What's wrong with just using normal maps and displacement maps?

You start adding so much detail to a model and you're going to bog down, not to mention have all kinds of problems with bending the topology a hi res model necessitates.

That's why the pros, the people who make the movies and such, use very LO-res, UN-detailed models with very tight topology, in conjunction with normal maps and displacement maps and subdivision surfaces.

They would never finish anything using models with 2,000,000 polygons.

@JenX : If you want to see it that way. My point is what's best for the average Poser user:
A "down to earth" realism that is fast and fun (like in games), or that kind of "technogeek cutting edge brainwanking" that folks here seem to prefer ?

@MikeJ:
"...shape has little to do with it."

Sorry. 100% wrong.
If you want to create an accurate model of something, either virtual or physical, correct reference is a must.
Because if the shape is wrong, everything else is, too.

Apollo failed because he tried to rely solely on displacement maps for body detail.
I also want my meshes to look great in preview, too, because that's how I look at them 99% of the time.
HANA for example has 45.000 polys.
High res body + lo res head = enough polys for the body detail but still lighter than your average DAZ mesh.
The only time I'd use displacement maps were if I needed accurate veins or for a real old face with lots of folds.

Polygons are cheap these days, textures and other stuff costs ram.
(Like V4's crazy magnet rig for example)

Look at those cars in the game renders I posted.
They are laser scanned to get the shape perfectly right and have more "built in" detail than many Poser cars.

 you can go out of your way to optimize for poser users, 99.999% of them are still going to do things the way they've always been doing it.  New stuff = To be feared.  You're not going to change that.

What everyone else in this thread is worried about achieving is realism.  Which is Model+Maps+Lighting+PATIENCE.  

Quote -
Sorry. 100% wrong.
If you want to create an accurate model of something, either virtual or physical, correct reference is a must.
Because if the shape is wrong, everything else is, too.

You think I don't know that? I would think you'd be able to read that in the intended context and realize I meant the shape-to-surfacing ratio of realism. Surfacing is the more important thing than shape.

Look at a simple object like, say a simple drinking glass. I could model a totally accurate, 100% perfectly shaped drinking glass and then spend hours trying to get the light and the surface data just right to make it look like a photo instead of a CG picture of a glass that looks wrong.

Granted, a drinking glass is a much simpler shape, but it's the same idea.

Quote -
Polygons are cheap these days, textures and other stuff costs ram.

That may very well be, but I think the thousands of highly realistic CG human renders that some of the pros "out there" make using very lo res figures pretty much proves my point that shape is a lesser concern than lighting and surface data.
And they use normal maps and displacement maps to get their "shape", which is partly surface data as well.

I don't want to argue with you about this though, because you are wrong, completely wrong, and this is wasting my time.

You're not wrong that shape is important, but when you start saying that shape is the MORE important thing... well I guess you know better than all the professionals out there.

Quote - @JenX : If you want to see it that way. My point is what's best for the average Poser user:
A "down to earth" realism that is fast and fun (like in games), or that kind of "technogeek cutting edge brainwanking" that folks here seem to prefer ?

I hope they don't dumb down Poser to the average user.  I'm tired of everything being made 'simple' for those who find  thinking too difficult.  If I want game rendering, I'll buy a game (or a game engine... how about  you look up licensing costs).

Quote -
Look at those cars in the game renders I posted.
They are laser scanned to get the shape perfectly right and have more "built in" detail than many Poser cars.

Cars are a much easier to get to look realistic than human figures -- mesh and materials.  Even then, they still need materials tweaked to look real.

".... and this is wasting my time."

Indeed.

Quote - ......and this is wasting my time.

The only thing that's wasting my time at the moment, is the horrible slow IDL rendering time.

I never thought I would learn so much about game rendering when I clicked on this post.

It really puts things into perspective when  you take into consideration how long it takes to develop a game and how many people to make it in comparison with a long Poser render time.  I'll take my long render times in poser any day. especially now that I have Poser 8.  At least I know I won't be doing any over night rendering times anymore.

But thanks for getting in detail with this post because I definitely learned a few things that I didn't know before.

Frederick
Poser By Design

Quote - ...but so far NONE of the renders I've seen using Poser 8's new lights look even remotely PHOTOREALISTIC to me.

