Forgettting for a second polygon counts, maps and shaders, is Poser limited in speed by the rendering software itself? I ask this because when I use Poser and I render a scene with nothing in it and a blank background, it renders at virtually the same speed as if I had a low polygon figure in the scene. I have been debating over whether or not to splurge on a new computer to render things quicker, but if there is a limit to how quickly Poser can render then it isn't worth the upgrade. I would like to render animations using very low polygon figures of a PS2 type quality, and my logic is that the PS2 is very out of date and today's technology should be more advanced and that I should expect almost instant renders on a modern machine. If this is faulty logic, then what is it that makes video game consoles/engines render in 3d faster than Poser?

First thing is they are hardware accelerated 3D graphics engines. Firefly is doing all the math using your general purpose CPU, not a highly tailored GPU. Also, there are lots of things a GPU cannot do at all - things that are left out because they would be too slow even for special hardware. Raytracing, for example. Real reflections and refractions of arbitrary content arranged in arbitrary ways is just not done.

Second is that game content is highly optimized to take advantage of every possible cheat, particularly knowing that the scene is fixed. For example, most shadows in a game are pre-computed and baked into the scene. The sun doesn't move so the shadows don't have to move. Reflections are generally fixed, since the scenery is fixed. In a car game when you load a track, all the shadows and reflections are baked into the textures.

There are other reasons, but they all boil down to speed versus realism and flexibility.

If you want to render in real time, get a gaming engine, convert your content to run in it, and then you can make movies in real time the way games do. Google "machinima".

Thanks for the reply. That does clear up some things.

There's a cheat way to get something approximating ray traced reflections in a 3D game scene but I don't know if anyone uses it because it uses a lot of memory even though it's fast enough for games.  Some of the guys at Infogrames developed it when I worked there. 

Yeah, I don't really strive for realism in my renders and I actually try to cheat effects as much as I can, and I think I only ever actually used ray tracing about twice. I am just looking to create a comic as a hobby and not neccessarily a work of art that will blow people away.

I do have another question though about the gaming rendering vs Poser rendering. Newer games that are run on the PC (like Bioshock) do utilize real-time shadowing and lighting, water effects etc.. I get that gaming consoles are designed differently, but this is a game that is run on a general CPU and has access to the same resources Poser has. Am I just not getting it? Is there an article somewhere that goes into depth on this topic? I would like to know just for the sake of knowing.

PC games don't render in software running on your main CPU, either. They use your 3D graphics accelerator video card. It's still software, but running in very specialized hardware.

A PC video card is pretty much the same thing as what is in a game console. Better, in fact, if you buy a high-end card. I have a card from several years ago (NVidia 8800 GT) that has 112 processors in it. That's at least 112 times faster than my CPU at doing rendering. You can buy that card for peanuts. The current flagship, 9800 GX2, has 256 graphics processors in it, and they're fast. Good luck matching that in software even with Intel's Flagship I7 with 4 cores.

You might wonder if these cards can be coerced into doing more realistic rendering, not real-time, but still way faster than your main CPU. That would be a yes, and is the subject of intense investigation at the moment. But not for Poser.

In games you can use direct x etc and get the video card to do a lot for you. Those graphics processors are amazingly fast. Poser doesnt do any of that for the final render, although it will use mutliple processors if you have them.

What spec system do you have now, and what are you thinking of , also what version of poser ? 

You might try the poser 4 renderer rather than firefly. See what change in render times that gives you. Or I suppose run your make movie using the preview renderer, thats very fast.

Quote - Am I just not getting it?

No, you are getting it. Poser's rendering really is that crappy. Compare with a decent modern renderer like Octane for example:

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/

Heh. You're understating how impressed we should be with Octane. It's not that Poser is so crappy, although it is at the bottom of the scale if we stack up renders. It is that Octane is totally state of the art - unique - not merely decent, but mind-blowing.

