Quote - > Quote - I've been seeing a good number of P8 renders now and I'm wondering about one thing...... why does the majority of these P8 renders look so much alike P7/Pro renders? Why aren't we blown away by stunning renders if the light system and rendering is so much better then it is in the previous versions?

I  thought this one by BB was very impressive.  It only uses one light:

I was thinking the same thing.

I guess Indirect lighting and Global Illumination aren't enough for some people.

And it just doesn't boil down to superior renders, I'd say. If you can get great lighting very quickly, your setup time is gonna be drastically reduced. I frequently get a nice pose, then work spend a lot of time trying to get a lighting situation that looks good for the particular setup I've got. This should make things much simpler.

But alas! I gotta wait for Poser Pro 2....

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - I've been seeing a good number of P8 renders now and I'm wondering about one thing...... why does the majority of these P8 renders look so much alike P7/Pro renders? Why aren't we blown away by stunning renders if the light system and rendering is so much better then it is in the previous versions?

I  thought this one by BB was very impressive.  It only uses one light:

I was thinking the same thing.

I guess Indirect lighting and Global Illumination aren't enough for some people.

well what good is GI if you can not have smooth raytraced shadows? he he :)

Just a quick note - I have a meeting shortly.

I did not intentionally make the comparisons to Poser 7 style renders ugly. Enough with the conspiracy theories and constant negative attitudes and  interpretations. I showed how Poser 7 renders with 1 light, no tone mapping or GC, and no falloff. These are its default behaviors.

Obviously I have published tools and instructions on how to make custom scene specific IBL in Poser 7. I also published how to implement GC or HSV Exponential Tone Mapping in Poser 7. I published how to do accurate inverse square or inverse linear falloff in Poser 7. If you spend enough time (an hour or more) getting ready, you can sort of get close to some of the P8 renders I showed.

But, I was demonstrating renders with one light, with no setup time, no tweaking, no loading funky shaders on everything. How long does it take you to set up a realistic indirect lighting for an indoor scene with Poser 7?  Is it zero seconds as with Poser 8?

How does Poser 7/Pro look with one light? Everything not facing the light is black. Is that real? No. Is this a subtle difference? No it's not a subtle difference, it is a HUGE difference.

If you cannot see the difference, then you probably should be rendering with Poser 4.

Look at the render of the Abrams tank. There is very subtle self-illumination from the reflected light off one surface to another. Poser 7 cannot render that tank with such realism, even with IBL.

I wrote words under the box demo render, telling you what to look for. Are you blind, or just obnoxious? Do you see how the hidden ball is not invisibly black? Do you see how the subtle gradient of lighting on the sides of the white box appear? IBL does not do that on the side of a box. With IBL, the side of the white box would all be one identical color.

Either you don't understand IBL's limitations, or you are one of those people who isn't really an artist, because you can't see and analyze the world around you accurately. You don't know what makes things look real versus fake.

The figure demo and other content demo renders I did were not using GI. I could have and they'd look different, but I was doing 2 minute renders so you'd have lots to see.

Quote - well what good is GI if you can not have smooth raytraced shadows? he he :)

Do you really want me to answer that?

Look, we can all wish that every possible flaw, every possible thing that is non-optimal, all of it gets fixed all at once.

What do you want them to do? Stefan is pretty much single-handedly doing all the renderer stuff. He works long - he does research - he fixes bugs day and night. I beat him up constantly about things I didn't like in the new GI stuff. He's a f'ing hero, IMO.

Why the constant whining? When you buy a car for $13,000 do you expect it to be perfect, like a Mercedes? Why do you guys keep forgetting the price point?

You want Mercedes or BMW renderer? They exist - go buy them. You will pay $8995.

All this pontificating about what should be different, better, what SM should be doing, how dumb they are, how they make every decision wrong, it's ridiculous. If you have never written software, never run a product development group with a small team, never marketed a product, (all things I do professionally) how can you be so sure you know better? How can you constantly complain about decisions when you don't know the factors? Are you reading their marketing reports? Do you have their customer feedback in front of you?

