Have notice in a lot of threads, that some people don't seem to like Superfly. Personally I love it compared to Firefly. But would be interested in hearing why people don't like it or why you prefer Firefly over Superfly?

(Im not interested in hearing that you would like Vray, Blender cycles, Octane or whatever else you might prefer, only why you prefer Firefly over Superfly :))

Well since you asked, I PREFER Cycles the full renderer to Superfly. I never really understood of liked Firefly that much anyway. So it kind of Piqued me when Smith Micro only went halfway on Cycles to come up with Superfly. Look, if you like Firefly, keep it, use it, good health to you. But dump Superfly and give us Full Cycles.

EClark1894 posted at 9:06PM Sun, 02 May 2021 - #4418231

Well since you asked, I PREFER Cycles the full renderer to Superfly. I never really understood of liked Firefly that much anyway. So it kind of Piqued me when Smith Micro only went halfway on Cycles to come up with Superfly. Look, if you like Firefly, keep it, use it, good health to you. But dump Superfly and give us Full Cycles.

So you like Superfly, but would just like to see more shaders or functionalities which are in blender to be added to Superfly/Poser cycles? If im not mistaken Cycles in Poser is build on that of blender right? (Not very familiar with Blender, just think I remember that it was mentioned at some point)

Yes SuperFly was based on Blender's Cycles, but only at a "general" stage. Blender's Cycles is more complex, with many more nodes than SuperFly, which I believe is what they're trying to upgrade with Poser 12's SuperFly. Also, the nodes SuperFly has aren't built like the Cycles nodes, such as the in and out connectors, and that makes it difficult to get the same result with SuperFly in Poser, that I can get with Cycles in Blender.

Also Blender 3, which may be out at the end of the summer, will have their latest version, Cycles X, which will be even more involved. I use both SuperFly in Poser, as well as Cycles in Blender, and I wish SuperFly were more like Cycles than it currently is in Poser 11.

Just my 2¢, FWIW.

I think that there are two things that people don't like about Superfly: 1) they don't own a modern graphics card and can't render very fast in Superfly. 2) They are set in their ways and don't want to change the way they work with Poser.

Miss B posted at 4:50AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418237

Yes SuperFly was based on Blender's Cycles, but only at a "general" stage. Blender's Cycles is more complex, with many more nodes than SuperFly, which I believe is what they're trying to upgrade with Poser 12's SuperFly. Also, the nodes SuperFly has aren't built like the Cycles nodes, such as the in and out connectors, and that makes it difficult to get the same result with SuperFly in Poser, that I can get with Cycles in Blender.

Also Blender 3, which may be out at the end of the summer, will have their latest version, Cycles X, which will be even more involved. I use both SuperFly in Poser, as well as Cycles in Blender, and I wish SuperFly were more like Cycles than it currently is in Poser 11.

Just my 2¢, FWIW.

So if you had to choose between rendering with Superfly or Firefly, you would choose Superfly, if I understand you correct, despite its limitations compared to Blender? I know there are some crazy and in some cases expensive renderers out there, which is why I was specifically asking about Superfly and Firefly :)

ghostship2 posted at 4:58AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418242

I think that there are two things that people don't like about Superfly: 1) they don't own a modern graphics card and can't render very fast in Superfly. 2) They are set in their ways and don't want to change the way they work with Poser.

So basically it's that some people prefer speed over quality?

I don't really know how they would solve that, except increasing the speed of Superfly. But in general higher quality images tend to take a longer time to render than low quality ones, but if people don't care about quality anyway, then that is an issue :)

Show me or link me to amazing Superfly renders, that might want me to use Superfly.

It takes too long to get a decent image on my old, slow machine, for one thing. Just a simple image with one relatively simple model - my MK1 Dalek, for example, takes 37 million billion and a half years before it stops looking grainy.

I can't, for some reason, get my head around the new approach to materials. I can get pretty much what I want, or a reasonable approximation thereof, in Firefly but in Superfly? Noooo.

