The non-IDL version renders in less then an hour, IDL version took over 7 hours and wasn't even finished when it crashed. Besides the crashes, the time difference is just too much to even seriously consider using it on a regular basis. It was fun as long as it lasted, but I will not touch this new feature of P8 anymore. I'm sure it works fine with some boxes and spheres or a one figure scene rendered screen size, but when one wants print quality large renders or more complex scenes (and the one I did wasn't even that complex), the render times will be a very serious issue. Computer used: Core2Due P8600 (2.4Ghz) with 4GB RAM.

Shame, another P8 feature going down the drain.

Just had to vent..... not being able to use a pc for a whole day and then ending up with nothing, isn't fun! Image attached was reduced in size to be able to attach it.

Did you first ensure that all AO (Ambient Occlusion) nodes were removed. You do not need them with indirect lighting, they'll just slow the rendering down.

More details at:-
http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?p=470058

From what BagginsBill has hinted, you'll love it again after SR1 :) 

One reason its taking you so long is because your using Terradome with a AtmoSphere , the Atmosphere part of Terradome is a large transparent object and transparent things really slow IDL down , Remove the Atmosphere and I bet it renders alot faster :)

I have a Core2Duo 3ghz with 4 Gb ram and I am doing IDL renders in a hour or two depending on whats in the scene , but put afew objects with transparent parts or a Atmosphere ect and It can take 6 hours just for the IDL calcultaions .

are those trees all geometry?

are you even aware that the good GI engines take hours to render out trees? 

fact is that you have a very complicated scenes.

"...fact is that you have a very complicated scenes"

Nope. aeilkema is perfectly right.

Fact is that Poser (And Studio) are WAY behind the curve of what's possible today.

If these can be rendered in realtime at a fraction of a second, I don't see why I should wait for hours to do a single still picture in Poser or Studio.

If you forget about all those fancy three digit light settings and go back to the basics, render speeds in Poser 8 are at least somewhat reasonable.

The above render took 2 minutes on a 4GB dual-core machine.

 Game Engine and Render engine are different things.  A lot of that texturing you could get in the OpenGL Preview (not the specularity and shadows, obvs.) NOW if you take the time to do it.

Also, the realism of "environments" aren't due to Poser.  If you want realistic environments, you either make them yourself, or you find the really real looking ones and pay (sometimes a lot) for them.

:-)

Nope, there is no difference.

You have a mesh, you have a texture. You have shaders.
You render it, and the result is a picture.
The picture either looks like a photograph or not.

Game environments and meshes used to be very simplistic but not any more.

Those cars for examply are more accurate and detailed than 99% of the Poser cars available.

If a GAME screenshot looks more photorealistic than an hour long Poser/Studio render, then something is wrong IMO.

 You can get realism out of Poser.  It's not the programs fault that users haven't worked at it.

Look, we've got this program, capable of creating really great renders...the majority of users want it to make their products pretty (either stuff they made or stuff they bought) or to make big-boobed women.  This is not news, and shouldn't be news, to anyone in the community.  How do you get them interested in making better art, when it takes longer?  We're in a society that values the instant gratification over the long, hard work.  Poser the PROGRAM is capable of some really great stuff.  It's up to the users to do it.

Quote - Nope, there is no difference.

Yes, actually, there is.

Game Engines are designed to showcase the game in real-time.  This means, designers have to use everything they know to make the game look it's best.  It's not all render engine you're seeing.  You're seeing hi-res texturing, high-performance lighting, and a lot of teamwork.  You're comparing a 20 person team with a 1-person team.  You're comparing years of personal research and learning and development with Point And Click and Render.  You're going to get different results.  

See, I'm not completely UNHAPPY with Poser 8.
(Or any of it's predecessors or Studio)

All I'm saying is:
Sorry, dear Poser coders, But lights that take hours to render are a waste of time IMVHO.

There is no way to achieve PERFECT PHOTOREALISM in Poser (Or Studio) anyway.
I leave this for the big boys playing with MAYA or MAX.

So I rather stick with perhaps 95% (photo)realism and don't frustrate myself everytime I wait for an render to finsh.

The game also uses all kinds of tricks, exploiting known factors that are not going to change.

For example, the mountains in the background are always in the background. So you do not need to calculate atmospheric haze based on distance - it is baked in. The lighting on the mountains or buildings is also known and a constant, so it is baked in. They don't have to run a full GI calculation to find out what colors and brightness are the sky, clouds, ground, other buildings nearby. All of those things are hard-coded into the scenes they've created for each venue.