"Octane Render is the world's first GPU based, un-biased, physically based renderer. "

First, and only as far as I'm aware. Could be wrong. This is not the norm yet.

The Octane release note says:

"Plugins for Autodesk Maya, 3Ds Max, XSI and Blender, with Sketchup and C4D coming in development"

Poser is the sad, ignored, ugly cousin in this group. Sketchup? Give me a break. An Octane plug-in for Poser would be awesome.

I know the material room has to be dealt with, since Octane is an unbiased renderer, but that can be dealt with.

Note that unbiased renderers are only for realism. They cannot be made to do toons or artistic styling of any kind.

If Poser only had to deal with realistic shaders, it could be a lot faster.

Wish you guys would look at this item on the front page here which leads to 2 previews of MachStudio Pro .

"Melody Street" Creates Broadcast Magic for Kids with StudioGPU MachStudio Pro.

Though Poser of course is not supported it can import-export FBX

Benefits of MachStudio Pro

    * Real-time rendering on your desktop
    * Fully animatable properties for all objects in your scene
    * Very robust Shader and Materials pipeline
    * Real-time HDR cameras and lighting
    * Interactive Ambient Occlusion (AO)
    * Real-time displacement mapping using hardware tessellation
    * Easy export from major 3D packages like Maya & 3ds Max
    * All render passes can be rendered separately
    * Resolution independent, allowing for rendering at any resolution
    * Comes with best graphics card on the planet (ATI FirePro v8750)

Would love to hear what you knowledgible people think of this as opposed to Octane.

Cheers

How about the Unreal game engine?

Quote - Would love to hear what you knowledgible people think of this as opposed to Octane.

It's not bad, but the reason I mentioned Octane is that it is ridiculously cheap (even more so while in beta) and is probably the only high end renderer that poser guys can easily afford. And it's MLT-unbiased at that. I mean MachStudio Pro is $5000 after all. For that much money you may as well just buy MAX and VRay/VRay-RT instead or wait a bit and get iRay free with the next version of MAX/Maya/XSI.

 To have a real benefit you have to buy the extension (GPU-X), if your motherboard can't handle more than one card and one or two more graphic-cards. If you have this you are equiped to use Octane-renderer with your exported Poser scenes (without textures/shades and displacements). The advantage is, texturing is easier with Octane then with Poser ;) 

Ahh - and don't forget: You have to use Nvidia Grafic-Cards with a lot of memory. GPU-Memory is important while using Octane if you want to render high-res and/or complex scenes.

Add this together and Octane is not anymore a "renderer that poser guys can easily affort" :)

Just remember that the Octane render engine requires a very particular graphics card
There are other alternatives to poser render engine
MODO401 @ $800 USD for example has a great preview render as well as a world class modeling tool set
and works well on even low end graphics cards
MODO'S PREVIEW

Cheers

Quote - Poser is the sad, ignored, ugly cousin in this group. Sketchup? Give me a break. An Octane plug-in for Poser would be awesome.

Wouldn't you be the man to write that plugin? ;)

Quote -
Wouldn't you be the man to write that plugin? ;)

I think he might need some sort of Docs from the makers of Octane.

Quote - I think he might need some sort of Docs from the makers of Octane.

The Octane team is looking for people who can write a plugin for 3rd party 3D apps. They are even going to pay for a plugin they don't already have. So I guess they will provide the documentation that are needed.

I would certainly enjoy doing such a thing, assuming I had the docs, as wolf359 said. Without docs, it would be very frustrating.

But it would be a very lengthy bit of work to do. I already have too much paid work to take on something like that.

Quote - What spec system do you have now, and what are you thinking of , also what version of poser ? 

I am using Poser 6 with almost exclusively the Poser 4 rendering. I am going from about a dual core 2.3 Ghz prosessor with 4GB ram and a crappy video card (I can only approximate because it died three weeks ago) to a 3.2 Ghz Intel core i5 650 with 8GB ram and for a graphics card a NVIDIA GeForce GT320 with 1GB of dedicated video memory. In order for this to be worth it to me it will have to be a very signficant speed increase, close to triple. Could I reasonably expect those results? From what I read in this thread it doesn't seem like the graphics card will make much of a difference.