We've been through this before. The general Poser market doesn't think there is a problem with shadows. They don't even use them.

Some of us want Maya for $130. We're not going to get it.

Just like with my Nikon D90, which was $900, not $8000, I allow for some work on my part to deal with the fact that it isn't a damn D3X. Use your head for God's sake.

My take on the Creech render.
Here he is making a friend.

Environment is a prop from Maxstudios, also included in Poser8.
Only one light coming from between both figures hand, with inverse square falloff added, and a bit of Ambient Occlusion magic.

bagginsbill: Don't let the nay-sayers put you off. Either they don't understand, or they just want to stir up trouble.

You and Stefan seem like the perfect team to beat the renderer into shape. I'm looking forward to the results. I'd still love to see Catmull-Clark subdivision in Poser at some point, though. Maybe in P9? 

Quote - bagginsbill: they just want to stir up trouble.

There are people here like that.

Quote - You want Mercedes or BMW renderer? They exist - go buy them. You will pay $8995.

Some of us want Maya for $130. We're not going to get it.

I would pay $500 extra to get the "optional modo render engine for Poser".
But, I realize that marketing decisions must be based on how many would pony up for a better render engine.

I'll get Poser 8 for my 32bit machines, and -when it's released- Poser Pro 2 for my 64bit machines.

Given how much time I've spent trying to get a reasonable balance between light and shadow before, the GI upgrade of Poser 8 is worthwhile to me.  Also, I found the multithread system of dividing the window into quadrants exasperating, so the new system of handing out buckets as cores become available is a considerable improvement.

I always seem to be constricted in building complex scenes, so I would like for Poser (Pro, at least) to move toward full 64bit  - the executable, as well as the render engine.  I find that I tend to do setup on my 32bit boxes, and then transfer the pz3 to a 64bit box in order to be able to render it.

Quote - > Quote - well what good is GI if you can not have smooth raytraced shadows? he he :)

Do you really want me to answer that?

Look, we can all wish that every possible flaw, every possible thing that is non-optimal, all of it gets fixed all at once.

What do you want them to do? Stefan is pretty much single-handedly doing all the renderer stuff. He works long - he does research - he fixes bugs day and night. I beat him up constantly about things I didn't like in the new GI stuff. He's a f'ing hero, IMO.

Why the constant whining? When you buy a car for $13,000 do you expect it to be perfect, like a Mercedes? Why do you guys keep forgetting the price point?

You want Mercedes or BMW renderer? They exist - go buy them. You will pay $8995.

All this pontificating about what should be different, better, what SM should be doing, how dumb they are, how they make every decision wrong, it's ridiculous. If you have never written software, never run a product development group with a small team, never marketed a product, (all things I do professionally) how can you be so sure you know better? How can you constantly complain about decisions when you don't know the factors? Are you reading their marketing reports? Do you have their customer feedback in front of you?

We've been through this before. The general Poser market doesn't think there is a problem with shadows. They don't even use them.

Some of us want Maya for $130. We're not going to get it.

Just like with my Nikon D90, which was $900, not $8000, I allow for some work on my part to deal with the fact that it isn't a damn D3X. Use your head for God's sake.

if i would have maya i would have to rig the figures.
with poser you get a figure that is rigged and ready to pose. and i can do animations.

Quote - if i would have maya i would have to rig the figures.
with poser you get a figure that is rigged and ready to pose. and i can do animations.

turbo squid sells rigged Maya figures.

for the same money like daz3d and others? and they have a free figure like apollo maximus with 100 morphs?

Nope.  And that's the tradeoff. 

Do you get everything you want?  Nope.  No one does.  Do you get easy-to-use, inexpensive software that gives MUCH better results than its' predecessor?  Absolutely. 

''Do you get everything you want?  Nope.''

do i want everything? i didnt even want GI. i only wanted samples.

