Quote - I bought Reality 3 for Poser (Mac) today at Renderosity, then read about an update dated April 10 that was posted on Runtime DNA, which would charge me all over again. Has the update been posted to Renderosity, or anywhere other than RDNA? If anybody knows the download link, could you please post? Thanks.

I just looked in My Account > Item List and there are new files, dated 11 April, so head there and download them...

@WandW: Got it! Many thanks.

cityscape with sun by medzin very good IMVHO.  am hoping to see outdoor environment scene with human figure.  so far, mostly see promo human renders in empty scene, usu. black background, but apparently full scenes can be done.

I read post by Miss Nancy which putting interesting test. Constructed outdoor scene with all poser objects, the terrain is RDNA Terradome. Trees are prop, not billboard. I use R3 sun and adjust sun size to 6 for shadow quality. Again using IBL and blending with Lux sky.

Does someone have a render of a dense scene where cap the render time at 2 minutes?  So basically make reality 3 render a somewhat dense scene in under 2 minutes and let's see what it looks like.

Quote - Does someone have a render of a dense scene where cap the render time at 2 minutes?  So basically make reality 3 render a somewhat dense scene in under 2 minutes and let's see what it looks like.

 

Okay assuming that wasn't a joke, Lux just doesn't give you great results in that little time.  Just a fact of how it is, don't look at Reality or any other Lux exporter if you want instant gratification.  2 minutes in, even with an amazing light set up you are going to have something grainy and pixelated.  Maybe if you were rendering something the size of a postage stamp...

Quote - > Quote - Does someone have a render of a dense scene where cap the render time at 2 minutes?  So basically make reality 3 render a somewhat dense scene in under 2 minutes and let's see what it looks like.

 

Okay assuming that wasn't a joke, Lux just doesn't give you great results in that little time.  Just a fact of how it is, don't look at Reality or any other Lux exporter if you want instant gratification.  2 minutes in, even with an amazing light set up you are going to have something grainy and pixelated.  Maybe if you were rendering something the size of a postage stamp...

I never expected a 2 minute render to look great, I just want to know if I can render a scene in 1-2 minute as an ultra fast draft preview so I can make judgements and corrections.  I was wondering what a 2 minute render would look like (horrible probably but enough to make corrections?)

Quote - Does someone have a render of a dense scene where cap the render time at 2 minutes?  So basically make reality 3 render a somewhat dense scene in under 2 minutes and let's see what it looks like.

 

You will however see a full representation of the whole scene, it will be noisy but it is there.

Another thing to try is suspending a Firefly render and resuming it from the point it was suspended a few days later.  Of course you can't, does that mean Firefly is rubbish, of course not.  Horses for courses. 

If your artwork is simple and can be rendered in two minutes and you are happy with it fine.  In my experience two minutes in Firefly is not enough to give a render of V4 with a good skin tone, in fact I am lucky if I have the top of her head from the indirect light scan at that point.

So with a V4 render at say 2000X1500 pixels after two minutes Luxrender wins hands down because you can see Vicky.

> Quote - > Quote - > Quote - Does someone have a render of a dense scene where cap the render time at 2 minutes?  So basically make reality 3 render a somewhat dense scene in under 2 minutes and let's see what it looks like. > > > >   > > > > Okay assuming that wasn't a joke, Lux just doesn't give you great results in that little time.  Just a fact of how it is, don't look at Reality or any other Lux exporter if you want instant gratification.  2 minutes in, even with an amazing light set up you are going to have something grainy and pixelated.  Maybe if you were rendering something the size of a postage stamp... > > I never expected a 2 minute render to look great, I just want to know if I can render a scene in 1-2 minute as an ultra fast draft preview so I can make judgements and corrections.  I was wondering what a 2 minute render would look like (horrible probably but enough to make corrections?)

 

This is dead on two minutes, it has to be exported but even including that this is five minutes tops.

Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? 

Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

Now that's a bit harsh, isn't it? Implying that Firefly is only good for speed and not for quality & realism, while it's clear Fireflu can do all of them just as well as Lux, only faster.

