I think the 660Ti is definitely a good starting option.  IMO there is two types of renderspeed requirements:

1. Professional high resolution animation of complex scenes needing a < 1min per frame render time, and

2. General single copy artwork type rendering (for posting at Rendo!).

The 650 and 660's will not cut it for 1) (where you will need 1 or more 680.690/Titans), but are perfect for 2) because a) they still give almost immediate feedback on the scene, lighting and material chagnes you;ve made, and b) whilst they might take 5, 10 or 15 mins to do the final render....that's the final render so you only have to do it once.

I'm upgrading my very low-spec 550Ti and going to a 660 or 660Ti because I won't really get enough benefit from a bigger card to justify the cost.

Paul

I just got this installed:

EVGA GeForce GTX 670 SuperClocked 4096MB GDDR5, 2x Dual-Link DVI, HDMI, DP, 4-Way SLI Ready Graphics CardNo where near high-end, but it fit my budget. I would LOVE a Titan or Quadro but they're out of reach for me right now.

I'm guessing then, I'll be in okay shape with this card?

You will be perfectly in shape with the GTX670.

I would suggest to keep your old videocard installed as well. That way you can offload the OS and other applications to that card leaving you with a better performance for the UI and more VRAM for Octane.

Quote - You will be perfectly in shape with the GTX670.

I would suggest to keep your old videocard installed as well. That way you can offload the OS and other applications to that card leaving you with a better performance for the UI and more VRAM for Octane.

 

That never occured to me! I simply yanked my old GT9600 and plopped in the new one.

Thanks for the advice!!

Quote - I just uploaded this one to my gallery.  Poser to Octane.

That octane skin shader setup looks excellent.

Would you consider sharing your settings?

I already posted about textures and I bought a 670 gTX 4 and I still have the some pbs with textures.

I Didn't kept my old quatro (my husband took it for his computer) whith the new my  pb is not speed.

No textures and transparency in props and no transparency in clothing .

Processor intel core i7 CPU-12 GO of ram

Octane demo, poser pro 2012.

What's wrong with me ?

No textures and transparency in props and no transparency in clothing .

Which version of the demo are you using?  The latest is 1.16a which contains all the latest enhancements to the commercail version - so make sure you are using that one (the version number is on the Setup window header).

Paul

Hello

I've just loaded octane's demo in Otoy'site. It's 1.10 for octane and 1 for the plug

Nothing have changed. Where can I get the 1.16a. ?

I would really like to buy octane . I've already changed my graphic card. Don't know what to do ?

Have a good day

I've just loaded octane's demo in Otoy'site. It's 1.10 for octane and 1 for the plug

Nothing have changed. Where can I get the 1.16a. ?

You don't need to install Octane Standalone in order to run the OctaneRender for Poser demo (but you need to purchase a license for Standalone when you purchase the plugin license).  The Poser plugin you would have downloaded would be 1.16a3 (if you downloaded it in the last 3 or 4 days) - which is the latest demo.

Hope that helps.

Paul

Unfortunatly no !

I already had the 1.16a3.

I have an error message about the ID and the need to activate the plug but I think it's because it's a demo version. All seems to be OK to import meshes and textures .In the texture tree of octane the indicated parameters are good .The images for textures are in right place but don't render.I can put an alpha map in the transparency for exemple but it dont render. I can change the whole color and tranparency but not use maps .

I give up. I've changed the graphic card, the cuda test works well don't see what I can do now.

I'm dissapointed , I'll upgrade to PP2014 and see later.

Thanks for your advices.

If the material in Poser has color maps which are altered by a set of nodes, the color may be different or the maps may not attach at all. Some material setups are too difficult to convert by the plugin. You have to do that manually

The same is the case for transmaps. If you are not directly attached to the transparency channel they may have to be adapted in plugin material nodes. In some cases you have have to use a multiply node to create the same effect as firefly does: Multiply the transmap by the value which is in the transmap connecter in Poser.

The Octane plugin is not a one click solution - in some cases you have to make manual adjustments

To wimvdb

Thank you a lot .In fact I have to rebuilt materials. Now it works. I was focused on the hardware and didnt took the time to undestand the material tree and nodes of octane even if they rather easy to use. tried to quickly.

Have a good day

I have an error message about the ID and the need to activate the plug but I think it's because it's a demo version.

Could you send a screenshot of this message to paul at physicalc-software dot com pls (or post it here)?  I'd like to fix it.

Paul

I've read all four pages of this and I still can't keep everything straight...  I do know I can't really afford Octane though...  So I am looking at Reality/Luxrender and wondering if it would suit my needs.

I don't really do high res images because they take so long.  I know that resolutions keep going up and I'm going to have to get used to the idea of doubling the resolution I render at.  One of my current projects is taking about an hour per frame, and that's just unacceptable to me for stills and makes animations unthinkable.  I am happy with Firefly's output, but not the long render time.  Most people seem to be looking at other renderers because they are more physically accurate, I just want results similar to what I'm getting now in a fraction of the time.  Would I get more benefit going from 4 cores (using 3) to 8 cores (using 7), or should I put the money into a beefier GPU?