The lighting on the cars is also known with a few small variables thrown in that can be taken care of quickly. When the car is on the road, the ambient lighting from sky and ground is totally pre-calculated and set up as an IBL for the car. The occlusion shadows under the car do not have to be generalized - they can be pre-calculated in a few shadow maps which are interpolated, in case the car is flying off the ground.

Reflections of the scenery (mostly sky) are baked into a reflection map, which can be quickly looked up to generate nice reflections on the car surfaces without using ray-tracing. I haven't seen the game up close, but they can also handle some car-to-car reflection using some neat tricks that are far less general than dealing with a V4 crawling over the car.

There's tons of stuff like that. If you added up all the stuff rendered off-line and baked into just one venue, you're probably talking about a render time of 1000 hours.

 Thank you for explaining it better than I can, BB ;)

According to a Wikipedia article

Quote - In an April 2008 interview, game creator Kazunori Yamauchi revealed that 150 people had worked on Gran Turismo 5 for four years, with all of Polyphony Digital's 120 employees working on GT5, and the game costing 50 times more to develop than 1997's Gran Turismo.

750 man-years!!! Assuming a fully burdened average cost for one full-time employee is $120K,  a reasonable estimate for the cost of development is $90 million. I'm pretty sure (not certain) that's more than the total revenue of all versions of Poser and all products on CP combined for all of history.

plus a game engine is designed to do that same thing over and over and over. so that's all it has to to. so they optimise it like crazy just to do that and nothing else.

that game engine for example can't on the fly render an octopus. without tweaking the engine and the model, you wouldn't get that far.

Quote - Did you first ensure that all AO (Ambient Occlusion) nodes were removed. You do not need them with indirect lighting, they'll just slow the rendering down.

More details at:-
http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?p=470058

I'll give that a try!

Quote - are those trees all geometry?

are you even aware that the good GI engines take hours to render out trees? 

fact is that you have a very complicated scenes.

Not on Vue...... I can do way more complex scenes in Vue rendering in GI and it still takes less then an hour. Besides, that's not a complicated scene..... 2 trees, 1 figure, a landscape and some grass and that's called complicated, I don't think so.

IDL is needlessly slow.

Quote - From what BagginsBill has hinted, you'll love it again after SR1 :) [/quote

Hope so. once it's released I'll try it again, for now I'm done with it.

Quote - One reason its taking you so long is because your using Terradome with a AtmoSphere , the Atmosphere part of Terradome is a large transparent object and transparent things really slow IDL down , Remove the Atmosphere and I bet it renders alot faster :)

I have a Core2Duo 3ghz with 4 Gb ram and I am doing IDL renders in a hour or two depending on whats in the scene , but put afew objects with transparent parts or a Atmosphere ect and It can take 6 hours just for the IDL calcultaions .

Remove the atmosphere will spoil the scene. If transparency is an issue then SM needs to deal with that and resolve the issues, since transparency is used a lot in Poser.

Yes, Bagginsbill.

And that's exactly the same tricks I'm using myself for years to get the most out of the low-end machines I owned so far.
Because EFFICIENCY is also a quality feature.

I'd be happy to pay 100$ a piece for an environment setting for Poser, baked on shaders or not, as long as the results look as realistic as those game screenshots and the whole shebang would render in less than 5 min.

It's the results that count, and I bet that 99% of the average Poser users would be a lot more happy with the realism of a "game optimized" scene like those above instead of having to wait for hours to get "accurate" highlights on an otherwise anatomically completely inaccurate Vicky.

Ok, I've checked my render settings and the AO nodes and settings and my settings were as adviced, so that's not the issue.

Quote - Yes, Bagginsbill.

And that's exactly the same tricks I'm using myself for years to get the most out of the low-end machines I owned so far.
Because EFFICIENCY is also a quality feature.

I'd be happy to pay 100$ a piece for an environment setting for Poser, baked on shaders or not, as long as the results look as realistic as those game screenshots and the whole shebang would render in less than 5 min.

It's the results that count, and I bet that 99% of the average Poser users would be a lot more happy with the realism of a "game optimized" scene like those above instead of having to wait for hours to get "accurate" highlights on an otherwise anatomically completely inaccurate Vicky.

Then all it takes is to learn how they do it.  

Some of the top vendors here and at DAZ have some experience in the game design world.  I know that one (LukeA here) has written books on texturing for games (we don't sell them here, but they ARE at Amazon, search for Luke Ahearn).  Looking for information isn't as hard as you think, it's just that you have to make an effort.  