But I agree, a 2 minute LuxRender makes no sense.

Sorry, that was not my intention. Not at all. I used Firefly because it's built-inside Poser and so it's accessible. I would not turn off all the advanced features of Firefly.

I didn't mean to imply anything negative about Firefly, which I think is a good renderer.

Cheers.

Quote - Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? 

Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

Looking at Hornet's 2-minute render, one can at least see if the lights are in the right places...

In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKexUCXY53M

You can see a real-time render.

Cheers.

Quote - > Quote - Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? 

Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

Looking at Hornet's 2-minute render, one can at least see if the lights are in the right places...

At two minutes, yes, you will be able to see if you need to change your lighting placement, though materials will take far more than 2 minutes to come clear enough to see if you need to adjust them unless they are horrifically out of whack.

Quote - In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKexUCXY53M

You can see a real-time render.

Cheers.

Cool video, gives a good overview and the real-time render is cool to see. Can I ask what the computer specs are that this was done on?

Quote - Sorry, that was not my intention. Not at all. I used Firefly because it's built-inside Poser and so it's accessible. I would not turn off all the advanced features of Firefly.

I didn't mean to imply anything negative about Firefly, which I think is a good renderer.

Cheers.

That's cool, it just sounded a bit...... but it's cleared up now :-)

Quote - Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? 

Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

 

I agree with you but that render was in response to a question earlier on in the thread which was posed by Zanzo.  It was not the way I work but, if he has use for a 2 minute render then so be it.  As for the machine we are measuring I felt that is quite clear from the description on my sign-off at the bottom of my post...and every post.

I apologise if you think this puts Luxrender in a bad light, it was not my intention.  I have already posted a couple of renders in my gallery that were 60 minutes and 90 minutes which I felt were fair and a good representations.  I have also posted on more than one occasion that I do not think that the render time is the be all and end all and I think Luxrender is superb and Reality is an easy way to get there.  What I did nto expect was a semi-flame for providing what another person in the thread asked for, even if I saw limited use.

Quote - Implying that Firefly is only good for speed and not for quality & realism, while it's clear Fireflu can do all of them just as well as Lux, only faster.

I don't think it's clear at all that Firefly can do quality and realism "just as well as Lux"

Quote - > Quote - Implying that Firefly is only good for speed and not for quality & realism, while it's clear Fireflu can do all of them just as well as Lux, only faster.

I don't think it's clear at all that Firefly can do quality and realism "just as well as Lux"

 

From what I have seen so far, both from test and see in other renders, Luxrender can produce renders that would be difficult to dupicate in Firefly, if not impossible.  If you are a real wizz with Poser materials and streach Firefly to the limits it can produce some very real looking renders.  One of the differences with Luxrender is its use of 'Real Lights' which adds to the realism.  What Luxrender cannot compete with is the speed of Firefly, at least not for most renders, although I am surprised that they are not as long as I expected they would be.  It also has a lot of features that do not exist in Firefly.

Quote - I don't think it's clear at all that Firefly can do quality and realism "just as well as Lux"

Actually it can't, but that is not a criticism of Firefly. Lux calculates materials and lights using exact physics, Firefly doesn't. I don't want to make comaprisons. Two different renderers are used for two different workflows. It's a lot like comparing painting to photography. Two great artforms in their own rights. Just different :)

Cheers.

I was just about to chime in with nearly the identical thing posted by Paolo.  I think many poser users(since this may be their first exposure to luxrender) will be hard-pressed to get themselves out of the firefly render time mind-set.  There really is no comparison between firefly and luxrender and I've used both fairly extensively.  Not even an apples/oranges comparison.. more like an apples/onions comparison.

 

This is just my own two cents.. but it's like comparing a graphic novel artist and a portrait artist.  Both can be just as equally talented; yet the results are vastly different.  Someone like Olivia de Berardinis can crank out an absolutely stunning airbrush painting in a few hours; where some of the renaissance era artists spent weeks or months producing masterpieces.