Well, they didn't add it that time.  And, not to sound snitty, but, the Smith Micro team aren't gearing this at only you.  It's not going to be perfect, and you're not going to get what you'd get with Maya with Poser, especially not for the price.  But, I will say, Poser 8 is looking a DAMN sight better than I thought was going to come from Smith Micro.  Kudos to them for exceeding my expectations.

Poser 8 has also exceeded my expectations. For it's price point, I think it is really a very good deal. I costs less than a plugin for a high end 3d app.

Well, I think BB and the others testers are doing a tremendous job at showing us the renders, and I for one am impressed.  BB doesn't deserve the backlash at all, as he and company has been very faithful, showing us a thing or two about Poser 8 (some sniplets of course)  - and besides, it hasn't made its debut at Siggraph yet and we're just dishing in on price, bit-versions, launch dates and what-have-you.  I say let them show us, tell us, inspire us.

I'm like this, just wait a bit.  Who knows, we might expect the unexpected.

Just my .02 cents.

 I might also point out that while I'm often amazed at what realistic looking renders that Poser and DAZ3D often turn out, that's not really MY thing. I'm not looking to do any realistic renders really, although I don't mind trying every now and again. I won't be buying Poser Pro for two reasons, I can't afford it, and I don't need many of the features.

For me, Poser 8 fits just right and for the right price.

I bought Poser Pro licenses for my 64bit machines just for the 64bit render engine.  I have not used the network render feature, because I don't want to deal with trying to get/keep a network functioning.  While I often use 4 machines to render out an animation, I copy the pz3 via flash drive, and simply assign blocks of frame numbers to each machine.  I would prefer that SM add the option to render frames in reverse order,  so that I can start TinkerBell rendering at frame 1, and Firebird rendering from frame 1200 backwards.  You would stop both machines when they reach the same frame.

The GI and multithread upgrades alone are worth the price of admission to me, for P8.

For Poser Pro 2 (name?), I hope they get the movie node fixed in the 64bit render engine, because I use movie nodes a lot, to apply animated lightning, or animate ripples in water.
If there is an equivalent GI and multithread upgrade for Poser Pro 2, that would sell me a couple of Pro license updates when it's released.
It would be less confusing to me if they used the same number as the concurrent Poser version, though, e.g., Poser Pro 8. :D

Or maybe Poser 8 Pro, as the current Poser Pro is Poser 7 plus some extra goodies.

Technically, the Products are

Poser 7

Poser Pro (There are two levels of this... Poser Pro BASE and Poser Pro Full, generally when users talk of Poser Pro, they are talking of Poser Pro Full)

Poser 8

There is no such product as Poser 7 Pro

I will add my insights when I can to the public forums.

Quote - I'd still love to see Catmull-Clark subdivision in Poser at some point, though. Maybe in P9? 

Depending on exactly how much is exposed to the scripting engine, I suspect this might be possible in Poser 8 via plugin.

Be aware that the GI in the older versions of Poser is in the "just barely implemented" category, it certainly will not be the same in the final version of Poser 8.

nodding to pjz99 I am greatly anticipating trying the fully supported GI in Poser 8. But, I admit, I was itchy to see what it might do so I used the script to see if I could get any result. I did like what I saw there--with just one spot light!

 I am just itching to get my hands on it already

Quote -  I am just itching to get my hands on it already

Me, too!  :lol:  which is why I jumped when the dummy page was posted.  

I can't wait to get Poser 8. I do animation. I know there hasn't been much talk about the animation capabilities, but, The time saved with the lighting set up is worth it alone. It takes a good amount of time to get the lighting the way you want it often, and dancing around the inviroment to make sure your lights are in a correct place to cover the scene.

I have a I7 4core, 6 gig or ram 64bit to work with. Poser Pro really speeds up the renders as apose to Poser 7. Everything to me is setup and animation. rendering speeds are things I can't control to get certain looks. But is Render speeds are as fast as Poser Pro, and easier to set up, All I can say is Wow. Time is money!

You'll love rendering in Poser 8 then. The multi thread optimization thingy works quite well. Gone are the days with idle cores in Poser renders.

Quote - Gone are the days with idle cores in Poser renders.

That's wonderful news; if they did nothing else new, I'd get Poser 8 just for that. And with properly implemented GI, the interface and library improvements etc. this looks like it could be the equivalent of the jump from Poser 4 to Poser 5.

Why people have chosen to moan about this, that and the other here I don't know. It sounds like the Poser team at Smith Micro have done / are doing a sterling job.

So hats off to all those connected with P8 who have posted renders, screenshots and info in this and other threads, and who have dealt diplomatically with the usual crap. Most of us are reading this with interest. Personally, I'm grateful (and frankly a little surprised) that this is all allowed to be disseminated before the official announcement at SIGGRAPH.

Wow! Been away for a while now but I found out about this today and Im impressed. Im a little concerned about the render times but the results are stunning.

Seems like now it will be a lot easier to set-up things and not fiddle endlessly to get just the looks I want, be it realism, comics or whatever tickles your creativity. Im not sure artisically that is such a good thing...I.e It's getting closer to turning into a make art button and I do like a challenge instead of point and click. Not that Im complaing at all. It's a trade off and a good one I think. Less time involved setting up scenes more time rendering. I'll take that deal anyday because it means It will free up time to get some realworld things done instead of tedious fiddling and lots of hair pulling. Time is money and I don't have much of either these days so I need to be efficent. P8 looks very effecient :)

I have to say Im really impressed that much work went into it. I was sort of expecting minor changes but this looks big. The rendering engine finally looks impressive and so does the UI.
The whole parameter control thing that DR and others mentioned and the improvements to rigging is huge and something I hoped they could do without running into compatibility issues.
The content looks pretty impressive too coming with extensive morphs and texture variety right out of the box. Something they should have done a long time ago for thier base figures.

I for one would like to thank all who took the time to post info about this and the whole team in general. Although I doubt I'll have the money or time to purchase it right off the bat Im surly looking forward to it when I can get around to it. Im sold. Impressive work.

Sorry if Im sounding to much like a fan but I think the people who work on this stuff don't get enough credit but they really deserve it.  It's also nice to recieve a complement every now and then instead of piss and moan all the time which gets old faster than conversations about religon & politics. Oh shit did I mention them...Sorry!!!

The scene has the Abrams tank, the ground, a pyramid, and the environment sphere. On the EnvSphere, I have a panoramic image. I have one infinite light for the sun.

This render is done in Poser 8, but using IBL instead of IDL. 

IBL = Image Based Light
IDL = Indirect Diffuse Light

These are completely different techniques attempting to accomplish the same goal - to simulate the "ambience" created by light bouncing off one surface and illuminating another. IBL is fast and for many images is a big improvement, but only in comparison to NOT doing anything whatsoever about ambience.

Now keep in mind, this image is using Poser 8 HSV Exponential tone mapping, so that we don't have gamma correction problems. If you were rendering in Poser 7, you'd have to do more work just to match this; either using GC or HSVE shaders, or doing postwork. So even though I'm not using IDL yet, this is already a better render than you could get from Poser 7 in a straightforward way.

Note the insufficient shadowing under the Abrams. If I were to crank up the AO enough I could darken that, but then upper areas would over-darken. You can already see some excessive AO on the side of the tank.

Open both of these and do a flip-test comparison. If you can't see the enormous differences then you should not be doing any sort of CG art - try sports.

With IBL, we can sort-of get the ambience right for things outside the tunnel or deep inside the tunnel, BUT NOT BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.

Is that clear? IBL cannot capture ambient lighting in a varied environment. It is fine for a solo figure standing outside, it is not fine for anything involving canopies, tunnels, caves, AND open to the sky in the same render.

The tank here is partly in sun. The shadows part should be picking up some open-air ambience as you look farther toward the rear. Instead, it is homogeneous. Also, observe closely the lack of gradient on the tunnel wall and the ground.

Even I can see the difference :-)

Do you have the rendering times for each image also, that would also be helpful!

Both tanks in the tunnel are in deep shadow, but the front one is near the sun and the front opening. The Poser 7 style IBL completely does the wrong thing here. If you adjust for the tanks in shadow, then the outside tank would look like a Poser 4 render.

Of course you could tweak, and test render, and tweak some more, and maybe find a compromise.

I absolutely love this! tremendous difference!

There are a whole lot of new types of scenes you could NEVER get right with Poser 7 that are a total automatic snap, no adjusting of anything at all, in Poser 8.

Yes it renders longer. So what? When the very first render is perfect, I am doing something else while it renders, not a care in the world. This is a totally different experience than baby sitting a render and doing like 30 of them before I'm happy with all the compromises and cheats.

Also, I just got a last-minute update to the renderer, and now it's even faster and cleaner than before. A few weeks ago this was taking an hour, now it is 2 minutes.

I told you they were still working on it.

BB if you weren't a bloke I'd kiss you. ;)

Quote - Even I can see the difference :-)

Do you have the rendering times for each image also, that would also be helpful!

Awesome! You and I are on the same page again. That's good.

I just re-rendered with timing turned on, using the last scene, with 3 tanks. Keep in mind I don't even consider the IBL+AO version usable. I'd probably do more complicated lighting and postwork to get this type of image to look good in Poser 7. But let's compare anyway.

IBL+AO = 169 seconds
IDL = 227 seconds

Great stuff, BB!

What can I say? Im speechless. Such a dramatic difference for not that big a speed difference. I take back what I said about being worried about the rendertime.

Keep in mind that if speed is a top priority, you do not HAVE TO render with GI every single time.  This should be obvious, but I keep hearing fretting about "gosh will it take longer to render with GI huh willit huh???"  If you want to render without shadows, without polygon smoothing, without any kind of quality options whatsoever, I'm sure your renders will be really fast.  They will look like, well, what they are (renders with zero quality options) but they will surely be fast, at least compared to max quality options.  This isn't specific to Poser, it's true of all CG - quality costs time, and max quality may not always be the priority (e.g. in animation).

Great render BB :)
When Poser8 cames out I have to re-render some scenes  :biggrin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArtCyDfOLkA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMhY-eHXBZU

Mazak

You know how I can tell I've been looking at Poser images for too long and too often?

I looked at the IDL version of the first tank and thought "gah, that doesn't look right!"  Then, I thought for a second....it DOES look right.  It looks right in the "OMG, that almost looks real" sort of way.

It also gave me some cool ideas for some renders.  :)  I wanna try to get a "tilt shift" effect, and see if I can do it in Poser :)

Quote - Keep in mind that if speed is a top priority, you do not HAVE TO render with GI every single time.  This should be obvious, but I keep hearing fretting about "gosh will it take longer to render with GI huh willit huh???"  If you want to render without shadows, without polygon smoothing, without any kind of quality options whatsoever, I'm sure your renders will be really fast.  They will look like, well, what they are (renders with zero quality options) but they will surely be fast, at least compared to max quality options.  This isn't specific to Poser, it's true of all CG - quality costs time, and max quality may not always be the priority (e.g. in animation).

I know quality takes time. Speed is not a huge priority for me although I don't think I could do super high settiings and have it render overnight or my old pc would probably die. I skimmed this thread after coming home from a night out with friends ( note to self :reading and comprehension are not your friends when alcohol comes into play )

About halfway or a little above settings would be fine for me and I don't think that would increase the time too much.  

Does anybody have anything to say about the new rigging? Did you notice a huge difference in the way these new figures bend compared to ealier figures? Im curious about how much of a difference these new features will add.

I'm trying to imagine what we could get with a set from Stonemason and IDL on in P8.... :D
Thanks for these pics BB, it's enlightening!
The benefit of IDL is clearly demonstrate here ;)

Quote -

Does anybody have anything to say about the new rigging? Did you notice a huge difference in the way these new figures bend compared to ealier figures? Im curious about how much of a difference these new features will add.

The new rigging system is fabulous. You can have multiple falloff zones AND you are not restricted to just have some scaled spheres. You can now use capsule deformation zones, with the capsule size fully parametric.