May sound a bit stupid,but after some observation there are props that poser 5 ( specially the firefly doesnt like) Im on a amd 2000xp,768 mb ram......so no weak system and p5 is running smooth.i can use the mildragon and a viccy with clothes all no problems. But if i use only some more or less simple props( nothing else) and start render(same settings as before) poser slows down,starts swapping to hd like crazy,rendering slows down.....and mostly never finish This only happens withsome props,and till now,they have something common, the geometriedata is included in the pp2 file and if i start render with smoothing enabled they look like gasballoons. smoothing enabled make them look normal,but the renderspeed is not improved and the same as above starts

Some more, the same props used with p4 render behave total normal.And since the SR1 patch i cant turn off smoothing for seperate props in the properties window. Only turning smoothing on or off for the whole scene is possible.

I am not sure about P5 since I haven't purchased it yet, but I have had the same problem in P4. I find the obj files that have large flat planes or nice square edges always ballooned (additional smoothing) on import. But, I have learned that 3ds files always come in nice and clean with no or minimal ballooning. Perhaps you can take your model and convert it to 3ds and re-import it, then resave your prop to the library or to an obj file.

i know poser 4 smoothing edges ,but the crazy is ,in p4 renders the props look normal, and in p5 firefly the balloning is so much more, than a p4 ever did in smoothing. they really look like made of rubber and pumped with high pressure.

The gasballoon effect is not the same as P4's slight rounding. Here's a comparison... I made the object in Amapi, saved it separately as 3ds and OBJ. Rendered it in P5 using the old P4 renderer versus the new Firefly. I didn't bother to make the camera angle agree, but you can still see the diff. In the P4 renders, slight corner-rounding. In P5FF, pure gasballoon!

yep, just what i got!And if those obj are bigger,they can cause more problems. I exported the object mentioned above as *.obj file and reimported,same bad behavior. imported in amapi and exported as 3ds imported in poser, same.

Seperate from the smoothing problem, I'm finding problems with P5 rendering slowing down substantially when I change camera position in scenes that have a lot of props in. I'm still trying to reproduce the exact cause of this. Bill

anyone else seen that ,if you uncheck the smoothbutton in the properties of something,the thing is still smoothed in render?

The smooth polygon option is different from the P4 smoothing, it really deforms the geometry. This is good for organics but bad for mechanical things with straight edges.

You can turn this off, in 'Render Options' for the whole scene or for each object separately in 'Object Properties'.

thgeisel > Some more, the same props used with p4 render behave total normal.And since the SR1 patch i cant turn off smoothing for seperate props in the properties window. Err, since SR1 I can turn it of and one for each object. Maybe the sum of bugs is constant, the patch only shifts the bugs from one user to another. ;P

Mad: think youre right :-((

Aha! Thanks, MadYuri. Here's the same object in P5FF with the Smooth Polygns unchecked. Looks just like P4, maybe just a bit better shadowing and reflections.

ockham: now try this, click your box, in the properties uncheck smoothing,in the renderoption check smoothing. Now the obj shouldnt be smoothed,but the rest should be. Or maybe this are two diffrent smoothing which have nothing to do with another.

I don't think there's any reason to separate the types of objects. Here's a more complete picture with the "case" fully equipped, and Posette in front. In P5 Firefly with Polygon Smoothing turned off for the whole image. Looks good to me; the lighting and shadowing is again slightly better than P4, and also the Amapi tessellation lines in the case are completely covered by the texture. (P4 lets those lines show through.) So I'll say that turning off Polygon Smoothing should be the default.

Note: the odd triangle on the bottom is not P5's fault; that seems to have been done when I converted BMP to JPG in a separate paint program.

Yep, Polygon Smoothing is only sensible if you make a hires closeup of a human face or such...

I wondered what was causing that. :)

Had the football helmet bought in RMP, with smooth on, the vertical bars in the face mask literally did look like balloons. After many test renders, tried with the smoothing off, and bingo, it looked like a face mask again. Haven't tried to re-render post patch yet, but the balloon affect was the only difference I could tell with smoothing on/off.

There are other things that Poser 5 doesn't like : shadows. I have a strong enough computer (for a non professional) and I have installed the SR1 patch. Everything runs smoothly in Poser 5 and in the Firefly renderer as long as I don't ask it to calculate any shadow. If I click on the "shadows" option in the render options, then the rendering slows exponentially and finally freezes, sending me a "C exception". That's quite exasperating to see that Curious Labs sells a non working product, and even more to see that they don't answer to my e-mails, not even to say "OK, we'll work on this one". I'm begining to consider going back to Poser 4... As for polygon smoothing, it was one of the main reasons I bought Poser 5 : I wanted to have pictures of humans that looked natural, and not with polygonal shoulders. I hope that CL will fix all the bugs quickly.

Compiler, are you using raytraced shadows, or depth mapped shadows? I ask because the latter takes forever to render. What you need to do is to look at the properties page of each light in your scene and check "Ray Trace shadows". See whether that improves your rendering time.

Thanks a thousand times Misfire !!! It works, and the renderings are now reasonably long. Thanks very much indeed !