I need help figuring out how to speed up my render time on my Mac Pro:

2x2 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256 MB VRAM
Poser 7

I have a large animation project for work, and have found that ambient occlusion is necessary for the quality of the images we're looking for (need shadows on the teeth, otherwise they're too bright, etc.). However, the end product will be displayed in 640x480 streaming video, so texture quality isn't a huge issue.

My problem is that it's taking way too long to render the sequences, about three minutes a frame, and I need to find a way to cut it down. Getting a second computer isn't an option, and as far as I know network rendering isn't available in Poser yet. I also understand that VRAM has no bearing on how fast Firefly renders, correct?

So what tips could anyone give to help me out? Is there another hardware upgrade option that I haven't thought of? Is there a third-party renderer that I could use that would be easy to import my scenes in, which will render faster? Any settings I could chuck that won't make a huge different in a compressed video format?

And please...no "you shouldn't use a Mac" speeches...I've had enough of those already. PC simply isn't an option.  :-P

edit: Forgive my newbishness as well, I'm still learning how all of these settings work and the amount of options is quite daunting.

Quote - about three minutes a frame

Make that about twenty minutes...three minutes is how long it used to take before I added AO.

 Render times heavily depend on render settings and scene complexity. If you can post more details about what you're rendering and with what settings, it'll be much easier.

Especially when doing animations, you can get away with lower quality/faster render settings since the animation codec and the motion itself hide a lot of detail (in fact, too fine details can even show up as 'crawling ants' artifacts in animation).

I'm using a Mac and PC, so that's not your problem. Hardware option? Faster and or more CPUs are it. Over 1GB RAM, I would stay away from virtual ram anything as you can introduce disk thrashing (bad) .

So is there anyway that you can skimp on AO? Will you be able to notice it in long shots after video compression is applied? Possibly not, at that's where shadow maps (very blurry) could help. Also items that aren't participating in raytrace calculations (which is usually almost everything not reflecting, refracting, AO-ing or GI-ing) should be disabled on a per-object basis. If tex resolution is not super important 

Everything is 3D is a hack or a cheat. If you know where to cut corners you can squeeze more CPU cycles but it requires a bit of forethought. 

Attached are my latest settings, and while they're much faster than before, I think they could still do with some trimming...at least it doesn't take 10 minutes.  :-P
For lighting I'm using the default "Lagoon Desaturated" IBL, plus a skintone HDRI from AerySoul described here (NWS).

Here is the result of the settings I posted above. I might be able to skimp on AO, but the problem is the teeth...without it, the characters look like "vampires" from the feedback I've gotten, because they're too bright in the back of the models' mouths. AO is the only way I've found to counter that, unless someone has another solution that will make the front of the teeth look bright, but the canines look dark.

While we're on the subject, does anyone know a trick to make the eye whites brighter? The teeth I want darker, but the eyes look strange and plastic-y because there's so much shadow on them. Is there a way to fix that without post-work?

You could always just modify the teeth textures so that the parts normally in shadow are darker then the rest. that way you will get the same effect as AO without the render hit. Not as nice as real AO of course but a lot faster.

And for the eyes, you could try and brighten their material settings.

One option you can do is material AO rather than light AO .. Only set it for the mouth, etc.

Instead of AO, you could reduce the Min Bias of the mapped shadows. Use the shadow cams to make sure that they always look at the complete scene (but not from too far away, that makes the shadow maps chunky).
Use as few lights as you can get away with. Filler lights can be emulated using ambient color settings (which is also a good way to light up the eyewhites).

Or (but that takes a lot of fiddling after import) render in Vue. Vue can import entire Poser animations. It needs quite a lot of material tinkering before it looks like you want it to look, but after you're done Vue renders MUCH faster than Poser.
If using Vue 6 Infinite, you can even use polygon smoothing, just like in Poser. Vue 6 Infinite is cross-platform, comes in 32 bit and 64 bit flavor on the same disk, and comes with a 5 node render farm license.
But it is NOT cheap. www.e-onsoftware.com

use the carrara 6 pro renderer for exported pz3 files (poser scenes).
those render settings are about as low as one can go.  maybe ray-traced shadows
would be quicker than ambient occlusion, unless forced to use IBL, which is vastly
inferior in FFRender than most other renderers IMVHO.
uncheck "smooth polygons", "remove backfaces" and "displacement maps" if possible.
if stuck with FFRender, reduce all textures to minimum size, delete all unused morphs,
do whatever the others said, but skip the part about virtual memory, as apple has
thoughtfully taken away control of that from typical users.
yes, vram only affects the speed at which preview screens can be manipulated.
apple hasn't yet incorporated the "vram-sharing" module into its OS AFAIK.

