You can export Poser files into Blender and then render in Vray. I've been doing this awhile now and like the results. The material settings aren't what I'd like, but the lighting is very simple and predictable in behavior.

"VRay is great and all, but outside of architectural work, it's best suited for larger outfits with the necessary talent and more importantly the right hardware to truly use it to it's full potential. One person with one computer and a copy of Poser isn't gonna be able to do much outside of the occasional gallery upload."

Hi  upon what do you base this assessment?
This image, I did this very evening,"Sunset on Mars Station" is literally one hour of work from opening C4D to final render in Vray
one artist, ONE 4 year Old 2.16 GHZ Macbook/2 GIGs RAM
the Speed and Quality of Vray allows you to be a prolific artist if you choose to be.

Cheers

Quote - This is definitely the most interesting discussion I've seen in a long time!
I think what everybody in the Poser world needs to realize is that eventually you'll have to roll up your sleeves and learn how to light and render your scenes. The problem of course is that even the most basic industry-standard lighting approaches are so mind-numbingly difficult to pull off in Poser that most users start looking for better programs that still allow DAZ and Poser content to be used.

There you go. That's why this thread exists.

Quote - I hate to say it, but the whole "LuxPose" project is a colossal waste of time. Lux still requires a solid know-how of lighting and rendering techniques and its render times are so laughably slow that I can't imagine a single scenario where Lux would be a viable solution. Even for architecture, something like Mental Ray, which ain't exactly known for its speed, would be a vastly better option-despite the price tag.

But you need 3ds max to use Mental Ray, AFAIK. LuxRender is free and soon the speed question will be mute in many instances with GPU rendering. If you setup scenes correctly, it doesn't really take that long compared to an IDL scene in Poser and at least you have predictable results. LuxPose was revved up again because DAZ Studio users got Reality and the developer of Reality passed on doing it for Poser. So it became a "we can do this, too" effort. It's the folks who have a good eye and know lighting and rendering who are frustrated with Poser results and are looking for other options to render their content. Of course, there are a few who don't know what they are getting into and why, but that always happens around here. So far, they haven't turned up in this thread AFAIK.

Quote -
We're definitely in a strange place these days; I'm seeing more and more professionals using Poser and DAZ models, but at the same time Poser has fallen so far behind the curve that modern gaming engines are producing better results in less time.
Still, I think the vast majority of Poser users are content with their program. It's simple to use, you can buy everything you need, and it's dirt-cheap. Poser easily meets the needs of hobbyists who are looking for something to scratch their collective creative itch and that's perfectly fine.
On the other hand; Poser always seems to get a select few of its users thinking about a potential career in CG, which is a beautiful thing...but you can't do it with Poser :)

Not really a career for some. Most know that's a hard road to go down. There are those who are completely happy with Poser and that's great. There are the artists turning out subpar textures and morphs that people still buy. Fine for them, too, though it brings down the reputation of our section of the CG universe. But  there are the users who have tired of the excuses and waiting and want to use their content and get a better looking result with GI that you just can't get in Poser or DAZ Studio at this time. I've had this "discussion" over in the Carrara forum at DAZ and it's the same thing... "Carrara is just fine. Who needs unbiased that..." or "the lighting is just as good if you know what you're doing," etc. Sorry, but with a little study of renders on good monitors and renders done by people who really do know what they are doing and still using Poser/DAZ content, then you get the idea. It can be done, it has been done, just how can we do it, too, affordably. If you have PoserPro 2010, it's not a big problem... you can export in Collada to a bigger package and make whatever adjustments you need to make. But for those of us with lesser means at the moment, getting standalone VRay to work with Poser would be nice. Right now, though, I'm looking into the DAZ Studio Collada export to Blender Beta 2.5 to Yafaray Beta 0.1.2 for larger scenes to see if it will work and Octane Render for smaller scenes using OBJ export.

Attached Link: Making of 'Portrait of a Silent Man'

Patrick Eischen gives a good overview of making a realistic human render using "only" C4D and a specialized skin shader plug-in. He uses only four maps but I've seen perhaps half a dozen used in other instances. Without that level of detail - at a minimum - to say nothing of the lighting and material settings, is it wrong to suggest that no mere change of render engine is going to produce great results? Conversely, with something approaching that degree of effort, would not the existing render engines, within their limits (Poser's included), not yield impressively better results than generally seen?

I agree with Abraham that the figures themselves are not the primary perceived limitation IMO. While there will always be those who concentrate on their flaws, I think many people are reasonably satisfied with them. What they crave is some elusive look that they feel can be obtained with another renderer. It may well be that once having achieved that, their attention would then turn to the finer points of rigging. OTOH, some new trend may catch on by then to supplant the Holy Grail of synthetic reality.

