Quote - I'm not sure how useful the term 'photo-realism' is. If you're trying to make a render look like a photograph, then you have to take into account the fact that photographs, especially portraiture, are often manipulated in various ways to be something other than perfect documents of the subject.

This is true. But I think part of the goal of "photo-realism" is to create an image which cannot be distinguished from a photograph, even when there is no concrete reality with which to compare the image. Hence, "photorealism," and not "realism."

http://www.old-boy.co.uk/personal/personal.html -- Have a look at "Bernadette"
The question is, I think, if you show this picture to people, are they going to say, "Oh, that's a nice photo," or are they going to say, "Oh, great CGI. Very realistic"?

Quote - "And many don't try because they don't want to create photorealistic images" I understand that, illustrations, toons and manga is also a form of art. But for myself, I will not rest before I can paint like addy, or die trying.

She's done quite a lot of images, using a wide range styles. Shje doesn't seem to want to paint every one of her images to such a degree. But I agree: it would be awesome to have that level of skill.

Quote - But a Poser render is hardly beautiful, no matter how you see it. On the other hand a photograph is only a, well - a photograph. I should be possible to work from photographic refs or Poser figures or preferably both, to achieve that what we call art. To just render a Poser model and upload it without any postwork at all is a deplorable praxis IMO. Even if you are a illustrator they needs postwork. Just look at Frazetta and Royo's work! It certainly doesn't look like Poser figures to me.

I agree, but not completely. Creating poser images and bragging that there is no postwork is not, in my mind, much different from taking a digital photograph and claiming there was no postwork. Since there was software involved in converting the image, there was postwork, whether the camera or poser did it all, or the user worked on it in photoshop. But some people make a hobby out of restricting themselves to what their cameras or their renders can do alone. That's their choice.

However, I will agree that it's rare that an image which has not been postworked will look good, especially if there is a human figure involved. Poser's humans are not quite good enough for their anatomical flaws to unnoticeable in almost all initial renders.

And as a photographer, I think that there is a great deal of art involved in photography. All you have to do is look at the massive number of shockingly awful photos and the huge number of truly average and uninspiring shots to realize that both skill and artistic sensibilities are required to make photographic art.

Quote - But forget art too, I really only have one simple petition, "please spare me the basic plain Poser renders"

Well, I do know what you mean. Almost all of them are well... rather... uninspiring.

Myself, I LOVE postwork, on renders and photos. I have many PSD files with 70 layers or so that are over a GB in size. Postwork is often my favourite part of the whole process.

But I still won't deny the possibility that there exist people who can make great images, straight out of their cameras or renderers. It's just really hard and therefore very very rare.

Quote - moriador, "I find very, very few renders of poser people to look particularly real. There are too many things standing in the way"

That is not any special just for Poser. 3Ds max, Maya and C4D or any computer software inclusive Renderman and Disney studios have this problem. There is one one way to do it and that is by postwork. Like addy do and a few others.
<a href="http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1189652&user_id=122068&page=3&member&np">realistic Poser figure

So the great majority doesn't even bother to try... That is what I find rather - sad.

There's either a lot of photo layering on that image or a lot of painting. I've certainly seen some traditional art on canvas done with acrylics that could pass as photorealistic. But if you're going to paint, then paint. Why use poser?

To wit, same artist:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2144323&user_id=122068&member&np

The whole reason so many people use Poser is that they either CAN'T paint like that, or because they don't have photo references (essential for both of those example images) for the sort of things they're creating.

And many don't try because they don't want to create photorealistic images. I'm one of them. I make illustrations, and sometimes toons.

@onnetz: Sweet! Thank you.

Physically resizing the images is only half the problem -- you have to either create new mat poses or add the material collections, or resize for each render. If you're really obsessive, you might want to resize different textures for each "product" at differernt resolutions, depending what you're focusing on in the scene.

However, just resizing all the textures in some background props might well be all it takes to fix things in a great many cases. And if your app renames the textures to the same names, then the mat poses and/or mat files don't need to be recreated. I just need to make sure I don't overwrite the originals. Also, I could happily use it create thumbnails and/or med res preview images. Sounds great! Thank you.

Quote - "Here we are, trying to make our Poser people look real"

Actually I don't see very many trying to make Poser people look real. Perhaps you could direct me or give a link?

?

Just go to the galleries and look under "realism". It's not all cars and landscapes.

Of course, I don't think anyone's saying necessarily that people are succeeding. I find very, very few renders of poser people to look particularly real. There are too many things standing in the way, from unexceptional transmapped hair to flesh that does not displace when it contacts other things to stiff poses to incorrect lighting to oddly morphed conforming clothing. It only takes one wrong thing in a scene to break the spell.

Quote - I'm referring to:

Quote - Venders seem to enjoy complicated nodes, and the results are lovely at low resolutions. But, alas, my 32bit Poser 8 does not seem to be able to reliably handle such complexity.

I think you may be conflating factors and making an incorrect conclusion. I believe that large textures will cause you trouble, but not large shaders.

Oh, yep. I see. I'm likely misusing the word "nodes" here. I think the confusion stems from the fact that images (hence some textures) are plugged into nodes (aren't they?) At least, that's how I remember them being referred to in discussions in these forums.

It may be that I lack the vocabulary to adequately describe my problem. But that does not make it any less annoying.

Quote - Another option I was thinking about that may or may not help is to run poser at a lower priority within windows.

Interesting. Could you explain how? Thank you!

Ah, bagginsbill, please don't permit me to become responsible for the perpetuation of a nascent falsehood!

