Anyone have any tips for speeding up a render using the Poser shader tree? I'm rendering something that is 1200x1600 and it seems to be doing about 1% per hour. I set it to AO spectral atmosphere. That's so crazy for something that is so small.

Can't say with that amount of info.
If you have water in your scene for instance it will slow render times down a lot, it also depends what other settings you have for quality and stuff.
To help, peeps will need much more information about your scene!!

Vue 6 xStream on XP 64, 4 gb RAM, 2.2 dual core AMD

Ok, doesn't seem much there except I notice you're on "user settings" for rendering, have you adjusted any parameters for that in any of the edit boxes?
If you have, that may be causing your issue, you may have set something too high!

Try rendering the same scene in "final" or "broadcast" mode and see if that makes a difference!
I rarely use "user" settings, I usually use "broadcast" or "superior!"

Mine is actually less intensive than Broadcast. I think it's the crazy skin shader on A3. I can't use SkinVue because I have 64 bit, so I am stuck with the Poser shader tree. :(

Could be something in the atmosphere setting too that is slowing down the render.  Look carefully at each tab.  What is the quality setting?  Make sure Volumetric sun is not selected... 

It won't be the shader IMO, I always use Posers shaders inside Vue with no issues!
You could maybe try bringing down the quality slider on your anti aliasing, other than that I don't know, sorry!!

I'm on 64 bit too so I can't use skinvue either, I know Dave is working on it so hopefully you'll have it soon!!

Interesting info to know if i ever get the guts to use the Poser  shade tree(;

It's still busy and I don't want to shut it down. 91%! =D

However, it's on a spectral atmosphere with AO selected.

I've always, always had a problem with the Poser shader tree. It's horribly slow, I think because it is loading Poser to do part of the rendering.

I really think it's the crazy skin shader. It took almost 12 hours to do 10%, and now it is speeding up again.

What shader is it?
If I have it I'll try it on my set up!
I don't have this problem at all, if you look at my gallery I always use the shader tree!!

Maeko from this set: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=3230&_m=d

I don't know if this is also important, but I have Poser 7 with my content in a compressed, external runtime. OBJ files are not compressed.

I don't have that set but those aren't particularly large textures for a 64 bit system to cope with!
I'm guessing the EXT runtime could be the problem!
I have mine on the same drive as Vue and I use sub folders within Poser rather than multiple and/or EXT runtimes!!

I'll try moving the runtime back once it's finished...

I have noticed that when my poser renders hit transparent clothing and hair the render times take a big dive.  If the portion of your render is really slow at these areas of your render, then there is little to do except wait.  On the other hand, all you have to do to change the poser shader material to a Vue material is to double click on the material and click on the "simple material" tick which will remove the shader to it.  Then you can use Vue to change highlight and shadow colors.....it might speed things up.

PM me if you want screen shots to know more.

is there really a significant difference in quality between using the Poser shade tree and the standard .pz3 import?

Blurred reflections and blurred transparency are render time killers. You have them both checked. I would advise to only use those if you absolutely must. I never use them. I prefer to simulate blur with bump, it's much more efficient, in terms of render time. The rest of the render settings seem ok to me (the AA seems even a bit too short for some hair props but it could be fine with the one you have).

Some hair props slow down render time enourmously. This is mainly due to the indirect lighting. To check if this is the problem, untick the "indirect lighting" in the hair material and try a test render on that area. If this is the source, you might consider render without indirect light and do some postwork.

In the atmospheric settings, light tab, normally it's sufficient to put the quality slider with a negative value. This depends on the amount of ambient light you have (the more you have, the higher the setting has to be, otherwise grain or blotches appear). But I would say that if your ambient/sun light slider is in about 75% or so, you could put this quality slider at -1 or -0.8. If you have this slider unnecessarily high, this slows down render times considerably.

Another thing that slows down render times significantly is materials with displacement instead of bump. Another thing is translucency. Even worse is a material that has both transparency and translucency.

Quote: "It's still busy and I don't want to shut it down. 91%! =D"
Maybe you dont know that you can interrupt the render, exit Vue, answer yes when it asks if you want to save the scene. When you restart Vue, you can resume render and nothing is lost.
Anyway, just to make sure, I always save the portion that is already rendered before I exit Vue... If the worst happens, I can do a partial render.

Quote -
Maybe you dont know that you can interrupt the render, exit Vue, answer yes when it asks if you want to save the scene. When you restart Vue, you can resume render and nothing is lost.
Anyway, just to make sure, I always save the portion that is already rendered before I exit Vue... If the worst happens, I can do a partial render.

I do know this, but xStream is flakey and this almost never works. Once you close it, it's pretty much over.

This is the image that took so long. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1642809

28h59'55"

This image took 22'16" with the internal runtime, 22'12" with the external. The only other thing it could be is the sky... I have some AsileFX skies that I got with the "What's new in Vue 6" tutorials that had some messed up clouds. They would render slowly or not at all. This was just one of the preset skies that came with Vue. More experiments are in order. :)

22 minutes seems excessive for just that!!  What settings, were they the same user settings??

I'm starting to think something else is going on here!!

Same settings, but only 640x480x72dpi.

I have a V3 with a complex shader on the skin that I use for testing every now and then, I just set her up with the "Bisbee" stock atmo and render settings set to "Ultra" at 640x480 and 75 dpi
Time taken = 1' 16"
There's something else causing this I think, what though, I have no idea, sorry!!

That atmosphere alone takes me 1'57" at the same size and render preset. I'll keep looking...

Like I wrote above, did you look at the quality slider in the light tab of the atmosphere settings?
The Vue default is zero but, with a scene like that, you can put it at -1 or even less.

It only shaved off 2 minutes for the test render if I lower the atmosphere to -1. There's something else going on.

How long does it take without the clouds? What kind of clouds is it, so that I can test in my system?

Angel Hair atmosphere, except set it to AO instead of GI.

Without clouds, 57"! Those are some borked up clouds!

Baseline: no change to Vue default scene and setup, preview render takes 2 seconds.
With those "angel hair" clouds, change atmo to AO, no other change to Vue default startup scene: 59 seconds
With another standard atmo ("on the move") the same scene takes 14 seconds. So, those "angel hair" clouds seem like a render time killer.

I analysed the clouds and I removed the turbulence node attached to the origin of the perlin repeater (didnt seem really necessary for most scenes) and the render time was 34 seconds. The effect is hardly noticeable and the speed improvement is big.

So, I suggest to either change to another cloud type or do this change.

Thanks a lot for the help guys, I really appreciate it!