I was looking at the GTX 660ti, even though it was mentioned above that it is a less than ideal card.  Does Luxrender take advantage of an SLI setup?  Would two 660ti cards compare to a gtx 670, or would that card's higher RAM be more useful?  I'm assuming that two 660s would still only give me 2GB usable memory as each texture would need to be sent to both cards?

This is almost too much for me to keep track of...

Could you send a screenshot of this message to paul at physicalc-software dot com pls (or post it here)?  I'd like to fix it.

Hello! that's the screenshot.

I begin to undestand how textures works in octane

Have a good day

Hello! that's the screenshot.

Excellent - thank you.  I'll post an updated version of the demo which fixes this in the next 12 hours.

Paul

Quote - I don't really do high res images because they take so long.  I know that resolutions keep going up and I'm going to have to get used to the idea of doubling the resolution I render at.  One of my current projects is taking about an hour per frame, and that's just unacceptable to me for stills and makes animations unthinkable.  I am happy with Firefly's output, but not the long render time.  Most people seem to be looking at other renderers because they are more physically accurate, I just want results similar to what I'm getting now in a fraction of the time.  

This was pretty much where I was coming from.

I have gone with C4D as a renderer. For me, it is around 50x faster than Firefly (!). It is an expensive option, but I am not bound to any hardware.

I have a couple of projects on the boil and will post some examples soon.

Quote - All this talk about Octane vs. Vue or any other renderer for that matter is a load of old BS if you ask me. Are there bad renders being done with Octane? Of course. Are there bad renders being done with Poser and Vue? Oh yes!  Getting a new renderer doesn't automatically make your images better. If you're bad at lighting and posing with Poser, Octane, Reality or Vue won't fix that problem for you. I bought Octane after trying out the demo. I like how fast it renders and how it handles lighting and materials.  That being said I still have a lot to learn to get the most out of it.   It also suit me personally since I have a very old system but a new GTX660 graphics card (bought for computer gaming).

Quoted for enthusiastic agreement. What attracted me to Octane and the Poser plugin was that it was all contained in Poser: make a change to the scene, it's immediately reflected in your plugin viewport. I already had Octane -- bought it way back when it was only a hundred bucks (beta version) which stupidly I'd never installed (but finally did) so I only had to cough up another AUD$134 (Euros 99) for the plugin. Unfortunately, I did get a GTX580 with only 1.5 gig VRAM, but time goes on and -- as we do here in Oz -- one can save up for a better card.

Playing with the plugin alone, it is more than worth the price. Even though the LiveDB material set might seem a bit limited, the fact that you do have caustics makes a world of difference. I'm still learning this tool, so I won't show any renders yet... if you must, you can have a peek at a WIP.

There are two main reasons why anyone would want to use a different renderer with Poser; quality and speed.  I'd like to have a clear impression of which would be best for me, given my future hardware purchasing would need reflect that choice.  Is it as simple as "versus Firefly, Octane will give you more accurate renders and Lux will give you faster renders"?  That's what I really need to know, comparisons of quality are largely moot if I'm currently content with Firefly's output.  Still not seeing much information on how these renderers handle heavily displaced geometry.  Surely there are some sacrifices to be made to achieve these gains?

Anyone know how Vue's renderer compares to Firefly (speedwise), and whether it has any particular limitations (especially with regard to PoserPro 2014)?

Is it as simple as "versus Firefly, Octane will give you more accurate renders and Lux will give you faster renders"?  That's what I really need to know, comparisons of quality are largely moot if I'm currently content with Firefly's output.  Still not seeing much information on how these renderers handle heavily displaced geometry.  Surely there are some sacrifices to be made to achieve these gains?

Octane is the fastest unbiased renderer.  The only sacrifice is that you are limited to 144 color texturemaps and 68 b&w (bump/trans) maps and you need a compatible graphics card.  Plus texturemaps have to fit in your graphics card memory (seldom a limitation on a 2GB card and with 3GB not a limitation).

There is a good independent Lux verses Octane blog entry on Deviart (link to it from my facebook page below).  I think they are both great rendering solutions for Poser.

heavily displaced geometry.

Are you referring to displacement maps or actual displaced vertices?

Would two 660ti cards compare to a gtx 670, or would that card's higher RAM be more useful?

My understanding is that a 660Ti card provides almost the same Octane rendering speed as a 670, and is a much lower cost.  According to the Octane benchmarks, a Titan is 3.65 times quicker than a 660Ti.

Paul

Quote - heavily displaced geometry.

Are you referring to displacement maps or actual displaced vertices?

I guess I meant how well do these renderers handle Poser materials which use displacement maps.  I thought you had to have micro-polygons to render the materials as Firefly does.  My environments use a lot of (render-time) displaced geometry, and I wasn't sure if most renderers support that now, and if there would be any problems with scale/strength with regard to Poser units.

Thanks for the info...  The possibilities are intriguing.

Attached Link: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32909

Paul