Glitterati3D posted at 8:34AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355078

EClark1894 posted at 6:41AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355071

ironsoul posted at 4:28AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355066

wolf359 posted at 6:02AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355004.

To move forward I think we need an upgrade path that allows old FF content to still be used in poser reliably.

I actually would have no real issue with that since we technically have three renderers in Poser now. But implement a full Cycles now. With all the nodes, and Cycles shader development should expand. Right now you can only do so much, and places that make shaders for Cycles, don't bother with Poser's limited nodes. It would also help if Poser could read Blender nodes since they would do the same thing. But there's not much point if the nodes aren't in Poser.

Wow, so yeah, now you want vendors to add yet another render engine to learn and support. I hope you're willing to pay the additional price for products to support all this work?

Not if you're going to be charging exorbitant prices, I'm not. Besides, the render engines are already in Poser. And after two whole years, I'm not asking you to learn anything you should already have a handle on by now anyway.

Well, consider how few vendors have bothered to learn Superfly as it is, I don't think adding yet another render engine will help. Kudos to those vendors who DO provide SF mats, but I see too many new Poser products being released today with FF mats only, or worse, the description only says 'materials', and not which render engine they are for. I refuse to buy them. If vendors don't want to learn new tricks, they can't complain about diminishing sales either, just sayin..

SatiraCapriccio posted at 1:26PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355082

So, why cycles rather than iRay or another render engine? Is it because people know cycles because they use blender to model ... being free. Or is it because Poser developed Superfly based on cycles?

It's possibly because of the very thing being discussed above. The decision to have a 'unified material' could be one of the things that required a renderer that allowed chopping and changing as needed. Iray in contrast is only licensed as a sealed box, the internals of the renderer remain completely under nVidia's control.

EClark1894 posted at 8:56AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355095

Glitterati3D posted at 8:34AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355078

EClark1894 posted at 6:41AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355071

ironsoul posted at 4:28AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355066

wolf359 posted at 6:02AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355004.

To move forward I think we need an upgrade path that allows old FF content to still be used in poser reliably.

I actually would have no real issue with that since we technically have three renderers in Poser now. But implement a full Cycles now. With all the nodes, and Cycles shader development should expand. Right now you can only do so much, and places that make shaders for Cycles, don't bother with Poser's limited nodes. It would also help if Poser could read Blender nodes since they would do the same thing. But there's not much point if the nodes aren't in Poser.

Wow, so yeah, now you want vendors to add yet another render engine to learn and support. I hope you're willing to pay the additional price for products to support all this work?

Not if you're going to be charging exorbitant prices, I'm not. Besides, the render engines are already in Poser. And after two whole years, I'm not asking you to learn anything you should already have a handle on by now anyway.

Oh, I see........so vendors should ALREADY know how to use Superfly AND Cycles. And not charge anymore for their products either.

OK.

DreaminGirl posted at 8:59AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355097

Well, consider how few vendors have bothered to learn Superfly as it is, I don't think adding yet another render engine will help. Kudos to those vendors who DO provide SF mats, but I see too many new Poser products being released today with FF mats only, or worse, the description only says 'materials', and not which render engine they are for. I refuse to buy them. If vendors don't want to learn new tricks, they can't complain about diminishing sales either, just sayin..

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that a product that does NOT support Superfly should clearly state so.

But, I disagree with your numbers of folks who haven't learned how to use Superfly. Personally, I've encountered only one vendor who doesn't in the La Femme line of products. Are you seeing more than that?

Glitterati3D posted at 9:00AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355086

Well, I know this much.......I'm done purchasing products that have no material preview. This results in constant, unnecessary rendering just to SEE what it is you're loading onto the stage. Or the ridiculously slow Raytrace Preview open at all times.

I'm sadly guilty of this simply because I wanna use Superfly's full power - and the Cycles root shows as white in the preview window. To go around this with my products, have the Firefly renderer selected while you're working and the preview window will pick up the Poser root instead, textures will show in the preview, change to Superfly only when you're about to render.

Glitterati3D posted at 3:05PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355104

DreaminGirl posted at 8:59AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355097

Well, consider how few vendors have bothered to learn Superfly as it is, I don't think adding yet another render engine will help. Kudos to those vendors who DO provide SF mats, but I see too many new Poser products being released today with FF mats only, or worse, the description only says 'materials', and not which render engine they are for. I refuse to buy them. If vendors don't want to learn new tricks, they can't complain about diminishing sales either, just sayin..

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that a product that does NOT support Superfly should clearly state so.

But, I disagree with your numbers of folks who haven't learned how to use Superfly. Personally, I've encountered only one vendor who doesn't in the La Femme line of products. Are you seeing more than that?

I was talking more about prop sets. But as for LaFemme products, most of them don't even say what they are for, and I have to study the promos to guess. But most of them seem to be for Superfly, yes. I just wish it would say so ;)

Some examples of simple setups:

The pants only use the grey from the diffuse map to control Spec and Bump.

