Quote - As to Lux and Octane, for me, the deal breaker is that Poser shaders do not accurately translate into the other render environments. Nor should we EXPECT them to! They are separate projects. I'm not willing to lose the power of the new rendering options in firefly for some modest quality gain in another platform. I'm with the group who says you are not going to get results in those other systems that you can't get by learning the nuances of firefly. Certainly not without a speed trade-off. I've put my time into doing the hard work tweaking firefly, but that's me. Your mileage may vary.

 

That really describes well the point I am at although I do admit I came to that point after I had purchased Reality 3.  There is no doubt that Luxrender can supply very good rendors and that Reality 3 makes it easier to use but the downside is the time taken to get that quality.  It is not just a question of render times but the time spent getting the textures right.

I not expecting a one click solution but I have decided that my time spent improving my skills with Poser lights is the quickest way to get to where I want to be.  I also know I am no where near the limits of what Poser lighting and Firefly can do.

The point about the graphics card used to be true and probably is for the majority of Poser users as the preview is done by the graphics card but the render is done by the CPU.  I know Octane uses the GPU and Luxrender had the option to use the GPU or CPU, I did try the GPU when I first started using Reality 3 but after it consistantly 'blue screened' my system so I gave up.  Not blaming Reality 3 mind, probably just a limitation of my system.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.