lets face it. poser renders are very simple. and a simple raytracer can be vreated very fast.

if you would do a production render for movies,animations and game cinematics it would take a lot of time.but for simple GI,glorry reflections ,SSS and displacement it can be done very fast. all the info that you need for a patchtracer are online. and now with GPU the rendering is very fast.

firefly is just not good enough anymore. and Luxrender is way to slow for simple stuff.

should SM hire a guy like bagginsbill to create a raytracer in the next 1-2 years?

here is a short demo from the new Blender photorealistic renderer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k&feature=player_embedded

Yes, they should improve the Firefly render engine. The Render engine is one of the reason why i really don't like to use Poser anymore for Renders.

SM hired a guy like stefan and his co-workers to re-do the poser render engine, but they hired a guy like bill to do some other stuff with the library, scripts and the shaders AFAIK.  however, they were all agreed that, for the <10% of poser users who know how to do shadows and GI, FFRender needed more work.  in re: some renderers being too slow, that's true, hence for commercial movies they use alotta tricks, shortcuts and hundreds of gofers.  if ya hire 200 d00dz to do some renders and half of 'em are goof-offs, it's still ~100X faster than doing it yerself IMVHO.

Stefan knows what to do. Trouble is he's just one and Poser isn't the only program he has to support.

Miss Nancy, even with a lot of tricks , the FF render engine is despitting.

I have masive memory problems in Poser and only in Poser. One of the reason why i simply switch to Daz Studio , or C4D render.

This should be the first they improove.

I load V4 with outfit, hair , character texture. Thats it, poser 8 go out of memory.

My last image with the Cloister, Poser was not able to render it, but D/S, in 15 Minutes.

It depends what you do.

I render 8 v4's with hair and outfit and 3 m4's with hair and outfit in about 10 minutes with IDL, RT, shadows without any memory problems in PP2010

I just depends on your poser settings, material settings, hardware, operating system and your level of perfection

Firefly is a capable renderer and the material room is fantastic and who knows what the future brings.

My experiments with DazStudio, Vue, Carrara and Luxrender have been less than satisfactory, so if Firefly gets a replacement it has to be integrated into Poser just as well before I move over.

wimvdb, I try really everything in the Poser settings, my material settings are good, i overwork mostly the shader from the stuff i buy after BB tuts , or i use his MM.

Well prefection, i work usualy on a image days. Do render over render, try to make it as perfect as possible. ( 100ù perfection don't exist)

I am with understanding how a PC, Software works not a newbie. ( I worked in this genre and Study it)

No, Poser has massive problems with memory, because i am not the only one.

But with the material room i agree, this is fantastic in poser. I love it a lot.

32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

If you are in a 32bit environment you change a couple of things to get more memory such as:

• Render in separate process

• Set preview texture display size to 128K

• disable some import libraries

Those are considerable memory savers.

Best thing though is to upgrade to 64 bit

Iceboy, that looks amazing.

This is allready know .

My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine.

But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

i am not asking if they should fx firefly. firefly is not a raytracer.

CPU's and GPU's are becoming very fast. todays computer are power enough that they can render poser scenes in less then 30 minutes .of course with an optimized raytracer. and not with transparency hair. no. i am talking about glossy reflected skin,real hair and SSS.

yes i understand that Poser would be more expensvie. but if you dont have the money you dont need to buy the new version.

i am asking if they should create a brand new pathtracer for Poser with simple code.

you dont need complex shaders for poser renders .

you need :

-diffuse

-reflections ( fresnel ,reflection blur )

-refraction ( fresnel ,blur)

-GI

-SSS

-fur and hair support

-DOF,motion blur

-render settings

all of this is automatic with a raytracer. all the info is posted on the net.

i am asking if Poser should become a little more expensive for more realism?

lets face it. we can not have Firefly for the next 5 years. computers are becoming cheap and fast. and the technology is out there for faster renders. faster. and the code is simple and gets you better and faster results.

i am guarantee you that after 2 years all that are complaining would accept the new render and join the group that supported it. every 3D software has a small group that are against raytracers and realism. they are against change. i bet my life that poser users after 2 years would be happy for a new render engine.

SSS,shadows,GI,reflections are all very easy to implent in a raytracer. the coders with experience can CREATE a raytracer in 6 months. this is not a 2 year project.

i am a poser fan and i will support it. but i am hoping that the company will make some changes for better renders.