The shirt uses diffuse, spec and bump from the diffuse map.

The hair is special, It has lots of morphs, and the bangs have a life of their own. (combination of morphs and rigging). See that there are 2 Color Math nodes in there. I can draw the color from the Image Map, or from Color_Math or from Color Math 2.

And here a rendered example of some face and hair morphs and the 3 hair Diffuse color options used.

Best regards, Tony

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:16AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355105

Glitterati3D posted at 9:00AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355086

Well, I know this much.......I'm done purchasing products that have no material preview. This results in constant, unnecessary rendering just to SEE what it is you're loading onto the stage. Or the ridiculously slow Raytrace Preview open at all times.

I'm sadly guilty of this simply because I wanna use Superfly's full power - and the Cycles root shows as white in the preview window. To go around this with my products, have the Firefly renderer selected while you're working and the preview window will pick up the Poser root instead, textures will show in the preview, change to Superfly only when you're about to render.

I know I can preview with Firefly render selected, but I'm not going to select things like makeup and lip color based on a FIREFLY preview that I intend to render in Superfly.

DreaminGirl posted at 9:17AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355107

Glitterati3D posted at 3:05PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355104

DreaminGirl posted at 8:59AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355097

Well, consider how few vendors have bothered to learn Superfly as it is, I don't think adding yet another render engine will help. Kudos to those vendors who DO provide SF mats, but I see too many new Poser products being released today with FF mats only, or worse, the description only says 'materials', and not which render engine they are for. I refuse to buy them. If vendors don't want to learn new tricks, they can't complain about diminishing sales either, just sayin..

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that a product that does NOT support Superfly should clearly state so.

But, I disagree with your numbers of folks who haven't learned how to use Superfly. Personally, I've encountered only one vendor who doesn't in the La Femme line of products. Are you seeing more than that?

I was talking more about prop sets. But as for LaFemme products, most of them don't even say what they are for, and I have to study the promos to guess. But most of them seem to be for Superfly, yes. I just wish it would say so ;)

Oh, I agree with prop sets being Firefly only. I just pass those by unless it's something by a vendor I know that will render well in Superfly with those materials. And, prop sets one has to review the ReadMe to check the date of creation - some of them were created before Superfly was released.

But, yeah, I pass up products that are clearly not Superfly ready.

Glitterati3D posted at 9:22AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355110

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:16AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355105

Glitterati3D posted at 9:00AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355086

Well, I know this much.......I'm done purchasing products that have no material preview. This results in constant, unnecessary rendering just to SEE what it is you're loading onto the stage. Or the ridiculously slow Raytrace Preview open at all times.

I'm sadly guilty of this simply because I wanna use Superfly's full power - and the Cycles root shows as white in the preview window. To go around this with my products, have the Firefly renderer selected while you're working and the preview window will pick up the Poser root instead, textures will show in the preview, change to Superfly only when you're about to render.

I know I can preview with Firefly render selected, but I'm not going to select things like makeup and lip color based on a FIREFLY preview that I intend to render in Superfly.

That's nothing really that a vendor can do about that if they want to use a Cycles Root - it's a Poser flaw, it doesn't preview Cycles root materials.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:25AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355113

Glitterati3D posted at 9:22AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355110

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:16AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355105

Glitterati3D posted at 9:00AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355086

Well, I know this much.......I'm done purchasing products that have no material preview. This results in constant, unnecessary rendering just to SEE what it is you're loading onto the stage. Or the ridiculously slow Raytrace Preview open at all times.

I'm sadly guilty of this simply because I wanna use Superfly's full power - and the Cycles root shows as white in the preview window. To go around this with my products, have the Firefly renderer selected while you're working and the preview window will pick up the Poser root instead, textures will show in the preview, change to Superfly only when you're about to render.

I know I can preview with Firefly render selected, but I'm not going to select things like makeup and lip color based on a FIREFLY preview that I intend to render in Superfly.

That's nothing really that a vendor can do about that if they want to use a Cycles Root - it's a Poser flaw, it doesn't preview Cycles root materials.

And, if a vendor chooses to use the Cycles root materials I will simply bypass those products.

Not everyone has a beefy, top of the line, expensive video card in their machine that allows them to use the Cycles root materials effectively. I am one of them.

Glitterati3D posted at 9:28AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355114

Not everyone has a beefy, top of the line, expensive video card in their machine that allows them to use the Cycles root materials effectively. I am one of them.

I feel so strange when someone makes such a claim - see, I'm not doubting you, at all, I just don't understand what's happening.

When I try rendering in Firefly it takes forever for me. When I render in Superfly it goes much faster - and it seems to be about the same render times with any root, the amount of nodes in the root that makes a difference in my render times, or so it seems. And then it's much much easier to make a good shader with few nodes in Cycles than with the default root (and then Physical Surface I confess I've never tried touching).