 

To use Luxrender and to be a speed-demon is counterproductive.  Unless you're producing tiny resolution-ed renders meant for something other than to push reality, poser and luxrender to it's(and your) limits artistically.  Some things in life and art take time to acquire and luxrender is one of those things that just takes time.  If you want blazing-fast renders, try SLG.  Using SLG, I can carbonflux a render in a just a couple hours and achieve realism that (and yes I'm saying it)firefly would have a seizure trying to replicate.  It sounds offensive to me in my head as I'm sitting here typing it and I'm not purposely trying to be so; but, the expectation of 45-minute 3000 pixel masterpieces are a product of the microwave oven mind-set.  If you want to make a test render to check lights and materials.. keep everything at your full final resolution and just turn it down to 25% in reality and lux will give you a few hundred passes in 15 minutes or so; this method can give you an incredibly accurate test render.  If all is well, cancel it, turn the res back to 100% in reality and let 'er rip.

The other thing where lux(and others) are head and shoulders above firely is in the ability to suspend and resume a render.  How about going to bed and forgetting that it's mandatory update night for windows/microsoft and having your computer reboot in the middle of an overnight render?  With firefly, you're toast.  With Luxrender it's simply a matter of resuming.  Sooner or later the devs at Lux will get the gpu rendering issues resolved and the speeds we all render can take a big jump.

I spent six years of my life struggling with Poser.  Never an issue with composition for me since I tend to stick to the pinup/glamour style renders; but with materials and lighting.  I can't think of how many hours I spent fighting with poser lights to get the effects that I wanted.  Yet, thanks to some tutelage from Paolo (how many other artists with a listing on IMDB have time for us little guys?) reading a few glamour photography lighting tutorials and a bit of play; my lighting issues were over.  Don't even get me started with poser's material room.  With Reality, THAT little problem is over too.  I have used it enough with DazStudio that I know what to do to get what I want.

Frankly, I'm eagerly awaiting more.  I have a few poser artists on my favorites list that I'd really like to see using Reality and pushing luxrender to its limits(Fallen, MGTCS, eekdog, and barryjeffer all come to mind.. hint hint nudge nudge).  It's just that I see folks dissing Lux because of the enormous render times and I want to shake them all and yell at them because in the same hands; the end results of each render engine are beyond comparison.

Well I had no problem getting out of the Firefly mindset but then I had a few Firefly renders run over night. I am not a speed demon, Ok I did do a 2 min render earlier but was to try and help someone out.

The difficulty I have is that it appears people are quick to talk about the long render times which could put people off when in fact that is not the full story.  To say long render time to someone who's average render is 30 minutes may be fair but for someone who is used to 6 hours or so they may see the term 'longer render times' and think of days. This may not be the case and, as was pointed out earlier, it also depends very much on the machine in question. 

Luxrender has other benefits but I am certainly not trying to start a Luxrender/Firefly war which would only be as unpreductive as the Mac/PC war that is still carrying on after years.

Each to their own, but I do think it would be good to guard against putting others off from trying Luxrender when they may well be prepared to give up speed for quality.  I certain am, but then, as I have already said I was never a speed merchant.

 

Quote - I spent six years of my life struggling with Poser. I can't think of how many hours I spent fighting with poser lights to get the effects that I wanted.  Don't even get me started with poser's material room.

My experience is the opposite. I've used Poser for over 14 years now and never had issues with lights and getting the effect I wanted. I love Poser's material room. In those years I've used it for serious game graphics and comics and all kinds of fun renders. I've had one of my comics printed by a commercial printer, 10,000 copies were printed and everything was done in Poser 8. With the changes in Poser 9 even more power has come available, also in the lights department.

Having said that, I can imagine people wanting to switch. I want to do more nature scenes, for that I've got Vue 10 Studio now. Vue's rendering engine is a power house and the quality you can output if you've got gain the skills and have some patience, are awesome. Whatever I render in there is so much better then in Poser, except.... for portraits. I don't have the Vue skills yet to make those shine. I may get there in time to come, still learning.