Quote - Stefan knows what to do. Trouble is he's just one and Poser isn't the only program he has to support.

if Stewars is good like you then i also support him.  

my question was if they should hire a guy similar to you BB and Stewart. someone who would focus only on the new render engine.

try to understand me. i am a big photoshop fan. i am using photoshop every day tehwhole year. i am using it for photographic images,3D textures,compositing,tinting,3D,...

i am a big photoshop fan.

but my computer is old. i dont have a good enough computer for photoshop CS5 (latest version). my graphic card is also not good enough for some tools.

BUT i am not complaining that i can not use photoshop. they made changes for the better. they made a better software. just because i can not use it ( this year before i buy a new computer ) that does not mean that Adobe is the devil.

so i am asking you to not complain about Poser changes. just because Poser would be more expensive that does not mean they are unfair to you. if you have Poser 8 then you have a good enough 3D program for your needs. but i think in the future Poser could become faster and more realistic for very little work.

honestly Ice- boy.

What are you talking about?

And btw, simple codes dont exist in this case. You need to implement a code in a existing software which should keep his compability.

And Pose has a raytrace render engine.

render real hair without tranparency? Please explain what you mean with this.

look at this thread. this is the biggest problem.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2826341&page=3

users are angry because they will not be able to use a new DAZ figure because in 2011 a company added new technology. this is not the right way of thinking and it makes me sad.

you have V3 and V4 with the old way of rigging. and now after 4 years a Poser user is angry because V5 will use new technology and he would have to buy a new Poser version. how is this normal? how is this sane?and its the same problem with the renderer.

this is just not  normal behaviour.

Quote - honestly Ice- boy.

What are you talking about?

And btw, simple codes dont exist in this case. You need to implement a code in a existing software which should keep his compability.

And Pose has a raytrace render engine.

render real hair without tranparency? Please explain what you mean with this.

-if they would use a new renderer then all the old materials and nodes would not work. they would have to add new nodes. but the names would be very similar. creating a skin material,hair material,cloth material ,wall material, car material would be easier. you would spend less time and get better results. but you would need new materials.

• in CGI we use 2 types of hair. polygon based hair. those are planes with transparency textures. 90% of DAZ hair. the other type is strand based hair. with small strands that render like real hair.

• poser is using raytracer. but Firefly is a hybrid renderer. a new raytraced renderer with pathtracing would be different. easier and better.

-i am not an expert. but making a brute force raytracer can be done in 6 months. then you spend 12 months testing,beta,adding tricks,opitmization. in 20 months you have a new renderer that works.

(ice-boy) "you dont need complex shaders for poser renders"

But I enjoy building hideous creations with nodes in the material room - animated water ripples, strobe lights, etc.  ^^

Whether V5 is compatible with the next Poser Pro version is a matter of profound indifference to me;  I can use the P9 dolls, Aiko 3, Antonia, or Posette.

I'd certainly be pleased with any improvements in Firefly, and would be willing to pay more for it.  Firefly is slow with IDL engaged and good quality settings, if you have any complex materials.  Transparency and refractions seem to especially slow it.

For the next Poser Pro, I'd have these requests:

• Faster IDL precalc and render.  :D
• Provide some replacement for the movie node, which is moot in 64bit.  An image array node would be my choice.  It would address a folder of images -rather than a single image- and have an input number to control which picture was fetched.
• Fix the OBJ import.  I'm currently using P7 to import new models because P8 and PP2010 often omit pieces or fail entirely.
• Fix the dynamic cloth simulator and the wind generator.  I don't know exactly what is wrong, but just when the vertices should be settling into a final draped position, they seem to go divergent (like a pinball hitting powered bumpers).  Also, the cloth sometimes sinks significantly through collision-enabled objects.  I've been relying on P7 to do this task also, before transferring the scene to PP2010 for rendering.
• Allow me to save lights (usually point or spot type) with a prop.
• Allow me to render the frames of an animation in reverse order.  I often use two or more computers to render animations, and this would help optimize total render time.