Maybe true, but I think this turned out okay...
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1939667

Photorealistic? Heck no, but with only one light, IDL did a pretty good job here.

lets face it. no P8 render is going to look photorealistic to this guy.

Not quite sure if this is off topic, considering where the discussion is going, but I was wondering how you guys get the lights to reflect off the figure.

Looking at the impressive game screencaps on the first page, here.  (Haven't read the more recent posts; this is probably completely OT on page 3.  My apologies.  )  I've toyed with 3D game programming recently, and much of it seems to involve the use of pre-compiled shaders.  Which are a major PITA to create.  Hoo boy.  I'll take Poser's shader system any day.

Quote - > Quote - ...but so far NONE of the renders I've seen using Poser 8's new lights look even remotely PHOTOREALISTIC to me.

Maybe true, but I think this turned out okay...
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1939667

Photorealistic? Heck no, but with only one light, IDL did a pretty good job here.

That's what I like about the IDL.  Before you would have had to plaster lights everywhere.  By the way very nice picture. 

Frederick
Poser By Design

Quote - That's what I like about the IDL.  Before you would have had to plaster lights everywhere.  By the way very nice picture. 

Frederick
Poser By Design

Thanks! :)

Wow, three pages now, and I haven't actually learned anything.

Yawn.

lmk

Quote - Wow, three pages now, and I haven't actually learned anything.

Yawn.

lmk

Hmmmm...actually, I didn't take this as a learning thread...its more of a venting/discussion thread. There are other IDL threads that someone can learn something on.

I think he just wanted everyone to know he disapproves of the thread content.  ;-)

Fuck. I disaprove of 98% of this forum.

LOL Join the fucking club. None of us are going to be perfectly happy with any collection of discussions. If I were king I would bonk a lot of fucking heads for wasting my fucking time.

Personally I'm not trying to get a render that's indistinguishable from a photograph, not with a $250 program, that I actually paid a lot less for with promotional discounts. And even if Poser is able to get 95% of the way to photo-realism, I'm not willing to dedicate my computer to a single render for multiple days to accomplish it.

I don't WANT to have a photograph, honestly. I actually prefer that the image be recognizable as a constructed fantasy that evolved out of my head. Not a mannequin-like Posette with no shaders or shadows, but a high-quality (to me) image that renders in 10-20 minutes at full size. That I can do with Poser and some inexpensive models, textures and lighting.

What a trained 3D artist with a $1K rendering program and $20K computer station might think of it, I could give a flying (f-word that BB is allowed to use here)

Quote - Interesting thread.  My first Poser 8 render attached, at less than an hour to render I can't think of any reason to complain.

Wow, you have to teach me how to get that beautiful render. What settings do you use?

Quote -

Wow, you have to teach me how to get that beautiful render. What settings do you use?

Not to pick on you or anything, so please don't get that idea. I'm just using your post as an example, so I don't look like I'm just spouting this off for no reason.  :-)

But although umbongo6 could tell you the settings used, it wouldn't likely do you much good unless you had the exact scene to use it all on.

The thing about GI is that everything in your scene matters and contributes to the final output, and the same can be said for shaders.
Everything is dependent upon scene size, object size, shaders, shadows, light intensity... and the list goes on.
And the same thing can be said for the shaders themselves, which in one situation might look great, and in another situation absolutely terrible. Again, hugely dependent on all the other scene conditions.

This is why so many people have so much trouble with shaders and now, with GI too. There is no one size fits all, there is no easy way. There are no light sets, backdrops, cameras, shaders, textures, or anything else that will guarantee a perfect scene. Not just Poser, but the same goes for all 3D apps.
And a lot of times, presets won't even get you close to what you want.

The people who do well with it are the people who understand it.
For a lot of Poser users, GI is a whole new world. They don't understand it and that's evidenced through dozens of threads like this one. You have people like BB here and pjz99 and a few others trying to help people understand what it's all about, but it doesn't seem to be widely sinking in, and I still see the same comments over and over again... Poser's GI is broken - this SUX!

And it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Sooner or later, merchants will be making GI light sets and other things "guaranteeing" beautiful and... "realistic"... renders, and people will buy those and encounter more problems they don't understand.

