I'm sorry if I missed it but what render settigns did you use?

Quote - > Quote - All in all I would mainly like to improve the performance of the pre-render work.  That seems like its all driven by video card and hard drive.  The harddrives you can't do that much about (you can go scssi but that doesn't buy that much more for the price) but the video cards you can right?    .... Am I right to say the pre render performance has little to do with the cpu (with in reason I'm not saying to put somethign less than a pentium 3 in or anything) and is mainly based on video card?

 

Naw, as Louguet said it is very much a mixture of memory, CPU and Graphics card; if you have old tech in any one slot then it will only hurt the other two.  Hard disk should rarely enter into it, that is only an issue if you do not have enough memory to load and work with the entire frame at once (and that's very bad).

And here, at the pre render stage, it is probably only using one core of your cpu.  If thats the case then perhaps a higher clocked single or duo core may give better performance than a lower clocked quad core.  

On memory, I think Louguet was saying that as long as you have enough that is all that matters.  Also I think he may have only been refering to render speed and not pre render performance.  I could be wrong though.

Quote - > Quote - so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

QX6700 is 4 cores.  Everything else in the list including the AMD chip is 2 cores.  The names are confusing (and probably not by accident).  Try to get familiar with the specs to go along with the name, there is not a good pattern to predict what a chip is by deciphering the number on it.

Thansk for the responses.  I believe they do have motherboards that will take two quad cores(8 core total) or two duo cores(four cores total).  It seems no one has tested an 8 core machine.  I wonder how the memory will be handled for such a machine in rendering.  If you have a very complex scene that requires more than 2 gig of ram will each core need its own 2+gig before ahrd drive swapping occurs?    In that case you would need 16 gig total.  If its animation could the memory possibly keep track of many things that are the same in each scene being rendered?   In other words lets say you start rendering 8 completely different but equally large scenes.  Would that require as more memory than rendering 8 images of an animation where the scene itself is jsut as large but each frame only involves a small change from eachother.

I wish we could see actual tests of these processors out with 2 of the duo core cpus(four cores one machine) and 2 of the quad core cpus(8 cores one machine).

BTW: Another palce to see testing is www.anandtech.com  

Quote - Well, it depends on a lot of things e.g. what display mode you run Poser in and are comfortable with, what screen resolution you run, and how complex the scene is in Poser that you are trying to display.  ...
On the other hand when you have a million vertices in the viewport (say three V3/M3 characters and hair and various props and clothes) and have shading/texturing on (the last button in preview options) to get a more accurate preview, your 32MB card likely can't show you more than one V3/M3 character with their full textures (does it?) and you're likely running in 800x600 with 16 bit color, so you're really not seeing the texture the way it will look when someone else in higher color resolution sees it.....

When I add textures and clothes the image looks white like a ghost.  Daz studio gives me a better preview closer to what I will see on the actual render than poser does.   Will this change if I get a better video card?

I too have some lag between my mouse movements and what happens on screen.  I run at 1024x768. 32 bit colors 

All in all I would mainly like to improve the performance of the pre-render work.  That seems like its all driven by video card and hard drive.  The harddrives you can't do that much about (you can go scssi but that doesn't buy that much more for the price) but the video cards you can right?   
 Like you say I don't stare at the screen while waiting for a render - especially if its an animation, So the pre render performance is as important if not more so.

Am I right to say the pre render performance has little to do with the cpu (with in reason I'm not saying to put somethign less than a pentium 3 in or anything) and is mainly based on video card?

Thanks for all the great information in here.  

A few more thoughts and questions.

First and most basic.  I thought when they said for example core 2 quad.  That meant 2 quad core cpus so 8 cores total.  That is the "2" meant 2 cpus and the quad or duo meant number of cores per cpu.  Is that correct? 

so in this link http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2049694,00.asp are they

a) comparing 4 cores with 2 cores

or are they

b) comapring 8 cores with 4 cores?

My other questions involve doing the pre render work in poser.  I will post my understandings/suspicions so anyone can jump in if they are incorrect.   

1)If my  machine is slow loading objects figures or Pz3s the bottleneck is most likely due to a slow hard drive.

2)if my machine is slow posing figures and moving through a keyframe timeline then my video card is most likely the biggest bottleneck. 

The next set of questions deals with whether you woudl be better off with one big machine with 2 quad cpus (8 cores) or say 2 machines with 2 duo cors renderfarmed (with 8 cores.) 

3) Is it an advantage if you have the one machine with say 4 gig or ram (assumign a of course a 64bit system) instead of say one duo core with 3 gig and the second with one gig?  For example, if you are rendering a large scene will the machine with only one gig potentially start swapping off the hard drive slowing the rendering process down?  Any other ideas? 

Great work and thanks for sharing this info in such an organized and easy to understand way.

This is an interesting discussion.

Gareee and PJZ99 thanks for the good advise.  I think its sound counsel for your average bear but I am smarter than your average bear so i may still go through with my ideer.

PJZ99
I actually use a laptop with a 32 meg video card.  Your last post makes it sound like you don't fair much better with your 7800GTX!  Its hard to see what you mean by "unpleasant" without actually seeing the difference side by side.  But I am wondering what performance increases people have in fact seen in the viewport based on an upgraded video card.  I have nothing to compare it to.

Animation will get faster and faster as hardware gets better and more cores are added to cpus.  Moreover rendering software  will continue to improve giving bettrer results in less time.  So things are looking up.