Quote - 32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

2GB for each process, 2GB for kernel... poser.exe and ffrender.exe are separate, so maybe you could get to 8GB plus whatever else is running on your machine while rendering? I often exceed 7GB of total physical memory while rendering, but poser.exe has never gone much over 1GB for me. FFrender.exe, on the other hand, regularly reaches 4GB. At that point, it almost always crashes.

The resolution of the render must make a difference, as I can often complete a scene at 2500 x 2500 pixels, but will fail 2/3 of the way through at 4000 x 4000. So when you say that you can render 4 x V4's, so can I. At 1000 x 1000 pixels, I can render almost anything. But at 4000 x 4000 I am seriously limited.

Daz Studio has always been better for rendering larger resolutions. I found it to be the case back when I was using Poser 5 and DS 1, and it's the case now.

Agree... 64 bit version of Poser would probably resolve my memory issues.

Quote - My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine. But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one suffering with Poser 8 memory issues. I can find no explanation for my problems, either.

if that's 20 mos after they release P9, then they could put the new renderer in PP2012.  but maybe they fixed FFRender so it works better now.  time will tell.  problem: FFRender belongs to them, but if they try to put something else in there, complications may develop.  e.g. nobody is suing them claiming credit for FFRender AFAIK, but what if some patent vultures are watching them, just waiting for the moment when they add something new?  I ain't a lawyer.

Quote - look at this thread. this is the biggest problem.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2826341&page=3

 

users are angry because they will not be able to use a new DAZ figure because in 2011 a company added new technology. this is not the right way of thinking and it makes me sad.

you have V3 and V4 with the old way of rigging. and now after 4 years a Poser user is angry because V5 will use new technology and he would have to buy a new Poser version. how is this normal? how is this sane?and its the same problem with the renderer.

 

 

this is just not  normal behaviour.

This is the evolution of the technologie. ;)

If all the developer, ingeneer in the worl think like this, we still would riding horses and not driving cars and would have no high tech computer.

why should they change the material room for a new render engine? The material room from Poser is one of the best. Efficient and powerfull, would be silly to change it.

better overwork the old one. And you have no issues with the materials and lights and cameras.

When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

Quote - > Quote - 32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

2GB for each process, 2GB for kernel... poser.exe and ffrender.exe are separate, so maybe you could get to 8GB plus whatever else is running on your machine while rendering? I often exceed 7GB of total physical memory while rendering, but poser.exe has never gone much over 1GB for me. FFrender.exe, on the other hand, regularly reaches 4GB. At that point, it almost always crashes.

The resolution of the render must make a difference, as I can often complete a scene at 2500 x 2500 pixels, but will fail 2/3 of the way through at 4000 x 4000. So when you say that you can render 4 x V4's, so can I. At 1000 x 1000 pixels, I can render almost anything. But at 4000 x 4000 I am seriously limited.

Daz Studio has always been better for rendering larger resolutions. I found it to be the case back when I was using Poser 5 and DS 1, and it's the case now.

Agree... 64 bit version of Poser would probably resolve my memory issues.

Quote - My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine. But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one suffering with Poser 8 memory issues. I can find no explanation for my problems, either.

On my working PC, where i only render, i have W7 64 bit 8 Giga ram.

With Vue no problem; DAZ no problem , only Poser 8 is a diva.

I a so sick of this. :(And i hate the new library. It is a recource monster .

I think in one or two years poser will be dead, they dont listen the users.

Even the badest engine render GI or transparency maps better than poser.

I think we dont need two versions of poser ( P8 and Ppro ), but only one with a lot of work on the engine .

Like said ice-boy :

i am asking if they should create a brand new pathtracer for Poser with simple code.

you dont need complex shaders for poser renders .

you need :

-diffuse

-reflections ( fresnel ,reflection blur )

-refraction ( fresnel ,blur)

-GI

-SSS

-fur and hair support

-DOF,motion blur

-render settings

That's all folks :)

Rendering speed is a direct function on how well done is the code. Using the same algorithm the speed can be very fast or very slow depending only on how you code this algorithm.

Today with modern CPUs with SSE2 you can do four things at the same time and execute two instructions in the same CPU clock, you can add multicores that allow you to execute two, four, six,... tasks at the same time, so the overall multiplying factor can become very big and you even can add the GPU processing power.

