Just a few cents worth.

When I render complex scenes (using many figures) I find that Poser is a real memory hog when loading the geometry and textures. Try looking at Task Manager when Poser loads things and you will see that resources are pushed very tight when using multiple characters. Remember that most (unhacked) versions of Poser will not be able to address more than 2 GB of memory on Windows and, indeed, I have found Poser can get upset if the memory usage reaches about 1.2 to 1.5 GB. Obviously reducing the texture sizes and having no shadows and creating a P4 style render are all possible solutions to be able to render at all, but who wants to do that? I want maxed out rendering as large as possible with original resolution on the textures, because I'm only going to final render the scene once and then post-work it. You can also use the task manager to see if Poser has bust or is just busy, by looking at the CPU usage. If the CPU usage remains at 0 for a long while then your poser rendering has died.

I have not had much luck with Vue 5 Esprit which also ran out of resources rather quickly. I was using 8 V3 figures.

My favorite render solution, for complex scenes, is the PoseRay + POV-ray solution. I am still learning to use it but, with decently textured figures and quite usable native lights (two infinte lights without shadow and an area light with jittered shadow give a good lighting solution), I think the results are just marginally better than P6. The lack of import of P6's procedural shaders is the only thing I really miss.

I have two recent scenes rendered in POV-Ray, they are:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1332519

(WARNING MILD NUDITY)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1326359

So, if you get stuck, and no-one else can help you, give the freebie options a try.

Regards,
Jovial.

Hi idocatrudiaris,

As the others have indicated, there are ways to get Poser scenes into some of the best renderers. I briefly tried Vue 5 and found it to be a bit buggy and still quite limited in terms of the overall scene complexity that could be imported.

When I pass a certain complexity of scene in Poser 6 (usually three or four figures), I know that the firefly renderer will probably break, when I try to render, because the stupid thing tries to keep everything in memory.  Unless you drastically reduce the rendering quality and the texture sizes, there is just no way that the firefly renderer will cope. When this limitation is reached, I turn to POV-Ray as a renderer and use FlyerX's excellent PoseRay scene converter (both are free and the results are usually very good and produced relatively quickly).

The following is from an earlier posting, and might help you to get started if you want to try the PoseRay/POV-Ray combination as an alternative renderer.

Here are some of my experiences with POV-Ray and PoseRay:

The good points of using POV-ray and PoseRay are:

• Both tools are free.
• PoseRay will import P5 lights, camera and scene from a PZ3 and the geometry from an exported wavefront .obj + .mtl.
• POV-Ray handles full size textures without problems and is quite a fast renderer.
• Radiosity is supported (although I have not had great experiences with the default settings as it sometimes seems to overdo the illumination for multiple area lights and produce "smudged" skintones).
• PoseRay has area (actually multi-point volume) lights that can produce quite nice "jittered" shadows.
• You can get many Millenium figures rendered in a single scene (I have been informed that 12+ is possible) although I have only done 8 so far.
• PoseRay/POV-Ray have some nice standard materials for metals, glass, stone and water.

The bad points are:

• No built in materials (via PoseRay) for clothing textures in POV-Ray - so you need to used textured and bumped clothes. POV-Ray has procedural shaders but these are only accessible by command line and need to be learnt.
• You need to be sure everything is where it needs to be and everyone is looking in the right direction because there is no easy way to change things after exporting the scene from Poser.
• Poser 5 export to wavefront obj is a bit broken so textures seem to get messed up. P6 export is much better but "Preview" materials can get muddled up.
• Poser material shaders are not supported.
• Preview lights and the final rendered image have slightly different (but somewhat predictable) illumination levels.
• This is a multi stage process, i.e.
  a) P6 export to wavefront obj (creates an .obj and a .mtl file).
  b) Save the PZ3.
  c) Import these into PoseRay.
  d) Go through materials list to replace those that used complex P5 shader materials - simple textures, transparencies and bumps are mostly OK but reflections are handled differently. Watch for opportunities to use metalic reflections and nice POV-Ray metals AND glasses.
  e) Use geometry/uv tool to weld vertices (and smooth) for any figures that need it - especially if the figures are nekkid. If you don't do this there can be jagged shadows at the boundaries of material regions. I generally do this smoothing as follows: Select [tick boxes] only a figures neck, torso, legs, feet, arms, hands and fingers using the geometry selection list. Have everything else unticked. Select the weld vertices and smooth options and then do update. Don't forget to re-select everything for the preview (and for the final render).
  f) Check everything looks ok in preview, and then
  g) Save and render using POV-Ray.

I tend to use native PoseRay lights rather than poser ones because I think they give me more control and a nicer illumination. I don't think P6 IBL lights are supported.

Example of P6 scene => PoseRay => POV-Ray at
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1098936
I have a few more examples in my Gallery but they have mostly nekkid characters.

You can get PoseRay at:
http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

and POV-Ray at:
http://www.povray.org/

Regards,
Jovial.

My Hints and Tips:

1. Lots of really great older P4 props can be used to give great results if you go into the material room (of P5 and P6) and give them a bit of a make-over. Both Renderosity freebies and RDNA freebies have some brilliant free materials packages which can make ordinary props look great in raytraced scenes ( - check out Ajax too) and there are some awesome ones for purchase (e.g. ShadowDaleCreations). Don't forget to add a hint of reflection to those painted, varnished or shiny surfaces.

2. When using a hi-res primitive square with an image textured surface (as a scene backdrop), one of the most important things to do is to make the diffuse and specular colours to black and have 0.0 as the value and have the image applied as the ambient colour node with a value of 1.0. This makes the prop ignore the scene lighting. Change the ambient colour to a darker shade of grey (from white) to darken the backdrop. You might need to keep the texture as the diffuse colour with value 1.0 (until just before you render) so that it will preview correctly in the Pose window.

3. On the subject of ambient nodes. For those dark moody scenes, take the iris image texture for the iris material and, instead of using it as the diffuse colour, plug it into the ambient colour with a value of just over 1.0 (do this for the iris of both eyes!) and the eyes will seem to glow from within. Scary!

4. Dynamic hair makes quite good water jets for a shower when you keep the hair density low , thicken (and massively lengthen) the hairs and then apply a glass material as the hair texture.

5. Watch out for reflections on even quite small objects which can give the viewer a sense that the the scene is not real. In one scene, I had to have a second figure and some more furniture so that the rest of the room was reflected in a shiny mug. Although this reflected image was tiny, it was very obvious that something was missing.

6. Using a 2D drawing package to add a little monochrome noise to a poser rendered image can often make it look more real, i.e. a bit more like a photograph. A little bit of softness can help too.

And here's a mini A to Z tutorial (that I have arrived at) for beginners to try to help sequence their posing in a reasonably logical way:

Recipe for Posing (assuming you are making a static scene using a standing figure and using conforming clothing - if at all):