Quote - uncheck "smooth polygons", "remove backfaces" and "displacement maps" if possible.
if stuck with FFRender, reduce all textures to minimum size, delete all unused morphs,
do whatever the others said, but skip the part about virtual memory, as apple has
thoughtfully taken away control of that from typical users.

According to the Poser 7 manual, "Enabling [the remove backfacing polys] option can greatly speed up render times but can affect realism, especially when using ray tracing." So shouldn't I turn it on to speed up rendering?

As for texture size, I can't find the option in Poser 7 anymore. Someone in another thread said that textures are handled differently now, so there's no need to lower max texture size...unless there's another place besides the render options that you can do it?

And out of curiosity, how does deleting unused morphs help? Does it load all the morphs in a model, even if they're not being used?

Forgot one thing: turning off texture filtering for all maps will reduce color bleed and speed up your renders. I've got a script here in freestuff (Poser 7 texture filtering utility) that can do this for you.

As for deleting unused morphs, it saves memory and cuts down on disk swapping.
V3 and M3 use the injection mechanism to save memory, but many other figures come with all their morphs loaded. This does not depend on Poser version, but on the figure loaded.
There's a RemoveMorphs script on my freestuff page that'll strip all unused morphs from the loaded figure(s), reclaiming quite a few MBs of memory.

 Your bucket size at 128 is rather large if you're raytracing. I recommend lowering it to 64, 32 or even 16 in extremely heavy scenes. Remove back facing polys will affect to things that I can think of: raytraced reflections and transmapped hair - there's hair missing behind the character's right ear. But it will save time by (theoretically) culling half the scene's polygons. A snaazy video card will not help your final renders; it's all about CPU cycles

I like to apply an SSS network to the eyewhites, changing the scatter color to 50% grey.

Imo, that hair prop is the real problem. I realise it can be animated to an extent but it weighs more than your entire figure. If it is visible in RayTrace or, casting shadows you will get mega slow renders. Got a lighter hair prop? Ao on teeth is not a great option unless you turn max distance way down... Chest,lips, head,, eyewhites (or outer shell), cloth, really all you need.

 I vote for finding a different hair, one thats a prop type not the Poser Hair.

Replicand, I tried lowering the bucket size to 64, but it added time to my render with the same settings...and it seems to function fine at 128, so I'm going to leave it there for now. The reference manual actually states that higher bucket sizes will speed up rendering, but at the cost of processing power, iirc.

svdl, I tried your texture filtering script (thank you!), but it added a few minutes worth of render time...and it didn't look so good either. I also tried it on the "fast" setting, but it either takes much longer, or it's freezing up at some point. So that doesn't work either.

I also tried your morphs script, but I guess it doesn't support V4? I got an error...one that for some reason, I can't copy and paste.

Now how would I add SSS to the eyewhites? What material actually applies to the eyewhites, as a matter of fact? Would I have to change all of the colors, or just the scatter color?

What kind of hair would you recommend I look for? Something that's not strand-based? I don't have many of those. :-/

Quote - I also tried it on the "fast" setting, but it either takes much longer, or it's freezing up at some point. So that doesn't work either.

Do you have the latest service release for Poser 7? It fixes, amongst other things a potential freeze with the "fast" texture filtering option. With the lastest service release you may also see faster raytraced rendering compared to the earlier version. And despite what many here seem to think, having texture filtering in Poser 7 turned on is in most cases faster than having it turned off.

You may want to try pulling the "irradiance cache" slider to the left and see how it turns out. It might reduce the image quality, but can also give you faster renders.

