I have to correct myself on the PLE version..... it's has both Infinite & xStream in it and you choose to install the one you need.

The Poser-Vue team could be perfect. In Poser you set up your characters while you prepare the stage in vue. For setting up the stage , vue is the ultimate tool, ... BUT I just can't get any real good render out of Vue. The antialiasing and DOF is a mess. It just looks bad at even high settings. Even Carrara looks better at low settings.

The problem could be solved by setting down vue's athmosphere, but what do I need vue then? I stopped using Vue at VueInf10.5 . I've tried Vue2014PLE to see what has been inproved. A lot, but not the render quality - too bad.

Antialiasing and DOF , if those will become as good as in any other 3d application I know, I will jump right back on Vue.

@aeilkema
Thanks for the heads-up although I think I'll give it a miss after all.

It would be nice to have the luxury of quickly creating such epic scenery but I was having a very good read of their detailed features list the other day, and did you know, even buying Vue Complete still has an absolute piss-take of a resolution restriction?

Unless I'm mistaken, the specs for Complete suggests you can only render animation at a maximum of 1920x1080.  They want $599 for a scenery generator and it's still restricted?

We're rendering in 4K since a few years now.  They can keep it, I thought the RenderUp module removed all that restrictive crap.  Looks like all it does is enable you to render at a higher resolution that we were using ten years ago.  There's a word I could use to describe E-On right now, but I'd be banned if I used it.

Lucky them.

@Timberwolf
Probably for the best!

Based on the last few posts above, Complete doesn't sound very ideal anymore, at least with regard to render quality and the UI.

Maybe I should skip it and save up for Infinite.

If you only do still images, like I do, the render quality is fine, Infinite isn't any better. The size you can render is limited by memory only :) Seems like animations are limited by render size, but not quality, the quality is the same, but perhaps you can render at larger sizes for animation in Vue infinite. I'm not sure though, I don't do animations. If you only do still images, the render size or quality in Complete is the same as in Infinite.

Quote - Based on the last few posts above, Complete doesn't sound very ideal anymore, at least with regard to render quality and the UI.

Maybe I should skip it and save up for Infinite.

Just check out e-on's user gallery. Lots of real cool stunning pictures. But most of them have that Vue typical poor antialiased grainy look.

Quote - If you only do still images, like I do, the render quality is fine, Infinite isn't any better.

As mentioned before, I have no interest in animation, so thanks for clarifying.

What about the differences in the UI?  I don't want to be following a tutorial and find myself having to figure out a work-around to accomplish whatever's being taught.

Quote - Just check out e-on's user gallery. Lots of real cool stunning pictures. But most of them have that Vue typical poor antialiased grainy look.

I've seen several of their gallery images.  I've yet to see any that have aliased edges or a grainy appearance.

The pro level stills are from houses with enough renderfarm power to chew up a scene quickly. A lot of the poor quality renders out there are due to incorrect settings or getting frustrated with how long borderline hardware is taking to render and dropping the quality of the worst offenders.....which is AA and lighting quality settings. And a lot of the flicker issues only show when animating, the vast majority are in the distance, where things are a lot more granular and virtual than close up is.

I always try to be unbiased about these things no matter what tool I prefer, and to be honest, I'm impressed by Vue's renderer.  I used it once for about two weeks many years back, and even back then I really liked it.

I've never taken much notice of Vue since then, so the aliasing thing isn't something I notice.  But one thing I do like about the output is that it has an organic look to it, and maybe that has something to do with the aliasing or algorithms they use for outdoor scenery.  But yup, I do like the way it sort of 'meshes together' to produce it's final look, if that makes any sense.  Kinda like comparing the look of film to digital (I prefer the look of film), and although Vue is digital, I think there's something slightly organic looking about the way it renders, and like I said, maybe that has something to do with the different way Vue renders things.

That animation restriction is waaaaaaaaay too petty for my liking, though, and for their pettiness they lost at least this potential (although not very likely) customer.

Quote - Just check out e-on's user gallery. Lots of real cool stunning pictures. But most of them have that Vue typical poor antialiased grainy look.

You and I must be looking at something else then Whenever I browse through whichever Vue gallery I choose, here, at Cornucopia3D or E-onsoftware, I do see stunning images that do not have a grainly look at all. Yes, some of the old ones do have it, some of the beginner ones do have it and some rendered with old versions of Vue, but on the whole, they look excellent.

Here at Rendo there are probably more then elsewhere, but I don't even pay attention to those Vue images that have been put together centering on a badly posed Poser figure, with a horrible looking mountain and a few badly placed trees and rendered with horrible light settings. You don't need Vue for that and those often look grainy since the creator wants quick results.