But eventually people will have to really start thinking about things if they want to get good results. With GI, you really can't just expect it to work without either a whole lot of experimenting or knowing ahead of time how to work it into each individual scene.

And it's not by far just Poser either. Even with the mighty Mental Ray, you can have your GI set up perfectly where everything looks great in all parts of your scene, but just move a light slightly of alter a setting or two, and your whole scene goes to hell. But not if you know how to compensate, then you adjust other appropriate settings at the same time and maintain the quality and accuracy.
And unlike real world objects which stay the same and always interact "correctly" with light, surfaces in 3D need to be adjusted constantly to compensate for different lighting conditions, camera angles, and other things.

People using GI in Poser are going to have to learn these things or they will always be fighting it, always be struggling.

Just my .04...

Many of us are starting to get a feel for some of the settings available that influence GI/IDL, but not nearly all of them. The "Poser Manuel" is about as clear as mud on many of these settings, and those settings that are only exposed to Python scripts are not covered at all.

Looking through Wikies about obscure lighting principles and properties is only so useful. Some are over the head of the average user, and they apply only so well. Poser often implements things in a non-standard way.

Reading these forums is great, but a document, giving understandable descriptions of the terms and settings, with some attention to their interactions, would help those of us who are willing to turn dials and tweak settings. I have notes scattered everywhere, and can rarely find that little hint that I am looking for. Yes, if it were available, I would buy the book.

Of course, every one is waiting for SR1. I hope that some tutorials will follow. I already feel that Poser 8 is a vast improvement over its predecessors.

lmk

Mike you are 100% correct.

i think the gamma correction threads are proof of this. BB posted tons i mean toooooooooons of info about GC. and people who are from the US acted like he explained quantum physics.quantum physics.
i am from europe and i dont understand everything english. and i get GC. why? because i was reading.it doesnt matter if you just want one click renders.

fact is that someoen decided to buy a 3D software. so he must know that he will have to understand something. i tryed making matte paintings in photoshop. i am not good at this. but i at least tryed. i didnt spend the first 2 hours making the whole new york city for christ sake.

yes you are right. it wont get better.

Quote - For a lot of Poser users, GI is a whole new world. They don't understand it and that's evidenced through dozens of threads like this one. You have people like BB here and pjz99 and a few others trying to help people understand what it's all about, but it doesn't seem to be widely sinking in, and I still see the same comments over and over again... Poser's GI is broken - this SUX!

That's not how the thread started out. The only reason I'm not using it anymore is because of the horrible long rendering times. I'm getting excellent results, but whenever a render takes more then 4 hours, it's not worth it for me. I've got better things then waiting for a render to finish. 7 hours is way too much for me and on top of it a crash. Poser IDL  isn't broken, it just lags a lot.

Most people (even in this thread) who claim it renders fast, have either done small size renders, very basic scenes or a scene with one figure in it, without even a background, so IDL isn't fully utilized. When doing serious work (print ready images) or complex outdoor scenes, for which both IDL should be really used, it's not a valid option. Results are great, but I do not see myself waiting for 24 hours to finish a 4000x4000 render for print (with all the risk of a crash).

Keep in mind that Poser 8 is still mainly geared at the amateur and semi-pro market and in those market the newest pc's and rendering networks aren't too common. I'm sure IDL wil render well on a 8 core or more machine, but that's not the user base that P8 is geared at. most of us have a dual core or perhaps a quad core and I don't want to feed the poser users using a single core still, I'll be bankrupt soon. SM should keep it's market in view and realize most of us aren't too happy with way too long rendering times.

I'm hoping that SR1 will speed up things, but I'm not getting my hopes too high. Since IDL is one of the very few new features in P8, this issue must have come up in testing. It's not that the testers had tons of new features to look at, so this hardly can have been overlooked. Makes one wonder why it wasn't dealt with in the first place. I'm not expecting too much speed up in IDL, but one can never know.

As for Poser and transparency issues.... those have been there for ages also, hopefully they will finally be dealt with, but again, I'm not getting my hopes up too much.

In this case it's seeing is believing.......

Quote - Fuck. I disaprove of 98% of this forum.

