Quote - DustRider wrote: Neither image used SSS. I've been playing with SSS the past couple of days, but haven't got the look I want yet. The image I posted here in the forum was V6 with the Bree texture she came with. It was only set up as a diffuse texture (just as it was converted by the plugin). In the Gypsy image in my gallery, the skin was set up as a glossy material.

You probably already know this but there's lots of good discussion on SSS in the Octane Poser forum, and also some SSS setups to play with in the LiveDB.  :-)

Quote - DustRider wrote: Indeed, it sounds like our experiences are almost identical. I actually had a similar experience with Reality 3 and Lux, in that I could enjoy using Poser again without fighting the lighting (like you - the lighting in Poser and I never really clicked). But the longer render times slowed me down quite a bit because I'd have to leave my laptop cooking the images for so long. Another big advantage with Octane for me - I just turn the cooling fan to high, and the laptop doesn't even get warm - with CPU renders it definitely very very warm.

I looked at Reality 3 and Lux also and I don't remember now why I decided on Octane, but I feel like I really lucked out by doing that.  One thing I was happily surprised with was the pretty easy learning curve. 

Quote - DustRider wrote: I finally tried Octane because Otoy announced that they were developing a Carrara plugin (my favorite 3d software). So I gave the Poser demo a test run. I found myself playing with the demo in all my free time for several days. My wife saw how much fun I was having, and encouraged me to get Octane. The Poser plugin is more developed than the DS plugin (what I would expect with beta software), but at half price I figured it was better to get it now before it goes up to full price, and save up for the Poser plugin. I'm still “playing” every chance I get. I’m having fun changing lighting and changing shaders and immediately seeing the almost instant effect in the image.

Good idea to get the DS plugin while it was half price!  I've been playing with the Poser Plugin constantly since I got it, it's kind of addicting. lol.  Speaking of changing lighting and immediately seeing the effect in the image, I've been having fun using the blackbody and texture emitter nodes on lamp/light meshes rather than creating generic lights and turning them into emitters.  Like in that picture I posted with the liquor store?  All the light is coming from the store signs and the street lights themselves (and two steet lights that are on the other side of the street that aren't seen in the actual render). 

Quote - DustRider wrote: One other real advantage for me is that I hope to eventually get the plugins for Poser, and Carrara as well. I like all three applications, and they each have their unique strengths and weaknesses. With Octane for all three won't have to remember (or more importantly re-learn) how to set up the lights and shaders in each app any more. I will be able to focus on the set up and creation of the image, rather than the nuances of three different renderers, lighting, and shader systems.

That's a really good point and I hadn't thought of it, but you're right that is a great advantage.  At the rate Otoy is cranking out plugins, that ability to have a standard way of setting up lights and shaders across applications becomes more and more interesting to me now that I think about it.

Quote - Dustrider wrote: The attached image took around 15-16 min. on my laptop with a 670M (think 560 in a desktop) with render priority set to medium so I could work on the computer while the render was going (disclaimer - this was done with the DS beta plugin - it doesn't use the newer 1.2 dll's yet, the Poser plugin does).

Hey Dustrider, I really like your render.  Are you using SSS on the model's skin?

Quote - aeilkema wrote: We can go around and around with this, but for the money you've spent on your laptop or a gtx titan 6Gb and on top of the license for Octane, you can buy some extreme cpu's as well. OK, I may not get a render in 2 minutes, but I sure get a lot closer to it.

Okay, but realize in my case I didn't purchase my computer or video card to be able to use Octane, it's the same computer I was using for Poser+firefly.  So for me, the total cost of implementing Octane was the cost of Octane itself.  My video card gives me very fast render times, but it isn't necessary to have a top notch video card to get very high quality renders from Octane.  My initial post was just to share my enthusiasm for the Octane renderer, not really to focus on the speed of the render.  To me that is just a bonus. 

Quote - Dustrider wrote: I can echo mrp2284 comments about using Octane - I haven't had this much fun in years! I truly enjoy the instant feedback to changes in lighting and materials I get with Octane. Three weeks ago, like you, I was in the "for that price, I can afford to wait for my renders" camp. I made the fatal mistake of giving the demo a test run, and I was immediately convinced I was wrong. Your mileage may vary, but for me it is worth it.

Hey Dustrider, I think you and I have similar experiences.  I was just always so frustrated with lighting in Poser and I never got very good at it (totally my own failing there), but since Octane simulates real light I find it just so much easier and predictable.  I actually have a lot of fun setting up lighting now, and I'm having a blast with Poser again.  I was like you in thinking (basically)... do I really want to spend this much for a renderer?  Now I'm just so glad I did because for me too, it was worth it.

Quote - aeilkema wrote: Anyway, that's not my point at all. I've got a nice i7 for rendering. It's fast, special build for rendering, but it sure didn't cost $$$ at all. For the kind of money you need to spent on getting octane quality and speed, I can learn to use Firefly as well and spent that kind of cash on lot's of cool stuff.

Just to be clear, other than the cost of Octane itself you don't have to spend a lot of money.  If you have a Nvidia GeForce 8000 series or higher card you're good to go, although it is optimized for the GTX series of cards, and a CUDA compute 3.0 card would give you more texture slots, etc. (info from Otoy website).

Quote - But.... and we all know this but.... if you want to set up your Poser images for rendering with Octane you need time, a lot more time then when setting up your image for rendering with Firefly. We all know that. In the end what you gain in rendering time, you loose in getting your Poser scene ready for Octane. In the end it may render a lot faster, but you've lost time also, so it isn't really faster at all.