But to achieve this formidable CPU potential is not an easy task, you must have total control over the code you create and this only can be done with Assembly language and here comes the problem. Nobody beside video card and firmware makers use Assembler. You have very little control over the code created by a C compiler that also nobody uses it again, all is done with C++ where the generated code is even worst.

users are not sure yet whether they want realism or speed.  it's a zero-sum game IMVHO.

Quote - Rendering speed is a direct function on how well done is the code. Using the same algorithm the speed can be very fast or very slow depending only on how you code this algorithm.

Today with modern CPUs with SSE2 you can do four things at the same time and execute two instructions in the same CPU clock, you can add multicores that allow you to execute two, four, six,... tasks at the same time, so the overall multiplying factor can become very big and you even can add the GPU processing power.

But to achieve this formidable CPU potential is not an easy task, you must have total control over the code you create and this only can be done with Assembly language and here comes the problem. Nobody beside video card and firmware makers use Assembler. You have very little control over the code created by a C compiler that also nobody uses it again, all is done with C++ where the generated code is even worst.

Thank you :) I was try to find the last 30 minutes the correct English words for my explantation. :)

Cage, would you like to post some pictures of those hairstyles  that you want to do? Perhaps we can figure it out together and learn in the process.

Quote - > Quote - why should they change the material room for a new render engine? The material room from Poser is one of the best. Efficient and powerfull, would be silly to change it.

better overwork the old one. And you have no issues with the materials and lights and cameras.

When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

i think we are not on the same page. let me explain.  

i am not saying that they should change how the material room works and looks. please try to understand my bad english. the nodes can look 100% the same. the whole material room can look 100% the same. when

you have a new raytracer then you dont need anymore '' specular'' and ''blinn''. with a raytracer you only need ''reflection''. so insted of 3 different nodes you would only have 1 node. it would look visual the same.

Quote - if that's 20 mos after they release P9, then they could put the new renderer in PP2012.  but maybe they fixed FFRender so it works better now.  time will tell.  problem: FFRender belongs to them, but if they try to put something else in there, complications may develop.  e.g. nobody is suing them claiming credit for FFRender AFAIK, but what if some patent vultures are watching them, just waiting for the moment when they add something new?  I ain't a lawyer.

miss nancy they can fix and make firefly faster  every year. but it will not be the best speed for your computer. i am not talking here about movie productions. please try to understand me. i am not talking here about some expensive stuff.  

pathtracers are bad for animations. but they are fantastic for still renders.

i dont have 3dsstudio max so i am a little lost. but i am using blender for years.so i found this on google in less then 5 minutes. and this looks to me logical and simple.

how is this material not simple? you ony add producerals or textures for details. and bump images for bump.you have 4 sliders. 4 sliders.

Quote - you have a new raytracer then you dont need anymore '' specular'' and ''blinn''. with a raytracer you only need ''reflection''. so insted of 3 different nodes you would only have 1 node. it would look visual the same.

The raytracer and the nodes are two different subjects, both involving realism and speed.

The nodes, much better, the property of the material defines how the material reacts to illumination that receives.

The raytracer or any other method deals on how the lights and light sources interact with the scene, the lights that reach each point of the material and what reaches the eye or camera.

You need both, you can have an excellent raytracer, but if the shader you use fails to emulate the optical properties of the material you use the result will be bad. You can have a very correct brdf of the material, but your raytracer fails to reproduce the shadows and illumination produced by the reflections of other elements of the scene, the result also will not be good.

i said that with a raytraced renderer you dont use anymore blinn and specular. those are cheats. in a raytraced renderer you only use reflections for highlights. in the material room you use less nodes .

so i wrotte nothing wrong.

ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore.

What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

Lights has to be changed . This means, all your past stuff you buy, you have to rework in the new mat room because shader nodes don't work properly anymore.

Like you rework in DS, Vue, C4D, Max and so on the materials when you import from Poser.

Quote - > Quote - [ When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

i dont have 3dsstudio max so i am a little lost. but i am using blender for years.so i found this on google in less then 5 minutes. and this looks to me logical and simple.

how is this material not simple? you ony add producerals or textures for details. and bump images for bump.you have 4 sliders. 4 sliders.

 

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

Quote - i said that with a raytraced renderer you dont use anymore blinn and specular. those are cheats. in a raytraced renderer you only use reflections for highlights. in the material room you use less nodes .so i wrotte nothing wrong.

Blinn, specular or reflection for highlight all are cheats, it all depend on the material you use. For a perfect metal you have no Blinn, Torrance, Fresnel, highlight size, reflection. You have only a mirror that reflect strictly following the refelection law. Now if you have a rough metal using the Torrance-Cook model will not be a bad idea and if you have a piece of chalk forget all, you even have no reflections.

And I even had not mentioned human hair because if you don't take into account that light is a wave you are in big trouble and for raytracers the light is photons and not wave....

Quote - ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

You don't need to change the materials, you can change the raytracer without changing the materials

Quote - With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore. What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

It's more a Poser's problem, Poser use shader trees that nobody use. All rendering software use more or less the same or similar materials.

Quote - ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore.

What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

Lights has to be changed . This means, all your past stuff you buy, you have to rework in the new mat room because shader nodes don't work properly anymore.

Like you rework in DS, Vue, C4D, Max and so on the materials when you import from Poser.

but you dont have to change visual how the material room looks. why should we be afraid how the material room code changed? if someone will have any problems with the new material room i would connect all the textures for him. and do presets and post them online.

you think if DAZ in 2012 would realese a hair prop you think that they would not create materials and textures for the new render engine? you think they would just throw all the textures in the ''texture'' folder and sell it?

you know very good that if a poser user in 2012 would buy a t-shirt that they would give you all the shaders and materials in the folder.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - [  

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

 

you have diffuse,reflections,refractions. this is your normal shader for 80%  objects.

you need color ,bump and specular textures. you need 3 type of textures for realism.you connect all the textures in the right slots.

in the shader you have 3 importan sliders that you change for each object. its very simple.

 

I think to change the way how the Mat room looks would make no headache for the Software developer from Poser.

To change the Algorythm yes ;)

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - > Quote - [  

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

 

you have diffuse,reflections,refractions. this is your normal shader for 80%  objects.

you need color ,bump and specular textures. you need 3 type of textures for realism.you connect all the textures in the right slots.

in the shader you have 3 importan sliders that you change for each object. its very simple.

 

 

VRay is simple? Now i am speechless  :scared  .  

Ladona i need to first find out if you even have experince in Poser material room?

because if someone does not have experiene with CGI materials and textures then  vray would be very complex for him.

Honestly ice-boy,  if you want to insult me, go ahead. :(

Do you understand what you are writting here? You understand simple basics of material rooms and how they work?

It looks like not, because in this case you would avoid to write some of your posts here.

I have a very good understanding in materials from poser, and what is more important, in Mathematic and Physik.

This are the two basics to undestand EVERY material room and his parameters.

Vray is complex. Vray is not only connect bump and reflect, you need to understand the lights, how they works, and much much more.

Go ahead and tell all the Profis who write tutorials for Vray , how to get the best out, that they are on the wrong way, because Vray is easy and really simple.

Sarcasmus off....

i dont want to insult you.

in this paper we can see how the materials and shaders got mroe simple realistic.

http://renderwonk.com/publications/s2010-shading-course/martinez/s2010_course_notes.pdf

Interesting paper but in reading it, it wasn't all roses and kittens.

The had major issues with hair and noise.

One interesting section entitled The Catch had an interesting statement.  They had very long render times, especially when it came to hair and the cost was only offset by the fact that they didn't have to do as many render passes.  That and the comment that their costs didn't go up nearly as much as was thought.  He isn't saying the cost of switching wasn't more, it just wasn't as much as some thought it would be.

but those are movie production renders.ALice in WOnderland. and Cloudy.

poser scenes are 5% of those renders.

True but what's the point of using stand based hair, which Poser has had since version 5, if the render engine cannot reder it properly.  The problems with it were also noted in the same section.

These are just things I found noteworthy in the paper. 

As far as renderers go, I have access to scan line, raytraced and unbiased renderers.  Which I choose depends upon what I want. 

If you want more realism, have you tried an unbiased renderer?  It might give you more of what you're looking for.

a raytraced render can render strand based hair. so hair like in poser.

Firefly has been rendering dyamic hair since Poser 5.  The two biggest obstacles I found to strand based hair in Poser were the materials and system resouces. 