(a) Load your figure (e.g. V3 SAE).
(b) Immediately apply your prefered character morphs, textures and make-up (OK perhaps not make-up for James - but WTH he's a modern guy), etc., for the scene you are creating.
(c) Turn off (untick) the IK links in the left and right legs using Figure => Use Inverse Kinematics.
(d) Apply the pose that you are going to use (even if it is only a base pose that you will then further modify). Watch for silly things like your figure's legs are both behind or infront of the "centre of mass" of the body (in Poser this is the Hip), so actually your figure looks like it is falling over - did you mean for that to happen? After this point, do not further rotate the Hip since this can undo all your hard work that follows as you set the pose for the feet and legs.
(e) Most scenes have the figure standing on something. If this is so for your scene then use Figure => Drop to floor (often this does not get the feet nicely level with the ground and more often then not, your figure will either be partly embedded in the ground or floating above it).
(f) Turn on the full tracking (Display => Tracking) which shows the actual body parts moving as you alter parameters rather than showing a box that ris supposed to epresent the body part.
(g) Turn on the Figure => Use limits (unless your figure makes use of extreme limb bends and twists).
(h) Start at the feet. If the figure will wear shoes then add these and conform them now. Use the Parameter dial "figure 1" => body => yTran to get the soles of the feet (or the shoes) roughly on the floor. You might need to slightly move one or other of the legs and bend them so that both feet are at the required position compared to the ground. Try to use the Thighs to get the required leg pose rather than the Buttocks since moving the Buttocks tends to mess with the groin and can cause flattening of the front surface of the Thigh [I know some of you are sniggering at this point!].
(i) Use the aux, posing and/or even left and right hand cameras (which can be dragged downwards) to view the feet from a variety of angles to check that the feet posing is good, i.e. you have believeable looking contact but only just touching.
(j) Now you can tweek the rest of the pose (i.e. from the abdomen upwards).
(k) You might find that when you add the prop or scene that your figure will be standing on, this does not align with the ground. Just use the Parameter dial "figure 1"  => body => yTran to get the whole body (and hence the already levelled feet) up (or down) to the required floor level.
(l) Don't forget the face. Give the figure an expression of some sort (unless you truly want the figure to look wooden or emotionless).
(m) PLEASE set the eye directions. I find that having the eyes look directly at the viewer tends to work quite well although looking at another figure or object is fine too. Just don't leave the eyes at 0 for left/right and 0 for up/down. It goes without saying that the eye poses should be similar (especially when looking at remote objects).
(n) Add clothes and conform them to your figure now. Saving this step until now should have made the earlier steps much easier for the selection of limbs and to get the figure posing correct.
(o) Adjust the clothing for poke-through. Sometimes this can mean using clothing morphs - if the clothes have them, sometimes it will require making a figure body part invisible, and sometimes it will need a load of x-, y-, z-scale and move tweeks for parts of the clothing. Sometimes a particular piece of clothing cannot be worn by a particular character, in which case you might have to un-apply some of the muscularity or the large breastedness that makes the character so far from the default shape that the clothing was intended for.
(p) Add the figure hair (and conform it if it is a "character" hair) and then texture pose it.
(q) Tweek the hair morphs and pose so that it does not go through the clothes or the figure's body. Especially watch the hair near shoulder length and near the breasts (of a female - hopefully - figure) that often pokes through something or other and looks odd in the final render and can be a real PITA to fix in postwork.
(r) Choose your lighting solution.
(s) Save often to a newly named pz3 file (e.g. my_scene_06.pz3 and then to my_scene_07.pz3) and always, always, always save just before rendering.
(t) Get into the habit of saving your render as PNG or TIFF since they are not lossy AND they support alpha channels (i.e. support for figures on a transparent background which can be so helpful when postwork compositing).
(u) Do a moderately large BUT quick P4 or non raytraced firefly render to check that everything looks OK - especially the direction of the eyes and the look of the face.
(v) You will almost invariably find something that needs a bit of a fix so go back fix it and return to (u) again.
(w) Now set up for your final render.
(x) Set the render size. It is best to render as big as possible (say 1600x1600) so that you can then postwork and resize smaller to hide the postworking.
(y) Set the rendering options. I prefer manual settings of the Firefly renderer with raytraced with 2 bounces, no texture filtering, smoothing and displace maps on, bucket size to 64, min shading rate of 0.3, pixel samples of 5, max texture size of no less than 2048.
(z) Set your render going (and wait, and wait, and wait, AND remind yourself that you really love doing all this and are probably not getting paid to do it either!)

Hmmm, interesting thread. I'll bite...

One of my first images (a non nekkid one with my most views) was in 2004:

"Danger Girls - Ready for Action"
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=715362

I had collected and purchased so much Poser stuff that I had to start making scenes.
I can see a load of issues with this old image, dodgy shadows, dodgy posing, and a lack of decent postwork. (I am cringeing here because I forgot to apply the no nipples morph to the figure in the black latex). I might just have to go back and fix all the problems now.

Somewhere in the middle I tried some attempts at humour, e.g.:

"(For the ladies)...The Locker Shocker"
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1095023

Still lots I could improve, e.g. lighting and shadows. Also this image was slightly let down by the fact that the expression morphs just quit working in two of the figures. Argghhhhhh! Why does Poser sometimes do that?

And my most recent image is just a day ago (WARNING NUDITY):
"Skimpy Skirts Shocker"
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1286858

Really just having some fun using dynamic clothes and seeing if and how they can be applied to other figures.

I really enjoy making multiple figure scenes and I am really waiting for Poser to catch up with my ambitions for making complex scenes.

There is one thing that all of my images have in common. They all seem to take a lot of time.

Thank you for yet another excellent freebie. Really great beaten-up texturing.

schtumpy,

My Poser 6 download was a zip file called "Poser6SEE_W_app.zip"
that also had the winter queen setup stuff for Jessi.
The Poser installer that this contained was called "Poser 6 Setup.exe"
and don't forget to apply the SR2 update called "Poser6-SR2.exe"

HTH,
Jovial.