And mind you, my computer is kinda beefy, definitely not top of the line but pretty good, BUT my video card is AMD - I don't use GPU rendering, I use CPU. And Firefly keeps taking foreeeeever, Superfly goes super well.

Oh, did I mention the hair was special with a combination of morphs and rigging?

Well, the hair has 20 (for now) all combinable morphs and is part of the head vertex group, and there are no hair specific vertex groups or bones.

The upper part is weightmap rigging controlled from the head and neck, and the lower part of the hair is weightmap controlled through the collar movement.

And, LOL, to keep things simple (ahum) the collar itself is controlled through the shoulder bone. I never "pose" a collar, because when we move our shoulders, the collars follows automatically. That is what this figure does too. => So? End result? ? ? ? ? When the arms are moved? ? ? ? The hair gradually follows and that is how we prevent intersections with movements. LOL.

That is how human anatomy, geometry, rigging and technology combines.

PS : The figure is a tech demonstrator, nothing more, nothing less.

Best regards, Tony

A bit of a clarification about Turing as I understand it (I may be completely wrong so someone please correct if they know better.) Turing should not be confused with RTX. All new NVidia cards are now produced with the Turing architecture. The RTX cards include additional ray tracing features, RT cores which speed up ray tracing calculations and AI features, Tensor cores , which are used for de-noising in RTX enabled games. Poser can't use Turing architecture because it is using an older version of the CUDA api. I know blender also had this problem, but I don't know if there has been an update. Getting Poser to be able to use Turing shouldn't be too difficult. Getting it too use the RTX features would probably be a lot more difficult, but could be expected to be a big leap in rendering performance.

Physical Surface root will work with Firefly, to an extent. I've set up props with PBR textures and got similar-ish results from both engines. Bear in mind the big difference between the two - in Superfly there is no specular, only proper raytraced reflections on everything. If you use Physical Surface root you also get fresnel reflections automatically as well. With Cycles root you'd have to add it to everything manually.

I tend to use PBR Metal/Rough workflow, which is easy and and compatible with lots of other render engines (including Iray) and for that the Physical Surface root is pretty much plug and play. For materials needing refraction, translucency or volumetric stuff I have used Cycles root and surrendered the preview (which could be an OpenGL issue?) - depends on the material. (I have found that if I make a material that doesn't work in Poser's preview I can make a simpler material using the Poser root, set that to Firefly only, and then whenever the render engine is set to Firefly and saved in the Render Settings it will preview using that. Switching to Superfly and rendering resets the preview back again. Fiddly, but a sort-of workaround.)

Shameless self-promotion - the gun I made a while back was textured in Substance Painter, materials setup using Physical Surface root within minutes and this is a straight Superfly render. Superfly makes some things really simple now.

DreaminGirl posted at 10:53AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355107

Glitterati3D posted at 3:05PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355104

DreaminGirl posted at 8:59AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355097

Well, consider how few vendors have bothered to learn Superfly as it is, I don't think adding yet another render engine will help. Kudos to those vendors who DO provide SF mats, but I see too many new Poser products being released today with FF mats only, or worse, the description only says 'materials', and not which render engine they are for. I refuse to buy them. If vendors don't want to learn new tricks, they can't complain about diminishing sales either, just sayin..

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that a product that does NOT support Superfly should clearly state so.

But, I disagree with your numbers of folks who haven't learned how to use Superfly. Personally, I've encountered only one vendor who doesn't in the La Femme line of products. Are you seeing more than that?

I was talking more about prop sets. But as for LaFemme products, most of them don't even say what they are for, and I have to study the promos to guess. But most of them seem to be for Superfly, yes. I just wish it would say so ;)

I will make a note to ensure I add that information to my sales page and ReadMe. It's a valid point.

I like the prop sets that say DS and Poser and every promo render is in iRay. Yeah, I skip right past those products, too.

I assure you, I know full well DAZ Studio is one program and Poser is another. I haven't touched DS since DS4 came out, and even then, it was only for testing. While I started out using DS, because it was free, once I knew creating art with 3d models was something I enjoyed and wanted to continue to do, I purchased Poser. I stopped shopping DAZ products when DAZ stopped supporting Poser. I've never regretted that decision. Especially not once HiveWire came out with Dawn, Dusk, Luna, and their fabulous line of animals.

I'm not suggesting Poser use any DS technology. I'm not at all interested in Poser becoming a DS clone. I also don't believe it is the responsibility of Poser programmers to incorporate Genesis technology in Poser. If people want to use Genesis in Poser, they need to hound DAZ. (Just don't hold your breath)

iRay isn't DAZ technology. Nor is DAZ the only company that has integrated iRay. Allegorithmic also integrated iRay in Substance Designer and Painter. A new Poser programming team might well feel integrating the nVidia iRay SDK is better than working further with the open source cycles. Maybe they will stick with Superfly or go with a different fork of cycles. Maybe they will decide an even better solution is a Poser to KeyShot Bridge.