Finally - and this really is the deal breaker for me - it doesn't support Displacement, which is something a lot of my stuff relies on. Yes, I know about Normal maps - although I haven't ever tried to make one yet - but in my experience, they don't look anything like as good as Displacement.

So, a triple whammy. If, at some point, I can upgrade the machine, I may look at Superfly again but until then, nope.

complaints I've seen for Superfly are speed, which is often hardware-related, grainy images which is a render settings problem but the settings can vary depending on lighting, and some shaders and people seem to want one setting for all. I've also seen complaints about having to update every shader in a scene because older content and sometimes even newer stuff doesn't come with superfly shaders and firefly shaders usually don't look as good in superfly. There's also the lack of microdisplacement.

All that being said, I'm not one who dislikes superfly. I almost never use firefly anymore. I don't mind taking a little longer to make a scene look good. I would like the microdisplacement though. It would add a lot to images.

Nevertrumper posted at 6:39AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418256

Show me or link me to amazing Superfly renders, that might want me to use Superfly.

When I refer to quality, it doesn't mean that you can't make cool looking stuff in Firefly, but merely that you get correct lighting and access to PBR with Superfly that you won't get with Firefly.

How a person manipulate a render into something that looks cool, might come from post, which is perfectly fine. So just want to be sure it clear, what I mean with quality.

But here are some examples.

I don't know who made the first two, but I think they are excellent and don't know if there is any post on them. But the last two I included, because I rendered them myself and know that there is no post on them. But I think it shows some pretty good quality from Superfly. And again, as initial renders that you can then take to a post program and manipulate further for a final image, I think is a good starting point.

SamTherapy posted at 7:08AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418258

It takes too long to get a decent image on my old, slow machine, for one thing. Just a simple image with one relatively simple model - my MK1 Dalek, for example, takes 37 million billion and a half years before it stops looking grainy.

I can't, for some reason, get my head around the new approach to materials. I can get pretty much what I want, or a reasonable approximation thereof, in Firefly but in Superfly? Noooo.

Finally - and this really is the deal breaker for me - it doesn't support Displacement, which is something a lot of my stuff relies on. Yes, I know about Normal maps - although I haven't ever tried to make one yet - but in my experience, they don't look anything like as good as Displacement.

So, a triple whammy. If, at some point, I can upgrade the machine, I may look at Superfly again but until then, nope.

It does take slightly longer to render, so clearly it's a nice to have a fast computer, but when is it not? :D

The reason it might take such a long time to get a clear image, can be due to mesh lights and wrong materials. Especially mesh lights are not good in my experience at least, but honestly they don't seem good in any renders I have tried to be honest, not only Superfly.

But since Superfly is PBR, it pretty much work with just 4 basic maps. Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal, then you can obviously add opacity etc. You just have to use the Physical surface node, the only thing it doesn't handle well is glass, ice etc. where you want to use a cycle node instead. At least when it comes to the most basic materials, you don't really need anything other than these 4 maps. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with displacement maps, from what I can see.

Keep in mind that normal maps are very different from displacement maps, in the sense that displacement maps manipulate the geometry itself, so if you don't have enough density it won't work and in most cases ruin your object. Normal maps just work as a 3d bump map. But here is an example of displacement map in Superfly.

As you can see the top left square is just 1 poly, so the displacement doesn't work at all, as we increase the density it gets better. The last one have a SubD of 2, which gives a lot of details, but you will also quickly kill your scene :D

I don't like or use Superfly except to test my freebies because it is way too complicated and way too slow. Over the years, there have been endless threads about how to get something to look right in Superfly. You don't see those about Firefly. There's one thread on the Poser 12 forum right now about how to get skin to look realistic in Superfly. Skin looks fine in Firefly. Criticize me for not wanting to change my work flow, but to me it's about not making my work flow take much longer, such as by having to tweak a bunch of friggin' nodes. When I look at Superfly renders, the only things that look significantly better to me are glass and metal. I don't care about glass or metal.