I wouldn't mind seeing Poser with a better rendering engine than Firefly, but I'd hate to sacrifice the Materials Room, if that would be a requirement for the change.  I quite like Poser's shader system.  :laugh:

(Ha!  I said something positive about Poser!  :woot:  It was bound to happen, sooner or later.)

The Poser mat room is a (fairly well) known entity, which to me is an important feature. If they enhance the Firefly render engine, perhaps we'd have access to things like caustics or SSS? Who knows.

Are people willing to pay for a change of rendering engine? Some will, but I doubt the majority of Poser users will be willing to pay more money for Poser because of a new rendering engine? If they raise Poser's price too much, they'll loose customers. If they change too much in Poser, they loose customers as well. For SM this must be a though place to be in. They want to move forward, but have too keep their users in mind.

While their is much talk here about these things, the people debating represent a very very small minority of poser users. We've got no clue what the majority of Poser users want. Seeing how slow Poser changes each version, it seems like most customers don't want to drift to far from what they know.

On the other hand, SM is trying to reach new customers as well andmost likely they should to survive. They can't always build on the original user base. After all, a lot of those traded Poser in for D/S, they're getting older and move on, or don't use Poser that often anymore. A good number of the poser base is still happy with older versions. So SM has to look ahead and the new customers don't care about the older versions. But.... from all the effort it seems that recently SM is trying to reach the lover end of the market again and they're not going to pay for expensive rendering engines. For a while SM made the effort to try and reach the higher end market, but that seems to get less attention these days. Not sure where SM is going, but I wouldn't be surprised that a new rendering engine is not their main concern at all, since they're very busy trying to improve and enhance Firefly.

Personally, I still like Firefly and find it a pleasure to work with. For me it's an understandable rendering engine, being able to work out how it works and how to get the results I'm after. I also find it very nice that it gives me a range of rendering options. If I want cartoony, it can handle it. If I want more realistic, it can be done. If I want more studio like, no problem. Interior and exterior renders can be both be well achieved in P8. All without to much problems. It's easy and predictable, so it get's my vote.

That's my personal opinion, but no one should listen to that in respect to a new poser version at all, since I'm not going to upgrade at all. Poser is now getting too far from the originall by now, adding all kinds of new features that do not interest me at all and some improvements even annoy me. SM is adding all kinds of techniques I don't need at all. Or perhaps I should say I'm not willing to learn them at all. I like the way Poser works now and suits me fine. I don't need to go beyond, I'm not will to advance into newer developments, since I don't see the use and advantage of them for me at all. I've briefly followed the new D/S developments and some of the things mentioned and thought 'whatever'. I really don't care. I've followed the lux development briefly and thought the same..... 'whatever'. I doesn't excite me at all.

But I understand it excites others, but only a hand full of people.... the majority if poser users is, as always, silence. I do hope people get what they want in the next version or after.... I'm just to stuck in my ways and too happy with what I have now, to even be bothered to look forward anymore. For me Poser in it's current version is a tool that helps me to get my work done fast and easy, it offers all I need. I don't need to expand, I've got everything I need (even when it comes to content). I've learned Poser as much as possible, created my own content, custom figures, had fun doing so, been there. Now Poser is merely a tool for me and when I look around that's the feeling I get.

A few techies discussing what Poser needs to advance, willing to pay for it and help in rethinking Poser, but for most it's just another tool, helping them to create their dreams or getting work done faster or just have fun. I don't think it matters whatever direction Poser takes, there will always be a majority using it silently and if it's not me, it will be someone else. Seems like a lot of people (like me) have lost interest in discussing Poser. Compared the way (and by the amont of people) D/S is being discussed, there's little discussion going on around here and it's always the same few that do discuss.

I'm mainly a lurker these days and all I notice is active people going away, new users coming, but they don't join in the discussion. Only a few discussing many things, while it used to be a lot of people discussing these matters. For SM's and your sakes, I hope this is a not a sign for Poser..... but seeing how SM is doing a lot of effort to reach new markets and interacting with the old user base less and less, I hope Poser will be able to survive in the long run and I somehow have my doubts that adding expensive stuff to Poser will be helping in the survival of Poser.

I'm just hoping that SM knows what the majority wants and not only listening to a few, I'm sure they know how to reach the silent majority. I'm sure it's though to find out what such a diverse user base wants and needs.

Again, don't listen to me when it comes to future version and I hope you all get what you want from Poser in some way.