I'm actually content with Firefly (I can hear you all shuddering!) But I do heavy postwork because I'm more drawn to watercolors and illustrations rather than photography. I'm just not all that into photorealistic.

I know why some are adamant about Genesis as it's been rather clear for quite some time that some believe only DAZ is capable of creating decent figures, despite evidence to the contrary. I also know why some people believe only DAZ is the place to go for content ... any content. Their marketing department could probably convince people that liver tastes better than steak. I also get why some people think both the Hair room and Cloth room should be ditched because they aren't exactly the easiest to learn to use. But I've no idea why the fascination with cycles. I was just trying to understand why people are so adamant cycles is the only route Poser should go.

Of course, as I mentioned previously, I don't get Superfly. Contrary to those who use Blender, it makes no sense to me, and I don't find it easy to learn to use ... at all. But I'm not advocating Superfly be ditched. For that matter, I'm not all that unhappy with either the Poser Cloth or Hair rooms. They just need some love, not ditched.

MD simulations were so freaking easy, and at least in MD2, it was easy to pause and pin the mesh. Pinning the mesh became less user friendly with the next couple of versions and converting tri to quad never really worked all that well once it was introduced. Consequently, I eventually abandoned MD. Simulating in Poser should be just as easy as loading a figure, loading a piece of clothing, and clicking simulate. We should also be able to pause, adjust, and unpause, rather than always having to restart the simulation from Frame 1. Definitely, we should also be able to tweak the settings as needed.

I actually had better success with the Hair room in previous versions of Poser (both long and short hair), which surprises me because I don't believe it's been touched for decades. But, I'd like better styling tools in the Hair room and for full figure hair (fur) to be less cumbersome.

I'm really rather happy with the Fitting room, and seriously cannot imagine attempting to rig with the Setup room. Well, I can imagine. I've attempted to do so. It's a pain. I'm not as crazy with using the Fitting room for converting clothing from one figure to another, but I don't think DS autofit is the solution either. From what I've seen, Autofit works better on some clothing, while it fails on other clothing.

Hopefully, Renderosity will ask for feedback on specific functionality. Seemed Smith Micro started to do that at one point, but it seemed to be dropped just as quickly. Probably about the time they decided to outsource Poser development to a team with no previous experience with Poser.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 7:42AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355083

SatiraCapriccio posted at 8:04AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355082

So, why cycles rather than iRay or another render engine?

Because DS is the one that uses iRay, Poser is the one that uses Cycles and DS is one program, Poser is another program entirely.

Please, we've gone through this one thousand times already.

I simply meant that Poser didn't choose the same extra renderer that DS chose, because they have different lines of thinking.

Someone before mentioned that Cycles is fully opened - meaning that Poser was allowed to tinker with the renderer so that it would render Roots and Nodes not native to Cycles.

So many things go under program development decisions - so I don't see why Poser would have gone for iRay. They just didn't, that's all.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:58AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355115

When I try rendering in Firefly it takes forever for me. When I render in Superfly it goes much faster - and it seems to be about the same render times with any root, the amount of nodes in the root that makes a difference in my render times, or so it seems. And then it's much much easier to make a good shader with few nodes in Cycles than with the default root (and then Physical Surface I confess I've never tried touching).

And mind you, my computer is kinda beefy, definitely not top of the line but pretty good, BUT my video card is AMD - I don't use GPU rendering, I use CPU. And Firefly keeps taking foreeeeever, Superfly goes super well.

Oh, man, it's definitely the opposite for me. I want to love Superfly, but it takes so long that I often use Firefly instead. I've tried the settings people have recommended here, and either it ends up super grainy, or takes forever compared to Firefly.

My computer is fairly good. 12 core processor, 64 Gb of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. But Superfly is slower than molasses flowing uphill in January, while Firefly is blazing fast.

Thanks prixat.

With cycles, the programmers could modify the code to fit their needs. Which is the advantage of open source.

With nVidia iRay, they could not.

I just wish Superfly made sense to me. I'd like to support it in my products, but the best I can do is to make sure my materials don't render black in Superfly.

prixat posted at 10:01AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355100

SatiraCapriccio posted at 1:26PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355082

So, why cycles rather than iRay or another render engine? Is it because people know cycles because they use blender to model ... being free. Or is it because Poser developed Superfly based on cycles?

It's possibly because of the very thing being discussed above. The decision to have a 'unified material' could be one of the things that required a renderer that allowed chopping and changing as needed. Iray in contrast is only licensed as a sealed box, the internals of the renderer remain completely under nVidia's control.

The main reason I think they should stick with Superfly/Cycles is that it is Open Source, which means hey can do whatever they want with it. Iray is proprietary, and they would be locked to dance to Nvidias tune, plus I bet the licensing ain't cheap. The AMD renderer could be worth considering tho.

