80 percent of the price of the 3D program is the renderer. I dont know i'm just making this up but i would guess.

But now everybody uses PoseLux or reality, cause it's much better. So why not just get rid of included Renderers and let people just use LUx( WHICH IS FREE).

that would drop the price of poser/daz from say (if it was)200 dollars, to 50 or 40 dollars. that would be great.

Well, some still would like to use Poser's Firefly. Believe me, not everyone is using Reality or Pose2Lux. Very few, actually. Besides, SM aren't about to drop their internal renderer. That would just be stupid ;).

Not everyone is willing to wait a day for a render...lol. Luxrender might be great, but it's slow compared to Firefly (as are all unbiased renderers unless they use GPU).

Laurie

But now everybody uses PoseLux or reality, cause it's much better. So why not just get rid of included Renderers and let people just use LUx( WHICH IS FREE).

Don't count your chickens before your eggs hatch...It's a very costly mistake.

2 Cents = The community has created some REALLY neat stuff for firefly.  Leaving those setups for a different "material room" is problematic for many attempting to create continuity between softwares. 

VSS / Matmatic, etc. 

EDIT:  If Poser has soft body dynamics and particles I would probably never use anything else.  Oh, it could also render faster...  You get spoiled in C8 / C4D.

I still render some pics with the Poser 4 renderer. Each render engine has benefits and problems and are best suited to different things. If I want very reaistic I would use 3ds max rather than lux. For some comic series I use Poser 4 render because it looks good.

Firefly with all the bells and whistles (relfection, raytracing, idl if you have it, whatever else) already takes long enough to render, I don't feel like having my main work/play/render computer taken up for more than an hour or maybe two with a render.

Which is the main reason I've not even considered the Pose2Lux plugin, and won't until the render times get much shorter.

At the moment, the version of Poser that drops it's internal render engine is the version of Poser past the point where I decide to forget upgrading it forever.

The price of the Poser renderer is nearly free, not 80% of the price of Poser. The most expensive work being paid for out of current sales is in the UI, rigging, data model, etc.

It's not that hard to write a new renderer - which explains why there are so many free ones.

Also, just because you see 50 people talking about or posting images from Lux is no reason to conclude that a majority of users are doing that. In fact, such an assumption is more than absurd. Any trend you think you detect in these forums is usually not a trend for Poser users in general, in the larger sense, outside the Rendo community. The vast majority never speak here and their desires are not reflected by this community very well. I've explained this many many times. For example, so many here are vocally against GC and the new UI, especially the new library. I am not permitted to reveal specifics, but you should know that Poser Pro 2010 sales far exceeded anybody's wildest hopes, and demonstrate that SM product management know a lot more about making Poser popular than most of the wonks on this forum do.

Quote - So why not just get rid of included Renderers ...

For the same reason that they include figures and clothes with the program, anyone just starting out doesn't want to have to go and get bit & pieces from elsewhere, they expect it to be usable "out of the box". A second reason is that Lux doesn't do NPR (cartoon, sketch etc.) which a fair few people want.

Even if SM decided to go with a modular architecture, a renderer would always be part of the base (much like the figures etc.)

I'm one of the few people that had never yet had a problem with the Poser library ;)

And tho I'm a Luxrender user, I'm in a very, very, very small minority...lol. Just because there's one or two posts about something does it mean that everyone's doing it.

Laurie

Quote - Also, just because you see 50 people talking about or posting images from Lux is no reason to conclude that a majority of users are doing that. In fact, such an assumption is more than absurd. Any trend you think you detect in these forums is usually not a trend for Poser users in general, in the larger sense, outside the Rendo community. The vast majority never speak here and their desires are not reflected by this community very well. I've explained this many many times. For example, so many here are vocally against GC and the new UI, especially the new library.

On the Internet, you do not assess the popularity of something but the total noisiness of a community; 3000 people doing one post per day on a subject generate more noise than 1 million people doing 1 post per year and infinite more than 100 million lurkers who stay silent.