LOL Join the fucking club. None of us are going to be perfectly happy with any collection of discussions. If I were king I would bonk a lot of fucking heads for wasting my fucking time.

Indeed.

How's the hangover?

I SAID HOW'S THE HANGOVER? (Sorry. I couldn't resist 'shouting'.)

There are two things that have been going through my mind while reading this, and other threads.

1. Windows is not for hobbyists, no matter what Microsoft would have you believe. It needs to be managed properly: maintained and cared for. Not only do most 'hobbyist' users do zero maintenance, they're the ones most likely to fill their systems with crapware. They should be on Macs - the ones that 'just work'.

2. The four stages of learning:
         Unconscious incompetence: you have no idea how much you do not know
         Conscious incompetence: it dawns on you how much you do not know
         Unconscious competence: you've learned a lot, you just don't realise it
         Conscious competence: you realise that you've become pretty good at whatever-it-is

Most of the stupidest and most negative posts are coming from people who, I suspect, don't really know how to use Windows. The trouble is, because they can launch programs, surf the web and send emails, they think they know what they're doing. They are unconsciously incompetent. Note that this state can persist for years, decades, lifetimes.

Anyone who has progressed from the first state to any of the others tends not to have the know-it-all, arrogant, whining, whingeing, petulant attitude that we've all seen here. Their egos have no problem admitting that they're wrong or that they don't know something, and their attitude is one of wanting to learn and to engage with new concepts and ideas.

Just my thoughts, folks, and aimed at no one in particular.

but poser is not meant for serious and complicated scenes. firefly can not handle big models,complicated models,raytracing in a normal time.
**
**i tryed it and its works but it takes to much time. afterall its poser.
**
**

LOL, cspear.

Hey aeilkema - I like you today. Very nice wording on your post. I got no problem with your post today and have the same wishes you do. Only difference is I have high hopes that it is fast enough to be usable. I'm using SR1 and it's way better than the release.

Quote - LOL, cspear.

Hey aeilkema - I like you today. Very nice wording on your post. I got no problem with your post today and have the same wishes you do. Only difference is I have high hopes that it is fast enough to be usable. I'm using SR1 and it's way better than the release.

Thanks :-) Good to hear..... I guess I've been using (and testing) Vue  to long, that tempers high hopes a little.

Quote -
That's not how the thread started out. The only reason I'm not using it anymore is because of the horrible long rendering times. I'm getting excellent results, but whenever a render takes more then 4 hours, it's not worth it for me. I've got better things then waiting for a render to finish. 7 hours is way too much for me and on top of it a crash. Poser IDL  isn't broken, it just lags a lot.

Well to be honest, I didn't read the beginning of this thread. I just looked at the car pictures, wondered what that had to do with Poser GI/IDL, and moved on until I found something I wanted to argue with. ;-)

So I didn't mean to imply you were just bitching or something, or not understanding it - I was just speaking in general 3D terms, assuming Poser 8's GI works at least similar to other 3D apps.

But I'd imagine you're right about its long render times. Frankly I'm amazed at how comparatively slow Poser Pro is with things that other apps just fly through like nothing, so I assume that that hasn't changed too much.
And that most definitely IS a very legitimate gripe that they would make a feature that nobody can really use, especially when half the controls are hidden away in an undocumented script somewhere.

Of course I believe what BB says about the SR 1. That's what I'm waiting for and don't see much reason to be interested in it until then.

To be fair, unlike some other apps, there are only 4 controls (half of which, i.e. 2, are hidden) precisely because of a recognition of the Poser market. We can't expect the typical Poser customer to grok 21 GI parameters. Two, OK. So they get two, and there are two more hidden away for us geeks.

The priniciple difference that I see after looking at the GI controls and options in some other apps is that Poser will avoid grainy results without the user having to do a lot of tweaking. Some of the other apps you have to decide which Monte Carlo method to use, which interpolation method to use, which caching methods to use, blah blah blah. I think when all the kinks are worked out, Poser's GI will not be the greatest there is, but it will have the smallest learning curve.

That's what's exciting about Poser 8 - I won't have to take so much stuff into Vue. Which, by the way, is taking forever to render a high res version of this scene.

i have those buildings. using raytraced soft shadows for the sun and some reflected materials takes a lot of time in poser.
and i am not angry because its poser.

i hope for SSS in poser 9 because i want to use this software for humans and skin.