And, again, you're comparing hundreds of man-hours against point-and-click effort.  Apples and Steak comparison, man.  Not even the same ballpark.  If you want good results, it's going to take you time.  It took the game designers a lot of time to get the game to where it is, why are you expecting the same with no effort?

Please don't show a bunch of renders with no-shadow infinite lites and say "that's just as good as GI".  Also, the game images you're showing, those mountains in the background look great because THEY'RE A PHOTOGRAPH.  Of course the photographed elements look realistic!

Quote - Ok, I've checked my render settings and the AO nodes and settings and my settings were as adviced, so that's not the issue.

I'm going to go out on a limb (bad pun, bad pun!), but have you tried eliminating one of the trees?  They have a LOT of little limbs, and that is probably killing your render time with the calculations.

Eight infinite lights. One with shadows. No fancy skin shaders. Baked on highlights.
Works for me for quite some time. :-)

Sorry, but it's NOT the IDL, IBL and whatever else new toy you have that makes a render realistic.

It's accurate meshes and good textures. (Based on actual photographs and not on procedurals)

You might be able to add the last 0.001% of "realism" with a fancy light set and skin shader, but only if the foundation (The mesh and the textures) are right.
But if the last 0.001% in realism takes 1000 times longer to render, I'm sure a lot of people would say "Thanks, but NO thanks", just like I do. Lol.

My point:
Focus on BETTER, more ACCURATE  models with BETTER textures.
(Like Stonemason does)
Make Poser MORE EFFICIENT instead of dreaming up stuff that's completely unpractical for most people in the end.

Stop trying to emulate the big boys (Max and MAYA) and instead have a good hard look at what the gaming industry does.

But I guess that would be way too easy for some people here.  ;-)

I think I agree that the long render time is from the giant transparency layers that implement the atmospheric effect. Even Poser 7 and Poser Pro are slow when using ray-traced shadows with those things.

Aeilkema, I totally agree with you that Poser needs to improve how it deals with transparency. It's just too common. I discussed it with SM at length, and they explained the technical limitations to me. I have to confess that because I have unbounded confidence in my ability to do the impossible, to do what 99.99% of engineers say is incredibly difficult, I asked them to give me the source code and I'd fix it. They haven't taken me up on that offer yet. ;-)

Quote - You might be able to add the last 0.001% of "realism" with a fancy light set and skin shader, but only if the foundation (The mesh and the textures) are right.

I hate to break this to you, but every pic you've ever posted that I can remember has pretty terrible lighting and shadows.  They do not look remotely realistic.  I expect you'll go ballistic again like the last time I told you this.

edit: I encourage you to post some of your best images on cgSociety for open critique on your lighting technique.

Quote - I think I agree that the long render time is from the giant transparency layers that implement the atmospheric effect. Even Poser 7 and Poser Pro are slow when using ray-traced shadows with those things.

Aeilkema, I totally agree with you that Poser needs to improve how it deals with transparency. It's just too common. I discussed it with SM at length, and they explained the technical limitations to me. I have to confess that because I have unbounded confidence in my ability to do the impossible, to do what 99.99% of engineers say is incredibly difficult, I asked them to give me the source code and I'd fix it. They haven't taken me up on that offer yet. ;-)

I do hope it get's fixed, whoever does it :-)

JP,

There's no use complaining that a general purpose software renderer, and the content people make for it, is a general purpose software renderer.

There are some beautiful images (and movies!) that can be made with inexpensive NVidia hardware and the free Gelato hybrid hardware/software renderer. This is a general purpose renderer, not a game engine that needs everything pre-baked and limited.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/gz_home.html

Go get it.

No, pjz99, why should I ?

See, when I remember how you constanty blew a fuse back when I said that V4 has tons of problems, and now you basically say the exact same after working with her for some time, I'm pretty sure there will be a time until you reckognize that I'm perfectly right...again.

So if spending hours over hours fiddling around with Poser 8's new light settings trying to find the perfect shadow is your idea of fun, I really have no intention to stop you from wasting your time.

Me, I rather refine my sculpts and rigs and occasonally render them using my ultra-fast-yet-highly-accurate homemade light set.

:-)

Quote - No, pjz99, why should I ?

See, when I remember how you constanty blew a fuse back when I said that V4 has tons of problems, and now you basically say the exact same after working with her for some time, I'm pretty sure there will be a time until you reckognize that I'm perfectly right...again.

So if spending hours over hours fiddling around with Poser 8's new light settings trying to find the perfect shadow is your idea of fun, I really have no intention to stop you from wasting your time.

Me, I rather refine my sculpts and rigs and occasonally render them using my ultra-fast-yet-highly-accurate homemade light set.