Quote - VRay is great and all, but outside of architectural work, it's best suited for larger outfits with the necessary talent and more importantly the right hardware to truly use it to it's full potential.

Both, true and wrong :) True that vray is very well knonw in the archviz world and is probably the most used render engine for architectural visualization (followed from a distance by mental ray) but it can definitively do much more than that. If you go to the Chaos Group gallery and choose for example "Blur Studio" you will see pictures that would be close to the kind of thing a Poser user might want to render. Another good example would be Myst IV which was rendered entierly with vray.

Where you are perfectly right though, is the fact that, to be able to use vray full potential, people would have to spend a lot of time learning, not only about the render engine but also about the theory behind lighting and material (actuall, if you want to produce anything good with any render engine including firefly and 3Dlight, it is a prerequisite anyway).

Quote - Even for architecture, something like Mental Ray, which ain't exactly known for its speed, would be a vastly better option-despite the price tag.

Actually, mental ray is extremely fast (in my opinion, slightly faster than vray and a bit easier, but it might be because I have more experience with it, I certainly don't want to start yet another vray vs. mr war :P)

To compare two render engines, you really have to compare the features and the final result, not only the speed. If you enable the same features in both, mental ray and firefly and launch both renderers, you will see that mental ray runs in circle around firefly

If you replace all the speculars by real blurry reflection, use a mental ray skin shader (very different than the glowing effect you get in poser), real aera light, global illumination and so on, then yes, it will get slower (but not incredibly slow, a 1920x1080 render, high quality seldom takes more than 2 hours for a reasonably complex scene)

Quote - You can export Poser files into Blender and then render in Vray. I've been doing this awhile now and like the results. The material settings aren't what I'd like, but the lighting is very simple and predictable in behavior.

Sounds interesting, I will have to play with that :) Time to dust off my Blender Cookie intro to Blender 2.5 tutorial.

Quote - LuxRender is free and soon the speed question will be mute in many instances with GPU rendering.

I bought Reality and I like it (it will even get better with ver. 1.2). I'm pretty sure the Luxrender project is also a nice alternative. Lux is a very nice render engine and the gallery definitively shows it is a very capable one. But, even with the hybrid version (CPU + GPU) I doubt it will ever be as fast as a biased render engine like vray, mental ray or even yafaray. Besides, I'm not sure I would be comfortable having my two cpu and my gpu running at full for several hours especially not in Summer (I have "octane" and I have already seen how incredibly hot my 480GTX can get).

Quote - Patrick Eischen gives a good overview of making a realistic human render using "only" C4D and a specialized skin shader plug-in. He uses only four maps but I've seen perhaps half a dozen used in other instances.

This shader looks very similar to the mental ray skin shader. A good example of the fact that simply moving content from one render engine to another won't do the trick :)

wolf359: My views on Vray come from my own line of work. I run a small company; a couple of employees, a couple of workstations and a 32-core render farm. Our typical job is 5000-10000 frames of character animation with a delivery time of 3-4 weeks. There's no way we'd be able to take advantage of Vray's biggest selling features (IDL, environment lighting, etc.) and still make our deadlines. I think it's one of the best engines on the market, but for my situation Vray just isn't something we'd get our money's worth from.
That's a great render by the way; I'd give more credit to your skill than what you rendered it with!

ksanderson: Trust me, I could by a dozen copies of Max and still turn a bigger profit than rendering with Lux. Mainly I just don't see the Poser community ever really embracing it. Really buggy too.

Abraham: Keep in mind that Blur is one of the biggest, most well-funded CG houses on the planet. When I said that Vray's non-architectural offerings were best suited for larger companies, that's kinda what I was getting at.
And just to clarify, I was comparing Lux and Mental Ray, not Mental Ray and Vray. I ain't touching THAT! :)

Another point I wanted to make is this:
Poser is made for character animation, right? That being said, GI/IDL are rarely used for production-level projects. Pixar, ILM, Weta-they all pretty much stick with manual lights and occlusion. It just cracks me up that there's such a high demand for these super-advanced rendering engines.
Rather than waiting 90 hours for Lux to get rid of the artifacts, I personally think people would be much better off using that time to learn some solid lighting techniques.
I'm probably on my own with that one, huh?

"Poser is made for character animation, right?"

it's rarely used for that. check the galleries....... most render stills only.