For example, from the Internet it appears that the world uses Linux. If you go to this page you will see that the actual market share of Linux is about 5% of the total; add that it is a web development site, so the population is already skewed towards "unusual" platforms and you see that the picture is quite different from what appears from the loudness of the noise.

Just a question: what is 'GC'?

Quote - Just a question: what is 'GC'?

Gamma correction.

Laurie

Quote - I'm one of the few people that had never yet had a problem with the Poser library ;)

And tho I'm a Luxrender user, I'm in a very, very, very small minority...lol. Just because there's one or two posts about something does it mean that everyone's doing it.

Laurie

I never complained about the new library. Or the UI updates. My last Poser related complaint was probably about Koji 1.0.

Lux? What's that?

lux = Luxrender. some of us have been working with an exporter, pose2lux. by some I mean a few dozen, but the OP seems to think, in error, everyone is using it...

Even though I am happily one of the Luxrender users I still haven't abandoned Firefly.  First, I have characters who due to the mat room setup for a certain look just aren't possible to move to Lux (yet?).  Second, as I take commissions from time to time it simply isn't a viable option to let a render bake for 1-3 days for what I generally charge.  The other thing is flat out, setting up a render for Lux takes some time, consideration and effort that load and render types would likely blanch at.

Removing Firefly from Poser is just silly.  I will say the same thing I say about Lux, it is one more tool in the box.  You just have to pick the right tool for the job you want to do.  Sometimes it is Luxrender, sometimes it is Firefly.  And for me, sometimes it is pulling out the tablet or the brushes and paints.  Nothing is perfect.

Though I can agree, Lux is slower than molasses in January, that alone puts people off it.

Umm, there might be a dozen active people in the p2l thread, another dozen who are semi active.  Hardly the masses being hinted at.  Though it would be nice. ;)

I've used Lux for only one render so far, to see what I could do with the new Reality plugin for DAZ.  It took 48 hours to sample 3600 pixels and produce a render I thought was good enough to publish.  You can see it here.

I'm hesitant to use it again though.  The biggest problem I've found with Lux is that, while it makes inatimate objects and architectural scenes look absolutely phenomenal, once you stick a Poser figure in there, it looks like a Poser figure.  I haven't even tried Pose2Lux.  I took one look at the UI and my eyes crossed.

I'm sticking with Firefly for now.  I'm familiar with it, I know how to get the kind of results I want, and it only takes a few hours to render a scene on Final settings.

This first time I heard of lux was two days ago when I noticed the sticky on this forum. Some of the work looks really good but I like the ff renders I get in Poser 8. If I don't like what I'm getting, I just import into Vue 8 and I'm usually happy with the results.

If you have Vue (especially Infinite, where you can tweak in detail render options and settings) you get 80% of Lux results in just a few hours. If you don't have Vue or want 100% of what is possible, Lux is wonderful, you have just to learn patience.

As I wrote in another post, I once read on a Terragen forum of a render which had took 709 hours to be done; 24/48 hours are perfectly normal nowadays for unbiased renderers for any non-renderfarm configuration or without OpenCL.

For anything else, wait for LuxRender OpenCL builds and plan accordingly your next video card/cards buys. I use the plural because you can have more than one video card on a computer working in parallel; I have seen gaming rigs with 3 high-end video cards on them.

Well. the firefly render in Poser is not the best render, but I think it is a great one.

I use it yet.

I'm starting to ignore the OP. Troll like behavior being exhibited lately or maybe it's just a lack of knowledge...

Quote - I'm starting to ignore the OP. Troll like behavior being exhibited lately or maybe it's just a lack of knowledge...

Quote - I'm starting to ignore the OP. Troll like behavior being exhibited lately or maybe it's just a lack of knowledge...

Ditto. Numerous threads being started without the OP coming back to post. Some threads are even antagonistic in nature.

I have a great deal of patience with people, but I have to admit that this is even getting on my nerves.

Not sure why the Moderators don't do something about this already.  Practically every thread posted is an "OT" and while I know they allow the occasional OT thread, this poster is habitual about them.