Poser works great for me and so far I haven't seen much from Lux that with some skill can be achieved in Poser as well. But if you're constantly fighting poser, I can understand you want to have something you can work with. But..... when people say that switching from Firefly to Lux is giving up speed and gaining quality, it's just not true at all. There are more then enough awesome poser render around that show that poser can do excellent quality as well. I understand people love the new tool, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's some much better. But Lux has a lot of advantages over firefly, that's for sure and certain things can be achieved easier, but the end result isn't worse the Firefly or better.

***Quote - Now that's a bit harsh, isn't it? Implying that Firefly is only good for speed and not for quality & realism, while it's clear Fireflu can do all of them just as well as Lux, only faster.***But I agree, a 2 minute LuxRender makes no sense.

I must be doing something wrong, do you guys not rely on fast draft previews to save time and judge for corrections? How do you guys do it? Remember speed is the highest priority for me and getting work done fast.

But don't get me wrong, when I go to sleep at night I let my machine render a scene for 3-6 hours.

Quote - This is dead on two minutes, it has to be exported but even including that this is five minutes tops.

That looks great for two minutes and if you divided the resolution by 50% you could get a fast dirty preview.

***Quote - Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? ***Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

How much time do you spend on a render? I give myself a time limit. I try my hardest and work as fast as possible to finish a very high quality scene in 4-6 hours tops.  A fast draft preview helps me out a lot.  Maybe my workflow needs improvement.

Quote - Looking at Hornet's 2-minute render, one can at least see if the lights are in the right places...

Yes and if you divide his resolution in half it would render faster too :)

Quote - At two minutes, yes, you will be able to see if you need to change your lighting placement, though materials will take far more than 2 minutes to come clear enough to see if you need to adjust them unless they are horrifically out of whack.

That's fine. In firefly it's the same. When testing material I kick up that shading rate to like .2 and IC to 100 to see what the material truly looks like.

THOUGHTS

After reading every post in this thread I've come to the conclusion that if you take commissions, using reality 3 will force you to charge your client more since it takes longer to finish a render. However, the extra time isn't wasted since the quality output is significantly higher.

Am i wrong to think that in order to use reality 3 on a intermediate commercial level where speed is a concern, that I need two machines networked with i7 processors both hammering away at the luxrender?

I could go into the diffences of Luxrender networked and Poser at this point but after the fuss over the 2 minute render I think I will pass and let someone else put their head above the trench.

Quote - > Quote - I spent six years of my life struggling with Poser. I can't think of how many hours I spent fighting with poser lights to get the effects that I wanted.  Don't even get me started with poser's material room.

My experience is the opposite. I've used Poser for over 14 years now and never had issues with lights and getting the effect I wanted. I love Poser's material room. In those years I've used it for serious game graphics and comics and all kinds of fun renders. I've had one of my comics printed by a commercial printer, 10,000 copies were printed and everything was done in Poser 8. With the changes in Poser 9 even more power has come available, also in the lights department.

Having said that, I can imagine people wanting to switch. I want to do more nature scenes, for that I've got Vue 10 Studio now. Vue's rendering engine is a power house and the quality you can output if you've got gain the skills and have some patience, are awesome. Whatever I render in there is so much better then in Poser, except.... for portraits. I don't have the Vue skills yet to make those shine. I may get there in time to come, still learning.

Poser works great for me and so far I haven't seen much from Lux that with some skill can be achieved in Poser as well. But if you're constantly fighting poser, I can understand you want to have something you can work with. But..... when people say that switching from Firefly to Lux is giving up speed and gaining quality, it's just not true at all. There are more then enough awesome poser render around that show that poser can do excellent quality as well. I understand people love the new tool, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it's some much better. But Lux has a lot of advantages over firefly, that's for sure and certain things can be achieved easier, but the end result isn't worse the Firefly or better.