SatiraCapriccio posted at 11:04AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355128

I know why some are adamant about Genesis as it's been rather clear for quite some time that some believe only DAZ is capable of creating decent figures, despite evidence to the contrary. I also know why some people believe only DAZ is the place to go for content ... any content. Their marketing department could probably convince people that liver tastes better than steak.

I actually laughed at this - thank you.

I also get why some people think both the Hair room and Cloth room should be ditched because they aren't exactly the easiest to learn to use. But I've no idea why the fascination with cycles. I was just trying to understand why people are so adamant cycles is the only route Poser should go.

It's more realistic than Firefly, and in my case much faster too. It's what we got after Firefly. And if it's ditched or changed at this point, we break a huge lot of existing content.

Of course, as I mentioned previously, I don't get Superfly. Contrary to those who use Blender, it makes no sense to me, and I don't find it easy to learn to use ... at all. But I'm not advocating Superfly be ditched. For that matter, I'm not all that unhappy with either the Poser Cloth or Hair rooms. They just need some love, not ditched.

For me, Cycles is super easy (compared to the default Poser root), Poser Cloth room is counter-intuitive and complicates things that should be easy, and the Hair room I gave up entirely.

Simulating in Poser should be just as easy as loading a figure, loading a piece of clothing, and clicking simulate. We should also be able to pause, adjust, and unpause, rather than always having to restart the simulation from Frame 1. Definitely, we should also be able to tweak the settings as needed.

Yup, agreed.

I'm really rather happy with the Fitting room, and seriously cannot imagine attempting to rig with the Setup room. Well, I can imagine. I've attempted to do so. It's a pain. I'm not as crazy with using the Fitting room for converting clothing from one figure to another, but I don't think DS autofit is the solution either. From what I've seen, Autofit works better on some clothing, while it fails on other clothing.

I think options should exist - mainly a few-clicks solution targeted at the casual end-user converting clothing, and a more detailed and advanced solution for content creators. Which is basically what we get with the Fitting Room and the Setup Room, but the Fitting Room needs to be simplified (like, do we NEED to create a new instance? Can we just get a "fit X figure to Y figure" as a starting point?) and the Setup Room needs to be made more precise and less daunting.

randym77 posted at 11:17AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355131

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:58AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355115

When I try rendering in Firefly it takes forever for me. When I render in Superfly it goes much faster - and it seems to be about the same render times with any root, the amount of nodes in the root that makes a difference in my render times, or so it seems. And then it's much much easier to make a good shader with few nodes in Cycles than with the default root (and then Physical Surface I confess I've never tried touching).

And mind you, my computer is kinda beefy, definitely not top of the line but pretty good, BUT my video card is AMD - I don't use GPU rendering, I use CPU. And Firefly keeps taking foreeeeever, Superfly goes super well.

Oh, man, it's definitely the opposite for me. I want to love Superfly, but it takes so long that I often use Firefly instead. I've tried the settings people have recommended here, and either it ends up super grainy, or takes forever compared to Firefly.

My computer is fairly good. 12 core processor, 64 Gb of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. But Superfly is slower than molasses flowing uphill in January, while Firefly is blazing fast.

Your computer is better than mine. Something's not making much sense LOL

Oh wait I know what it might be - are you using indirect lighting with Firefly? I have slow render times but I always have it on - it looks horrible when off, way too fake.

SatiraCapriccio posted at 11:19AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355133

I just wish Superfly made sense to me. I'd like to support it in my products, but the best I can do is to make sure my materials don't render black in Superfly.

Honestly tho, that's pretty much all you need. Even a simple texture plugged into Diffuse in the regular poser root will look better in Superfly because it'll render as an actual material, instead of requiring you to use a bunch of nodes to tell Poser mathematically how to render an actual material.

And Gliteratti3d has mentioned here that she won't use anything made in a Cycles Root - perhaps she's not the only one.

I'm now actually trying to figure out the other roots here to do without the Cycles Root, even though I love it to bits.

I think the last render engine Poser should use is Iray to be honest. The fact that it only works with Nvidia cards is a huge hinderance for those that don't have one. It should be using a render engine that can use either card.

Laurie

LaurieA posted at 11:37AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355141

I think the last render engine Poser should use is Iray to be honest. The fact that it only works with Nvidia cards is a huge hinderance for those that don't have one. It should be using a render engine that can use either card.

Laurie

It only works with Nvidia? Oh gosh, that's definitely a deal breaker I think.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 11:45AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355147

LaurieA posted at 11:37AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355141

I think the last render engine Poser should use is Iray to be honest. The fact that it only works with Nvidia cards is a huge hinderance for those that don't have one. It should be using a render engine that can use either card.

Laurie

It only works with Nvidia? Oh gosh, that's definitely a deal breaker I think.

