I've recently gotten an RTX 2060 video card. Before I install it, what should I know about using it to render in Poser? I figure it would be better to start off with things right rather than have to go back and change things. Thanks for any help or advice.

Using the studio drivers and not the gaming drivers seems to be more reliable.

You should be able to do GPU-based rendering for Superfly. The Optix version is faster, but occasionally will give errors that require restarting Poser (in which case render without Optix). You'll see in the list of GPUs the regular and Optix version.

I don't know that there are really any other issues here if you're already using Superfly. If you're using Firefly, you won't get any real benefit from the GPU, so that's more of a transition. I think it's worth it though.

Though scant comparison with yours, my twin GTX 750 cards thrive on vol-bounces = bucket-size = 1024 for Superfly renders.

But, if scene is too complex, with detail and/or wide-angle, so test-render black, drop that 1024 by binary stages to 512, 256, 128 then 64...

Um, is your 2060 a 'type 2' with the extra RAM ??

When I render one of my Vic4-based character, using my Cycles-based material, and I use a hair prop/character, I have to use a Posersurface node for the scalp part, or quite often the RTX-based render crashes.
It sometimes appear using some old pubic props.

Most of the time, if I correct the problem, I can restart an RTX-based render directly (I have a 2080Ti) without relaunching Poser.
So you may have different experiences.

Furthermore: the RTX engine truly hates the old "Ambient Occlusion" nodes....

This is for superfly. I know firefly doesn't do GPU rendering. I haven't used firefly much since I got superfly.

I'm not sure if I type 2 or not. It doesn't say, so probably not. It has 12g RAM.

I do sometimes like huge scenes. If it does go over what I have, what will happen? I'm assuming my computer won't explode. Does it crash poser, crash my computer, say you've got to be kidding me (or more likely some out of error message)? As long as nothing explodes, I can always go back to CPU renders for big scenes. I've been stuck with those so far so I haven't been spoiled by the faster GPU stuff yet.

I usually update all the textures and remove the amibent occlusion nodes because I don't like what they do to textures in superfly rendering

I'm sorry if my explanation caused any confusion.
PoserSurface works really well with Superfly.

i don't know what you call a huge scene, but the following, with 13 Vic4 set to SubD level = 1 needed less than 4G of video RAM (this probably depends on the bucket size), but Poser12 used up to almost 19Gb of RAM, something Win10 handles smoothly on a 32Gb system.

This is my largest scene. It has 70 people in it. (Is there really any reason my old computer died?) I don't usually do them this big. Most of my larger scenes are 10 - 25 people. There will be a learning curve for what differences are in GPU vs CPU rendering, probably not as bad as I expect.

70 people? wow... all with the same density as standard Vic4's or are they low-poly versions?

I'm asking because my 2080Ti couldn't handle 14 Vic4's in the same scene, but not because of its onboard RAM

The population consists of 14 V4s, 21 M4s, 4 V3, 3 M3, 5 k4, 2 Dawn, 2 D3, 2 Roxie, 3 Pauline, and one of each Matt, Ryan 2, PE, EF Steve, Sydney, Laura, Luna, Alyson 2, Apollo, Dusk, Simon, Miki 4, James, and Genesis. There were no lo res versions or reduced polygons used. Only half was rendered at a time and only that half was populated. It still maxed out my 20g RAM. 

Wow

@RedPhantom wow what a beautiful scene that is! Beautiful composition!

About the low-poly versions, in game development there is a thing called LOD (level of detail), if I'm not mistaking it considers the distance from camera and automatically switch geometry versions to render. I don't know if Poser has something similar, but this would allow you to zoom in/out without having to manually replace the figure, maybe a script could be done for it? (idea for the python guys out there!)

@ RedPhantom

I'm running an RTX 2060 super. pretty close to the same card I would think. I also use an older GTX card to run the montor while the RTX is rendering so I can do other stuff on my computer while rendering ( video games, watching movies, surfing the internet etc.)

With a ton of figures on screen at the same time you are going to want to re-use texture maps to save render memory. I always use the same mouth and eye textures for all my V4 and M4 characters. all my female characters also use the same eyelash textures.

I run into the same render crash situation that Y-Phil gets. It has to do with some GPU memory problem with Optix turned on. I ALWAYS use OPTIX. Sometimes a mat will make it crash and I have to change out the mat. My free Poser 11 mat will sometimes crash out an OPTIX render on a prop. I've never had an issue with textures on a figure, just props. When you get one of those crashes you need to save your file and restart Poser because it will no longer render to your GPU.

Super high res texture maps will get you to that point of a render crash as well as super high detail procedural textures. At some point it's got to convert all those nodes into something it can render and it needs ram for that.

I will back up what @evargas has said: For distant shots use lower res texture maps. I'd start by using 1/4 size maps for the figures (2048x2048) smaller for textiles and such.

Wow, these new GPU cards are literally an order of magnitude more powerful, and all that extra G-RAM must certainly help !!

{ Sobs...}

Early last year, I did the math, realised it was much cheaper and more future-resistant to build an entire network-render PC than sufficiently upgrade either of my CAD-Tower's now-ageing twin cards. Hence 'Box', with Ryzen 7 1700x, 32 GB, and a minimal VGA Radeon R5 left over from trouble-shooting this CAD-Tower's build. Queue Manager renders utilise ~98% CPU...

Prices are crazy. The only reason I’m upgrading is because my old computer died and I decided that rather than just replace the bad part, and hope to find something compatible with the old and later new as the rest deteriorate (the thing is 10 years old and I see signs of the rest going) I would go ahead and replace it all now and stop torturing myself.

Howdy Red.

When you're ready to upgrade that RTX 2060, I recommend the RTX 3060 12gb version. The 3070+ GPU's are a bit faster but most have less V-ram and as you know their cost is ridiculous for the slight gains.  I ALWAYS render huge scenes , never a hiccup, in fact I'm rendering 2 huge animation scenes on the same GPU simultaneously(Q-manager + native Poser render) as I type.

I’ve already ordered it, just waiting on other parts that should be here any day now. Watching the tracking like a hawk

Thanks for all the help. I've got the card in and Poser rendering with it. Here's the first render I did with it

Great!

That's fantastic.  Well worth the weight for the new card.

Thanks. I'm now working on one of my larger scenes to see how it handles that. If you hear about an explosion of unknown origins, it was probably me

So I decided to put the card through its paces and did this scene with 31 humanoids and 4 dragons. The GPU was able to handle it, only taking about an hour to render.Much better than the days it used to take me.

Howdy Red, its me again...

Did you render the dragon scene above with a 30 series GPU? If so would you mind posting your render settings here?

I don't wish to offend, but if you're using a 30 series GPU It probably shouldn't take more than  5min(Possibly less than 2min or even 1min) to render that scene regardless of how complex it is.

It may be time to think outside the box, having great respect for the render Guru's frequenting this venue...this ain't quantum physics... Optix rendering on 30 series GPU's  is a whole 'nuther smoke from what we've gotten used to previously...... Bigger Better Faster is the flavor of the day...

Lets hash this out, rite here in the public forum using your Dragon scene above as a test bed...Shouldn't take more than 10-15 min of your time each day/week/month if you're game.  If you don't wish to participate its totally OK,  I'll drop it no problem,                                                                                                                                            

Here is my suggestion as a starting point.....

Its important that you enable noise reduction in PostFX, I know  how you(and others) feel about NR,  just humor me on this and(if you're willing) I'll show you how to fix it.

Render the entire scene leaving nothing out...The first draft may be ugly, but post it anyway so we can track your progress. If it takes a week or more for you to get around to it, I don't mind I'm retired now, and I have the patience of a Pope....LOL

No, I used a 20 series. I probably used higher settings than usually needed, but the hair on the blond in the center doesn't render well without them, and using denoise doesn't look right for it.

RedPhantom posted at 3:21 PM Wed, 23 March 2022 - #4436310

I’ve already ordered it, just waiting on other parts that should be here any day now. Watching the tracking like a hawk

As NikKelly said above

"NikKelly posted at 8:08 AM Mon, 21 March 2022

Wow, these new GPU cards are literally an order of magnitude more powerful, and all that extra G-RAM must certainly help !!"

Im looking at grabbing  3090ti in the near future, just waiting to see if the market keeps trending downward,  Newegg has 19  in stock at $1999.99, I probably should go ahead and grab one.

I recently got back into Poser after a few years of (another product), and the hardest thing for me with Superfly is the lights. None of my old light rigs work at all. 

Where superfly is a physics-based renderer, you need to think more like photography. In some old light sets, I've seen dozens of lights where in superfly, you can use a single one. It also helps to have your render be in an enclosed space, like an environment sphere.

I recently got back into Poser after a few years of (another product), and the hardest thing for me with Superfly is the lights. None of my old light rigs work at all. 

For GPU renders the bucket size is important to speed. And, it's super subjective. Scene complexity, system performance, memory and bus speeds. The only way to know whats going to perform best it to do speed comparisons for your self. Fortunately Poser has some tools to help you objectively tune your bucket size. If you look at the Message Log in Poser (the speech bubble icon on the top right of the screen) it will show you exactly how long a render took to run. This will give you the data to fine tune bucket sizes to your system's performance. On my RTX 2070 buckets around 128-256 seem to perform best. Also, adaptive sampling works best with progressive render off.

You need to have great cooling to use the full potential of your CPU!