Wow, that really isn't my experience at all, I've actually have the opposite experience.  In the vast majority of renders I do I can go from loading the meshes to final render much faster using Octane.  A big part of the reason is that you get instant feedback when you make changes, meaning, the image is rendering in a window in real time and as you make changes they are reflected instantly in the scene.  My experience with materials is much the same as Dustrider's -- now that I understand the basics of the material system it takes me 2 or 3 minutes to make adjustments if I need to. 

Quote - aeilkema wrote: So, it's even, doesn't matter where you render with, a project will still take about the same time from start to finish, but yours cost a lot more then mine :-)

Well, in my experience, not really.  :-)  Don't get me wrong, I've used Poser for years and years with its built in render engines and loved it.  I just now much prefer rendering within Poser using Octane and, for me at least, I find it faster to set up and easier to use and I like the results a lot more. 

Quote - aeilkema wrote: You could have bought Vue Esprit (or better) instead and saved yourself a lot of money and pump out some awesome looking images as well and gain a lot more then caustics or architectural glass along the way :-)

I hear you, but these are two very different things.  :-)  I bought Octane because I wanted what for me would be a better renderer that I could use within Poser.  If my goal was to render great landscapes and things, I would buy Vue (and I might at some point, I've been looking at it for a long time). 

Quote - aeilkema wrote: Let each render in what he/she wants to render in and what works best for for you!

You're right of course and I totally agree!

Quote - Now that I do find a very odd statement.... first of all, you should be able to do very high quality renders with Poser, just as good as with Octane and secondly everyone else confirms it takes time to get a good render from Octane, unless you sacrifice quality.

Well, maybe I didn't state it well but I mean for me personally, I can make much higher quality renders with Octane than I can with Firefly, and I find it much easier to light the scene.  But regarding the render times, I've attached some examples of what I mean below.  Since the renderer is GPU based though, the speed depends on the video card so different cards give different render times.

Quote - Anyway, you've found a good solution for your renders, but for all the money you've spent on tha tsolution, I know many other things to do. I do think I rather spent some time learning to use Firefly and spent the $1000+ on something else :-) To each it's own ;-)

My Octane solution cost me about $300 for Octane and the Poser plugin at the time I bought it.  To me it was worth it because I'm having a lot more fun with Poser since I got it.  ;-)

All renders were originally done at 1600 x 900.  I scaled them down to fit in the thread.

 Render time:  31 seconds

 Render time: 4 minutes

Render time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds

Render time: 5 minutes 30 seconds

This is going to sound like a commercial for Octane, but I have no affliation with them other than being a customer :-)

I use Octane (made by OTOY) and I really, really LOVE it.  As someone mentioned above it does do SSS, but not displacement (yet, although the renderer is continually being improved and having features added). 

I've used Poser for years and years and the hardest part for me has always been the lighting.  My favorite part of Octane is how easy the lighting is, and how easy it is to make great renders with just very basic lighting setups.  A few months ago I got very frustrated with Poser, or maybe more fairly, the process I had to go through to get the lighting right in a scene, so I looked at some alternatives.  I found Octane and even though it was a little bit pricey I thought I would take a chance.  I am really glad I did because it's reinvigorated my enthusiasm for Poser and I've been having a ton of fun with it ever since. 

Octane is CUDA based so render times depend on the graphics card(s).  Because it's CUDA based, there are also certain limits on the numbers of textures that can be loaded, and the renderer uses the video card RAM, not the system RAM, so that's important too.  So for instance, I'm using an Nvidia Titan card so I can load up to 6GB of memory and 144 rgb textures and 68 greyscale textures.  (If the same texture is used more than once it only counts as one instance against the count).  This has been way more than enough to pack a lot of stuff into my scenes.

My experience has been that it is blazingly fast compared to firefly.  Depending on the lighting setup, I can get high quality renders in as little as 2 to 3 minutes.  Seriously.  I think the longest render I ever did was an hour and a half, and that was due to very complex lighting I set up (and I'm sure my own ignorance in how to optimize the scene).  I'd say my average render time for very high quality renders (much higher than I could do with the native poser render) is probably about 4 minutes.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on an alternate to Firefly :-) 

Just wanted to close the loop and say that the vendor (Papillon68) responded to my problem and solved it with a new zip file very, very quickly after I contacted him.  I'm very happy with the response and I'll definitely buy more of his products.  Thanks :-) 

Thanks Stacey.  It still didn't work after the reset so I'll contact the vendor directly. 

This just happened to me too for the first time the other day.  I have Windows 7 with the Aero effects on and what I did to fix it is to hover the mouse pointer over the icon on the task bar (with Aero the little preview window opens) and then I right click within the preview box and click "Maximize" and it opens back up again.  Hope that made sense.  It's done it a few times and this fixes it each time.  

I support this petition.

Thank you Wonderdesign, that fixed it.  :-)

I'm having a problem with this too.  I bought it on 11/23 and got a message that the ZIP file is corrupted.  I've tried re-downloading it a couple of times, including about 10 minutes ago (11/29) and I still get a message that it's corrupted.  :(

Quote - Just to make absolutely certain that it isn't Photoshop, have you tried opening the images in other image viewers/editors ? You can get a free one like irfanview or xnview and try in that and see if the render looks bad in there as well.

Also are your display card drivers current ?

This is a good idea.   I would definitely open the image in another viewer and see what it looks like.  If the image looks okay in another viewer but not Photoshop, you might have a color management issue and need to set a different ICC profile.

Well then... back to your site to check out the new stuff! 

Well one thing to brighten your day Chikako is that I saw your contest, which led me to your site, which led me to making a big "I want" list!  :biggrin:

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