Yes,which makes it impossible for some to use, expensive for others and if you've just got a new computer with a great AMD card you're still rendering to CPU. I still to this day don't understand the reasoning behind the decision to use Iray. I was lucky I had an Nvidia card, but a lot of people don't. Don't get me wrong - I like Iray and all, but most physically based render engines are all pretty much the same under the hood. The same principles work in all of them, so they could have gone with anything, but instead chose an engine that uses only one kind of card. Yeah, it's silly ;).

Laurie

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 10:44AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355139

Oh wait I know what it might be - are you using indirect lighting with Firefly? I have slow render times but I always have it on - it looks horrible when off, way too fake.

Yes. I really think the problem is Superfly. (Or my ignorance about how to optimize it.) It takes forever, at least if I don't want it grainy.

And just judging from the renders I see posted here, a lot of people have that problem. Superfly renders are often visibly grainy.

LaurieA posted at 11:48AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355150

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 11:45AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355147

LaurieA posted at 11:37AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355141

I think the last render engine Poser should use is Iray to be honest. The fact that it only works with Nvidia cards is a huge hinderance for those that don't have one. It should be using a render engine that can use either card.

Laurie

It only works with Nvidia? Oh gosh, that's definitely a deal breaker I think.

Yes,which makes it impossible for some to use, expensive for others and if you've just got a new computer with a great AMD card you're still rendering to CPU. I still to this day don't understand the reasoning behind the decision to use Iray. I was lucky I had an Nvidia card, but a lot of people don't.

Laurie

You're rendering to CPU - meaning that it renders more slowly (like Superfly without an Nvidia card) or that it doesn't render at all in iRay?

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 11:50AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355152

LaurieA posted at 11:48AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355150

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 11:45AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355147

LaurieA posted at 11:37AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355141

I think the last render engine Poser should use is Iray to be honest. The fact that it only works with Nvidia cards is a huge hinderance for those that don't have one. It should be using a render engine that can use either card.

Laurie

It only works with Nvidia? Oh gosh, that's definitely a deal breaker I think.

Yes,which makes it impossible for some to use, expensive for others and if you've just got a new computer with a great AMD card you're still rendering to CPU. I still to this day don't understand the reasoning behind the decision to use Iray. I was lucky I had an Nvidia card, but a lot of people don't.

Laurie

You're rendering to CPU - meaning that it renders more slowly (like Superfly without an Nvidia card) or that it doesn't render at all in iRay?

It'll render as slowly as molasses runs in January (if you're in the northern hemisphere :P ) But it'll run. Unless your processor is just that old that even that won't fly.

Laurie

randym77 posted at 11:52AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355151

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 10:44AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355139

Oh wait I know what it might be - are you using indirect lighting with Firefly? I have slow render times but I always have it on - it looks horrible when off, way too fake.

Yes. I really think the problem is Superfly. (Or my ignorance about how to optimize it.) It takes forever, at least if I don't want it grainy.

And just judging from the renders I see posted here, a lot of people have that problem. Superfly renders are often visibly grainy.

Not to go off topic but did you know that there are external denoisers that you can use after a render? I know Intel has one and Nvidia has one too that works on any image rendered with any graphics card.

(the following copied from another post by 3DOutlaw):

1. Intel has a new denoiser library: https://openimagedenoise.github.io/ (looks like this was mentioned by @Apuat in passing a while ago, but got little notice)

2. A college student* in the UK wrote a Command-line front end about 2 weeks ago: https://github.com/DeclanRussell/IntelOIDenoiser/releases

Grab the Zip file from the link in #2 above, and extract it to a folder

Open a command prompt (cmd) and navigate to the folder where the denoiser.exe is, and follow the instructions For example, the command line example to do the above was: Denoiser.exe -i "C:UsersusernameDesktopDenoisercamera2.jpg" -o "C:UsersusernameDesktopDenoisercamera2a.jpg"

The following is copied from a post by Taoz:

Well here's the DnD version, if anyone is interested. Requires NET 4. It's just a test version so it will expire march 30, the final version will not expire. Will add more options under settings when basic functionality has been tested OK. So far only tested in Windows 10.

(end of Taoz's post)

Made for the Nvidia denoiser but works fine on the Intel one (which is the better one to be honest so it's the only one I linked). The links here are for a drag and drop for the denoiser. Just drop your image on it and it'll take care of the rest.

Here is the link for the correct denoiser. Works on the Intel denoiser even tho it says Nvidia. Have I confused you yet? LOL.

https://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/dnd_nvd/DnD_For_NVidia_Denoiser_1.000_NET4.zip

Laurie

Thanks, Laurie, I'll give 'em a shot.

I've gone thru that entire thread and this makes things the easiest for the denoiser...

Go here and read the instructions. It has all links (for the denoisers) and the drag and drop to drop your images on. Good luck and sorry for any confusion (heck, even I was confused...lol). These denoisers work on pretty grainy images (with varying degrees of success) so test them out on how grainy you can get away with. You might be able to cut your render times way down and then just denoise.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread....

