Hi,
I've upgraded my Poser 6 to Poser 7, and I'm disappointed with the result of rendering Mike4 with beard(using FireFly). In Poser 6 the unshaved face was nice, but in Poser 7 he looks shaved unless I render a face closeup.
Have I missed some new settings in Poser 7? Seems like details are gone in default render settings. Thankful for any help if it is possible to get a "Poser 6-like" rendering.

You might try going into the Material room and turning off texture filtering for that zone.  The default in P7 is to have all nodes turned on.

svdl does a Python script to control texture filtering at prop, figure, or scene level.

I modified this script to switch off all texture filtering in the scene without prompting. In Poser 7 and Poser Pro I have a button which runs this script, and I always click it before rendering, if I've made any material changes.

Another thing that will affect the amount of detail you are getting is the minimum shading rate. For final renders this needs to be well under 1.0. Lower values increase render time.

Thanks for answering! I've tried to turn off texture filtering for Mike's face, that did not help. The contrast is much better in the renderings from Poser 6, even my old Poser 4 give more details. All tests on the same PC. What am I missing here?

can you show a render? 

Looks like it's a combination of a couple of things ... what's your minimum shading rate?  When I'm doing something like this I have it set at .02.

Also, you might need to make a bump map to bring out the stubble.  I'm not the best with making them, I usually just take my head texture and gray-scale it and plug it into the bump node with a setting of about .000194 but everyone has their own preferences with this and I'm sure someone else who knows more about it will chime in.

Victoria_Lee - when you set the min shading rate to .02, do you also set it to that value on each actor? Because if you don't, you're actually using .2, not .02. The effective shading rate is the larger of the two for each actor.

bjoru - The renderer in Poser 7, while still "Firefly" is an improved renderer. In many ways we don't notice much difference. But for details such as very find-grained bump patterns, the P7 engine has many bugs fixed, particularly how textures are handled and how well bump maps perform when they contain very small features. Your render from Poser 6 actually looks buggy to me.

I can get Poser Pro (similar to P7) to look sort of like your P6 render by INCREASING Min Shading Rate to 3. But that's not, to me anyway, a desirable appearance.

Decreasing the Min Shading Rate is usually the way to go to get more detail in a texture and I'd give the same advice for any figure or texture map. If you actually like the appearance of the Poser 6 renderer, then by all means use it.

However, renderer aside, are you using the default low-resolution textures that come with M4 here? Because if you are, just stop. You're not going to get detail from those at all. In Poser 6 you're getting "noise" which can be mistaken for detail, but it is detail that is not present in the original texture. It's an artifact of an inferior render technology, compared to the latest stuff.

Quote - Victoria_Lee - when you set the min shading rate to .02, do you also set it to that value on each actor? Because if you don't, you're actually using .2, not .02. The effective shading rate is the larger of the two for each actor.

Absolutely, BB.  I learned that one from you a while ago but I don't generally render in P7 except for promo images so that I can state all renders done in P7.

Quote - > Quote - Victoria_Lee - when you set the min shading rate to .02, do you also set it to that value on each actor? Because if you don't, you're actually using .2, not .02. The effective shading rate is the larger of the two for each actor.

Oh? I missed this, so for settings lower than 0.2 on shading rate I have to set it on every actor? Interesting, no guide I read told me this, even when recomending settings as low as 0. That goes to my notebook.

Lot of thanks to everyone!
I see I'll have to explore more settings to get the result I want. Anyway, I re-installed my Poser 6, so if not satisfied with rendering in P7, I can always go back.
But still, I'm wondering why an upgraded rendering tool is missing details wich (in my opinion) was better before...

Quote - But still, I'm wondering why an upgraded rendering tool is missing details wich (in my opinion) was better before...

"Better" is a subjective issue that is hard to agree on. However "more accurate" is something that can be measured, and I can tell you, as a professional software developer, that if the programmers can make the program be more accurate at something, they probably will. It looks like that's what happened here.

Generally speaking, when I upgrade a program feature to make it work differently, I try to leave a switch in the program to make it work the old way unless it's just not possible, because no matter what I think as the software architect, someone probably thought the feature was a good thing.

the poser 7 render is better.

the poser 6 render is ''noisy''. its completely normal . you were used to the renders in version 6. while IMO the render 7 is better to you it looks worse.

open the figure texture. look it in close up. what do you see. then watch the render.you dont see those noisy spots in the texture right?

Quote - Lot of thanks to everyone!
I see I'll have to explore more settings to get the result I want. Anyway, I re-installed my Poser 6, so if not satisfied with rendering in P7, I can always go back.
But still, I'm wondering why an upgraded rendering tool is missing details wich (in my opinion) was better before...

Er... did you read Bagginsbill's response?

Yeah. I said: (with underlining added here)

In Poser 6 you're getting "noise" which can be mistaken for detail, but it is detail that is not present in the original texture. It's an artifact of an inferior render technology, compared to the latest stuff.

You can insist on calling the noise "detail" if you like, but it's still stuff that actually is not in the texture.

This is not a unique phenomenon - there are people who add "grain" (noise) to photos to "bring out the detail". LOL

You're not understanding the term "noise" as commonly used in discussions of systems that transmit infromation.

There is "signal" which can have detail or not, and there is "noise" which is added by the transmission medium. When you compare the original signal data with the transmitted signal data, any difference is called "noise". The ratio of these will determine how much you care, i.e. the signal to noise ratio often talked about in stereo equipment. When the signal to noise ratio is high, you are happy. When it is low, you are not.

In this case, the original "signal" is that color map. The transmitted signal is the render. Any difference between them is called noise.

The Poser 6 render has a lower signal to noise ratio than the Poser 7 renderer.

The fact that you LIKE the Poser 6 renderer better is similar to people who like vinyl records better than CD. The vinyl record playback system introduces more noise, but it's a sort of noise that some people prefer.

In your comparison render, the beard hairs seem to be more clear. But in fact, the P6 render has dark spots in places that are not in the original color map. The P7 render does not.

If you look at that map, however, it's nothing like your Poser 6 render, which shows the beard area as rather patchy and noisy.

It's probably a good idea to post your render settings.