@ jt411, I fully agree with you on the animation part. I most admit, I much more a "photograph" and I only make stills (I only have a dual xeon 5680). So, I must admit, when I talk I always think "still" rather than animation :) My remark about mental ray wasn't meant for you or anyone in this post, I just think it's a misconception to believe it's slow - actually, I think mental ray suffer from the fact it ships with max, if people had to pay for it as an add-on (preferably a lot of money :P) then it would suddenly become much more fashionable and good :)

"wolf359: My views on Vray come from my own line of work. I run a small company; a couple of employees, a couple of workstations and a 32-core render farm. Our typical job is 5000-10000 frames of character animation with a delivery time of 3-4 weeks. There's no way we'd be able to take advantage of Vray's biggest selling features (IDL, environment lighting, etc.) and still make our deadlines. I think it's one of the best engines on the market, but for my situation Vray just isn't something we'd get our money's worth from.
That's a great render by the way; I'd give more credit to your skill than what you rendered it with!"

Thanks I understand. Yes GI animation is a huge undertaking .

I have never actually rendered any of my animations with GI for obvious reasons (see my previously mentioned hardware specs)
I was Confused by your statement about only being able to output the occasional gallery still with Vray&Poser.
I tend to agree with you about  LUX for poser frankly Alot of the Demand is the need for some to always compete with Daz studio IMHO and so far I have not seen ANY render over in those Daz threads for the "Reality "plugin that could not have been achieved with Vue in a fraction of the time. Just check out the work of  "Vince Bagna"(sp?)

But The  Realtiy plugin's creator made the D/S to LUX work flow ,very,very seamless so people apparently will Endure 17-26 hour rendering times just to get (still grainy)V-chick images just to be part of the newest trend.

Cheers

actually some of us it's not keeping up with the jone's.

 

we actually want Lux, Kerky etc. so please don't make such broad generalisations, it's kinda annoying.

I actually have an interest in other render engines anyway. each engine has it's own render style, just like if you use oils, acrylics, inks, etc.

 

"actually some of us it's not keeping up with the jone's.

 

we actually want Lux, Kerky etc. so please don't make such broad generalisations, it's kinda annoying.

I actually have an interest in other render engines anyway. each engine has it's own render style, just like if you use oils, acrylics, inks, etc."

 

 

 

Not making broad generalizations but if you look at this thread title
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2807395

and the ensuing "Manhattan Project"  styled undertaking that followed and eventually faded to nearly nothing,
you can not deny the Daz plugin being a factor even though a LUX/Poser bridge was being discussed with bagginsbill before the DAZ announcement apparently.

As far as you speaking for yourself  it is certainly understandable to want rendering options outside of poser
I have never done a "completed" poser render in poser since "Fractal designs" poser 2, I was exporting .obj to  "Metacreations" Bryce2 and Today you have Many alternative rendering options already, Paid and free, if you are Willing to do a little work or spend a little( or alot) of money.

Cheers

BTW  We use  the

FREE "Smart IBL" plugin for Cinema4D it even autosets up Vray  Lighting Environments both indoor & outdoor.
while there are program Specific versions of the plugin
there is a "Stand Alone Python based version specifically for those python programers who wish to taylor it to their favorite parogram
it is open source
Quote: "The Concept
3d programs are evolving fast, and so do their scripting languages. Turned out that rich interfaces like a Smart IBL Thumbnail Browser are especially hard to maintain over time, and catching up with support for all the 3rd party render engines became a lifetime task.

That's why sIBL-GUI is a standalone Python application, available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Instead of building hardcoded lighting setups, it uses the setup information from sIBL-sets to fill in setup templates. These templates a code snippets, written in your 3d app's native language and tailored for a particular renderer. For example, you'll find templates for Vray Domelight in Max, mental ray in XSI, or Turtle in Maya. The templates are pulled from an online repository, so you're always up to date. It's very easy to create new templates, even for new applications."

 

THE STAND ALONE

 

Cheers

Maybe very slightly off-topic but for those who are not familiar with what mental ray can do and why a "virtual photographer" could dream of having it (or a similar render engine like mental ray or yafaray): http://vimeo.com/7809605 (if you like CG or even simply photography it's well worth watching. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful 3D piece ever (yes, if you wonder, it's all 3D)

As for dictating what people should use, I guess no one want to do that here, we only share experiences and talk about the various solutions avaiable, what they offer, how realistic they are (not as "realistic render" but realistic to use). After that, of course everyone is welcome to experiment :)

NB: by posting this movie, I don't mean to say: "here is what you could do if you had vray". This is an amazing piece of art made by an amazing artist who truly master his tools. It's like Poser, you see some extremely beautiful renders made by gifted artists who master their tool, and you see a lot of less successful attempts.

Yep Alex is a big celebrity over at CG talk.

what a Masterpeice!!!

 

 

Cheers

btw, I noticed, I said "what mental ray" can do, here I actually meant what "vray" can do since this entiere movie was rendered using vray :)