Quote - To be fair, unlike some other apps, there are only 4 controls (half of which, i.e. 2, are hidden) precisely because of a recognition of the Poser market. We can't expect the typical Poser customer to grok 21 GI parameters. Two, OK. So they get two, and there are two more hidden away for us geeks.

The priniciple difference that I see after looking at the GI controls and options in some other apps is that Poser will avoid grainy results without the user having to do a lot of tweaking. Some of the other apps you have to decide which Monte Carlo method to use, which interpolation method to use, which caching methods to use, blah blah blah. I think when all the kinks are worked out, Poser's GI will not be the greatest there is, but it will have the smallest learning curve.

Yeah, I can see that.
I have this habit of forgetting it's being designed for a very specific market with very specific general needs, who want very specific results, and those who want more are comparatively few.

By my count, it looks like there are 9 of us, Mike. Heheheh.

On a different but similar note, I think there's only one person pushing to get the rigging symmetry bug(s) fixed.

This thread reminds me why I don't post here too much, and even a forum moderator is getting in on it, WTF?  Some people really need to learn some humility.

Yes, I am going to say it, and I am sure I am going to be very unpopular for it, but some people here really seem to love to jump all over others for any negative comment about anything poser related (the all knowing gurus, you know who you are).  You assume that everyone else is so beneath you that they know nothing- I have noticed this quite a bit lately.  To all the gurus here that post everywhere and assume that everyone else knows nothing- great you are poser masters, but you assume that everyone else is stupid and you are all knowing, this is your downfall, and makes for a hostile environment here.  Why do you do this?

I am not even referring to this original thread argument, so don't school me on that ok, just an overall observation on the hostility here from people that are supposed pillars of the community.  I know all you gurus think you are martyrs for doing all of your poser research, but get some humility and tact, you make the forums here sucky IMO. 

wow

Quote - To all the gurus here that post everywhere and assume that everyone else knows nothing- great you are poser masters, but you assume that everyone else is stupid and you are all knowing, this is your downfall, and makes for a hostile environment here.  Why do you do this?

I don't think anyone posting here would be comfortable describing themselves as a 'guru', neither do I think that anyone has a superiority complex. Debates get heated and some name-calling goes on. Then things calm down and the debate goes on. Constructively.

Sometimes what someone with knowledge perceives as blindingly obvious is not, to those without that knowledge. That can be desperately frustrating for all concerned: the 'expert' who can't get the message across, the non-expert who can't get a handle on what is being presented.

There are real experts here in diverse fields and they're trying to give us all the benefit of their experience. For free. I, for one, am grateful to them. I see no reason why they should make extraordinary efforts to be super-polite and 'sensitive' while they're doing this.

Is it this that you perceive as hostility? Is failing to understand what's being said making you feel that the 'expert' thinks you're stupid? They don't! I can't see anything in your angry-sounding post that tallies with my experience in these forums, and talk of some sort of 'downfall' is just baffling.

Quote - This thread reminds me why I don't post here too much, and even a forum moderator is getting in on it, WTF?  Some people really need to learn some humility.

Wait, so, because I'm a mod, I can't say "No, you're wrong, that's not how it works"?  Excuse me for participating in threads, but, there was no actual attacking going on in this thread.  It was a discussion that started about one person's wish to have a better working Poser 8, got derailed into "But video games can do This and This and This!", which derailed even further when it was clarified that Poser 8 isn't a video game, and that, in order to turn a Poser render into the quality that that poster wanted (which most of us didn't consider real quality) hundreds of man hours were needed, and that's not ever going to happen in the Poser community, where "Point and Click" is the mantra.  
If you are offended that opinions were shared, I'm not going to apologize for voicing mine.  There are those who actually know what they're talking about, and those who like to blow smoke and say they know what they're talking about.  

Sorry, I'll take the knowledge of an MIT grad who's been doing this for almost as long as I've been alive over an armchair quarterback any day.

Sorry, I'll take the knowledge of an MIT grad who's been doing this for almost as long as I've been alive over an armchair quarterback any day.

Sheesh! I had no idea he was that old.  

 Actually, he's not, and I should have phrased that better.  I should have said "most of my life".  I'm not that old...gonna be 29 at the end of the month ;)

Heheh. I could be wrong, but from Jen's Rendo Homepage image, I'm guessing I've been doing CG not almost as long as she's been alive, but longer.

I started doing non-real time CG in 1980, 29 years ago. I started doing real-time CG around 1987, when I wrote my own flight simulator, not for any commercial purpose, but just to amuse myself.

[EDIT] CROSS POST. So I have been doing it longer.

 Actually, I was born in 1980 ;)

I typoed - I started CG in 1980. At Draper Labs, in Cambridge, where the Apollo Moon Buggy was designed.

I remember the first full color image we displayed at Draper on a computer monitor. It was a scan of the Mona Lisa, and we had a graphics card and monitor that had 8-bit color, 800 by 600. It took about 40 seconds to display the image as it was read from disk. We all thought it was science fiction.

 LOL, it's all good.

I love when threads talk about "how it used to be".  I know for a fact that I take for granted that I can load 200 photos from my camera to my computers in about a minute, or that I can watch a movie that was created by computer...on my computer.  I feel really lucky that some of the people who worked to make that happen are also some of the people I get to talk to on an almost daily basis.  I'm not going to go out of my way to tell you (or the others that I know) how wrong you are when you're not.  I see that a lot, and it really drives me nuts, LOL.  I always want to ask "Does your Google work?  It's not that hard to find that BB DOES know WTF he's on about."  

so people who are not MIT grads are 'intellectually inferior'?  WOW! ( yes i shouted )

what an attitude, and what an ego!
boy, am i glad i don't need any help with Poser ( 'cos i don't use it ).

at least when i need help with my app, the people i deal with are inherently helpful ( and they can get their egos through doorways ).i have never come across anyone as condescending, arrogant and rude, over there.

 Yes, and no.  Obviously, MIT grads got to where they are because they are intellectually superior and/or had the drive that others didn't.

Not that they're the only people we should listen to when it comes to things.  

What I'm saying is, rather than telling someone who DOES know what they're doing that they're full of crap and don't know what they're talking about, most people here don't actually take free knowledge given to them with any sense of gratitude.  I'm not just talking about bagginsbill, here.  

Most threads here de-evolve into "I'm more right-er than you are!  Neener neener!" faster than anything else.  Most times, everyone's wrong.  Or, my favorite, everyone's saying the same thing, only using different words, and arguing about the grammar.  

My point is, rather than "I'm right because I own the software and X versions before it", how about "This is how it's really done, taking these steps", or "this is why what you're doing is the wrong way, here's why it failed, and here's what you can do to circumvent it".  Or, sometimes, "Yes, I know it's wrong, and I don't know how to fix it."  Rather than attacking the guy that's actually giving the answers that are right (although, not always what you want to hear), most people go on a rant about grammar, attitude, and how they didn't like the answer.  Sorry, I don't like being told I can't do something, either, but I try to stop short of setting my computer on fire.  If it's not technically possible for me to do it RIGHT NOW, I wait.  
But, like I said earlier in this thread, since no store sells packets of Patience, it's running short in the community at large.

Quote - when I wrote my own flight simulator, not for any commercial purpose, but just to amuse myself.

ohoh

Quote - so people who are not MIT grads are 'intellectually inferior'?  WOW! ( yes i shouted )

That is not what was said...   I am not an MIT grad and I don't feel insulted in the least.  You can be anyone (with no formal education) and be a brilliant thinker, and  sometimes MIT grads can be  foolish.  We were just given bagginsbill's personal experience and  a reason for impatience with willful ignorance.

Quote - at least when i need help with my app, the people i deal with are inherently helpful ( and they can get their egos through doorways ).i have never come across anyone as condescending, arrogant and rude, over there.

Well, nobody I've come across has been as helpful with Poser materials or lighting as bagginsbill. He is exceptionally brilliant and wonderfully giving to the Poser community. I am thankful he puts up with the frequent prats and continues to help us who are willing to learn.

And as far as condescending, arrogant attitudes, I see them most frequently in those least deserving of wielding them.