Hi schtumpy,
Most modern software (poser included) makes changes to the registry of the system it is installed on. So, you need to install Poser on the new PC. Then you can copy the Runtime folder (or folders) from the old PC over the Runtime folder on your new PC and you will get all of your purchased and free content back without installing it all again. Just make sure that everything you copy over is at the same path.
The networking is quite straightforward since you can set up a simple drive or folder share (for yourself) on the old PC. [e.g. Use a My Computer browser and Right click on the Poser installed drive on the old PC and select Sharing and Security from the menu. Add a network share and give it a name you will recognise]. Then use the new PC network neighbourhood browser to find your old PC and browse into the shared drive.
It is not such a good idea to use the existing SharedDocs folder as you would have to copy everything into this folder on the old PC and then copy everything out again on the new PC.
HTH,
Jovial.

Hi Gora,

Just to give you a hint in the right direction. Here are some of my experiences with POV-Ray and PoseRay. (modified from earlier posting):

The good points of using POV-ray and PoseRay are:

• Both tools are free.
• PoseRay will import P5 lights, camera and scene from a PZ3 and wavefront .obj + .mtl.
• POV-Ray handles full size textures without problems and is quite a fast renderer.
• Radiosity is supported (although I have not had great experiences with the default settings as it sometimes seems to overdo the illumination for multiple area lights and produce "smudged" skintones).
• PoseRay has area (actually multi-point volume) lights that can produce quite nice "jittered" shadows.
• You can get many Millenium figures rendered in a single scene (I have been informed that 12+ is possible) although I have only done 8 so far.
• PoseRay/POV-Ray have some nice standard materials for metals, glass, stone and water.

The bad points are:

• No built in materials for clothing textures in POV-Ray - so you need to used textured and bumped clothes.
• You need to be sure everything is where it needs to be and everyone is looking in the right direction because there is no easy way to change things after exporting from Poser.
• Poser 5 export to wavefront obj is a bit broken so textures get a bit messed up. P6 export is much better but "Preview" materials can get muddled up.
• Poser material shaders are not supported.
• Preview lights and the final rendered image have different (but somewhat predictable) illumination levels.
• This is a multi stage process, i.e.
  a) P6 export to wavefront obj.
  b) Save PZ3.
  c) Import these into PoseRay.
  d) Go through materials list to replace those that used complex P5 shader mats - simple textures, transparencies and bumps are mostly OK but reflections are handled differently. Watch for opportunities to use metalic reflections and nice POV-Ray metals AND glasses.
  e) Use geometry/uv tool to weld vertices (and smooth) for any figures that need it - especially if the figures are nekkid. I do this as follows: Select [tick boxes] only a figures neck, torso, legs, feet, arms, hands and fingers using the materials list. Have everything else unticked. Select the weld vertices and smooth options and then do update. Don't forget to re-select everything for the preview and the final render.
  f) Check everything looks ok in preview, and then
  g) Save and render using POV-Ray.

I tend to use native PoseRay lights rather than poser ones because I think they give me more control and a nicer illumination.

Example of P6 scene => PoseRay => POV-Ray at
http://excalibur.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1098936
I have a few more examples in my Gallery but they are mostly nekkid.

I know you already have the links, but I have left them here for completeness.

You can get PoseRay at:
http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

and POV-Ray at:
http://www.povray.org/

Regards,
Jovial.

Free alternative that is worth a try (especially when Poser 6 chokes on a complex scene):

1. Pose scene in Poser 6 as normal but don't get exotic with material shaders
2. Export whole scene to wavefront obj
3. Save PZ3 too
4. Import PZ3 and obj (and partner mtl file) into PoseRay
5. Use Poser OR PoseRay native lights (camera comes from PZ3)
6. Fix any busted materials (shader materials not supported but maps, bumps and transparencies work)
7. Watch for opportunities to use nice POV materials (e.g. for metal objects and glass)
8. Launch POV-Ray renderer from PoseRay

Pros: Fast, High Quality render, Solution for when P6 fails.
Cons: Only has simple material handling, Might need to weld/smooth organic objects so that material zones flow into each other nicely (quite simple to do this), Radiosity seems a bit troublesome and quite slow.