Now, Poser 12 fixes the speed problem, but it also emphasizes the complexity problem because people are having to waste time because 12 doesn't handle materials the same as 11. Plus, Poser 12 nukes all the Python scripts I use every single day.

I am happy with my results in Firefly. I can quickly test numerous commercial light sets to get just the effect I want. It renders the materials of every product I own. New is not inevitably better.

RedPhantom posted at 7:37AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418259

complaints I've seen for Superfly are speed, which is often hardware-related, grainy images which is a render settings problem but the settings can vary depending on lighting, and some shaders and people seem to want one setting for all. I've also seen complaints about having to update every shader in a scene because older content and sometimes even newer stuff doesn't come with superfly shaders and firefly shaders usually don't look as good in superfly. There's also the lack of microdisplacement.

All that being said, I'm not one who dislikes superfly. I almost never use firefly anymore. I don't mind taking a little longer to make a scene look good. I would like the microdisplacement though. It would add a lot to images.

I think you are correct. In general expecting to get a top notch image out of a render is highly unlikely, pretty much all people I have seen that work with 3D and are considered very skilled, will manipulate and "cheat" as much as possible or when required to get the image where they want it to. Which make sense, its the final image that counts not how you got there :)

And obviously older materials not specifically made for PBR can cause issues.

I don't know to much about microdisplacement, but can't you do most of it with a good highres normal map?

Im not good at cycles myself, so for me, I would just really like there to be a glass node in the physical surface node, so I could avoid cycles all together :D.

RobZhena posted at 7:45AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418265

I don't like or use Superfly except to test my freebies because it is way too complicated and way too slow. Over the years, there have been endless threads about how to get something to look right in Superfly. You don't see those about Firefly. There's one thread on the Poser 12 forum right now about how to get skin to look realistic in Superfly. Skin looks fine in Firefly. Criticize me for not wanting to change my work flow, but to me it's about not making my work flow take much longer, such as by having to tweak a bunch of friggin' nodes. When I look at Superfly renders, the only things that look significantly better to me are glass and metal. I don't care about glass or metal.

Now, Poser 12 fixes the speed problem, but it also emphasizes the complexity problem because people are having to waste time because 12 doesn't handle materials the same as 11. Plus, Poser 12 nukes all the Python scripts I use every single day.

I am happy with my results in Firefly. I can quickly test numerous commercial light sets to get just the effect I want. It renders the materials of every product I own. New is not inevitably better.

But don't you think the reason such discussion is not in Firefly, is because it always look wrong? As far as I know a lot or at least some of the stuff in Firefly is faked, because it can't do it.

It seems to me that a lot of people confuses Superfly with a confusing web of nodes all over the place. But that is where the physical surface node comes in. It is a cycle node just made easy, so you don't have to do all those crazy nodes.

This is a flashlight I made, and the setup on the left is controlling the material of the flashlight itself, and the other is for controlling the light. But only the light setup, is where it can get a bit complicated. The material for the flashlight itself is controlled by just these four maps, which is pretty much the only setup you have to do for a standard PBR material, when using a physical surface node. Changing these 4 you can make it look like wood, plastic or whatever, which is why I personally like PBR are so much, it doesn't really get a lot more simple than that in my opinion. Again, its when you start using glass, water etc. that it gets complicated. Also the PBR materials allows you to use them with other PBR renders without really having to do anything, which is really cool.

Disclaimer: I try to use Superfly these days as much as possible. A lot of rework is needed with materials but the new Mat Room makes it easier. One can always pop back to P11 to use EZSkin 3 for a good shader base, save, the back to P12. ( but wait, that's wooork)...

Now, here are my peeves.

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

A good normal map is sculpted in like zbrush/mudbox etc. You need to subdivide it a lot and sculpt details on the mesh and then bake them to create a normal map/ displacement map etc. Normal maps made out of a diffuse map are just flat and not correct. Also dont save normals as jpg's but tifs or png's. Jpgs loses a lof of the info in the normal map.

As you can see i sculpted a lot of detail on her face and iris. Now this may seem very harsh but dont forget SSS, peach fuzz etc are going to soften the skin up and you'll lose some of that detail.