:-)

The point that he's making is you're saying "See, this is realism!" when it's not.  It's realistic-like.  
Like I said earlier, if you can't spare the time to get the work out that you're expecting, don't blame the software because you don't want to take the time.  You get out of the program what you put into it.

I'm sorry, JenX, but so far NONE of the renders I've seen using Poser 8's new lights look even remotely PHOTOREALISTIC to me.
And neither did any of the IBL and ambient occlusion renders that were all the rage when Poser 6 appeared.
Or any of the gazillion node skin shaders that were a "must have" not so long ago.

But REALISM in Poserdome is such a rare animal....

As long as most people (and vendors, and shops) claim that V4 is realistic just because she looks remotely humanoid, trying to discuss realism is really a waste of time.

I already spent thousands of hours resculpting and rerigging meshes because noone else was interrested in creating truly accurate humans for Poser, so I guess I know pretty well what I can blame and what not.

My point (again):

High quality meshes + simple but fast lights are more realistic (and more fun) than the usual poor quality content rendered with highly sophisticated lights.

 Ok, so if you've got these oh-so-awesome real rescultped and re-rigged meshes that you've spent thousands of hours on, where are the renders?  Your gallery is empty, you don't have a site link, and the images you post to the forum aren't the amazing and outstanding feats you're claiming.  

Sorry, I'm not buying that your way is better, simply because I can't see proof.  The proof you're showing is that, basically AO is good enough for you.  You actually don't NEED 8 lights.  Period.  8 lights is not only overkill, it's not even realistic lighting.  Some of the best lighting rigs I've seen and worked with have maybe 3 lights.  

You're saying your way is awesome, we're saying "show me".  The proof is in the pictures.

Quote - See, when I remember how you constanty blew a fuse back when I said that V4 has tons of problems, and now you basically say the exact same after working with her for some time, I'm pretty sure there will be a time until you reckognize that I'm perfectly right...again.

Actually many of your points were stupid and poorly investigated ("magnets in the figure can't be made visible" "can't render more than 1 figure" "JCM is a complete mystery").  What made me frequently irritated at you was that, like now, you say things that are stupid and poorly investigated.  You can choose to remember things how you like, but I do still encourage you to brag up your lighting skills over at cgSociety for an abrupt reality check.

Seriously, how you got back onto your "V4 sucks" track is baffling.  Render Posette with terrible lighting and come back.

Quote - I'm sorry, JenX, but so far NONE of the renders I've seen using Poser 8's new lights look even remotely PHOTOREALISTIC to me.
...
Or any of the gazillion node skin shaders that were a "must have" not so long ago.

This is a ridiculous statement. Not even "remotely" photorealistic? Either you believe the word "remotely" means something other than what I think it means, or you're being completely disingenuous here.

This is one of odf's test renders of Antonia. (Click for full size)

Not "perfectly" realistic, but to say this isn't even remotely realistic is only possible if you're blind or just trying to stir up trouble. This is a test render - no effort to refine or tweak. It's a basic 3-light set with IBL. The reason it doesn't look like a plastic mannequin is ENTIRELY because of the shaders - my VSS shaders. Your assertion is ridiculous.

i use DS3A , and i try to get as close to photographic realism as possible in some character studies, but i do not think that a reasonably low-end rendering system like Poser OR DS3 can hope to  get the same quality of 'realism' as those very high end softwares used on major workstations and more to the point, huge renderfarms.
BUT, both can do a very good job with a combination of HQ textures, shaders and a good light rig.
again, BUT, we have to expect very long render times.
a friend of mine is working on some Disney animation stuff and even with her software and VERY high end workstation, a single frame can take quite a few hours to render out.

whilst it looks very nice and will look even better to indiscriminate vidgame players, there are some rendering errors in joepub's first img in this thread:

• car shadows are neutral grey (r=g=b) even tho the scene appears to have a blue sky
• car shadows are not motion-blurred
• sides of cars don't reflect anything
• guard rail/barrier casts no shadow
• spectators cast no shadows

since this means there's no GI nor proper reflection/shadow calculations, even poser 6 or 7 could do a better job of it IMVHO.

"The reason it doesn't look like a plastic mannequin is ENTIRELY because of the shaders - my VSS shaders. Your assertion is ridiculous."

The only reason Antonia looks "realistic" is because she is "sculpted" realistic.

Antonia has a fantastic rig and very realistic sculpt, unlike V4.