PoseRay from
http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

POV-Ray from
http://www.povray.org/

Most of the 4 and above character scenes in my gallery are using this rendering approach.

HTH,
Jovial.

My copy of Hex 2 must be well "busted" because that option is missing on my toolbar.
Did I accidentally download some sort of lite version?

OK, video drivers updated and things seem more stable. Thanks for the advice, nruddock. I should have thought - here was me using completely antiquated December'05 video drivers!

Hiya BARcode, I don't regret spending the $1.99 but I might have if the software were essentially too buggy to be used. I have purchased many software packages that did not live up to expectations (or the advertising). It isn't even the $1.99 that is the problem, but rather the time I put into downloading, installing and learning to use it. Fortunately I got much better results this time and Hexagon 2 does look like a very grown up version of Wings3D (which I like) and - at first glance - it sees to be able to handle bigger meshes than Wing3D. As you rightly point out, $1.99 doesn't usually buy very much and the Daz Hex 2 offer seems to be the bargain of the decade. LOL

Now if I can only figure out what it all does.......

Hi all,

Got my (bargain) Hexagon 2 and tried it.

It seems a little, well, sort-of glitchy.

First I loaded batlabs free lab coat .obj to see if I could muck about with it. It never appeared.

Second loaded a space 1999 eagle (lightwave obj) and all seemed well. It appeared but then things suddenly ground to a halt (including windows media player running in the background) and when things started again, the Hexagon screen no longer updates. Got bored of this and killed it.

A couple more experiences like this and I might begin to regret spending my $1.99.

Any idea what might be problem? In case it is relevent I have a 3.2GHz P4, 3GB RAM, loads of swap and running on XP home sp2. I was wondering if Hegagon is a bit like Wings3D, in that it does not like big models with lots of facets.

Thanks if ya can offer any advice on making things work or even if you know what Hexagon's limitations are.

I really think your stuff is excellent. Thank you so much for making some of it free.

PoseRay is a format converter to change various 3d scene formats (e.g. Poser, D|S) into scenes and scripts for other rendering applications (e.g. POV-Ray). POV-Ray is a scripted renderer. You need both tools to get POV-Ray to render a poser scene. The preview mode in PoseRay is only really to check that the scene and materials were imported/set correctly and that the camera and light positions are correct. It is POV-Ray that creates a high quality render.

Hi mdbruffy,

There is one more possibility that I don't think has been mentioned. PoseRay and POV-Ray. These are free and POV-Ray produces some very nice renders. The POV-Ray site has some awesome artwork.

The good points are:

• Both tools are free.
• PoseRay will import P5 lights, camera and scene from a PZ3 and wavefront .obj + .mtl.
• POV-Ray handles full size textures without problems and is quite a fast renderer.
• Radiosity is supported.
• PoseRay has area (actually multi-point volume) lights that produce quite nice "jittered" shadows.
• You can get many Millenium figures rendered in a single scene (I have been informed that 12+ is possible) although I have only done 8 so far.
• PoseRay/POV-Ray have some nice standard materials for metals, glass, stone and water.

The bad points are:

• No built in materials for clothing textures in POV-Ray - so you need to used textured and bumped clothes.
• You need to be sure everything is where it needs to be and everyone is looking in the right direction because there is no easy way to change things after exporting from Poser.
• Poser 5 export to wavefront obj is a bit broken so textures get a bit messed up. P6 export is much better but "Preview" materials can get muddled up.
• Poser material shaders are not supported.
• Preview lights and rendered image have different (but somewhat predictable) illumination levels.
• This is a multi stage process, i.e.
  a) P6 export to wavefront obj.
  b) Save PZ3.
  c) Import these into PoseRay.
  d) Go through materials list to replace those that used complex P5 shader mats - simple textures, transparencies and bumps are mostly OK but reflections are handled differently.
  e) Use geometry/uv tool to weld vertices (and smooth) for any figures that need it - especially if the figures are nekkid.
  f) Check everything looks ok, and then
  g) Save and render using POV-Ray.

Example of P6 scene => PoseRay => POV-Ray at
http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1098936&Start=1&Artist=Jovial&ByArtist=Yes
I have a few more examples in my Gallery but they are mostly nekkid.

You can get PoseRay at:
http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

and POV-Ray at:
http://www.povray.org/

HTH,
Jovial.