Rhia474 posted at 10:26AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418284

Disclaimer: I try to use Superfly these days as much as possible. A lot of rework is needed with materials but the new Mat Room makes it easier. One can always pop back to P11 to use EZSkin 3 for a good shader base, save, the back to P12. ( but wait, that's wooork)...

Now, here are my peeves.

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

I think the issue that many models doesn't come with normal maps, depends on how old they are and what software people use. I myself use substance painter. And if you are familiar with PS, it shouldn't be to difficult to learn as it uses a lot of the same concepts, like layers etc.

Here is the basic idea of how to do it and how it works. im still learning myself as it always is when doing 3D :D

But normal maps are generated automatically, and as far as I know there are two common ways of doing it, which you can also combine into generating the normal map.

First way, is to have two models a low poly one and a high poly one, where you model all the changes into the high poly model and then you generate a normal map from that and use it on the low poly. Obviously this take a lot of time, but also gives you a lot of control, but for this you would use a program like Zbrush, mudbox etc. That allows you to work with very high density models.

The other one, is through the texturing itself, which is what substance painter does, so basically you paint your 3D object as you normally would, but you can paint on all channels at the same time.

So here is a table for a scene im working one, which can suit as example.

1. After you have Unwrapped your model and have loaded it into substance painter, you want to bake the textures first.

1. In this menu you choose the resolution and is also where you can load a high res mesh to use for baking. You don't have to if you don't want.

1. Then you just hit baking selected textures and it will automatically bake a lot of different maps that will eventually be used for the various functions. But when that is done, you are basically ready to texture.

1. Basic layer structure as in PS.

1. So you can choose a brush which is either a normal based on (basically you can just paint into the height map as that gets actually combined into the normal map when you export your textures. But as you can see, I created a shape on the table which paint the normal map automatically. Which is very good if you want to make screws or whatever.

1. Where it really shines is when you start using smart materials and want to add scratches and stuff. because you can simply turn off color for instance and only paint the scratches or remove the paint etc. As you can see I have just added a smart material which come with all the required settings you need and because its like photoshop you can just stack these on top of each other, using masks etc. And when you are done, you just export the textures and you get the 4 maps you need (diffuse, roughness, metal and normal map and other maps if you need them.) And those you just hook into Superfly as shown above or Daz Iray. Substance paint uses Iray so you are pretty certain what it looks like there is also how it will look in both Poser and Daz, if you use an HDRI map.

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

all the wrinkles and sagging skin are actually done with normal maps.

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

Yes you need a lot of memory in zbrush too to extract the normals out of the mesh. This is due to the fact that it is subdivided a lot and the details are calculated on the lowest sub and then extracted and placed on the UV map/normal.

Liquid_Ice posted at 11:39AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418301

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

Yes you need a lot of memory in zbrush too to extract the normals out of the mesh. This is due to the fact that it is subdivided a lot and the details are calculated on the lowest sub and then extracted and placed on the UV map/normal.

Had to update my graphic card as well and luckily you can get some fairly decent ones cheap, if you don't buy the newest of the newest :D.

Looking great with that model you have rendered lots of details going on. Very well done. What I like with substance painter is that for most things it works very well, but if you have to make extreme closeups, you would probably do as you do in Zbrush, but eventually time is also a factor :D

Well i cheat sometimes by using surface maps. But i prefer to make my own brushes for the pores and look at the pores of my reference photos. You can sculpt a pore map iin zbrush or a comparable program and use that as an alpha/brush. This way in poser or daz studio you wont get harsh lines on the skin. Also you have to take in to account poser and studio use tangent space normals and they are calculated differently in both programs.

I think substance painter uses the GPU to run right? and zbrush doesnt. so it is not so important to have 4 gb for instance on your videocard. But a lot of ram is paramount for this.

Liquid_Ice posted at 11:51AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418300

all the wrinkles and sagging skin are actually done with normal maps.

Are those Superfly Renders? Those look actually very good.

