3D-Mobster posted at 10:15AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418456

EClark1894 posted at 7:13AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418452

I think this is something that everyone should think about. Firefly isn't going away just because you use Superfly. In fact, for the same reason they won't give me full Cycles in Poser, they can't do away totally with Firefly. Superfly is a HYBRID. It uses both Cycles AND Firefly nodes. And that's actually what I object to. What may work fine in Firefly is crap when using it in Superfly or trying to use it in Cycles. I know for certain that several nodes that I want to use in Cycles is missing in Poser. And I respect workarounds, but they don't always work properly. One good example would be the Firefly colorramp node. Perfect for Firefly, not so much for Cycles. And let's not forget that there are several nodes missing all together for Cycles. I would accept the explanation that the development team just ran out of time for development of these nodes, except for one thing, if time was the factor, why not just add the nodes in during the intervening years? I also firmly believe that this hybridization has not only slowed down, but discouraged any development for Cycles in Poser and any materials for use in Poser. I admire Ghostship. He's had the determination I lacked, to wrestle with Poser's compound nodes. There may be others but I don't know of them.

Didn't know that, in fact I don't really know a lot about cycles at all :D

Couldn't they combine some nodes in Firefly, so it could work with the metal and roughness from PBR? So it could use the same maps, if that was possible and they could improve the shader for these that would go a long way.

Since I don't know a lot about cycles I take your word for it, that certain things are missing. What nodes do you lack, I mean what limitations do you find when using cycles of stuff that you can't make due to these missing ones?

Also since you seem to have a much better understanding of cycles than me, maybe you can help me with some glass issues :D

So here is a simple setup, a plane with a glassBsdf and a thin box with the same material. My issue is that the glass shader seem to behave rather weird when working with a double faced object like a box. Where you get this dark shadow as if the glass is not completely transparent, even though I have the color to all white. Lets assume it was a window with double glass in it. Do you know what is going on or how to fix it? I have tried to tell the box to not cast shadows, but didn't help so I assume its from the shader. Also have cranked up the transparency bounces so there should be more than enough.

There is no one kind of glass. Most people assume that glass is glass and they use the shader thinking it will treat it as such. But remember, Cycles and Superfly are PBR renderers, so there are some lighting and opacity issues that you will have to account for in your settings. That's not as difficult as you think, you have to do the same thing for Firefly, but it's more a matter of what you expect. Think of it like this: looking through a window is not the same as looking through a glass bottle or even eyeglasses. But you expect less or no distortion looking through a window, unless you're looking through it at a weird angle, while you do expect distorions looking through an eyeglass, bottle or even water. Yet people can, will, and have used the Cycles shader to be all of these in a render.

Off hand, except for the color ramp node which I mentioned earlier, I can't be specific on which nodes are missing in Superfly. I do know that a couple of missing nodes are math nodes, I believe, and I think an input and a color node are missing as well.