Thank you for the information. What you say makes sense. People have been promoting procedural shaders as a way to reduce the load on the renderer, after all.

But when it comes to textures, I have some products that have multiple image maps (as many as 10+) for each material zone for figures that have themselves multiple zones. It's a lot of image maps. These products will render at smaller resolutions, but trying to render them at a larger resolution is impossible for me.

So when I say "materials" as being part of the equation, I'm including these image map heavy set-ups. I used the word "materials" because, well, they're accessible through the material room. But perhaps my terminology is incorrect? Should image maps all be referred to as "textures"? If so, I'll be happy to correct my usage.

On the other hand, if a single figure has 30 image maps of varying resolutions associated with it, (and I have a fully clothed human wearing 12 such figures) and this should not affect rendering, then I need to figure out what else is going on with the scene.

Now, I have also been told that AO can cause a significant slow down. If that's incorrect, please tell me. AO is type of shader, isn't it? If not, again, don't hesitate to correct me. If I'm using the terminology incorrectly, we'll never communicate properly. Reflections, too, can be a problem?

When I say that fixing materials is a headache, I am partly referring to resizing all of those image maps to the appropriate size for each render (and obviously the bigger the render, the bigger some of those maps need to be) depending on the figures' locations in the scene. Or I'm thinking that there ought to be a way to recreate the effect without using all those image maps, but for me this is no small  matter.

That being said, there are also some scenes, which for whatever reason, I just cannot render at decent resolutions. I want to know why. When I look at the scenes that are problems, it doesn't seem to be polygons that are causing the trouble. But what I do see is a material room that's complex enough to my eyes to look like an Italian pasta buffet.

If anything I've said is clearly false, I do beg you to please correct me.

Since we've started a discussion on the other thread about rendering, I was curious to know how my machine would do. I figured I'd post results of your benchmarks here.

Win7 Home Premium 64, Poser 8

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU  860  @ 2.80GHz

Gateway FX6840

12288 MBytes DDR3

Radeon HD 5770

AO: 1:57

IDL Low: 41

Med: 1:50

High: 4:11

@onnetz -- Thinking about cutting a scene into 8 parts. Now I get what you're saying, and, no, I haven't tried to do that exactly.

What I have tried is to render, and then when it quits in the middle, to area render the rest.

I haven't tried to render small pieces right at the start. It might well be a solution. I'll give it a shot. :)

Yes, onnetz, I expect something specific is choking Poser.

I've got 12 GB of memory. Poser.exe's memory issues aren't a problem. Poser.exe rarely even approaches a gig of memory usage on the performance monitor. FFrender.exe, on the other hand, routinely gets to 4gb, at which point, predictably, it quits.

So, yes. Settings. But what exactly? I don't, for a moment, think it has anything to do with render or undo cache or bucket size or number of threads, since these things really don't change the final outcome.

I think it's a combination of render resolution, render quality settings, and materials. Sure, I can render small, lower quality renders, but I want bigger, high quality renders. And poser can give me this. But not consistently. However, figuring out exactly which materials are causing the problem -- and how to fix it --  is giving me major headaches.

@onnetz: Unfortunately, if the renderer quits on me before completion once, it will quit in exactly the same place when I use area render, too.  Hence my need to render upside down to get the bottom half.

@Miss Nancy: Poser's render engine is great if you keep to low resolutions. But as soon as I get into the 4k x 4k range, all kinds of problems crop up. I don't want more features. I want stability.

Perhaps it's just that I do not know how to optimize materials and shaders for high resolution renders. Venders seem to enjoy complicated nodes, and the results are lovely at low resolutions. But, alas, my 32bit Poser 8 does not seem to be able to reliably handle such complexity.

However, judging from these forums, 2010 also seems on occasion to quit rendering part of the way through for no apparent reason as well, and I'm thinking that's it's just because it's not really designed for high resolution renders with high quality settings AND overly complicated materials/shaders.

So one should adjust the materials and shaders to optimize render stability. But it's a lot of work. I do wish products came with low, med, and hi res options, but I suppose that's asking a bit too much of venders.

Quote - Yeah, I tried all the settings that were given me but unfortunately the hair kept coming out terribly. So, I just have to rough it out and let it do its thing to get the good renders. I guess it is better to take time and have quality work than to rush it and have something that you really aren't happy with.

Totally agree.

I've had to resort to rendering in layers... background, background with untextured figure(s), textured figures with no hair, textured figures with hair with no raytracing, raytraced hair all by itself... then composite all the layers in photoshop.

Or conversely, render the half of the scene that poser will render before stopping, rotate cameras 180 degrees and adjust the z/x settings and render upside down to get the bottom half. Rotate in photoshop and splice the two renders.

It's silly. But I'd rather do that than render on lower settings or at too small a resolution.

Some might say it's time to move to a render engine that's more suited to production work...

Yeah, it's ironic.

I sometimes think the primary purpose of photoshop is to make live people look like mannequins. Of course, I fix my own portraits, too... but I try to use a little self control and hopefully leave the subject looking human.

I was watching TV the other day and saw an ad for Oil of Olay. It was truly the worst airbrushing job I've seen on film. I mean, the woman had NO pores. Her skin had turned into plastic. It was frightening. If they had used a Poser animation, it would have seem more realistic.

I was just thinking about this because of a poser vs studio thread over at Daz.

I don't remember having done a render with Poser 8 that took longer than 2 hours. Ever. Usually I run out of memory right around the 80 minute mark... and kaboom!

I'm jealous. I want my machine to be able to render for 8 hours. ;)