No not all. the left one on the second row is. If you follow the correct BPR values and use BPR textures you will get similar results across render engines. Dont forget that some apps use different ways to calculate SSS (maya etc) so there is always a little difference and other options. But the basis still stands BPR should give you similar results in other apps.

Folks Poser 12, helps cut down on the time factor and the graininess that is inherent to SF. The have a post fx option that denoises the image and gets rid of the graininess, they've also improved the rendering speed.

Also, if the Cycles root confuses or scares you, try using the physical surface root, it's more like the poser root node, though easier to use as it does most of the work for you. Take a look at my store for decent SF renders. All the SF renders were done in P12. The longest render times was for Spring Fling, and it was still faster than some of my older FF renders.

Rhia474 posted at 1:42PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418284

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

Materialize can make normal maps and other maps and it's free. I'm an idiot and I could use it. But I'm not an artist, so I can't use it very well (but I should really start to try). Bounding Box Software / Materialize

I only render in Superfly ... but I do have issues with how well the shadow catcher works and micromesh displacement. Otherwise, I really like it and it's much faster with less noise in P12.

Boni posted at 4:00PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418326

I only render in Superfly ... but I do have issues with how well the shadow catcher works and micromesh displacement. Otherwise, I really like it and it's much faster with less noise in P12.

Wait... they added a shadow catcher? Where was I?

VedaDalsette posted at 5:22PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418319

Materialize can make normal maps and other maps and it's free. I'm an idiot and I could use it. But I'm not an artist, so I can't use it very well (but I should really start to try). Bounding Box Software / Materialize

That sounds pretty cool, actually. Let me grab it and see if I can figure it out. Many thanks for the recommendation!!

A Superfly render could be as terrible as a Firefly render if the lighting technique is poor. I'll pick speed over quality... an acceptable quality, as I love to postwork in Photoshop. What I cannot work with is grainy renders. It's pointless trying to do any postwork on a noisy render. I like renders where you cannot count the pixels in it LOL

I always work in Firefly. Several reasons. Most all the content I have will only look good in Firefly. I tried Superfly and like many said, grainy renders and takes forever to render. I do a lot of toon like renders for work and so Firefly works best for that. I am just happy with Firefly..works for me!

Digitell posted at 8:25PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418339

I always work in Firefly. Several reasons. Most all the content I have will only look good in Firefly. I tried Superfly and like many said, grainy renders and takes forever to render. I do a lot of toon like renders for work and so Firefly works best for that. I am just happy with Firefly..works for me!

I can understand the annoying grain, which does increase render times to get rid off.

This is from an article talking about PBR.

1. Can a PBR system be used to create stylized art?

Yes, absolutely. If your goal is to create a fantastical, stylized world, having accurate material definition is still very important. Even if you’re creating a unicorn that farts rainbows, you still generally want that unicorn to obey the physics of light and matter.

A great example of this is Pixar’s work, which is very stylized, yet often on the cutting edge of material accuracy. Here is a great article about PBR in Monsters University: fxguide feature on Monsters University

https://marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/

So PBR is not only for realistic renders, not saying that Firefly is not best for you, just that it is a misconception to think that PBR is restricted only to realistic renders.

I had to google PBR... all I got was: Professional Bull Riders and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, I'm guessing it's neither one of those...

@Digitell - I can understand that... I wouldn't doodle too much either trying to setup materials, shaders when you're on task and you have several images you want to create, you have to work off of presets and pick progress over perfection.

TwiztidKidd posted at 9:38PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418346

I had to google PBR... all I got was: Professional Bull Riders and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, I'm guessing it's neither one of those...

@Digitell - I can understand that... I wouldn't doodle too much either trying to setup materials, shaders when you're on task and you have several images you want to create.

PBR= Physically Based Render

Regarding grainy renders and long render times:

If you have P12, make use of Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. When engaged, Superfly will note when a given pixel no longer changes with continued samples (i.e., "this pixel has already reached Nirvana"), and skips that pixel thereafter, devoting its time to more difficult areas of the render.