A real woman will still look like a real woman even if you take a picture of her at night under a street lantern with a cell phone cam.
A Barbie doll will still look like a Barbie doll even if you take a photograph of it using high end studio equipment.

Sorry Bagginsbill, but your shaders are not as important as you think they might be.

They might add the last 5%, but the major factor wether a mesh appears to be realistic or not is the sculpting.

 Ok, this "mine is bigger" contest is getting old.  Are you willing to show a render, or not?

Sorry, Miss Nancy, but "speed" (= efficiency) is a major factor if you want to evaluate quality.

A car that can go 100mph for half the mpg than a car that can go 110mph is IMVHO the "better" car.

So I think the AVERAGE Poser user would be better off with more accurate and optimized meshes that render also faster, than trying to sqeeze out the last ounce of realism at any cost.

not so good as BB's example,
forum.daz3d.com/postimages/origimage_1_1870028.jpgwww.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/full.php
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/full.php

thefantasiesattic.net/attic/cpg/displayimage.php

last one is V3

"Ok, this "mine is bigger" contest is getting old.  Are you willing to show a render, or not?"

Atually, no.

You can see one of my sculpts in one of my recent posts.
(Search for HANA).
If that's not enough to illustrate what I'm talking about, I'm sorry.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3499621&ebot_calc_page#message_3499621

I'm going to stick with my previous line.  Realistic-ish.  Not true realism.  Not even close.  

 I should actually clarify.  I'm not calling your work bad.  I'm just saying that it's not photorealistic, at least not in the sense that you're claiming.  To say that working on settings, shaders and lighting aren't as important as modelling and rigging is a fallacy.  They are ALL important.  Most 3D work you see out there that is spectacular is a group effort.  Someone modelled, someone rigged, someone lit, someone textured, someone modified shaders, someone rendered.  To think that it's a quick process, and proclaim that it should be, couldn't be further from the truth.  Realism takes time in the high-end apps, too.

Hey she's right, Joe Public.
Go ask them at CGTalk, and see what they say.

To go with your barbie doll analogy, you can model a completely totally anatomically correct, perfect human and take a picture of it in a studio and if the materials used aren't as equally accurate, it just doesn't look real.

Digital artists struggle constantly with making human renders look right, even with the best physical models possible. The reason is our brains know the subtle differences between surfaces, based on thier physical properties. The hard part is making a bunch of polygons look convincing, and shape has little to do with it. Surface properties have nearly everything to do with it.

JenX, you miss my point:

99% of the renders made in Poser are V4 "as is".
Maybe a dial spun, maybe even a "real" custom sculpted "face".

But V4, without a thorough resculpt and re-rig, has tons of anatomical problems.

So, slapping on some 4000 x 4000 "elite" textures on her, buying (or using a free) 100+ node shaders and using a high end IDL light set, will do exactly ZERO to make her more realistic.
It will cost a lot of $$$ (Good for Rendo and DAZ, I admit) waste a lot of render time and cause a lot of harddrive wear.

I wouldn't say a peep if V4 or (any other readily available mesh) would have a 100% realistic base sculpt and matching rig out of the box and those 4000 X 4000 textures, those fancy shaders and high tech lights would take her from "almost perfect" to ABSOLUTELY BL**DY  PERFECT.

But even IF we had such a widely supported realistic mesh, is it really smart to spend so much energy on trying to push Poser to it's limits ?

I know my sculpting is quite realistic. And if I'd use fancy shaders and hi tech lights I think I could even end up with a render that wouldn't be immediately recognizeable as a Poser render.

But do I want that ?
Nope, I'm happy with the 90 to 95% of realism I have now and enjoy my 2 minute renders.

I have nice shadows, a nicely lit skin, and I still can do a lot of variations with my "old fashioned" light set.

And I'm pretty sure most other Poser users would rather have a more realistic figure that also renders faster than constantly having to fight with node settings, running out of RAM because of oversized textures or waiting for hours for a render to finish without being closer to "actual" realism anyway, because the figures anatomical problems negate any improvements they made.

And those few who really, really want to be cutting edge would at least have a solid foundation to start with.

 So, basically, you agree with me, but want to make it look like you disagree and I'm wrong.

shrug

I'm used to it.  I can dig it.

Quote - I have nice shadows, a nicely lit skin, and I still can do a lot of variations with my "old fashioned" light set.

Your point seems to be "GI is dumb, I don't like it".  Your shadows are not "nice", they're aggressively fake and so is your lighting.  If you like aggressively fake, that's wonderful and you should never ever hit that bad old "Indirect Lighting" checkbox again.  Ignoring the blabbing about V4 (no one else was even talking about that).