But in general, those who put some effort into their images and post them these days are pretty good and sure no grain at all. You should really take a look at Cornucopia3D's gallery of this month, some excellent stuff there.

Yes, Vue used to be very grainy when rendering, but from version 9 and upwards there is no need for that anymore when doing still images. Any good i7 has the power to do decent renders and once you get the lighting right in Vue, you end up with good and crisp images.

For animation it's a different story. You need power to get those done in good quality, something most users do lack for animation. Let's be honest, when was the last time you did see a stunning quality animation done with Poser by some home user? I haven't. Yes, I've seen fun animations, but the quality of most is hardly acceptable..... most Poser still images have a mich hogher quality then any animation out there. That's not a problem that is related to Vue only, but to most 3D applications being used on a computer set up for home use :)

i was checking the galleries again. Of course not all are grainy, but whenever there are a lot of plants in the scene, it is grainy. Let me make it clear: It is NOT the artist's ability , it is something wrong in the vue render engine. I followed a lot of tutorials promissing to avoid that grainy look, but it never worked. It might work at very high render settings, that will result in 24h rendering for a 1600 by 900 picture.

Howie Farkes has some scenes with plenty of plants out for both-Vue and Carrara.. Carrara renders look much nicer even with low antialiasing settings.

@ aeilkema:

I like your vue renders. Really cool scenes, but sorry your renders are grainy. You realy know about render settings, so it is NOT your  mistake. Let me repeat. It is in the Vue render engine. I have never seen that kind of grainyness in another render app. You'll immediatly know it is a vue render, when you have a grainy plant scene. I have also seen lot's of renders that were postworked with a blurring tool to get rid of that bad antialiased look. I've tried the same BTW.

Conclusion:

Artists' work: amaizing

Vue features: Best tool for creating worlds - without any real competition.

Vue render - awful for being slow and being grainy on plants

Quote - I like your vue renders. Really cool scenes

Thanks :)

I've been using the Poser-Vue workflow since 2007, initially started with Esprit but found it too limiting so upgraded to Infinite and never regretted it.

The initial outlay for Infinite is pretty high but the maintenance plan takes the sting out of it, this year I paid just £160 to renew - for that I get the .5 and full version releases.

Vue is actually pretty good for interior scenes too once you get the hang of the lighting and atmosphere controls

eg

The new Daylight Portals in 2014.5 improve things even further allowing you to control exactly where light enters a structure.

Cool.....

A funny thing happened today. I did see an image. Everything in it was made in Blender, but it was rendered in Vue. When I asked about why he didn't render it in Blender, he simply stated: "But a render in Vue makes much more fun"

Go figure :)

Quote - The reason they do Infinite as PLE is to suck you in :)

It worked.

Quote - As a hobby user, a lot of people don't need Infinite at all, but they still buy it after using PLE. It has a slightly different UI for a number of functions that simply work better then the Artists versions. It of course offers a number of features that the Artist versions lack. I tried the PL version first and also the 30 day trial of Studio (the version I wanted to get). I had a hard time going from PLE to the Studio trial, you right away miss certain features and notice that PLE has a better setup then the Artists versions. To this day, I still miss a number of features.

All of the Artist versions of Vue went on sale the other day, for 25% off through July 6.  I was only $70 away from 2014 Complete (the version I started this thread for) when I found out, so I downloaded the 30-day trial.

Ho-ly cow...

Just in terms of aesthetics, the differences in the UI between Complete and the Infinite PLE are like night and day.

And good luck to anyone finding a tutorial that actually uses 2014 Complete, or active support forums.  The Kickstart Tutorial off the Help menu even points to a low-quality, non-controllable, browser-run SWF video that uses Vue 6!  By low quality, I mean it's all text-based, and the menu options in the version they use are completely illegible.

Even worse, neither version is compatible with my 3D mouse.  That alone is a deal-breaker for me, I don't care how powerful Vue is.

I'm going to stay away from Vue altogether, and stick with pre-fabbed Poser content.  There's a really nice looking Enchanted Forest at DAZ3D that will suffice for my interest in creating woodsy death scenes, and my Poser/Reality/Lux workflow will let me do great things with it.

Now I just have to figure out what else to do with the $530 I've saved.  :)

You can buy a lot of poser content for that :) Or perhaps start saving for a new computer for whenever you need it. Or keep it until Poser 2015 comes and spent it then. Should I go on ;)

Sorry it didn't work out for you, Nyghtfall.
As for the surplus cash, feel free to send it this way if you're stuck for ideas :biggrin:

I was tending towards Vue when I had enough money saved but if it is true that the 3D mouse is not supported then that would be a deal breaker for me as well.  I have used it for years in Poser and even found a program that would allow it to be supported in Silo.  I know if I purchased Vue of any sort I would not use it much as I would find the loss of the 3D mouse a cpnstant pain.

spend the 500 squids on headache tabs and try blender ;-)

spend the odd 30 on a bottle of something for when you have that WOW moment

Quote - spend the 500 squids on headache tabs and try blender ;-)

spend the odd 30 on a bottle of something for when you have that WOW moment

You're going to need those if you do that, my head already hurts when thinking about Blender :)

Headache tabs... nice... hehehe...

I've actually already found a much more worthy alternative to Vue.  I recently learned that EVGA has released a 6GB Geforce GTX 780 graphics card.  I'll be ordering that in the next few weeks to replace my 4GB Geforce GTX 760.

Aren't you going to tell us what you found more worthy than Vue?
Curious what else is out there for all that shrubbery stuff!

Quote -
Aren't you going to tell us what you found more worthy than Vue?
Curious what else is out there for all that shrubbery stuff!

Are you suggesting a new video card isn't worth $600?  :)

Ah, right, I thought you meant another software package and the card was a bonus :-P

nice card ;-) cycles will fly well with all that vram

Ah, I see, so he's finally decided on Blender then!
I agree, that must be an awesome card for Blender Cycles :-)

Quote - > Quote -

Aren't you going to tell us what you found more worthy than Vue?
Curious what else is out there for all that shrubbery stuff!

Are you suggesting a new video card isn't worth $600?  :)

No, to me it isn't. I'm not playing games, have no gpu rendering engine, Vue and Poser work fine with my outdated ATI 1Gb HD 74xx, so what in the world am I going to do with such an expensive card? I'm sure it's worth every penny to you, but if I had that kind of money laying around, I would be tempted to use it towards the sidegrade to Vue Infinite :)

I don't play games, either, nor do I have a GPU renderer.

My intent is to give Poser's Preview Window more VRAM to maintain smooth navigation when working with scenes with high poly counts.

For example, I recently bought this Loft Apartment.  The genius who created it made the whole thing and its contents one giant, non-adjustable Prop.  Navigation slows to a crawl when I venture inside, and is reduced to a virtual slide-show when I add V4 and M4 to the scene.  I'm hoping the extra VRAM will smooth things out again.

I have the Loft Apartment as well, along with a lot of other models from the same vendor, and have to say I have not noticed an issue with the preview.  The scenes I have created are with at least one V4WM or a V4WM and M4, both with clothes.  I don't think my set up is exceptional my any means.

Like others I do not play games......well not on the PC so that is not an issue.

I seriously doubt that new card is going to make much difference. I've got massive props in Poser and for that matter my last scene was a huge scene. It had one massive building prop, at least 50 small and large props, 9 different fully dressed figures ( a mix of V5, V3, M3 and M4) with large body textures and of course they had hair :) The figures did wear either dresses, tunics with pants and boots or a full armor.

My Poser is still very responsive and I don't have the GPU or VRAM you've got, not even close to it. My graphics card is a ATI HD 7450m with 1GB..... they system is a laptop with an i5 2450m and 6Gb of RAM. OpenGL is set on the highest settings and everything is smooth and resposive. I even can use harware shading without a problem, everything is still responsive, not as smooth, but stiill good and the sure not crawling along, but there is a slight noticable lag now. It's save to say that if my laptop can handle all of that, yours should be able to handle a lot more and a lot easier.

I don't have that loft, but looking at it my latest scene comes pretty close. I do have a similar appartment scene and I've got no problem with that either.

I'd say there is something wrong with your settings if you can't handle that with all the power you've got now already. Is there some way to monitor the VRAM your current card is using? I seriously doubt that loft with a few figures will need 4Gb at all. I know most Poser stuff is fine with 1GB of Vram, since a lot of vendors do not have the latest hardware at all, a lot of them use older stuff.

Just looking at what the loft all works with and I do see Poser 7 and DS3..... if it works in that it sure isn't going to eat op lot's of Vram at all.

I agree, I doubt that card (awesome as it is), will make any difference to the Poser Previewer Window.  That feature was something I was looking forward to but in the end I just removed it.  Would be cool if it made use of the main window and used the GPU to compute.

That card is surely a real beauty for use with Blender Cycles or Octane, but like the others said, I can't see it effecting that previewer.  I think the previewer needs the most CPU cores you can get (assuming it's multicore aware) and as high CPU clock speed as you can get.

I know how you feel though, and it's a shame Poser rendering doesn't use the GPU to speed things up, I love FireFly and it would be incredibly cool if they could make it use the GPU to do it's number crunching.  I don't mean to make it a physical renderer, I just mean to speed the current one up.

Imagine seeing hundreds of squares rendering at once instead of the usual four, six, or eight!

I'm suddenly very glad I mentioned the new card here.  I'd love to have it, but if I'm just going to be wasting my money on a negligible performance improvement, I'd rather put my money toward other things, and re-visit the possibility of buying the card later, when the price drops.

I'll try examining VRAM usage when navigating that prop and see what I can do to tweak my settings.

Thanks for the tips.

Good luck, let us know if you succeeded.

if you haven't ordered it yet dont bother

I DID think you had swayed the blender way ;-)

it wont make much dif to poser

more ram better cpu or overclocking the one you have is a cheaper option (overclocking is a matter of choice lol )

Found a free GPU monitoring app, called GPUZ.

Even with just the loft apartment loaded, GPUZ reported only 243MB of VRAM in use, so, yeah, the graphics card would've been a huge waist.

According to what little info I could find on how to boost performance in Poser's Preview Window, the only solution availble to try is to make sure OpenGL is selected as the preview engine, instead of SreeD, and it already is.

This is really annoying.

Which version of Poser do you use?

PP14 SR 3.1

Do you have Enable Harware Shading on in the preview settings? If yes, switch it off for this scene and see if things speed up. If you don't have it enabled, try switching it on, it may unleash the real power of your gpu.

I'm sure you've tried switching between the PBuffer and Scene Window, if not give that a try.

There also is the Preview texture resolution slider. With this being one huge prop, I would set it lower then usual, that could speed up things a lot.

For other scenes go back to your usual settings if they work fine for you, but for this one try some different preview settings.

When I work with big scenes, I usually make the stuff I don't work with invisible. This can be done quickly in the hierarchy editor, but I usually have XO (a kind of extended hierarchy editor) always open on a second screen. So clothes are only visible in the editor when they are relevant, and invisible parts of the scene do not bother me. This really speeds up things.

The relevant settings for the preview window can be found in the render settings menu, preview tab. Disable the hardware shading and/or AO to get more speed, of course the preview window won't look quite as good as before after disabeling the hardware shading, but the speed boost is quite noticeable.

Quote - Do you have Enable Harware Shading on in the preview settings? If yes, switch it off for this scene and see if things speed up.

I did have it enabled.  Disabling it helped.

Quote - I'm sure you've tried switching between the PBuffer and Scene Window, if not give that a try.

Already using Scene Window.

Quote - There also is the Preview texture resolution slider. With this being one huge prop, I would set it lower then usual, that could speed up things a lot.

And now we're cookin'.  Disabling hardware shading and sliding the texture resolution all the way to the left did the trick.

Thanks!  :D

Quote - ... of course the preview window won't look quite as good as before after disabeling the hardware shading, but the speed boost is quite noticeable.

I don't render in Poser anyway, so that's not a concern.  My workflow uses Reality/Lux.

@bantha**
Thanks for posting that Preview Settings tip, I had no idea about that either!

@Nyghtfall**
So now that you're happy with the preview speed, working in Poser and rendering in Lux via Reality, have you thought about what might be out there to feed your hunger for shrubbery/forestry etc?

Are there any dedicated systems designed to work something like the forest painting in Vue does, but one that is designed to export to any rendering program, and therefore, able to be brought into Poser as geometry?

If you had that as well, you'd likely have a very disirable setup that'll get you what you want because you get to keep your current workflow and have the added benefit of a fast preview and a quick and efficient way to do forestry etc!

Glad to see it's working now and pumeco's question has my interest :)

Quote - **
@Nyghtfall**
So now that you're happy with the preview speed, working in Poser and rendering in Lux via Reality, have you thought about what might be out there to feed your hunger for shrubbery/forestry etc?

I'm not aware of anything comparable to Vue, and haven't bothered looking.  As I mentioned earlier, I'm sticking with prefabbed Poser content for woodsy outdoor scenes, like the Enchanted Forest at DAZ 3D.

But, thanks to your persistant advice, and heddeld's mention of a term I'm unfamiliar with called "cycles" - I decided to check out Blender for other possible uses completely unrelated to this thread.

So.  Cycles is Blender's open-source answer to a $500 copy of Octane.  Interesting.  A 6GB video card would definitely be useful for that.  There's a setting in Reality to enable GPU rendering for Lux, but Paolo recommends against using it for now.

Given the rising popularity of GPU-based rendering, I've decided to future-proof my PC and buy the card.  If at some point Reality/Lux begin offering GPU rendering as well, I want to be ready for it.  Meanwhile, I'm going to start learning how to use Blender, too.  I want to expand my skills beyond creating art with Poser, and Blender looks like a promsing challenge.

My new video card will be here Saturday.

(NyghtFall) 

Quote -   If at some point Reality/Lux begin offering GPU rendering as well, I want to be ready for it.

  Reality/Lux already offers GPU rendering, hybrid (GPU+CPU), and CPU-only rendering modes.  However, Lux will use a GPU's OpenCL (not OpenGL), and in short, that means you'd want an AMD/ATI/Radeon video card or set thereof.  Octane uses OpenGL, and runs best on nVidia cards, but Lux uses OpenCL and prefers AMD cards. Corrections welcome, if I've made any errors here.

Cycles is a great rendering engine, but at least in 2.70 the gpu renderer won't do SSS, so images with a decent skin shader need to be rendered on the cpu at the moment.

I had some success wrapping my head around blender in the last half year, so either I've become much more tolerant or the user interface has improved a lot. I think it's the latter, ad the feature set seems to be worth it.

Quote - Octane uses OpenGL, and runs best on nVidia cards, but Lux uses OpenCL and prefers AMD cards.

Mother pus bucket.  So much for that idea.

I'm not switching to ATI or AMD.  I've never used anything but nVidia.

Thanks for the tip.  Much appreciated.  I'm not in the habit of needlessly wasting money, so I've canceled my order.

Quote - Cycles is a great rendering engine, but at least in 2.70 the gpu renderer won't do SSS, so images with a decent skin shader need to be rendered on the cpu at the moment.

Another great tip, thanks.  I love SSS to much to give that up.

I'll just remain content with CPU-based rendering.  It's much less of a headache to understand, and less expensive.  At least I've got a powerhouse of a CPU.

Quote - (NyghtFall) 

Quote -   If at some point Reality/Lux begin offering GPU rendering as well, I want to be ready for it.

  Reality/Lux already offers GPU rendering, hybrid (GPU+CPU), and CPU-only rendering modes.  However, Lux will use a GPU's OpenCL (not OpenGL), and in short, that means you'd want an AMD/ATI/Radeon video card or set thereof.  Octane uses OpenGL, and runs best on nVidia cards, but Lux uses OpenCL and prefers AMD cards. Corrections welcome, if I've made any errors here.

Not to nitpick - and I'm sure you know the difference, but just to avoid any future confusion for those that don't ....... Octane uses Cuda, which is Nvidia's proprietary GPU processing technology, and only runs on Nvidia based cards. Nvidia cards support OpenCL GPU processing as well, they just aren't as efficient at processing OpenCL instructions as ATI cards. Cycles, LuxRender SLG (GPU only) and CPU+GPU all use OpenCL, and run on Nvidia cards.

OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is "a cross-language, multi-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering". Most 3d software, including Poser, use OpenGL for the rapid 3D rendering in the interactive viewport.

Well I have finally taken the plunge and purchased Vue Studio, well sort of.  I ordered it but the payment on my Credit Card failed, OK I may have made an error inputting the card deatails although I did check them.  Strange thing is, unlike other stores, I have no option to check and change the details or cancel the order and try again.  Very weird, still I will just have to remain patient.

I went for Vue for a number of reasons, first is the ability to use Poser shaders within Vue which I would lose in most other Poser alternatives.  I also have experience and like it but my version 8 is very dated, thanks to my one dislike of constantly having to upgrade the modules (I was using Esprit) which Studio negates in a large part.  I also like the upgrade subscription which I will take out as soon as I can place a valid order.

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait with fingers crossed that I have made the right choice.

Regards an alternative to Vue; I meant something designed for doing plants and trees and stuff, a dedicated generator of sorts.  There's something like that out there but I just cannot remember the name of it!

Regards Blender Cycles and the card you ordered; Cycles does indeed work with an nVidia card because I use it myself, but as DustRider pointed out, it's just not as efficient on an nVidia card as a CUDA-based renderer.  It does work though, so it may be just a matter of waiting for nVidia to implement better OpenCL drivers.

PS, Glad to hear you've decided to check out Blender.

Ah, here it is, a tree and plant generator that is capable of really good looking trees, plants, grass etc.

You can export in OBJ format and therefore bring this stuff into Poser.
Haven't actually tried it myself, but will do so later.

It's free as well so nothing to lose:
Click for Arbaro - The Tree Generator

Some awesome looking trees and plants on that page!