That Octane program looks awesome! It is just too bad it doesn't seem compatible with Poser. Otherwise I would buy that thing in a second. That is the kind of results I would love.

There are several factors that will define the rendering speed, in order of importance:

1- How ell is done the software, a poorly done software is very slow.
2- In which language is written the software:

• A scripting language is the slowest thing.
• Next comes C++
• Plain C is much faster than C++
• Assembler language is several times faster than C.
• An optimized assembler program taking into account scheduling, pairing instructions and using SSE extensions can be two or three times faster that normal assembler.
  Note: You needn't do all the program in assembler, only the parts that affects speed.
  3- Now comes the hardware and the most important is the memory speed (FSB and memory specs). For rendering CPU clock is less important than memory speed.
  CPU speed can be important for not optimized software, but for optimized software the limiting factor is memory access just because the amount of memory used is big and doesn't fit in the CPU cache.
  An unordered memory access runs ten or more times slower than the CPU clock.

As for GPUs the result is questionable, is most a sell, buy, buy and spend more $$$.
A well written software that use pure CPU rendering is faster than one that use a video card GPU.
A GPU is a specialized hardware so in theory can perform much faster the rendering, so why is slower that using CPU that is not specialized for the task.
There are two reasons:
1- As I said before the limiting factor is memory speed. A GPU can render faster than the CPU, but it needs data and the data must be prepared, read and transfered to the GPU, so the gain is lost with too much memory access.
2- DirectX. You need DirectX to talk with the GPU and DirectX is a slow software.

The advantages of using video cards, specially with games is:
1- Programmers with little knowledge can make games.
2- As the CPU has very little to do while the rendering is done by the GPU you can use the iddle CPU time for the game strategies.

Quote - > Quote - What spec system do you have now, and what are you thinking of , also what version of poser ? 

I am using Poser 6 with almost exclusively the Poser 4 rendering. I am going from about a dual core 2.3 Ghz prosessor with 4GB ram and a crappy video card (I can only approximate because it died three weeks ago) to a 3.2 Ghz Intel core i5 650 with 8GB ram and for a graphics card a NVIDIA GeForce GT320 with 1GB of dedicated video memory. In order for this to be worth it to me it will have to be a very signficant speed increase, close to triple. Could I reasonably expect those results? From what I read in this thread it doesn't seem like the graphics card will make much of a difference.

That Octane program looks awesome! It is just too bad it doesn't seem compatible with Poser. Otherwise I would buy that thing in a second. That is the kind of results I would love.

Unless you are planning on upgrading Poser going to a new PC wouldn't benefit you that much performance wise as your biggest bottleneck is going to be Poser 6 itself. P6 can't use multiple threads for rendering and is limited to 2GB a thread (32-bit app).  In order to take advantage of the newer hardware, you really need to be working in Poser Pro and above with the Firefly render engine on a 64-bit operating system.

Quote -

That Octane program looks awesome! It is just too bad it doesn't seem compatible with Poser. Otherwise I would buy that thing in a second. That is the kind of results I would love.

Don't know if anyone has tried it yet with Poser, but Octane is software agnostic and just requires an import of an obj. file with the materials data to work. .rib import is coming, too. Poser can export .obj and .rib files. You will probably have to correct your materials in Octane or just use Octane to set them up. Octane will also have a good collection of materials soon. I'd try it but I haven't got the money to finish my new PC I've been building that will use a newer Nvidia card. Octane will run with older Nvidia cards as long as they have CUDA cores and the drivers that work with the program. Fewer cores means a slower render, but what you're getting is usually faster than a CPU doing a render with advanced lighting techniques. YMMV. More info at refractivesoftware.com

Quote -
Unless you are planning on upgrading Poser going to a new PC wouldn't benefit you that much performance wise as your biggest bottleneck is going to be Poser 6 itself. P6 can't use multiple threads for rendering and is limited to 2GB a thread (32-bit app).  In order to take advantage of the newer hardware, you really need to be working in Poser Pro and above with the Firefly render engine on a 64-bit operating system.