With high quality settings, you'll see slow progress at the beginning of the render (same speed as P11), but at some stage the progress will begin to accelerate, and as more pixels are finalized, the render progresses very rapidly. For me, this feature alone made P12 worth it.

I have 2008 vintage equipment, and my video card is not good for GPU renders, so I'm limited to CPU-only renders. Take a look at these P12 Superfly renders which have a lot of metals, volumetric water, meshlighting, etc. No grain remaining, but they did take over an hour to render on my workstation.

undersea ruins

Appleseed Jedi

Cortana and Master Chief

Elven Grey Ship

These are the render settings I used for the Grey Havens renders; zero out the volumetric values if your scene doesn't have volumetric materials in it.

EClark1894 posted at 8:46AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418347

PBR= Physically Based Render

Thank you EClark1984... it's pretty obvious I'm new here lol Thanks again!

TwiztidKidd posted at 9:21AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418377

EClark1894 posted at 8:46AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418347

PBR= Physically Based Render

Thank you EClark1984... it's pretty obvious I'm new here lol Thanks again!

Here are two quick videos to understand what PBR render is and why it is very useful. I suggest you watch them in the order I linked them.

What is PBR? Physically-Based Rendering Explained

Real-Time Physically Based Rendering: A quick explanation

With these two you should have a pretty good understanding of what it is and why one would consider to use it. :)

This video might be easier to understand than the second one or you can watch both :)

PBR Explained for 3D Artists - Physically Based Rendering

Thank you for the explanation of PBR. I had never heard of it either.

@searchnasaigh-this is very good to hear about the Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. The long render times can make or break the work flow.

@TwiztedKidd- yeppers! I have a process I use and when I am working with deadlines, messing about with the nodes and all really doesn't work too well for me.

Digitell posted at 10:45AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418384

Thank you for the explanation of PBR. I had never heard of it either.

@searchnasaigh-this is very good to hear about the Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. The long render times can make or break the work flow.

@TwiztedKidd- yeppers! I have a process I use and when I am working with deadlines, messing about with the nodes and all really doesn't work too well for me.

Sure, no problem.

Now where I think it becomes very interesting talking about PBR is when we look at how we use Poser. Doesn't really matter whether you are a content creator or just using the assets for creating art or whatever.

But lets say I create something and I make all the textures etc. and it looks great to me in the scene I have made and I render it in Firefly. However now another content creator also make something, which looks great in their render.

However combining our two works might not look all that good together, because we approached it very differently. Meaning this person might have made metal slightly different than I did, because that worked for them or their glass or whatever.

Meaning that there is not a common guideline for content creators to approach what they are making to make sure that what they make will look correct regardless of what scene they are thrown into.

However if both me and content creator B is both working with the PBR standard, it shouldn't really matter, or at least not as much, which objects or scenes they are used in, as they will react more or less the same. Which to me, would be a huge benefit for everyone. Because people know that whatever they buy will be more or less compatible given they follow the same approach.

For content creators we can remake the textures and turn them into PBR somewhat easy, but for people that just want to make art and have a huge library of stuff, this could be a potential nightmare.

So to me it would be a huge benefit for the community if all content creators would start doing PBR materials rather than Firefly.

@3D-Mobster- What you are saying makes complete sense very true..BUT.., what about the artists/customers that already have tons of stuff in their libraries that dont render so well with Superfly. If they prefer Firefly, because that is what the bulk of their library works well in..and all content creators are now making only items that work in Superfly..that would leave out the Firefly users. So the most logical thing to do would be to provide materials that work well in both Superfly and Firefly. It would not be good to only provide 1 and not the other..That is my opinion.

That is what is being done now, vendors are providing both Firefly and Superfly textures for renders. However, will this approach last? It may get tiresome providing 2 sets of textures but, then again, DS does support Iray and 3Delight ATM.

