hi!

i wish to know which kind of acceleration (performance) a famous video card can afford to poser ?

For example, actually i own a ATI Radeon HD2400 with 512 memory.
Preview mode, and interface using in Poser7 is quicky, almost real-time.
But in the rendering animation, it is long, long, very long !

So, if tomorow i should decide to buy a new video card, what will i gain in Poser ?
Does the rendering task will be faster in animation rendering ?
and in single picture frame rendering ?

What part of the rendering could be faster ? load and calcul texture, shawdow..etc ?
or just display rendering ?

I really need to increse my performance of my computer to perform in Poser7 in good resolution (640x480 30f/s movie).
Actually i have the most powerful cpu that my motherboard can support, so changing the video card would be the less expansive for me to increase performance.
A high performance video card cost 150€ (like a nvida quadro), whereas changing my own computer could be more expansive (motherboard+memory + cpu)

thanks for help, and maybe you could advice me a video car model for build-up poser7 !

You won't gain anything in rendering performance from a video card.  Poser doesn't use the video card for rendering.

More memory and faster CPU is where the speed increase comes from.

 - Noel

Also a faster hard drive.  That can help with swap files.

A better video card will help in OpenGL display previews (assuming the card has good OpenGL support).

If OpenGL preview quality is good enough for your animations, the graphics card will make a difference. Poser 7 can make more use of OpenGL facilities than previous versions. Try out those options in the Render Options->Preview tab.

IF it is good enough for animation, OpenGL renders are orders of magnitude faster than Firefly/Poser 4 renders. And those renders WILL use the graphics card.

I don't recommend buying a professional graphics card like a Quadro or a FireGL. Some high end 3D applications (3DS Max, Maya) have special drivers for those cards that improve performance, but Poser doesn't have those. As of right now, an nVidia 8800GT is the best value for money in the higher end consumer graphics cards - it's significantly faster than anything ATI has to offer, and its OpenGL support is much better.

3/14/08

For the expense I put into it, my video card with 512mb was a waste of money.

Don't get more than 3GB of memory, the 4th GB is mapped to system uses, and the computer will not see RAM there. A faster CPU will not let you render larger scenes or greater resolution.

You need motherboard, CPU, memory, and an OS. Look toward 64 bit, but think on keeping the current computer. If you do network rendering in the near future, you will need more than one computer anyway.

LMK

as, i said, in preview mode, Poser7 let me do what i want with my litlle ATI 2400HD.
a render in preview state is pretty instant !
but..

i want to render in Firefly...

Even with a great video card with best support of shader, lightning direct 3D..Etc, Poser render in firewly will stay at the same speed ? it is very pity (for me).
i don't want to make greater resolution (640x480 movie) is aceptable, just render better and faster.

What is strange , that only 300MB of memory are used (value displayed in task manager in windows xp), wheras i have 2GB of memory, for poser.exe process.
--> Is there a way to setup poser for using MORE of my memory to render faster ? It's a waste to see the quarter of my memory not in use !
Moreover, the HD light (and HD noise) don't look very busy too. My hard drive is not so using too.

Firefly renders in software, not hardware. You can get it to use more than one process and that will speed up renders of large scenes.  Otherwise, you have to start considering the fairly useless amount of information you may or may not be sending to the render engine. Most of the time, Poser models feature textures that are larger than needed, especially if the image will remain static on screen at standard resolutions.   For animations, if an object doesn't appear directly in front of the camera for an extended period of time, textures larger than the screen res is a waste (for example, a lamp post in the distance doesn't need a 2048x2048 map if the final output is 640x480).

Decreasing texture size in models in the distance will speed things up.  Some creators provide LOD models (level of detail) models also, so consider using lower res meshes where appropriate, which will speed things up also.

I hope that helped. If you need more help than that, you can try contacting Smith Micro technical support or ...continue asking here I guess.

yes,
thanks for help.

i already know i could reduce texture size...but no, i can't because, i'm doing some closeup viewpoint in the animation like this one :
http://www.frenchcinema4d.fr/hub.php?doc=image&image=4986

so, to have a perfect zoom on her eye, i need a big texture...

i really wonder why poser don't use more of my memory !
my render is not finished yet (after 12hours), and only 300MB of memory are used !!!!