Ahhhh.. you said the "v" word.  I attempted to school myself in vue for a bit last year. Talk about wonderful pieces of software.  I created a couple scenes to use for hdri lights.  5000 pixel sphere hdri's took me nearly a full solid day of rendering and that was with fairly simple scenes.  I wish I had the talent to really create in-depth scenes with it; but, I just don't have the time for it.

Quote - > ***Quote - Now that's a bit harsh, isn't it? Implying that Firefly is only good for speed and not for quality & realism, while it's clear Fireflu can do all of them just as well as Lux, only faster.***But I agree, a 2 minute LuxRender makes no sense.

I must be doing something wrong, do you guys not rely on fast draft previews to save time and judge for corrections? How do you guys do it? Remember speed is the highest priority for me and getting work done fast.

But don't get me wrong, when I go to sleep at night I let my machine render a scene for 3-6 hours.

Quote - This is dead on two minutes, it has to be exported but even including that this is five minutes tops.

That looks great for two minutes and if you divided the resolution by 50% you could get a fast dirty preview.

***Quote - Itmakes absolutely no sense to do a two-minite test in that way. For starters, what machine are we measuring? ***Second, that ti not the point of Lux. Lux is about wuality and realism. If speed is what you're looking for then Firefly with all the advanced options turned off is what you're looking for.

How much time do you spend on a render? I give myself a time limit. I try my hardest and work as fast as possible to finish a very high quality scene in 4-6 hours tops.  A fast draft preview helps me out a lot.  Maybe my workflow needs improvement.

Quote - Looking at Hornet's 2-minute render, one can at least see if the lights are in the right places...

Yes and if you divide his resolution in half it would render faster too :)

Quote - At two minutes, yes, you will be able to see if you need to change your lighting placement, though materials will take far more than 2 minutes to come clear enough to see if you need to adjust them unless they are horrifically out of whack.

That's fine. In firefly it's the same. When testing material I kick up that shading rate to like .2 and IC to 100 to see what the material truly looks like.

THOUGHTS

After reading every post in this thread I've come to the conclusion that if you take commissions, using reality 3 will force you to charge your client more since it takes longer to finish a render. However, the extra time isn't wasted since the quality output is significantly higher.

Am i wrong to think that in order to use reality 3 on a intermediate commercial level where speed is a concern, that I need two machines networked with i7 processors both hammering away at the luxrender?

On the commish work thing.. I think it would depend on the render size.  Bobvan over in the D|S reality thread does commish work and a couple have done graphic novels with lux.  Smaller render sizes.. even with complex scenes can be done quite rapidly even with mid-level windows machines.

Quote - I could go into the diffences of Luxrender networked and Poser at this point but after the fuss over the 2 minute render I think I will pass and let someone else put their head above the trench.

I network nearly every render I do with the 2 other desktops and the laptop here in this house.  For me, since the other machines are older and kinda wimpy, I don't get a huge speed gain.. but even an extra 40k s/s gets ya to the goal faster

Quote - Ahhhh.. you said the "v" word.  I attempted to school myself in vue for a bit last year. Talk about wonderful pieces of software.  I created a couple scenes to use for hdri lights.  5000 pixel sphere hdri's took me nearly a full solid day of rendering and that was with fairly simple scenes.  I wish I had the talent to really create in-depth scenes with it; but, I just don't have the time for it.

Neither do I have time for it, but realising the potential of Vue, I've decided to make time for it and it's slowly paying off. I've decided to stop creating content for Poser and invest that time in learning Vue. It's hurting my sales and I'm loosing money because of that, but I'm sure once I get the hang of Vue it will open up venues that I cannot step into with Poser and other apps I do use at all and that will give me lots of new opportunities. What I do love about Vue is the vast sea of excellent teaching material available, something lacking for Poser. Yes, there are beginner tutorials, but a lot of the people who truly mastered Poser keep their secrets to themselves. A lot of the people who mastered Vue share their knowledge and it's helping me grow. There are still many things I don't understand about Poser and features I never use and in the 4 months I'm learning Vue, I wish I could have learned to use Poser in the same way. Through the Vue tutorials I'm learning things I could have never figured out myself, but they help me to get the most out of it and create wonderful renders.

aeikema.. i hear ya about the sharing of info.  I absolutely LOVE geekatplay and the massive amount of tutes there.