Digitell posted at 11:34AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418395

@3D-Mobster- What you are saying makes complete sense very true..BUT.., what about the artists/customers that already have tons of stuff in their libraries that dont render so well with Superfly. If they prefer Firefly, because that is what the bulk of their library works well in..and all content creators are now making only items that work in Superfly..that would leave out the Firefly users. So the most logical thing to do would be to provide materials that work well in both Superfly and Firefly. It would not be good to only provide 1 and not the other..That is my opinion.

There is nothing to do about old content, unless the content creators or people themselves make new textures. Which they could grab a free copy of Substance painter and learn the basics and would be able to convert the textures fairly quick. Given that they already have all the objects with UVs etc. But besides that, nothing as I can see it would be able to fix that, since a lot of the stuff was made before Superfly even existed, so it obviously weren't taken into consideration. But I can see it from both sides, the content users and content creators, but ultimately I still think everyone wins from a transition to PBR.

For users of Firefly, certain products might not work correctly in Superfly, which is obviously annoying. But for the most part you can render it in Superfly so it looks good enough. For instance I only use M4 and V4, which doesn't have Superfly textures, but still you can render them and they look fair enough in my opinion.

On the other side as content creator, you spend a shit load of time modelling, Unwrapping and in general preparing all these objects, and you want to deliver the best possible product to people. So seeing your hard work, getting butchered in Firefly is really annoying, especially because the amount of time you have to spend with it trying to fix the materials is absolutely insane in my opinion. Which is obviously a process that content users won't know about. But I think most content creator will agree that it is not easy to work with Firefly, especially compared to the quality you get out of it. Not saying that some people can do it very well, as some people have a very good knowledge of it and how to use it. But it is the few rather than the many. This is from a work in process of a soap dispenser I made for a new product, which is going to be part of a whole house, but it is rendered in Superfly. Should I make the materials for it in Firefly, given that Im not the best at using it, I could probably spend 30-40 minutes simply trying to get to something that I would find acceptable. Like the plastic, soap etc. But still it would be far off from the quality of the Superfly render. Which again would annoy me, because I want to deliver the best quality and what I vision it should look like, and PBR just helps so much with that.

Superfly as such doesn't exclude anyone, ultimately it will still be up to the content creator to decide whether they want to make materials for Firefly, Superfly or both of them, actually the benefit of PBR is that you will also automatically get materials for Iray in Daz3D at the same time, so it actually include more :D. Besides that a lot of the maps used for Superfly will function well for Firefly anyway. So Firefly users wouldn't notice a huge difference, they would still have the same issue as they have now, with inconsistent quality in the materials. But for content creators it could greatly increase the quality of their products and workflow, and make sure that products are working well together across the marketplace.

So again to make it very clear :D Its not a Firefly or Superfly kind of thing, one doesn't prevent the other. But rather to improve the consistency between products.

People assume they have to choose between a grainy image and speed. This image was rendered in 43 minutes. The only postwork was a fix to the part in the hair. The bump is too strong, but there's no grain

This image was entered in 4 minutes. It looks terrible. The same postwork was done

Here's the same image with the denoiser and the same hair fix. Has a more airbrushed look.

And this was the original firefly image I did back in Poser 7. I've lost the original scene file so the Superfly remders were a reconstruction. This had the hair postwork and teeth whitening. I have no idea how long it took to render. It would have been longer than 43 minutes, but it was also done on an older computer.

It is not that I dislike Superfly, I am just more comfortable using Firefly. I have no desire to change my workflow at this point. Maybe down the line when I have more time to study on Superfly settings and more time for rendering, but now I am happy with the Firefly :)

RedPhantom posted at 2:21PM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418405

Here's the same image with the denoiser and the same hair fix. Has a more airbrushed look.

The denoiser seems very aggressive, would personally prefer using more samples instead as it ruins all the details or maybe do some light touch up in PS.

She's cute... here's a light touch up in PS

Great work TwitzidKidd! The hair look so real with this touch up!

Thank you... just a couple smart filters... I can't paint hair as amazing as you do... I can draw stick figures though but not very well lol

I'm curious about how long does it take to render a 2048 x 2048 portrait upclose with Superfly or 4000 x 4000?

that's amazing. Never seen Sydney looking so good