I was beginning to get that feeling. Good to know not to waste my money. Thanks.

Quote -

Don't know if anyone has tried it yet with Poser, but Octane is software agnostic and just requires an import of an obj. file with the materials data to work. .rib import is coming, too. Poser can export .obj and .rib files. You will probably have to correct your materials in Octane or just use Octane to set them up. Octane will also have a good collection of materials soon. I'd try it but I haven't got the money to finish my new PC I've been building that will use a newer Nvidia card. Octane will run with older Nvidia cards as long as they have CUDA cores and the drivers that work with the program. Fewer cores means a slower render, but what you're getting is usually faster than a CPU doing a render with advanced lighting techniques. YMMV. More info at refractivesoftware.com

I was meaning more fully compatible in terms of being able to load actual Poser Scene files. Does it support any kind of rigging system?  It still is nice to know that there could be some level of compatibility at least.  

I don't really get this.  What is your reason for sticking with the Poser 4 renderer for this long, and then wanting to switch to some external renderer with a billion cutting edge features?  If the P4 renderer's output is OK then maybe consider getting the upgrade to Poser 8 and just setting your render options to very low settings, rather than all this hardware/software experimentation you're talking about.
edit: this is a completely serious suggestion and not anything but.

I was meaning more fully compatible in terms of being able to load actual Poser Scene files. Does it support any kind of rigging system?  It still is nice to know that there could be some level of compatibility at least.  

It's compatible in that it takes any .obj file (and will take .rib files soon). You would setup your scene in Poser and export an .obj file and then import that into Octane. Octane only lets you adjust lighting and textures. Everything else has to be done in your main program of choice (like rigging). It's just an interactive unbiased photo real render engine that uses the GPU, CUDA cores and memory of an Nvidia card - regular graphics or Tesla, not a new 3D software program.

Quote -

I was meaning more fully compatible in terms of being able to load actual Poser Scene files. Does it support any kind of rigging system?  It still is nice to know that there could be some level of compatibility at least.  

It's compatible in that it takes any .obj file (and will take .rib files soon). You would setup your scene in Poser and export an .obj file, including everything in your scene in the same file except lights, and then import that into Octane. Octane only lets you adjust lighting and textures and Octane camera settings. Everything else has to be done in your main program of choice (like rigging). It's just an interactive unbiased photo real render engine that uses the GPU, CUDA cores and memory of an Nvidia card - regular graphics or Tesla, not a new 3D software program.

Quote - I don't really get this.  What is your reason for sticking with the Poser 4 renderer for this long, and then wanting to switch to some external renderer with a billion cutting edge features?  If the P4 renderer's output is OK then maybe consider getting the upgrade to Poser 8 and just setting your render options to very low settings, rather than all this hardware/software experimentation you're talking about.
edit: this is a completely serious suggestion and not anything but.

I use the Poser 4 renderer because I don't use alot of the features that are enabled with FireFly. Most of my stuff is map based using mixed lighting with a bit of specular effects; nothing fancy. Honestly, I like that Octane is fast, and that I could render with proper effects at a speed better than I am at now. I just want to render my scenes faster.

I have tried using the FireFly renderer a number of times and it seems slower and I find it tends to blur my maps. The lighting looks alot better, but I'm not too hung up on that. If I did switch to Poser 8 or Poser Pro what kind of rendering speed increase could I expect? I have thought about it, but I was always under the impression that the rendering speed was only marginally faster and had more to do with the hardware you were using rather than the program itself. I mean if switching to Poser 8 will make a huge difference than I am all for it.

Since it's multithreaded, all other things being similar, at least twice as fast if you have a dual core (probably faster).  You can turn on all the quality options and it'll take longer to render but if you want to just match what the P4 renderer can do, pretty safe to say at least twice as fast.

Quote - The Octane release note says:

"Plugins for Autodesk Maya, 3Ds Max, XSI and Blender, with Sketchup and C4D coming in development"

Poser is the sad, ignored, ugly cousin in this group. Sketchup? Give me a break. An Octane plug-in for Poser would be awesome.

Octane can read RIB files. Poser can export RIB files.

Quote - Since it's multithreaded, all other things being similar, at least twice as fast if you have a dual core (probably faster).  You can turn on all the quality options and it'll take longer to render but if you want to just match what the P4 renderer can do, pretty safe to say at least twice as fast.

Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know. I think its probably time I upgraded anyway. It seems like everytime I am thinking about upgradiing they release an even newer version; everything just goes out of date so quickly.

"everytime I am thinking about upgradiing they release an even newer version"

When you buy a car, are you upset that a new version comes out every year and you have to keep your car for 4 years?

Why is software any different? If Poser doesn't improve until you're ready to upgrade, then what should they do, go home for 2 years?

In my opinion, the time gap between Poser 7 and 8 was longer than I think is wise from a business standpoint. For the companies that put me in charge, I produce a new version of whatever it is I'm in charge of at least every six months. My current main client was doing one new product release every 3 years. Since I'm in charge, it is 3 releases every year, a 9-fold increase in productivity. Lest you think the improvements are smaller, that's not the case. They just didn't know how to move fast until I showed them.

They now make twice as much revenue as before I joined two years ago. Doubling revenue in two years is a big deal. Because of the new revenue, I have funding to double the size of the development team, which will double the rate at which I can produce new features, which will again double the revenue. This improved success allowed them to cut the price of the product in half, which makes the customers happier, and makes more of them. I'm working on making it half again. All of this is goodness and makes a healthy company with happy customers.

Unless you like to buy from struggling companies, rapid product evolution is a good thing. You don't have to stay current, but the company has to keep improving the product, or the market as a whole (all the other people choosing which product to buy while you sit on the sidelines) will go buy something else. If that goes on too much, then there are no more improvements of that product - it and the company disappear.

Quote - "everytime I am thinking about upgradiing they release an even newer version"

When you buy a car, are you upset that a new version comes out every year and you have to keep your car for 4 years?

Why is software any different? If Poser doesn't improve until you're ready to upgrade, then what should they do, go home for 2 years?

I am not really upset about it; I guess I didn't elaborate enough. Honestly it is great that these types of programs are changing with the times to utilize the latest technology, and obviously it is expected, just like every other industry. What I meant is that everytime I think about upgrading I find out that an even newer version will released in a few months, so then I wait. And then after I wait and look at the changes made in the even newer version, not much has really changed at all. It just seems like Poser isn't advancing as fast as it really should be, and when I look at versions that are even two ahead of where I am, they really don't seem, at least at face value, very different. I am the kind of person that jumped from the SNES to the PS2, and I will probably be the guy to jump from the Poser 6 to Poser 9. I guess I am just hesitant to spend on new technologies, that though still an improvement, are still far from what I am looking for.

In short, it isn't really that I am put off by newer versions being released, but that the newer versions don't seem that much different and have not fixed many of the issues that so many people here have. 

A newer technology not always is better than an older one. Did you know that PentiumI MMX was superior to current CPUs? It is difficult to explain in short words, if someone rebuilds the same 200MHz Pentium I with 30 nm technology to run at 3GHz it will run faster (only CPU speed) than today Pentiums, Athlons, etc.
Other cases are very evident. Windows 7 is slower than Windows XP and has none advantage, and Windows Vista was a complete fiasco.
.

Quote - ... not much has really changed at all. ... Poser isn't advancing as fast as it really should be, ... they really don't seem, ..., very different.... new technologies, that ... are still far from what I am looking for.

