A couple of things that I do notice, using Wall 3 as an example.

"Create Roughness Map" is checked by default. But it only creates a roughness map if there is a specular or bump map. The wall has a diffuse map only, and that diffuse is plugged into the Bump channel of the PoserSurface node. 

BUT ... GoPhysical doesn't create a roughness map from that, and the Roughness setting is set to 1 (I'm assuming it's expecting values from a map and that is why). But, because there IS no roughness map, a setting of 1 makes the walls look very flat. Setting Roughness to .5 give the wall a more satiny surface. The more you reduce the Roughness setting, the "shinier" the surface will get.

But the second part of this wall is that the GoPhysical conversion doesn't inherit the Specular Color from the PoserSurface node, instead it's 50% gray. 

@DCArt--well, I just converted everything on the Sofa itself from the set, there is nothing else on the scene but the Construct, and the whole thing renders grey (not black) with OPtiX and GPU.

Error message says 'failed to create CUDA context--illegal address'

There is an extensive tutorial in the manual for how to create PBR shaders. It uses the "Sanctum Art Kitty" that is included in Core Content, because that has so many different types of surfaces in it (glass, plastic, fabric, metal, etc etc). 

There are examples for both Physical Surface and CYcles/Principled

Starts here:

Using PBR Maps with Poser

(You don't need to download the content from psoersoftware.com as it states in that topic, they were added to core content and should be in your Included runtime.)

So basically: the Go Physical does not work any more and we need to do everything manually?

Rhia474 posted at 1:57 PM Sat, 8 April 2023 - #4461324

So basically: the Go Physical does not work any more and we need to do everything manually?

Those are questions that Ken might be able to answer better seeing as I usually do my shaders manually anyway.  Here's the changes I made, and if you see the preview square it previews the same in both root nodes.

Yeah, I'll PM-bug him about this. You're a star for doing all this testing!

hborre posted at 12:03 PM Sat, 8 April 2023 - #4461294

I feel that Poser will move away from the PoserSurface and replace it with the PhysicalSurface node.  There are fewer parameters to keep track and the connections are more efficient.  I will need to run Firefly renders with both PoserSurface and PhysicalSurface but from what I see, the PhysicalSurface node produces better results.

There is an awful lot of content out there that uses PoserSurface root, I suspect it will remain for backward compatibility with older content. The tricky part will be getting content creators fired up to use it.

And for the record, Physical Surface root works MUCH better with PBR Metal and Roughness maps than the Spec and Gloss maps used in PoserSurrace. 

That CUDA error is bugging me. Nerd may want you to zip that up with your GoPhysical changes in it, and then attach it to a support ticket.

Yeah, that CUDA error is odd. I will put in a ticket and see what I can do when I get a breather tonight.

Rhia474 posted at 1:57 PM Sat, 8 April 2023 - #4461324

So basically: the Go Physical does not work any more and we need to do everything manually?

I'm not sure if anything is changed in the plugin, as I usually do my conversions manually. I just noticed that the results from GoPhysical didn't appear the same in the "preview chip" and made those couple of changes:

Those are questions that Ken might be able to answer better seeing as I usually do my shaders manually anyway.  Here's the changes I made, and if you see the preview square it previews the same in both root nodes.

Ah, Ken may have already answered your questions for you. Read "Best Practices" on page 4 of 5 of the GoPhysical PDF. Tweaks appear to be expected. 8-)

>>>> Ouch!  Driving a bump setting with a Color Map?  I wouldn't consider that practical.  You drive your bump through a grayscale map and in a situation like this, I would run that Color Map through a math node and Gamma Correct it.  I consider that very sloppy workmanship.

One of the reasons I was so happy about GoPhysical that it promised to relieve me the absolute nightmare of manually recreating shaders for these old sets--that is impossible for those of us who are not matroom gurus, guys. I am a bit despondent now that we discovered this issue. I sent Ken a PM.

Part of the difficulty is ...

PoserSurface uses FireFly renderer, which "fakes" a lot of things like specular and metal. It's not a physically-based renderer like SuperFly/Cycles is.  Two totally different methods of rendering.

PoserSurface uses specular, gloss, and reflection maps to create shine and reflection.

Physical Surface and Cycles/Principled uses roughness and metallic maps to create shine and reflection.  Roughness maps work opposite to specular. Darker areas are more "shiny" or "glossy", and lighter areas are more "flat." It's a little more involved than that, but that is the gist of it.

Metallic maps ... white areas are metallic, black are not. Gray somewhere in between.

Once you get the hang of PBR it is SO MUCH EASIER than dealing with a gazillion nodes chained together with spaghetti noodies (which is the major part of the difficulty in converting FireFly shaders that are node-heavy to Physical Surface). I havne't looked back since Poser started using PBR. All the work is done with the textures, as long as they are connected right. 

Oh, I agree with you. I am begging for an easy to use tutorial on how to connect maps for months now. What I tried on my own sucked bilgewater through a straw. Hence my excitement about the Ken1171 script. It WORKED.

I don't know if this is relevant here but, in another thread, I complained Poser 13 kept looking up, it was off working on something using both CPU time and memory but was unresponsive.  I have now found another factor, it only appears to happen when I load a scene created in Poser 12.  If I create the same scene in Poser 13 by adding all the content directly from the library there is no issue. The same is true if I create an entirely new scene in Poser 13. I am not technical enough to know why that is or what might be causing it but there your are.  It could be specific to my system of course.

Up above I posted a link to a PBR tutorial that is in the Poser docs (was added in Poser 12 docs IIRC)

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/comments/4461323/permalink

Oh, I agree with you. I am begging for an easy to use tutorial on how to connect maps for months now. What I tried on my own sucked bilgewater through a straw. Hence my excitement about the Ken1171 script. It WORKED.

@hornet3d--thank you for reminding me of that post of yours, I'll test that one rq.

@DCArt--will read, but my fear is that with the changes in P13 the P12 tutorials are irrelevant.

This appears to be one of the reasons for my difficulties with a GPU render # '20:39:20 - SuperFly: Cannot connect output from node Specular to input Specular_Color on node PoserSurface.  The log follow on with - '20:39:32 - SuperFly: Start rendering on device NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.

                                                                20:39:45 - Warning: Error Rendering in SuperFly.

What you just posted describes an illegal connection that shouldn't be there.  You can connect a Specular node to Alt. Specular but you cannot connect it directly to the Specular channel.  I bet if you check the Material Room, you will see a dotted connector between the two nodes.  A tip, whenever you're connecting nodes, Poser will gray out the connectors of the input node indicating that those are not legal receptors.  You can still connect but don't expect good results.  Always check the preview to insure that calculations are properly done, otherwise, you will get a black preview.

One of the reasons I was so happy about GoPhysical that it promised to relieve me the absolute nightmare of manually recreating shaders for these old sets--that is impossible for those of us who are not matroom gurus, guys. I am a bit despondent now that we discovered this issue. I sent Ken a PM.

What you just posted describes an illegal connection that shouldn't be there.  You can connect a Specular node to Alt. Specular but you cannot connect it directly to the Specular channel.  I bet if you check the Material Room, you will see a dotted connector between the two nodes.  A tip, whenever you're connecting nodes, Poser will gray out the connectors of the input node indicating that those are not legal receptors.  You can still connect but don't expect good results.  Always check the preview to insure that calculations are properly done, otherwise, you will get a black preview.

I have yet to invest on the product but I may soon.  I spend quite a bit time in the Material Room tinkering and learning set up and expected results.  

@Rhia, here's what I get when I use GoPhysical on the Sofa_1 material for the sofa.

Same issue with the sofa textures. The Color map was originally connected to bump, so that may be whyGoPhysical didn't create a roughness map. The Roughness setting in the Physical Surface is set to 1 (which is very "flat"). Adjust to somewhere between .5 and .8 depending on how satiny you want it to look. Then click the Specular color chip in the Physical Surface node and "pick up" the Specular Color from the PoserSurface node. Those are the same changes I made for the wall.

To be clear, I don't think the problem is with GoPhysical, I think it's that the original materials don't have much to "convert" from. Can you take a similar screen shot for what you get for the sofa material when you have a chance?  I am curious to see if the preview chips look similar or if you are actually seeing a black preview in there.

. 

And here's a screen cap after I adjust the roughness and pick up the specular color from the original MAT

The preview window shows the rendered result

Yup, will check it out after Easter cookie baking extravaganza tonight. Thanks so much!

No hurry, enjoy the baking. 8-)

Okay, this is what GoPhysical gives me:

But get this. I opened up a brand new scene based on what hornet3d was saying. I added the Construct, I added one light. I added the sofa. I used GoPhysical on all of its materials. I set it to render with OptiX. It rendered fine.

I am absolutely stumped at this point what causes this behavior.

Can you expand the preview square of the Physical Surface node as well?

Well that's interesting.

I'm not sure what was going wrong before, but this time around I got exactly what you show above. I DO see a bump map, and I DO see a relection map. And I also now wsee a Specular to Roughness converter.  So the only thing that needs to be tweaked is that specular color.

The difference is, I shut Poser down in between, so there must have been something hanging around inside Poser that was causing GoPhysical to burp and not connect things right.

Here's the puzzle though. I show exactly what you show, but it renders fine on this end. No gray or black render.

I'm now officially at a loss. I can't reproduce the problem. I am totally stumped on this one, I'm sorry 8-(

I'm gonna pass my file over to Chuck (Nerd) since it's the same thing you have. 

Sorry,. bottom half got cut off.

OK. So it PREVIEWS OK in the material room.

So that material is good.

And it's not your hardware because you are able to render that MA Bedroom as we found out the other day.

What the heck? LOL

Go Physical is a fine script and will work in the majority of cases but I have found it does not work on glass, lights and fires.  In this instance there were no flames rendered after running the scene figure through Go Physical.  With the flame materials colour and emissions set to zero it is really not a surprise so they have to be changed.

As you can see this is not the total answer as the outline of the flame panel can be seen but it is an improvement on darkness.  I am sure there is a better way to do this but I am just using this to show that while Go Physical is a fantastic script that will save a massive amount of time there are occasions when there is still work needed.

I tell you, this is driving me insane.  It must be something how Poser, specifically Poser 13 reloads textures. I will just try keep pushing and hope after Easter some of the devs will hang around and can take a peek.

You are a dear to try and track this down! (made blueberry swirl cheesecake bars for the record for tomorrow's Easter party at a friend's, my multitasking skills are still good apparently). I wish I could share.

Yeah it's actually pretty cool.  I'm not sure what happened before I am wondering why I was only seeing a color texture in the original shader. And the same thing happened with the wall, there was only a color map attached to bump. 

MY COMPUTER IS HAUNTED!

LOL, this is making my doubt my sanity sometimes. Of course, it is early days so hopefully we will find ALL THE HAUNTINGZ inside P13.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about renders in P13, so here is a quick and not very well-lit one of one of my OCs I mean, look at that ear glow!)

Nice!

I had been in a rendering slump, but I've  been enjoying trying out the new version

@Rhia474 When you convert Poser Surface materials to Physical Surface using my script, it has an option to "Use Image Maps Only", which means it will bypass all Firefly shader nodes and use only the texture maps. I believe this option is enabled by default, but if it's not, give it a try.

Having that said, this has a catch: some materials use procedural textures (shader nodes) instead of textures. In this case, the option above will result into blank materials. If that happens, try disabling the option and try again. If the render is still black, it means the Firefly shader nodes are totally invalid in Superfly with Physical Surface, and might need some manual editing.

It is important to remember that "Go Physical" is meant to create a PBR base material out of Firefly materials - it is not a FF to SF material converter. It does its best to automate the process as much as possible, but some cases might need some manual editing. It cuts a lot of time on the tedious part, and lets us go straight to the editing fun. :)

Sweet, glowy magic!

I resurrected a previous project that was constructed and rendered in P12.  The Material shaders were completely gutted and redone with Ghostship's skin shader and some tweaking.  The hair also has a modified Ghostship hair shader with an additional bright/contrast node to intensify the color and add more definition to the strands.  The sunlight again another Ghostship contribution except its intensity was set to 85 percent, the Shadow was set to 90 percent, and a Blackbody node was attached, with a Kelvin temperature set to 4100 degrees to simulate an afternoon setting sun.  

I just noticed something peculiar.  I have a Blackbody node attached to a light that refused to change regardless of the values I inputted.  It remained black.  I was using the 'Apply Post Effects to Render' feature in the Superfly render settings.  Once I unchecked the box, the Blackbody node began to respond.  This is rather strange behaviour and disturbing.

I took an existing picture which was made as an experiment with lighting - one area light only. - and transformed it to P13. It was both an experiment with shader and with render time. I used a number of the proposals from this thread for the shading: Cycles based SSS skin shader | Renderosity. I also made a Cycles based shader for the Wild Hair. She is Project Evolution, A model which comes with a really good set of base textures

For the render I reduced the number of pixel samples from 45 to 10, and for this experiment I did not add any Post Effects.

If there is interest, I'll post a side by side comparison with the P12 version, whcih relied on PhysicalSurface shaders

Some scenes will move from Poser 12 to Poser 13 without issues but that does not mean they cannot be improved.

I'm still being amazed by what we can achieve with those good old Vic4's... 

Thanks to Ghostship in particular:
- his Hair shader slightly adapted, and
- his skin shader as well but  with the SubSurface Radius back to what I was used to use (0.482, 0.169, 0.109)

Then, I add a second layer,  based on the Anisotropic node because I prefer this to the PBSDF's specular parameter and I find easier to control the intensity and the effects

LapinDeFer posted at 6:32 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461428

I took an existing picture which was made as an experiment with lighting - one area light only. - and transformed it to P13. It was both an experiment with shader and with render time. I used a number of the proposals from this thread for the shading: Cycles based SSS skin shader | Renderosity. I also made a Cycles based shader for the Wild Hair. She is Project Evolution, A model which comes with a really good set of base textures

For the render I reduced the number of pixel samples from 45 to 10, and for this experiment I did not add any Post Effects.

If there is interest, I'll post a side by side comparison with the P12 version, whcih relied on PhysicalSurface shaders

And here's a screen cap after I adjust the roughness and pick up the specular color from the original MAT

The preview window shows the rendered result

Specular in Cycles is not the same as Specular in FireFly. A spec map should not be connected to the Specular channel in the Phys Surface Node. There is a Gloss.Spec converter included with Poser that allows you to properly convert specular maps to Roughness/Specular inputs that the Physical Root Node expects.

For an example, see Included > SuperFly > PBR Skin Shaders > Phys Surface Node > LH SSS Spec Bump. 

The Gloss setting in that converter node will need to be adjusted up or down depending on how strong the specular map is. If the spec map is strong, the gloss setting will need to be reduced. The Specular color is set to 50% gray in the Phys Surface Node by default, like so:

One thing I do have to play with is which works better, adjusting Specular color in the Phys Surface node, or in the Specular color chip in that converter node.