 You can add SSS to eyewhites by choosing the eyewhite material (sometimes called eyeball or "sclera", but depends on the model) and select the "Create SSS" macro (I'm using P6, so I don't know how much it's changed).

You'll probably want to experiment but I change the FastScatter color to 50% grey but leave the other colors at their defaults, since a real eye has blood and stuff underneath the surface. Perhaps someone with more experience can offer their suggestions.....

I have not stopped watched this and this might sound completely screwy. But to use P7 under OSX 10.5 you have to uncheck render as a seperate process under preferences per a notice on the EF website. I did that and for a static scene it seems (seems is used an a adjective not a stop watch comparison) to render faster then when use a seperate process was checked under 10.4. Reading the manual it would seem to lead you to believe it would be the reverse. What would be inteteresting is for someone still using 10.4 to do a stop watch comparison of the two different render methods. I have quad intel but have 8 gigs of ram compared to your 2. Mac's have always loved ram and it "seems" to me the intel quad is no different.

I sure hope they release a Render fix for this separate process problem, but as Poser don't actually code the Render I guess we have to wait for the other guys to get this bug in the render fixed.

Kaveman so would I. It's not like 10.5 just appeared out of no where. My experience in the past with Smith Micro, has been dismal in regards to mac support. Only been a Poserholic for 14-15 months so I can't speak for EF and Mac support with certainty.

So for clarification; Poser 7 doesn't take advantage of the multiple processors on a Mac? Darn, that's really disappointing. That was one of the reasons why I thought a Mac Pro would be ok for this.  :-/

Quote - So for clarification; Poser 7 doesn't take advantage of the multiple processors on a Mac? Darn, that's really disappointing. That was one of the reasons why I thought a Mac Pro would be ok for this.  :-/

I believe it does. My Intel quad core chews through renders faster then my my old ppc dual processor Mac ever did. Was very noticeable when I changed out my cpu. I seem to remember some time comparisons posted in the Mac user forum here, but I could be wrong. There is an issue with threading I believe that is the correct term when using P7 on 10.5 vs 10.4 that require you to change from render as a separate process which you could use in 10.4, that you can not use in 10.5 currently. Number of threads I have set at the max, which is 4. Save a scene and then do a render with this set at where ever you have it. Change the setting to something either higher or lower. Quit and relaunch poser and re-render the same scene with this being the only change. You will see a marked improvement in speed using a higher number of threads. Or at least I am. Most if not all of  this is explained in better details in the manual which is easy to search and find using Adobe acrobat

Quote - So for clarification; Poser 7 doesn't take advantage of the multiple processors on a Mac?

It does. Just set the number of rendering threads to 4 and render ahead. See page 353 of the PDF manual.

Aha! Excellent suggestions - thank you so much! I had to uncheck the "separate processes" box and bump the number of threads up to 4, which was stated. That cut the time down by about half...at least on this particular render. Out of curiosity; on a PC running XP, is there a similar issue, or can it take full advantage of the multi-threading?

I also switched out the hair and replaced it with Gwenith Hair from RDNA, which cut it down by another couple of minutes. So now my render time is less than one minute per frame.

So thank you! This was a big help. :-D

On XP there's no such issue. Rendering in a separate process is a little bit slower than rendering in-process, due to the interprocess communication, but that's to be expected.

Lowering the irradiance cache also helps, try values of 25-35 and if what the difference it makes.

Quote - Out of curiosity; on a PC running XP, is there a similar issue, or can it take full advantage of the multi-threading?

It is taking full advantage of multi-threading on both OS X and Windows. "Separate process" has no influence on multi-threading.

I still don't fully understand what irradiance caching does, but I did try that after your suggestion. It rendered slightly faster, but the problem is those darn teeth...lowering it any more than 60 makes bright white spots start to appear where the AO detail breaks down, so I kept it as is.

However, I finally got the SSS eye whites figured out! Above is the finished render. As you can see, the eyes are brighter, the teeth don't stand out, and overall I think it has a nice look...especially for rendering in under a minute. Hopefully my superiors will think so as well.

/jumping for joy

The biggest helps were unchecking the "Separate Process" box in preferences, and switching to a less complicated (albeit less realistic) hairstyle.

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions!