A lot of folks have put some intense work into investigating the new P8 lights. Can anyone or several people set out in very simple and direct terms what settings a "dummy" should start with when first using P8 IDL?

For example...

Case One: Exterior Scene
1 Infinite light for sun
1 IBL with preview of scene as environment map at 30% for fill light
Render settings...

and

Case Two: Interior Scene
Point lights at artificial light sources as they occur in scene
1 Infinite light for sun as visible through windows
1 IBL with preview of scene as environment map at 30% for fill light
Render setting...

Just something real real basic as a sensible start point with info like OA or no OA, IBL or no IBL...
 

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46536

That is a great link... thank you. I just got kind of lost in the threads here and was hoping for a couple real direct summaries of what people had discovered so far about using IDL.

Now to read that RDNA post!!

Excellent... i  gonna have to try this....

bookmarking!

The link is interesting but it depends on using the BaginsBill environment prop which is something I never figured out and I am not sure that it applies to interior scenes which are about 95% of my render scenes.

I guess it states that AO should not be used with IDL but I am still not sure about IBL and IDL.

momo, it's not aboslutely necessary to use the script in vince's thread.  I posted a screenshot of reasonable render settings at the end of the other dummies thread.  those settings also cause reasonable values to be displayed in the script. both the render settings and the script set certain GIvariables in FFRender, prior to render.

Ambient occlusion (AO) is what previous versions of poser used to simulate the effects of indirect light bounces.  AO is disabled by poser 8 on any light settings when indirect light is enabled, but if anybody still has AO nodes on posersurfaces, those should be deleted.  due to these various complexities, it's not gonna be easy for everyone to understand at first.

Oh, and if you have questions about the Environment prop, go ahead and ask.  I'm sure there are enough people who use it that can answer your question ;)

Quote - The link is interesting but it depends on using the BaginsBill environment prop which is something I never figured out and I am not sure that it applies to interior scenes which are about 95% of my render scenes.

I guess it states that AO should not be used with IDL but I am still not sure about IBL and IDL.

The EnvSphere is really easy to use, nothing complicated about it. You load it, load an equirectangular image on it and you're done :)
It's first use (pre P8) was to simulate an entire environment with a pic that surrounds all your scene, but now with P8 and IDL it participates in the global lighting and illumination.

AO should not be used with IDL indeed.

And i could have done the exact same render with an IBL and IDL instead of the EnvSphere, though i would have lost the sky, and i should have added it in post. The EnvSphere avoids that extra step.
Bagginsbill said in other threads that IBL, when used with IDL, does the same thing as the EnvSphere. The IBL will project the probe image on a virtual sphere (with virtual, understand that it is not present in the scene) that will acts exactly like the EnvSphere by using this image in the illumination.
Bill shortened this idea by saying that if you want to use a light probe image for the illumination, use IBL, if you want to use an equirectangular image for the illumination, use the EnvSphere.

For an interior scene, the EnvSphere has no utility, nor has an IBL. Except if the room that surrounds your character has any opening (a window, an opened door etc).
Of course you could still use them (EnvSphere or IBL) to 'fake' a room for instance. Though the IDL will have no walls for the light to bounces off.

Ouch! IDL does not like reflective surfaces, even when they do not use displacment. My 8gb, quad core computer with Vista 64 has been crancking away on a scene now for more than 24 hours and it is only 1/2 through the precalculation of indirect light. I am not even using Raytraced shadows as that slowed the render by more than twice as much. The only really complex thing in the render is a waterfall falling into a pool. IDL is only set to 25. The same scene without it renders in less than 10 minutes. It is hard to see how IDL will be a center piece to Poser 8 if it takes days to render scenes with that have reflections.

I hope SR1 can sqeeze some more speed into this.

lmk

I am now at 48 hours on this render. Precalculation has finished. It is now rendering. If anything the render process is even slower than the precalculations. The big hold up is the water. I think it is the reflection of the water. There is a bump map, but no displacement. The render over the water advances about 4 16-pixel buckets at a time, and each advance takes almost an hour. So far the render with IDL (and with one shadow mapped light) is a little better than without IDL and with one light with Raytraced shadows, but the very small improvement is not worth 48 hours rendertime. Sigh.

lmk

48 hours for one frame??
it seems something is wrong.

I am using "AW Courtyard Waterfall" for my scene, BB's Enviromental Sphere with an equirectangular picture, three M4 figures, A plant, and one light. The "AW Courtyard Waterfall" is a one piece prop with a lot of material zones. I have changed some of the textures on some of those zones to suit my preferences, but I have not touched the water.

Rendering with one light and Raytraced shadows but without IDL took about 10 minutes or less.

I just noticed in looking at the readme file that the water uses *.PSD files for the textures. I hate to stop the render to test and see if *.PSD files cause problems for IDL rendering. Obviously that would be one of the things I would check. Any and all other suggestions would be appreciated.

lmk

lkm, that is too slow.  this is the part where it gets complex:

• a posersurface for water may have 0 diffuse, meaning no IDL bounces
• a posersurface for water may have some reflection channel or node(s), which may only need 2 RT bounces
• a posersurface for water may be expected to have indirect specular fx of refraction and reflection, which aren't supported in initial release
• a posersurface for water may have substantial displacement, which may also slow down IDL

what I'm guessing is to try rendering the water only, with no IDL, then render the rest (no water) with IDL and then composite (unless already attempted).  please post screen shot of render settings (and render script if desired, which is largely redundant with render settings).

Quote - I am using "AW Courtyard Waterfall" for my scene, BB's Enviromental Sphere with an equirectangular picture, three M4 figures, A plant, and one light. The "AW Courtyard Waterfall" is a one piece prop with a lot of material zones. I have changed some of the textures on some of those zones to suit my preferences, but I have not touched the water.

Rendering with one light and Raytraced shadows but without IDL took about 10 minutes or less.

I just noticed in looking at the readme file that the water uses *.PSD files for the textures. I hate to stop the render to test and see if *.PSD files cause problems for IDL rendering. Obviously that would be one of the things I would check. Any and all other suggestions would be appreciated.

lmk

posers IDL is new. its not to good .....yet.i think your scene is to complicated for this render.

try rendering the reflection seperate . and then combine it later.

Miss Nancy:

I will post render settings but at this rate the render will finish tomorrow some time. I miss rendering in the background. :(

The *.PSD files that are used to texture and bump the water are more than 10 times larger than a *.JPG file.

From renders already done, and from what is finished on the IDL render, the waterfall does not seem very relective. I mainly see a very pixilated relection of the image attached to the EnvSphere. The water in the pool (the IDL render has not reached that part of the scene yet) has a lot of ripples and reflection and looks more like water.

What size file can one attach to a message?

lmk

Something is really not right with reflections in the current release.  Even with no displacement or specular, with very simple geometry (a sphere in a box, one light) and with raytrace bounces set at 2, reflective surfaces make render times go up way more than one would expect (x20 in the simplest case I could come up with).  I reported this as a bug, hopefully it will get some attention.

Ratcloset:

Do I need to make a bug report to SM/Poser also, or is the reflection bug in Poser 8, with IDL well known?

lmk

I just did a test render, one light, two reflective walls.

No IDL - 20 seconds.

With IDL - 530 seconds. Ouch.

On your specific scene, does the bump map image give you really awesome realistic waves, or is it something that could just as easily be done with a node?

The waves are good, but not awsome.  The texture and bump maps are in PSD format and are very large.The bump map is "noisey." It would cause problems for IDL if it were attached to the Displacement channel. Nodes might work if interference patterns could be generated. The product was obviously made long before Poser 8. It is in the Renderosity Store at this URL

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=70436&vendor=22139

I hate to cancel now, as I would like to see how IDL does from top to bottom of the screen, and I have already invested 2 days of rendering. As soon as I can get control of my computer (which will be sometime tomorrow), I will give a screen shot of my render settings and the water's material screens.

lmk

Yes, I found that IDL doesn't like glass shaders, water, mirrors, or transmapped hair. Admittedly, my computer is 3 years old and only has 512 megs RAM, so I am having difficulty rendering these things in a timely manner. I have taken to deleting IBL lights from my old pz3 files when I try to re-render them with IDL. At least on my computer, IDL and IBL together makes for long render times.

Quote - I am now at 48 hours on this render. Precalculation has finished. It is now rendering. If anything the render process is even slower than the precalculations. The big hold up is the water. I think it is the reflection of the water.

I have a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo machine with 2GB of memory, so not a high power render machine, but in a "let's see how long this takes" moment I set to rendering a scene with a pool of water (using both reflection and refraction, but with no bump because the water surface already has suitable ripply geometry) taking up about a third of the view. With indirect lighting it took about four and a half days (Friday midnight til Wednesday morning) to precalculate, and then six more days (Wednesday morning til Tuesday morning) to render. Was it worth it? For the render result, no. There are enough small grey splodges that the settings obviously need tweaking. However, I now know roughly how much longer an IDL render is likely to take once it completes its precalculation, so I'll have a better idea when to cut my losses and kill the render.

LazyLaeopard:

You are more patient (stubborn) than I am. Poser has been grinding on all night, and the final render is not even 1/2 through the scene. There is still plenty of water to go. I might as well let it continue until I get home from work, but I doubt it will be anywhere near through by then.

I am sure that this much render time is not worth the results. :( The "AW Courtyard Waterfall" product has some strange "blocky" looking reflections in the surfaces of the waterfall, and the pool.

I have a 2.40 Ghz quad core computer with 8 GB of memory using Vista-64. Right now FireFly is using 2,871,520 of memory and Poser is using about 1,094,940. This is 70% of my memory capacity and 100% of the processor. The bucket is set to 16, and it takes longer than 1 hour to render one bucket height of the screen. I am not even using a Raytraced light.

lmk

That sounds like you're disk-thrashing, if Firefly is close to its 3GB limit. I don't bother letting renders finish when there is swapping happening, because the time you're spending now is not for quality.

I rendered a bathtub full of water the other day and it was 10 minutes with reflective wall tiles, chrome faucet, reflective floor, etc, even with IDL. Everything was procedural, so no memory was needed for bump maps and color maps.

I looked at the product promo image - ahem - not worth it, IMO. I'd use procedurals for the water bump, and there is no need for a color map with water at all. 

Quote - That sounds like you're disk-thrashing, if Firefly is close to its 3GB limit. I don't bother letting renders finish when there is swapping happening, because the time you're spending now is not for quality.

That's certainly possible, given I've only got 2GB in this machine, but the times I checked there didn't seem to be a hideous load of page-swapping happening. This was a scene that took about three hours to render without any indirect light, so it took about eighty times as long with IDL. I was using one light, indirectly lit, with:
RT Bounces: 3 (needed to get refraction looking right, I think?)
Irradiance (AO) Cache: 0
Irradiance (AO) Sample Size: 10
Intensity: 1.0
IDL Bounces: 3
IDL Samples: 985
Irradiance (IDL) Cache: 25.0
HSV Exponential: 2.2

I was using one infinite light with Depth mapped shadows.

These were my render settings:

lmk

lmk

LMK

Wow that shader is a mess. The sum of Diffuse_value + Reflection_Value + Refraction_Value is 2.35! That's a mighty glowy shader there - the sum should not exceed 1. Plus, the refraction isn't real - it's just a picture. Plus it is using transparency as well, instead of real refraction. Geez.

Plus for IDL, the Diffuse_Value should not ever be 1 - it should be around .8, but only for materials that are opaque. Water is completely transparent, and has NO diffuse reflection at all.

Remove the image that goes to Diffuse_Color altogether.

Set Diffuse_Value = 0.

Remove the Reflect node.

Disconnect the other image from the Refract_Color channel.

Connect a Fresnel node to Refract_Color, and set Refract_Value = .9

Set the IOR on the Fresnel to 1.333.

Render without IDL and see how that looks.

Then if the bump map is not a JPEG or is huge, I'd open it in Photoshop, and save it as JPEG, no more than 1K in dimension.

Your render settings show Min Shading Rate = 0. That's really aggressive. Try test render with it at 1. If things look blotchy, try .5.

On the water prop, I'd set the water Min Shading Rate to 1, even if you need a better rate on the rest of the scene.

Render without IDL, and see how it looks. Then try with IDL again.
 

Thanks! I have had some trouble lighting this scene with a single light because it has some strange twists and turns. It is hard to get the light into its inner recesses. It is one solid object, not multiple props so whatever Min Shading Rate is set for any part of the Courtyard, it is set for the whole thing. To be fair to the product, I think it was originally made for Poser 5.

"Your render settings show Min Shading Rate = 0. That's really aggressive."

I have always liked sharp detail, but more so lately. Right now I am looking through a moderately dense cataract (which will be removed next month). I can't tell much difference between 0.5 and 0.0, and 0.5 is much faster.

"Then if the bump map is not a JPEG or is huge, I'd open it in Photoshop, and save it as JPEG, no more than 1K in dimension."

The bump map was a huge PSD file. I use IrfanView (a free untility) to do little tasks like resizing as it loads fast, works really fast, and doesn't take much memory. Resizing and saving in JPG format really cut the KBytes of the file, and I cannot see a difference in the detail.

You did not say, but I changed from Depth Mapped Shadows to Raytraced Shadows on the light. This makes for very harsh and dark shadows without IDL, but where I could see water, it looked much more realistic. I am running a render now with IDL. It is precalculating at the moment, and seems much faster.

Lesson #1? Not every rendering problem is the fault of Poser 8 and IDL.

LMK

lk, this will sound counter-intuitive, but do an area render of some area with an harsh RT shadow, then turn off shadows on the light and do an area render of the same area. leave "cast shadows" checked in render settings.

Quote - That sounds like you're disk-thrashing, if Firefly is close to its 3GB limit. I don't bother letting renders finish when there is swapping happening, because the time you're spending now is not for quality.

I've upped the memory in my old white iMac to the maximum, which is 3GB usable. Then I set an IDL render running having given this thread on RDNA a good read (along with some of the comments in the previous "IDL for Dummies" thread here). I monitored memory and CPU use. The CPU was pretty much maxed out most of the time, and there was very little page-swapping going on (about 400 page-ins and no page-outs in 8 hours). I conclude that IDL is just very computationally intensive, so if you're going to use it, make sure you've got a machine with plenty of nice fast CPU cores (and enough memory).

Miss Nancy:

The water in that sceen is just flogging the CPU with calculations when I try to use IDL on it. I did what you said in the above message, and got an idea. I set one light source to no shadows, and put it at 15%, and set a Raytraced light to 85%. These lights do not respond to XYZ coordiates but they do respond to XYZ rotation coordiates. With the same rotations, the lights occupy the same space, and I have in effect one sun that can fill shadows with light. I am experimenting with blurring the raytraced stronger light to get a pleasing balance. This is not as good as IDL, but it is better than the results I was getting before. Thanks. :)

I wonder if I parent one light to the other if they will both move together?

LMK