?

Do these other programs do crowd scenes?

I can't speak for other programs--I like C4D, but it's also what we use at work, so it's the one I know. If you're on a PC you may have more choices--Reiss Studios has plugins for a couple apps, including C4D. 

If by "crowd scenes" you mean "dozens" of characters moving with AI, I don't think C4D has that capability. You could have lots of low-poly figures running around, but you'd have to animate them yourself. The kind of software that does AI crowds, like MASSIVE, is like $50k or something like that.

Tek Monk, I like ya name,kool

What I mean buy one click rigs ya put a rig in a character and XSI attaches the meshes points to the closest rig.

In Basic C4D you do this manually with Tags.

Don't know how CA does it.

Also I thought XSI would make a skeleton for a character.

Tell XSI hay auto make a skeleton for this character and it would do that.

Then again I might be getting app's confused it's hard to keep up with everything in all the app's.

But I am rather sure XSI will make crowds buy taking a single warrior and copying / multiple paste him and changing him a little so ya have a hole legend.

might depend on witch version of XSI ya using also.

Dajadues

I would bet Max supports real time renders as long as you have a real time 3D card.

Ask on the Max forms about real time renders.

at one time renderman was considered one of the best but that was a while back and there has been alot of new render engines released.

If ya asking witch app has he fastest stock render engine think thay all now support real time renders as long as you have a real time 3d card and not doing any thing real fancy.

but old fashion rendering ya half to ask on each app form about that apps render speed but I would think ya hear about third party plugs rendering boosters or render engines.

But realtime 3D card will put them all out of business.

Rendering will become a thing of the past very soon.

Even TrueSpace and iClone have real time renders right now.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Sounds like Cinema 4D is the Poser renderer of choice (especially for Mac users), at least in terms of simplicity and maintaining virtually all of the Poser specs, lights, textures, etc. That would be my number one criteria -- simple transfer from Poser with no little or no additional tweaking. Import, render and done. You gotta admit, animators want to animate. They don't want to spend hours building their own mesh models, clothes, props, etc. So Poser's incredible content (much of it free) is a godsend, and very hard to give up. But what about Vue? Unlike Cinema 4D, there are cheap entry levels for those who merely want to render Poser animated scenes in it, but how good is it at meeting the K.I.S.S. criteria? On the other hand, I sank nearly $5,000 into upgrading to a Mac Pro quad, extra RAM and a graphics card upgrade in order to handle 3D animation better. Maybe I should have just switched software.

Do not know about using TS with Poser animations.

TrueSpace has real time renders.

http://www.caligari.com/

Anyways for apps to say thay have real time renders

thay have game engines so thay say none of the main apps have real time yet.

Even if the main apps does not say real time renders if ya have a killer 3D card and a simple scene if ya just captured the scene in stead of rendering it.

Think ya might be able to pull that off.

Might only look 80, 90% as good as a render.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Guess I'll struggle with Poser & Max lol. Max draw back is that you can't really do a simple walk cycle without using their stuff to make it work. Cinema 4D does appear to be the better choice but for now Im too broke to invest in it. To my surprise it's really easy to import Poser stuff.

Max does support everything just has a very steep learning curve. If I had a few plugins to help me out I might be able to grasp most of it. Ive been giving myself crash courses in it all week. ;)

I'd like to make a game or two someday with it.

I have a cheap old Dell notebook nothing fancy. I need a serious upgrade but not right now lol.

Plugs like Body Studio would probably be helpful.

Thou I have never used it so can not say for sure just how helpful.

But I might be getting the plug my self.

http://www.e-frontier.com/go/poser/addons

Max is a killer 3D App. I would think with Max Poser Plugs.

Max would do Poser just as good as any other app, including C4D.

Max has plugs for any and everything

Max has always been the most versital 3D app.

Years ago I remember Max had Character Studio with Poser 4 characters meshes in it.

Keep mind High End 3D Apps are built for studios with a crew of 3D Artist that has gone to school for 3D.

The very first 3D App I learned was TrueSpace then went to Lightwave then went to C4D.

After you learn ya first 3D App it is easy to learn ya second ,third, etc etc.

Cause thay all work on the same theory and thay all have the same basic tools.

When ya want certain things some our better then others.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Yup, Your right Rorr it does tend to get easier as time goes on. I was just amazed at the render speed Max has compared to Poser.

I dont have the body studio though. I have Max version 7 probably discontinued by now. I mainly got it for animations at the time, same with Poser, I'm not much of a still art person, I like to make things move in my scenes. I model a bit but not that good at it.

I like watching the animations on here. I come to browse the gallery see what people are making for videos.