Laurie

randym77 posted at 1:46PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355131

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:58AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355115

When I try rendering in Firefly it takes forever for me. When I render in Superfly it goes much faster - and it seems to be about the same render times with any root, the amount of nodes in the root that makes a difference in my render times, or so it seems. And then it's much much easier to make a good shader with few nodes in Cycles than with the default root (and then Physical Surface I confess I've never tried touching).

And mind you, my computer is kinda beefy, definitely not top of the line but pretty good, BUT my video card is AMD - I don't use GPU rendering, I use CPU. And Firefly keeps taking foreeeeever, Superfly goes super well.

Oh, man, it's definitely the opposite for me. I want to love Superfly, but it takes so long that I often use Firefly instead. I've tried the settings people have recommended here, and either it ends up super grainy, or takes forever compared to Firefly.

My computer is fairly good. 12 core processor, 64 Gb of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. But Superfly is slower than molasses flowing uphill in January, while Firefly is blazing fast.

Something is very, very wrong there. D:

Try this benchmark and see what you get: https://www.sharecg.com/v/86389/view/11/Poser/Superfly-render-test-scene

Are you making sure your bucket size is at least 512 and no more than 1024 in your renders? The test scene is already pre-set at 512 which is perfect for a 1080 and with that you should average around 17 - 20 minutes.

Whatever render engine is used there needs to be an easy to use,click/load HDRI solutions, or scenes in the library, not one someone has to look for on a forum post to figure out how to setup.(same with shaders for the render engine) Personally I have no issues with the way it is as I mostly play around in Arnold or Renderman at work and other solutions at home. But I can't assume that everyone else enjoys setting those things up just because I have no issues with doing it, So just make things easier for your customers to get those "beauty shots" without much effort. With the ability to still get in there and tweak things if they want.

Anyway good luck.

Carlos

JohnDoe641 posted at 3:54PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355190

randym77 posted at 1:46PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355131

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 9:58AM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355115

When I try rendering in Firefly it takes forever for me. When I render in Superfly it goes much faster - and it seems to be about the same render times with any root, the amount of nodes in the root that makes a difference in my render times, or so it seems. And then it's much much easier to make a good shader with few nodes in Cycles than with the default root (and then Physical Surface I confess I've never tried touching).

And mind you, my computer is kinda beefy, definitely not top of the line but pretty good, BUT my video card is AMD - I don't use GPU rendering, I use CPU. And Firefly keeps taking foreeeeever, Superfly goes super well.

Oh, man, it's definitely the opposite for me. I want to love Superfly, but it takes so long that I often use Firefly instead. I've tried the settings people have recommended here, and either it ends up super grainy, or takes forever compared to Firefly.

My computer is fairly good. 12 core processor, 64 Gb of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080. But Superfly is slower than molasses flowing uphill in January, while Firefly is blazing fast.

Something is very, very wrong there. D:

Try this benchmark and see what you get: https://www.sharecg.com/v/86389/view/11/Poser/Superfly-render-test-scene

Are you making sure your bucket size is at least 512 and no more than 1024 in your renders? The test scene is already pre-set at 512 which is perfect for a 1080 and with that you should average around 17 - 20 minutes.

It took my 1070 with the saved values with Progressive Rendering 21.9 minutes.

*edit oops, didn't realize there was an edit time limit and it would post a new message. D:

I tend to stick with PBR matts and SF can process these very quickly, The image below consists of 600+ mats but it was the hair that killed the render time. Having complex overlapped transparancies seems to be the problem with SF IMO

JohnDoe641 posted at 4:38PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355235

Try this benchmark and see what you get: https://www.sharecg.com/v/86389/view/11/Poser/Superfly-render-test-scene

Are you making sure your bucket size is at least 512 and no more than 1024 in your renders? The test scene is already pre-set at 512 which is perfect for a 1080 and with that you should average around 17 - 20 minutes.

It took my 1070 with the saved values with Progressive Rendering 21.9 minutes.

It took 20 minutes to render in Superfly.

In Firefly, it took under a minute with the default settings. Set to "Final" mode, Indirect Light on, it took just under 10 minutes.

ironsoul posted at 5:32PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355257

Having complex overlapped transparancies seems to be the problem with SF IMO

That could well be the problem. I often use transmapped hair.

You won't notice it with progressive render or gpu render, but if using cpu render quite often you will see everything apart from buckets with hair having finished. I've had a render with about 25 out of 28 cpu threads idlily waiting while the remaining 3 threads finished te hair, taking 2 or 3 times as long as the rest of the render. Which is why larger bucket size is not always best for cpu rendering. If I have a render of a single figure with transmapped hair I usually use a bucket size of 16 for cpu renders so as many threads as possible will be rendering the hair simultaneously.

I have read a lot of this thread, and there seems to be some general misconceptions about render engines, in general. One is that Superfly is Cycles. Well, yes it is... Cycles from about 4 years ago...... Cycles has advanced miles since then.

