While rendering in a game engine sounds cool, you will face a few issues, as you will do with all GPU based render engines. A game engine is made for rendering real time so it has it's strengths and limits. If you do renderings for screen only, a game engine, octane, luxrender and so on will work well. If you want to use your images for print, I wouldn't even go there at all. The main problem with such render engines is that Poser is made with a completely different way of working in mind. You will need to restructure your scenes, lights, materials, textures and so on. You will face many obstacles and quite some people, like Basicwiz and me give up in the end. While some of the promos for these kind of render engines look stunning, I have yet to see a Poser user get that kind of quality and images. If you want those kind of images, be prepared to spent a lot of time in remaking your scenes and rethinking your workflow.

Every rendering engine has it's strength and weakness, but at the moment GPU rendering engines and game engines (basically the same) have huge limitations. I know lot's of people claim they're faster and yes they are, if you are prepared to pay the price.... less quality. If you are that desperate to ditch Firefly, then why not use Vue? It's a proven way and it sure beats any game engine or GPU rendering engine out there. Once you master Vue's rendering engine, you'll be amazed what it can deliver, it's a whole different thing. But also that one needs time to be learned, but there are a lot less obstacles to overcome when using Vue in combination with Poser. They work very well together, since both companies have put time and effort into making them work together.

As far as most users.... think again. Only a minority of Poser users comes here. With all the time and effort SM puts into improving Firefly with every new version and update, I'd say most poser users still use it. I know I do, it's easy to use, it's fast and it offers a lot of excellent features for rendering. It is very underrated and not appreciated by the minority here. But Firefly can do one thing very well and that is render Poser images. Even Vue with all it's rendering power, cannot beat Firely when it comes to portraits for example, but that's not the only area. Firefly and Poser are just made for each other and once you get to know how to use both, they can deliver very well as a team. Do you really think that if most users don't use Firefly, SM would put all of this time and effort into it?

Also keep in mind that these GPU rendering phase we had was a hype like a lot things when it concerns poser. It pretty much died down.... they excitement has worn off and reality stepped in again. GPU rendering is not easy at all and I'm suspecting that a lot of users who were very exciting about it, have already abandoned it. If I browse through the galleries I do believe Firefly is still going strong..... very strong.

I've found mastering Firefly and now Vue in combination with Firefly much easier then all other routes. I'm not saying it's easy, but at least you do not need to rethink how you use lights, materials, textures and so on. Is Firefly the best rendering engine in the world? No! Does vue have the best rendering engine in the world? No! but together they take you a lot further and deliver a lot more then any single rendering engine or combination I've seen so far.

I know Vue is an investment, but so is GPU rendering. You just need the best graphics card otherwise you will not get what you want. Getting one of those casts a lot of money. I know people will say you can do with less, but trust me, they have made a lot of compromises or are like Basicwiz and me..... frustrated and not willing to accept lesser quality then what we're used to. I'm happy I just stopped with the whole idea of GPU rendering and spent my money on Vue instead. At least I get awesome quality for a lot less hassle now and I'm able to render for (large format) print as well. Now I have two excellent rendering engines with each it's own strenghts without going crazy :-)

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk