Hello to all, I would like to discuss something that I have found out on the above mentioned subject. I have added a picture so that you can see what I am talking about. This is actually a patchwork of two of my latest images, both are - for this comparison - completely unedited; meaning this is what I achieved after rendering was finished. There is one thing missing / different on the Bryce render, this is the "sparkle" (that I have forgotten to export as an object) and the postiton of the sphere is different. Oh, and the lightning of course. On the left side you see the image that I got when I rendered the picture in Poser. As you can see, the structure of back and left wall are clearly visible, and also the floor texture is great. But - just look at the two enlarged detail parts of the picture that I have added on each side to the bottom - how poor that wonderful dress texture comes out! These are (to explain what I have done that I find this look poor) 3000x3000 color-, bump- and transparency textures to make sure that this "netting" will look great, and what does the Poser render make of it? ...something blurry and "washed out". Now look at the right side - the Bryce render. The structures of the walls and floor show up more than bad, and I have really tried a lot about the lightning of that scene but it did not get better. But the best thing is - the dress texture. *I* personally have the feeling that I can *touch* the netting on the dress, as you can (hopefully) see in the two enlarged areas that I have added to the right side. Another difference between these two (originally both 2000x1500 sized) pictures was, of course, the rendering time. The Bryce pic took about 35 hours to render, the Poser pic was finished in about 5 minutes. But - for the dress alone - this was worth it. What are your experiences on the difference of Poser / Bryce renderings? What do you prefer? I personally never thought that Bryce was the "outdoor" thing and Poser the "indoor" thing, even though I must admit that I could never make a realistic "Poser-Outdoor-picture" *lol*. Hoping for a good discussion, and sorry for the size of the image (could not make it smaller in order to keep the details), sincerely, Sabine

First of all ... Apples and oranges. And by no means do I mean to offend. Poser is NOT a true Ray Tracing engine, whereas Bryce is. I.E. No true reflections or refractions in Poser. As to why your textures in Poser are coming out blury/fuzzy I don't know. I have never had that problem. Poser does not do bumps well (even at 100% Poser's bump is very low) but when it comes to textures it has always shined, giving very good results. So if the dress is relying on a bump map to achive the "mesh" that's more likely why Bryce does a better render on that. Again, it's not really fair to compare the two. I have done some spectacular renders in Poser, but I tend to do my final images in Bryce. But if I had Maya or Lightwave (to name a few) I'd use those. For a low priced program, Poser can't be beat. But IMHO it's not the program to do a final render (Yet -- maybe in Poser 5). It IS however the program to do what it does best ... Pose! And then export to another program. 35 hours?! You must be using Bryce 5 with everything at it's higest render settings and or using volumetrics. It also seems that you need to set Poser at 300 dpi/ppi and 2000 x 1500 to get more detail. The 300 setting makes a difference, if you leave it at the default (around 72 dpi) it will lose detail. Well that's my 2 cents ;-) James

Well 35 hours versus 5 minutes is a very big difference. I have noticed that setting poser to render at it's maximum size brings out more detail. It does take longer but not 35 hours. I don't think Poser can ever get that "Bryce look" though.

Which version of Bryce did you use?

I think Poser is capable of doing the above bryce render with near the same quality. It just takes more than one light.

I agree to jschoen and Mallenlane.Its very much depending on renderresolution and specially lights. I use the spotlights more and more and the results are getting better.

First: I am using Bryce 4, NO volumnetric lights. But just remember: We have 3 maps (color-, bump-, transparency) on the dress at 3000x3000 each here; two textures on the body (bump- and color) at 2500x2500; three hair maps (c/b/t) at 1500x1500) and rwo at 3000x3000 on the amazone palace in the background. This takes ime to render in Bryce! Of course the netting is achieved with a transparency map; how would you do that with a bump map? And I always render the final pictures in Poser and Bryce at 300 dpi. Oh, and, of course, there is more than one light in both scenes. Where, do you think, does - for example - the light on the back wall come from? What I was just so surprised about is that both pictures show these big differences in the dress mapping and the wall mapping. Sincerely, Sabine

what were the shadow maps set to in Poser? Bryce raytraces shadows and therefore they come out as crisp as the iamge is large, Poser cannot, and shadow quality ahs to be set per image really. So for an image thats 2000x1500 you would need a Poser shadow map size of 2048 for your strong lights. Some of the mottled effect on the the dress appears to be from a low shadowmap size being blurred past the mesh of the dress, but I could be wrong.

I think the Poser render would be closer if you pot a spotlight on the dress, it is a little dark there. After saying that though, you can't really compare the two, Poser has a very simple (but very fast) rendering engine. Poser is also much, much simplier to set up, you can do in minutes what takes hours in Bryce, and while 35 hours ius a little long I've had many Bryce renders that had to run all night. I've got a love-hate relationship with Bryce, though. Bryce 5 does bring in big object files in much better than 4 ( I could never get two characters in on the same import in 4), and the renders are nice, but the interface is strictly from outer space, and this has to be the hardest program to learn ever created. It is also hard to actually see what you are doing without a test render, and each render takes forever. There is also just too much randomness about everything, like it ais all a big game, hard to get it to do what you want - all the dials work weird, tiny changes often make huge differences in the render. The whole thing really needs to be rethought.

What dress model is that? It is beautiful and the flow is awsome. Especially like the texture on the dress.

obviously bryce has a much better rendering engine. but honestly, i dont think your 'comparison' is completely fair here - ive NEVER produced a render that looks as blurry and dingy as the one you show for poser. with a few more lights, some decent bump mapping, and a DPI of 180 or greater would make that look a LOT better. and it also seems that you compressed the jpg at like 20 quality, lol. poser's rendering engine has its faults, but the fact that i can render an image in poser in under a minute, while the same image takes 2 days to render in bryce is its major selling point.

Maybe I'm thinking of something else or my info is old but I thought the best screen resolution was 72 dpi and that you're really not going to see an improvement in image quality unless you print.

I'd be interested inhearing more about what psampang brought up???

Hmm ... actually I find the Bryce interface a lot easier than Poser's to work with, especially for arranging objects and lighting. Poser is sluggish and awkward. It seems to me that Poser's renderings tend to be "soft" compared to Bryce. If a body mesh has a slight discontinuity between two parts, you will really notice it in Bryce, but not so much in Poser. I think the lighting in the Bryce pic above needs improvement - it looks too harsh and yellow. Also I suspect a texture mode problem in the background - are you using world space instead of world cubic?

BTW, I think the DPI setting is Poser is meaningless, unless you are talking about the size it will print, only the pixels matter, a 3000 x 2000 pixel render will have identical images at 72 dpi or 300 dpi or 600 dpi. They would also print identical once resized (but not resampled) to the same size output. DPI in the computer is just a figure of speech!

JimBurton is correct - the number of pixels determines the amount of detail in the image not the DPI, which is just the spacing of the pixels when printed - so it does not apply to a monitor since all pixels are spaced between 72 and 96 dpi - depending on the dot pitch of the monitor and screen size. MallenLane has a good point about the shadow map size. I have been working with some "lacy" clothing textures (transparancy mapped) and find that the default shadow map size in Poser makes the lace look blurry because it smears the shadows cast by the lace (which give it the feeling of depth). Crisp and conforming shadows are the strength of raytracing, but to achieve a similar effect in Poser, you need high detail in the shadows cast by any light on the "lace" object and therefore have to maximize the shadowmap size of the light source. This, of course, will sloooow down the rendering in Poser, but I think it will still beat 35 hours!

I disagree. Setting the dpi tp 300 does indeed render differently than if set at 72 only that it just starts you out on the road to a beter render. I have tried both and get better results with it set at 300, duh--more pixels, more detail ;-). I find that it's just better to have it set at 300 and just go from there. If it's set at 72 your image will render at the current size you're working at and you have to manually up the pixel dimentions, whereas if it's set for 300 it will automatically calculate a higher pixel width and hieght and render larger. But you still have to manually up the size if you want an even higher resolution, but it starts you at a higher res to begin with.

OK - if you say so... but in case you dind't know, DPI means Dots Per Inch, and is only significant when printing, as the dots on your monitor have a fixed spacing of between 72 and 96 "dots per inch". Period. If Poser treats DPI differently than the rest of the world, it wouldn't surprise me... they do have their own way of doing things ;)