... newer versions don't seem that much different and have not fixed many of the issues that so many people here have.

It's fine to complain (no insult intended by that word) that new versions don't interest you. But as an armchair quarterback marketing manager, you're making a grave mistake by projecting your own needs so far that you believe Poser has not fixed many of the issues that the market as a whole is interested in.

For example, some people such as yourself are unimpressed by the fact that, on a quad-core I7, Poser Pro 2010 is 20 times faster at rendering than Poser 7 is. Hmm. Or that indirect lighting makes renders far more realistic with far less effort on the part of the user. Hmmm. Or that Poser Pro 2010 can handle big scenes that crash Poser 7.

In short, you and a handful of others don't recognize the fact that Poser Pro 2010 has exceeded the marks hit by any previous release, as measured by actual units sold versus how many were expected to be sold. Your assessment that the improvements don't address the needs of the market (so many people ...) is incorrect.

Here's another analogy. Toyota sells a huge number of cars in the US. Clearly the features and price reflect what the vast majority of people want. Not me. I'd never buy a Toyota. I am a serial BMW purchaser because they have the features I want, and price doesn't matter too much to me. Nevertheless, I'd be making a terrible mistake claiming that Toyota doesn't meet the needs of customers in the larger sense, or complaining that their sedans still don't have 500 horsepower.

Quote -

It's fine to complain (no insult intended by that word) that new versions don't interest you. But as an armchair quarterback marketing manager, you're making a grave mistake by projecting your own needs so far that you believe Poser has not fixed many of the issues that the market as a whole is interested in.

I didn't mean to offend. I meant it purely from my perspective as the casual hobbist that does not even begin to use half of Poser's features. Most of the new bells and whistles in Poser I would not even utilize. I know there are lots of people out there who like those things, who have begged for those things for years, and are glad to have them. I don't normally have a lot of time to render, so my main concern is speed. I don't consider myself an "artist" (hence the absence of a gallery) and I am fully aware that I am not the primary demographic for Poser's marketing. I am sorry to project my perspective on the community as a whole as I am sure that everyone else is absolutely satisfied.

As a side note I haven't really looked into Poser 2010 at all, so I really have no idea what it can do.

I think we all understand there is little point in trying to tell a given person what they should think or like.  If you're OK with the output of the old P4 renderer though, it's almost certainly going to be easiest to go to a newer version of Poser to get same quality/more speed with the least amount of effort and cost.

Yeah, well the P4 renderer is gone in P8 and PPro 2010, so if that's your cup of tea, don't get those.

Hotdog - You didn't need to say you didn't mean to offend. I was not in any way thinking you intended to nor actually did offend anybody. I was just explaining how product marketing works.

When a phrase somebody uses is along the lines of "new versions of Poser could be better in ways SM seems unaware of", I feel it needs to be made clear that product marketing is never about the individual. It's about the masses. The handful of people who chime in and agree on some issue that seems important, yet appears to be ignored by SM, are often blind to the fact that they are just a handful of users making that claim. The issue was not ignored by SM. They are quite aware of just about everything. They make decisions. Every decision pleases one subgroup and displeases another. Collectively, each release comprises dozens or even hundreds of decisions. The net result is there isn't any important subgroup that is completely satisfied.

All they can do is try to minimize the dissatisfaction. They can never maximize the satisfaction. That takes infinite money.

 everyone always posts about rendering speeds.  render speed is the least of my problems with poser on my mac.
If I load a vickie 4 with all the different morph sets loaded in, then go to her head and try to scroll down, the scroll bar just doesn't move.  I grab it again and again, and sometimes it moves slowly or suddenly jumps.  Maybe that's just because there isn't 64 bit for mac as yet. I don't know, but it's hugely frustrating and one of the reasons I prefer to just used preset poses and expressions.  My BB library scroll bar is bllndingly fast though.  The parameters scrolling is sometimes so slow it's virtually useless.
Love esther