Here's a dumb question:

I've been trying to render a few Poser sets and I keep getting a blank gray ground in Lux. (The floor geometry of the sets aren't showing up, but they're fine in Poser)

Is this Poser's default ground plane showing up? (I hid it in Poser)

I haven't touched Poser in years, so I have no clue what I'm doing wrong!

Quote - I've been trying to render a few Poser sets and I keep getting a blank gray ground in Lux. (The floor geometry of the sets aren't showing up, but they're fine in Poser)

Very likely the camera is outside the set.

If you have added the Studio Cubed and you are rendering from the Main camera then the camera is positioned outside the set.

You need to move it inside or make the backwall of the set invisible

You're right, Paolo-the camera was in too close!

Didn't see any clipping parameters in the camera properties, so I had ruled it out.

Thanks a million!

No problem. Glad that it was that.

Cheers.

I have been reading thru the threads discussing Reality 3. There have been a lot of comparing it with other products and a lot of focus on the time it takes to do a render.

I don't think anyone is dead wrong and should keep their views to themselves.

Just remember that there are no two artist alike. What fits for one person may not fit another. For me Reality provides me with the right tool for what I want to do with my work.

As for comparing Reality with other products. For the price and the end results? Hands down Reality provides more bang for the buck...so to speak. You can spend a lot money on other products and end up with great results or spend less than a $100.00 and get really great results.

As for having the tools you need to learn Reality? I learned more from Reality forums and Paolo's videos than I did with learning Daz or Poser. Artist tend to keep secrets to themselves...I don't though.

I do commish work and I don't charge any extra for my work created with Reality, its up to the artist what he wants to charge for his work.

I keep saying proof is in the pudding...and I am not a well known artist or even a published one...but I do believe you can see what you can do with Reality from my gallery.

Hi Mustang2011

 

Well I can personally vouch for your willingness to share information and I was also impressed with your use of Reality as shown in your gallery.  I also share your concern with some of the responses, not that I think anyone is being malicious, I think they are trying to help going on about the render times being long may well put others off.  Luckily for me the time to do a render has never been a high priority.

You are of course right that each artist is different and that what suits one will not suit others.  It is a good idea to try different things to see what does suit you but that can lead to an expensive mistake.  The combination of Luxrender and Reality would appear to be one of the most cost effective ways of trying something different.

I have tried Luxrender in the past and I did like it but could not get my head around the export process, more my limitation than anything else.  I tried Reality to see if it was easier and it is.  I have been using it for less than a week so I have yet to do more than scratch the surface but already I really like the renders I am able to produce.

What is the point of buying reality3, when there is free Pose2Lux?

Reality 3 does a lot more.

Reality 3 converts the materials from Poser by scanning the Poser shader tree. It understands the Poser procedural nodes and converts them into Lux procedural textures with the maximum fidelity possible.

Reality converts inteligently materials from popular figures and provides zero-clik SSS for unparalleled skin fidelity. The Reality SSS converter includes an automatic hair-mask generator that excludes eyebros and facial hair from the SSS process for optimal results.

Reality 3 includes a fully-featured material editor that allows you to access all the features of Lux in a simple, node-less manner. You can create materials in Reality that are as complex as the Poser ones but without using a simple node. UYou can add new textures, link to exisyting textures, convert textures from one type to another with a click.

The Reality material editor includes a material preview and a procedural textures preview to allow you judge the result before rendering.

The Reality UI is simple yest very powerful, allowing you to access advanced parameters 

Reality works on all platforms supported by Poser at 64-bit.

Many other features.

Reality is also backed by the best customer support in this industry.

All the best.

I have tried both and gave up on the Pose2Lux (Not complaining it is free and I was the limiting factor) as I found it too difficult.  Reality is very easy to use and yes, the customer support is first class.

I see. Thanks.