One thing I would like to see in the next version of Poser, is api support for whatever render engine you want to use. There are so many free engines out there it is scary. Cycles, Iray, AMD Prorender, etc, just sort of scratch the surface.

Adding the proper api support has many advantages. Top of the list, is that you might not have to do anything to Poser to use the next version of (insert any) render engine. Things like new versions of CUDA for example, would be updated in the render engine and not be bound to the base program. Another thing is driver issues. Who has a better chance of getting driver issues fixed? Rendo or a render engine? Yeah, that's what I thought... lol

Next is that the end user can choose what engine to use, based on the hardware, content, experience, etc, they happen to have.

Binding a render engine into a program is an issue, and all you have to do is look at any program that has done so when the next version of whatever render api comes out.

Leave the render stuff in the engine, and write a program api to talk to them. Yes many programs have built in engines, Firefly in Poser, Cycles in Blender, etc. The difference is that programs like Blender have the api set up to add basically any render engine you want to it. Most 3D packages do this with proper api setups.

It is time that Poser do the same, and stop embedding engines into the program that can't easily be updated when the engines are.

shvrdavid posted at 8:08PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355275

I have read a lot of this thread.....

.... It is time that Poser do the same, and stop embedding engines into the program that can't easily be updated when the engines are.

I'd like to request a "thumbs up" button :)

That sounds good to me too.

shvrdavid posted at 9:21PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355275

I have read a lot of this thread, and there seems to be some general misconceptions about render engines, in general. One is that Superfly is Cycles. Well, yes it is... Cycles from about 4 years ago...... Cycles has advanced miles since then.

One thing I would like to see in the next version of Poser, is api support for whatever render engine you want to use. There are so many free engines out there it is scary. Cycles, Iray, AMD Prorender, etc, just sort of scratch the surface.

Adding the proper api support has many advantages. Top of the list, is that you might not have to do anything to Poser to use the next version of (insert any) render engine. Things like new versions of CUDA for example, would be updated in the render engine and not be bound to the base program. Another thing is driver issues. Who has a better chance of getting driver issues fixed? Rendo or a render engine? Yeah, that's what I thought... lol

Next is that the end user can choose what engine to use, based on the hardware, content, experience, etc, they happen to have.

Binding a render engine into a program is an issue, and all you have to do is look at any program that has done so when the next version of whatever render api comes out.

Leave the render stuff in the engine, and write a program api to talk to them. Yes many programs have built in engines, Firefly in Poser, Cycles in Blender, etc. The difference is that programs like Blender have the api set up to add basically any render engine you want to it. Most 3D packages do this with proper api setups.

It is time that Poser do the same, and stop embedding engines into the program that can't easily be updated when the engines are.

For the record, there are some standalone renderers out there. Cycles has a version in development although, I don't know how far along they are, and another renderer called Corona 4 works with Cinema 4 and 3DS Max. It has an Intel AI Denoiser included. and you can download it to test it out for 45 days.

https://corona-renderer.com/download/

movida posted at 11:06PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355276

shvrdavid posted at 8:08PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355275

I have read a lot of this thread.....

.... It is time that Poser do the same, and stop embedding engines into the program that can't easily be updated when the engines are.

I'd like to request a "thumbs up" button :)

Me too...lol.

Laurie

SatiraCapriccio posted at 11:36PM Fri, 28 June 2019 - #4355133

I just wish Superfly made sense to me. I'd like to support it in my products, but the best I can do is to make sure my materials don't render black in Superfly.

As someone who beta tests for you Satira, you know that I've done a number of Artistic Renders of your products using SuperFly, but just don't use the Rendered with SuperFly tag for the HW store. I can assure you I've never had to tweak any of the materials for any of your products in order to render them with SuperFly.

SuperFly is daunting, and even though I've been using Blender for years, it's taken a long time for me to get even a small grasp of Cycles, so I'm no expert when it comes to using the Cycles or Physical Surface nodes in Poser, but I'm getting better at it. It just takes a long time. Start small, and you'll eventually get there.

The problem with render engines is you must consider what type of program poser is. It is a content manipulation program. It is essentially designed to bring in external content, set up a scene or animation and render it. Users must be able to bring in content designed for poser and be able to easily render it. I've tried using Reality for poser. Every scene I had to modify lights and materials. Now if this was the same for these other render engines can you imagine the nightmares for content developers as they get constant requests for support asking how to use content x with renderer y. Also this brings us back to the problem of poser , and it's content, being tied to developments beyond their control. I'm not saying this would ever happen, but suppose poser didn't create superfly but instead had a bridge to cycles, and then the cycles development team decided to streamline it and get rid half the nodes they considered obsolete? Suddenly a large chunk of your pbr content would no longer work. IMHO poser must have it's own renderers, which users and content creators can rely on for continuity going forward.