Quote - But now everybody uses PoseLux or reality, cause it's much better. So why not just get rid of included Renderers and let people just use LUx( WHICH IS FREE).

Most people aren't using Lux at all, most still use the D/S or Poser rendering engine. I've looked at the luxrender and what people do in it with poser items and I'm not convinced at all. I'm not seeing myself going through all the hoops to get from Poser to the Luxrender, while loosing a lot of poser material options. For me, using the luxrender for poser, feels somewhat like returning to Poser 4 and loosing all the firefly benefits.

Dropping Firefly from Poser would be a huge mistake, it offers more then enough to make me happy, without all the limits and problems the Luxrender imposes. I do like the results Firelfy gives and what it's capable off, while I'm by far not convinced that luxrender is even the way to go for Poser related images.

People have come to expect Poser to be an all in one solution. The only way that Lux or any other render engine would be viable IMO, would be if it were fully integrated into Poser. Licensing costs aside, by the time you do that, your imagined savings have probably vanished for the most part.

I strongly Disagree!!
I  am routinely getting results like these in under 3 hours
with the older Maxwell 1.7 on a 2.16 GHZ  Macbook with 2 gigs for ram
NO open CL or render farm
renderers like LUX and terragen  are just NOT practical even for "personal work"
IMHO and Forget about production out put for my freelance Clients

I agree with you on vue though

Cheers

"NO open CL or render farm renderers like LUX"

erm correction. Lux has renderfarming. I use 4 machines here myself on network rendering that's built in.

and it has OpenCL support. again I'm using it - ok it's still under development and is not reliable for all scenes, but each release they are improving it.

edit : in fact here's commercial renderfarming for Lux here https://www.purepowua.com/

justto note, from the Lux site itself : http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/gpu_support notes on their GPU support and http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Network_rendering aka render farming here.

any more you need to know just ask :D

Quote - ...Maxwell 1.7

Translation: with one of the badasses of the field! I have no doubts that commercial big boys do wonders: I have seen architectonical renderings with V-Ray which where nothing short of phenomenal (and also short animations, in which the instancing capabilities were showcased).

I really don't understand lmckenzie comment: nothing prevents SmithMicro to add an official exporter from Poser to Lux in next version (it would be a great idea for them to sponsor Lux2Pose development); there are no licensing costs, Lux is GPL and its developers have officially promised they will not pull a Kerkythea/Thea trick on their community.

About the Firefly benefits... I advise everybody not to throw away a Trabant if they are offered a BWM...

"NO open CL or render farm renderers like LUX and terragen are just NOT practical even for "personal work"

I understood that to mean that he can achieve fast, high quality results using Maxwell without using a render farm or hardware rendering, not that Lux doesn't support those features.

alexcoppo - yes, SM could build an exporter or incorporate the one being developed. My point is that the average Poser user wants, IMO, a fully integrated render solution, not an exporter to an external application. Poser has supported the export solution via .rib, going back to Poser 4 and maybe even Poser 2 and there have been free renderers for the format for a decade at least. Ditto export to POVRay, Kerkythea, Carrara, Vue... However great, cheap or easy they are, the adoption rate probably takes a big hit once you start going outside the core application.

Fully integrated means supporting all the native material and lighting capabilities, and rendering within the Poser interface. As people have discovered, that is a non-trivial task. Even when it's done, one assumes there will be ongoing maintenance to track changes in Lux or maintain a custom build as Poser advances. If Firefly is nearly free, notwithstanding whatever they paid to buy or license it, then free Lux doesn't sound like it will be a big savings. Someone will still have to write code and if SM is going to profit from it, I expect they will want to be paid.

In regards to Kerkythea, a new version has been announced and Giannis has stated that he is committed to continuing development. One can choose to believe or not believe that.

Quote - *

I understood that to mean that he can achieve fast, high quality results using Maxwell without using a render farm or hardware rendering, not that Lux doesn't support those features."

Correct sir I mean a single user, Like Myself can produce usable output in one Day without having access to render farm or OCL.

Cheers