For what concerns the specular maps: I've been told 2-3 years ago that the specular maps were telling Poser where to add (or not) the specular effect, precisely, and the guy explained me that with PBR's it was better to avoid them and to use the gloss node or the anisotropic node

That's part of the difficulty in trying to explain and document all of this. There are so many different ways to get from "here" to "there". 

Ok, I understand.

I am liking this combination, Poser 13, hair from Ali (in this case Hr-169), Ghostship Hair shaders and Ghostship Lights.

Here is the skin-texture for my picture:

There is no need to plug the bump node into Clearcoat Normal if you are not using the Clearcoat channel.

There is no need to plug the bump node into Clearcoat Normal if you are not using the Clearcoat channel.

Playing around with my test scene, decided to flesh it out a bit more with filler plants, a custom star scene for the background, morphed the ground plane with the Morph Brush to make it bevel up to the huts little base, added in that bigger stepping stone in the front to finish it up seems to match the other large stone in the back of it so maybe it was made by the same published artist that made the fairy hut scene.  Rendered in Superfly and then used the Bloom to bring out the lights and other bits from the post effects panel.  Kinda like it...... 

"My friend will hurt you!"

"My friend will hurt you!"

Finally was able to get a render with the fog. I tried all three suggestions made, but it wouldn't render if I was using the hdri on the background. I had to switch to the environsphere.

The location is Hostile Surface recently put on the market by Coflek-gnorg but that is not what is creating the issue as Coflek-gnorg has been providing both Firefly and Superfyl textures for his products for some time.  The scene is populated with content from a number of different venders and there is something my graphics cards does not like.

My edits don't seem to have made it; I don't see them.

There's an old electronics troubleshooting trick I mentioned in the edit:  Start in the middle.  That tells you which half of the circuitry is failing.  Once you know that, go in the middle of that and see which half the failure is.  If you have a single item with a texture that is failing out of 64 items, you can narrow it down to two choices in only five tries.  Much better than turning off items and then adding them back in one by one.

Again, my apologies for trying to tell the experts how to find the problem. I'm good at playing Captain Hindsight, I'm afraid.

Somehow, I have managed to remain a beginner for twenty some years now, which is an advantage when I'm beta-testing:  I make all the mistakes a newbie would make that more expert beta testers would not.  You'd be amazed at how many bugs you can find by putting in the wrong inputs . . . .

At any rate, you all have been doing some lovely renders, so I thought I would share one of my Poser 13 renders.  The woman in the foreground used to have a tattoo on her chest, but in superfly, the overlay looked like a black shirt, not a tattoo.  Using EzSkin fixed the skin problem but removed her tattoo.  I also tried some depth of field on the image, but didn't get it right.

Here it is:

If the tattoo is an overlay, it can be added on a layer.  Frankly, EZSkin may need to be overhauled to accommodate the newer features of Poser 13.  Applying depth of field hasn't changed in this version.

Thalek posted at 8:45 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461527

Somehow, I have managed to remain a beginner for twenty some years now, which is an advantage when I'm beta-testing:  I make all the mistakes a newbie would make that more expert beta testers would not.  You'd be amazed at how many bugs you can find by putting in the wrong inputs . . . .

At any rate, you all have been doing some lovely renders, so I thought I would share one of my Poser 13 renders.  The woman in the foreground used to have a tattoo on her chest, but in superfly, the overlay looked like a black shirt, not a tattoo.  Using EzSkin fixed the skin problem but removed her tattoo.  I also tried some depth of field on the image, but didn't get it right.

Here it is:

gives this:

The same trick also work in case you'd like to add blush to the cheeks:

Both approaches are valid. But creating and saving layers gives you the ability to use those tattoos on ANY character made for that figure when you save those material layers to the library as material layers.

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

This is looking really nice!

"My friend will hurt you!"

Love it!

Y-Phil posted at 7:26 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461432

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

This is looking really nice!

Thank you 

I decided to revisit an old scene imported into P13; I revamped the shaders because the Material Room was a mess and rendered a different viewpoint.  In post-production, I  limited the Denoise effect and added a slight Bloom.  I also increased the contrast to darken the background and separate it from the model.  Modified Ghostship Hair System and Skin Shader used.

Thalek posted at 7:17 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461519

hornet3d posted at 1:48 PM Sat, 8 April 2023 - #4461320

The location is Hostile Surface recently put on the market by Coflek-gnorg but that is not what is creating the issue as Coflek-gnorg has been providing both Firefly and Superfyl textures for his products for some time.  The scene is populated with content from a number of different venders and there is something my graphics cards does not like.

I feel like I'm trying to tell an expert how to do their job, but maybe if you turned visibility off almost the entire scene, and then turned visibility back on item by item?  Maybe turning off each item that passes to keep test render times down?  Or am I just being a fool?

That is my conclusion right now as well. Once Poser 13's Superfly renderer throws a  CUDA error, you can only render with CPU for that scene even if you save it, close Poser and reload. Something with how it reads and loads textures.

Yes, if something causes a GPU render to fail, for any reason, Poser will need to be restarted to reset the GPU. Is one of those "Sawing off the branch you're standing on things" Poser can't reset the GPU while it's using it.

Anybody with CUDA errors. Please open a ticket at https://support.posersoftware.com/ and attache the scene as a zip created by the built in scene collection File > Export > Save for sharing ... command. If the scene is too big we'll provide you a way to send in larger attachments.

Yes, once CUDA has a crash you won't be able to render with your GPU till you re-start Poser.

@hornet3d The cycles warning about specular is this ...

Cycles want that connected a different way. FireFly doesn't care you can literally plug anything into anything else and it will happily render the impossible. Cycles and based on physical properties of the materials and gets offended when materials aren't based in reality.

Happy to provide several scenes. In my experience, restarting Poser and reloading the scene didn't fix this, but am old and cranky and I may be misremembering. Will get you some tickets this evening.

Some things don't work and will break every time. But once you get a CUDA error, nothing will work on GPU even if it's something that normally would have worked. Restarting Poser will clear that error and you'll be ok until you do something else that won't work. It won't prevent the original problem from occurring again though.

I have not been playing with P13 long enough to get a CUDA error yet, but I had quite a few in P12.

A little exercise with the updated Miki4 and updated IBL backgrounds. The background image was from  PolyHaven : https://polyhaven.com/a/mutianyu.

Where most HDRI's are large spacious places this was a pretty narrow place, so I had to use the Dolly cam, fixed at center, to get a credible perspective and play with focal length, as one would when shooting in this confined space. 

The remaining problem is the blur in the image, un-avoidable in an HDRI taken from this distance, which is a bit too much relative to detailed Miki4. I could have kept Miki off-focus, I know. Maybe next time.

This is going to kill me. Today I can't reproduce any errors I experienced the past few days. Everything renders fine. LOL ow. 

*pulls hair out, eats more whipped cream straight from the bowl*

that's a good thing. lol

Whipped cream totally is a good thing, yup. Then your skin shader crashed as I was trying it out. Monday. LOL.

DCArt posted at 10:17 AM Sun, 9 April 2023 - #4461448

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.

I don't have a PBR Skin Shaders folder at all, probably because I didn't install all the included content.

nerd posted at 2:09 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461580

@hornet3d The cycles warning about specular is this ...

Cycles want that connected a different way. FireFly doesn't care you can literally plug anything into anything else and it will happily render the impossible. Cycles and based on physical properties of the materials and gets offended when materials aren't based in reality.

My observations from this.  While I can understand why this has happened it came as a surprise to me because I was not aware of the issue or that the content I had was built in this manner.  I also understand why you have to restart Poser once the CUDA error had occurred ( I love the "Sawing off the branch you're standing on things" as an analogy) although I my case, deleting the content and restarting Poser only gave me another CUDA error.  Now I am not blaming anyone for this, I am not even complaining but this discovery means that any existing content I have may have this issue so that I need to check the materials before I use the content otherwise I will be forever restarting Poser. 

I do have a further issue with using old Poser content in that is can sometimes cause Poser to lock up in the sense that any slight change, such as changing the camera view point, means Poser starts some sort of process for a few minutes and once whatever it is has been completed any slight change has the same result.  In other words the slightest change means a four or five minute wait before Poser can be used again.  I have never had this happen building a scene from scratch on Poser 13 only if a use a scene created in Poser 12.  I need to raise a ticket but no body else has the problem so I need to do more work to decide if it is system related and to ensure I can duplicate at will.

One final point, I have been using Poser for over twenty years purchasing every upgrade, even Game Dev which I now regard as evil, or at least the way it was marketed was.  When I raise a problem like this it is for two reasons, one to see if anyone has an explanation and/or a fix and in the hope it will result in a better Poser at some point.  It has never been a with the intent to damage Poser in any way.  I have nothing for respect for the team now working on Poser development, particularly when my first fear of hearing of the sale of Poser was that it was just to allow it to die quietly.  I loved playing with Poser 12 and was that keen to have Poser 13 I was visiting the marketplace every fifteen minutes or so on the day of launch so I could start playing with it immediately.  I did reach the point some days later where I thought I would not be able to use Poser 13 not because it was broken but because my system did not work well with it.  I am glad I pressed on and I am enjoying using it once more.

I hope that explains why I see this as a possible issue and also my motivation in raising it.

"My friend will hurt you!"

hborre posted at 9:08 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461531

If the tattoo is an overlay, it can be added on a layer.  Frankly, EZSkin may need to be overhauled to accommodate the newer features of Poser 13.  Applying depth of field hasn't changed in this version.

I used Structure's Easy DOF script for Python 3, but not being a photographer, I had to twiddle with the settings a bit.  I'm grateful that I don't have to worry about brightness changing as I change the F-stops, though.  That's one real world complication I don't have to deal with.  [grin]

Y-Phil posted at 9:38 AM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461535

And if you don't want to use a second layer, a simple Color_math node, with its argument set to Multiply, can give the result you want, especially if the non-tattoo part is completely white.

hornet3d posted at 1:11 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461563

Well, for a start I am no expert and i welcome your advice only trouble is Poser will play ball.  Looking at the error log I get this little nugget,

Now here comes the problem, changing the visibility barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels and saving the scene, exiting Poser, restarting Poser and adding the scene has no effect.  Put simply Poser thinks the barrels are still there.  As far as I can see once you have the problem the scene is toast and you have to start from square one.

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

My observations from this.  While I can understand why this has happened it came as a surprise to me because I was not aware of the issue or that the content I had was built in this manner.  I also understand why you have to restart Poser once the CUDA error had occurred ( I love the "Sawing off the branch you're standing on things" as an analogy) although I my case, deleting the content and restarting Poser only gave me another CUDA error.  Now I am not blaming anyone for this, I am not even complaining but this discovery means that any existing content I have may have this issue so that I need to check the materials before I use the content otherwise I will be forever restarting Poser. 

I do have a further issue with using old Poser content in that is can sometimes cause Poser to lock up in the sense that any slight change, such as changing the camera view point, means Poser starts some sort of process for a few minutes and once whatever it is has been completed any slight change has the same result.  In other words the slightest change means a four or five minute wait before Poser can be used again.  I have never had this happen building a scene from scratch on Poser 13 only if a use a scene created in Poser 12.  I need to raise a ticket but no body else has the problem so I need to do more work to decide if it is system related and to ensure I can duplicate at will.

I tend to use a lot of older content too. Generally I will convert most of the materials to physicalsurface but maybe not all of them -- once an object has so many materials you need to scroll down to see them all, it's such a pain I might skip them. Then render. Then check the log. Whether or not there was an error, you'll usually get warnings for materials that have issues, so those might be things that require some attention. Also check the render itself of course, if a material is suddenly all black (and isn't supposed to be), or just looks terrible, that needs some attention. Other materials that are not important features in the scene might not be worth fixing; maybe they aren't optimal, but if they don't throw an error and don't visibly look bad in the scene, and are background elements anyway (especially if you use depth of field and they'll be out of focus!), why spend time on them?

I have run into things that just wouldn't render (in P12). If it's not clear what's wrong with a specific old material, probably throwing away the shader and just plugging the maps into a physicalsurface node will fix it.

I've also run into things I just couldn't render with Optix, but worked ok with non-Optix GPU rendering (in P12). I don't know whether that will still be an issue in P13 (I would think updating Cycles will replace most of the old bugs with new bugs!), but I would certainly try a non-Optix GPU render (after restarting Poser) before trying a CPU render. Given the time disparity it's usually worth it. Switching everything to unimesh helps but does not fix everything.

Thalek posted at 10:49 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461648

hornet3d posted at 1:11 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461563

Well, for a start I am no expert and i welcome your advice only trouble is Poser will play ball.  Looking at the error log I get this little nugget,

Now here comes the problem, changing the visibility barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels has no effect, deleting the barrels and saving the scene, exiting Poser, restarting Poser and adding the scene has no effect.  Put simply Poser thinks the barrels are still there.  As far as I can see once you have the problem the scene is toast and you have to start from square one.

You're more expert than I am, and that's all it takes as far as I'm concerned.  [grin]

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

On the plus side I am loving the way Poser 13 allows a scene to be lit solely by a dome and the first thing I do with any Poser 12 scene is to either delete or switch off all the lights.  This allow more accurate shadows and reflections and makes any figure or prop look much more like the belong to any given scene.  

hornet3d posted at 11:43 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461652

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

So far I have not had a problem with Poser 13 asking for any files.  Thanks to Hborre's timely comment I used the  'link previous runtime script' under utilities which should ensure Poser 13 has access to exactly what Poser 12 had access to.  My only problem so far is that Superfly in Poser 13 objects to the way some of my old content's material had been built which is nothing to do with Poser 12 really,  I do have a problem with Poser 13 locking up using some scenes created in Poser 12 but there is still a good chance that the problem is related to my system rather than Poser 13, I need to do some more tests to prove it one way or the other.

On the plus side I am loving the way Poser 13 allows a scene to be lit solely by a dome and the first thing I do with any Poser 12 scene is to either delete or switch off all the lights.  This allow more accurate shadows and reflections and makes any figure or prop look much more like the belong to any given scene.  

Yeah, I love that lighting feature as well.  It appears to be active in Poser 12 as well, because my beach scene above is lit that way, after watching a tutorial on YouTube. He installed an HDRI as his background, and it worked very well.

Thalek posted at 2:04 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461664

hornet3d posted at 11:43 PM Mon, 10 April 2023 - #4461652

Huh, I wonder if that relates to a problem I'm having:  my scenes were created in earlier versions of Poser, and while they work fine in Poser 12, in Poser 13, they start asking for object files and texture files that they never had to ask for before.  I'm set to Deep Search, and I think they're using relative paths rather than absolute paths  I seem to recall reading a thread that indicated that Poser 13 has a strong preference for its own creations over the creations in earlier versions of Poser, even as recent as Poser 12.

I read about the GPU issue, and that's what sabotages my trouble-shooting suggestion, but it's the re-saving the scene and re-starting Poser failure that makes me wonder if there's also an import issue complicating the problem.

So far I have not had a problem with Poser 13 asking for any files.  Thanks to Hborre's timely comment I used the  'link previous runtime script' under utilities which should ensure Poser 13 has access to exactly what Poser 12 had access to.  My only problem so far is that Superfly in Poser 13 objects to the way some of my old content's material had been built which is nothing to do with Poser 12 really,  I do have a problem with Poser 13 locking up using some scenes created in Poser 12 but there is still a good chance that the problem is related to my system rather than Poser 13, I need to do some more tests to prove it one way or the other.

On the plus side I am loving the way Poser 13 allows a scene to be lit solely by a dome and the first thing I do with any Poser 12 scene is to either delete or switch off all the lights.  This allow more accurate shadows and reflections and makes any figure or prop look much more like the belong to any given scene.  

That's the part that is so odd: I had imported my runtimes, and it still asked for several files.  Once I save it, it never asks again, but I've had it happen twice now. Once with Raven's freebie, a benchmark Superfly scene created with The Pad (many files asked for in that one!), and once with one of my own scenes.

Yeah, I love that lighting feature as well.  It appears to be active in Poser 12 as well, because my beach scene above is lit that way, after watching a tutorial on YouTube. He installed an HDRI as his background, and it worked very well.

HDRI was certainly there in Poser 12 and I used it a lot but it I found it difficult to get the balance between properly lighting the scene and over exposing the back ground right.  Ez dome answered that to some degree by have an inner and outer dome but I still needed lights in most cases to pick out the figure in the scene.  This also meant that you have to be careful on the colour of the light and also the direction to match the shadows to that of the back ground.  Poser seem a lot more forgiving and removing the lights seem to leave most scenes fairly well lit.  Using emissions on the dome also seems to be more subtle and it is relatively easy to light the figures without over lighting the back ground.  This also results in more accurate shadows and much better reflections.

Once Poser has found a file it should not ask again.

We often have old scenes with file definitions that points to now invalid locations, most of the time because things got re-organized in-between.
Hence my suggestion: add a tab in Poser's configuration dialog, where we could add a list of locations in which Poser should look recursively before asking us.
I'm writing this because more often than not, it's material bitmaps bought online.

Y-Phil posted at 6:14 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461680

hornet3d posted at 3:36 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461670

Once Poser has found a file it should not ask again.

We often have old scenes with file definitions that points to now invalid locations, most of the time because things got re-organized in-between.
Hence my suggestion: add a tab in Poser's configuration dialog, where we could add a list of locations in which Poser should look recursively before asking us.
I'm writing this because more often than not, it's material bitmaps bought online.

Not certain if the tattoo on her chest is even rendering, but I got most of what I wanted out of this image.

Thalek posted at 8:31 AM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461693

And here is an example with the same black & white tattoo, but using a second layer:
Here, the tattoo picture serves as a filter: the white parts force to use the TransparentBSDF and the black parts force to use the Closure1, in this case whatever bitmap
but it could also be a simple color 

For a colored tattoo: simple get a copy turned to black & white and use both bitmaps accordingly
The second layer has one advantage: you may control the specularity of the skin independently of the the tattoo.

Okay, I THINK I'm getting the hang of this now . . . . This is a P13 re-render of an older image. The hair was simulated in VWD.

Clothing added to avoid the wrath of the Modesty Police.

;)

Well this was an eye opener, another Poser 12 scene where I deleted all the lights and tried lighting the scene using Emissions from the light panels.  the snag was, even with some very long render times, white firefly issues was very strong.  Running the denoiser corrected that but the softening was so bad the faces on the figures not identifiable.

I played with the render settings but nothing seem to correct the problem until I loaded the High GPU preset and ticked Legacy Branched Path Tracing, increased the Adaptive Sampling w/threshold to 0.003.  There was a distinct improvement so, with Legacy Branched Path Tracing in use, I decided to try and drop the samples and finally finishing up with dropping the default from 25 to 5.  

This was the result after around 30 minutes, with no denoiser used, but I could have stopped it a lot earlier and all other render presets were looking like an overnight render.

hornet3d posted at 3:28 PM Tue, 11 April 2023 - #4461780

Woah... I love your picture.Dare I make a suggestion? using the "Motion blur" option to add a slight movement, for example on her right arm and on the ball

No element of dare, I am always open to suggestions and this one is brilliant, thank you.