I know Fredric gets some great results using poser and then importing to Vue.   I wonder why he uses vue instead of Carrara.  Skinvue seems to be a nice product with no counterpart in Carrara.  That is why I was thinking of using vue in my workflow.

In the book listed below "character animation with poser 7" Larry Mitchell talks of going Poser to vue to Cinema 4d.  I wonder if he loses his skin shaders in the process.  If he does I wonder what he does if anythign about that.    

http://www.amazon.com/Character-Animation-Poser-Larry-Mitchell/dp/1584505176/sr=8-8/qid=1166137343/ref=pd_bbs_sr_8/103-3323461-6743801?ie=UTF8&s=books

It seems the quad core processors are really almost 2xs as fast as the dual core.  Given that they aren't that much more expensive it seems that is the way to go.  

Poser says "up to 4" threads so I guess a 2 quad core machine won't use all 8 processors.  Vue will use all 8 cores though huh?

I am thinking of getting a motherboard that will take 2 quad core processors and just buying one quad core for now.  Later after the price drops considerably I will buy another and pop it in.  

Poser will no doubt support up to 8 cores in poser 8.

I am also very interested in speeding up the posing process.  For that the preview uses mainly the video card right?  I guess a video card that has open gl and a ton of memory is the way to go.  Any good picks for vue and poser?  

Fredric thanks for posting all this valuable info.  And very nice job on those animations.  

Quote - ^^ can you point out a cheaper vendor then?  I've been looking around a lot and their price is pretty competitive.

I usually shop at www.pricewatch.com for computer stuff.

Quote - quote: 
Also, it seems to me that it would be very hard to become good at animation without knowing the basics of "rigging" a character.  Yet, in order to optimally rig a character, the mesh show have certain optimum flows....(ie topology in facial areas....joints, poly counts, etc.)  Are you saying that you want to animate, but only something that someone else has modelled and rigged?  That's kinda another sort of "make art" button, isn't it?  

I want to create the script and direct the characters in the animation.   I would like them to look as good as they can.   Hence I am forced to learn a bit about 3d.   Yes thats right forced.  I do not want to learn the technical stuff.  I would much prefer that all the characters were premade and perfect and a hundred times easier to use.   I don't care whether you consider what I would like to do "art" or not.  Nor do l care what you think of writers and directors generally.    

Quote - quote:  THE BEAUTY OF POSER IS WE DO NOT HAVE TO CREATE OUR OWN TEXTURES.  THE BEAUTY OF POSER IS OTHERS HAVE DONE THIS FOR US SO WE CAN SPEND OUR TIME DOING WHAT WE REALLY WANT TO DO IN 3D.  

And, what, pray tell exactly what do you "Want" to actually DO in 3d.  You buy models, props, scenes, photoshop actions, poses, textures and premade light sets with that money that saves you time.....then what????   You hit "Render"?  Is that what you "DO" in 3d?

I answered this in my origial post.  Knowing someone like you would not understand why anyone other than those who want to make models and content woudl be here.   Why don't you read my answer to this question?  

Understand that not everyone is interested int he same things you are.  

Are they going to allow early downloads for people who bought P6 with the free upgrade to 7?  I am thinking we would as I already used my coupon to place the order.  Did anyone who bought a P6 upgrade with the P7SE added for free get the go ahead to download?

Quote - in ref. to: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2674155  Use a pencil and a sketch pad and use stick figures to explain it on paper to yourself if you can't draw. * make your own skin texture sometime. See how it turns out. No, seriously... try it sometime. I realize that half the merchants in here can't even do that without buying/swiping someone else's 'resource kit', but this'll be your golden opportunity to shine, and to do something useful. * Okay, if that was too tough, then how about making your own clothing textures? Don't even bother using someone else's. While you're at it, make your own transparency maps for them, and turn what you've got into whole different clothing... the things are damned easy to make, y'know? ...someday, you might even go through life without ever having the humiliation of buying a 'texture pack' again. * make your own unique character from a base figure, without resorting to buying someone else's and then just tweaking a few dials. Please. For me? * get a free modelling program (Wings ferinstance, or Amapi), and build your own set, your own props. It doesn't require a degree in graphic arts to build a few primitives tweaked out to resemble whatever it is you're trying to make. Once you've mastered that, get some clothing together, and make a bit. This way you don't have to go out and buy a bit of clothing and the 48 zillion add-on texture kits for it just to try to stand out.  /P

I must say I am amazed at how illogical those who make this type of rant are.    And to think 
you are complaining about other peoples logic!  So here is some tough love for you. 

First, I am not a kid.  Second where do you get off telling everyone what they should do with thier free time?    

In the thread you linked the guy said he does not model and is not interested in modeling.   What part of that do you not understand?  Poser is not even a modeling application.  Keep in mind that for many poser users: 
THE BEAUTY OF POSER IS THE FACT WE DON'T HAVE TO MODEL.    THE BEAUTY OF POSER IS WE DO NOT HAVE TO CREATE OUR OWN TEXTURES.  THE BEAUTY OF POSER IS OTHERS HAVE DONE THIS FOR US SO WE CAN SPEND OUR TIME DOING WHAT WE REALLY WANT TO DO IN 3D.  

I put this in caps becasue I think it may sink in better than when the other fellow said it in lower case.   

There are those who have plenty of time but no money and then there are those who have more money than time.  The latter group can use poser to do things like create animations and scenes without having to learn how to make a decent model. 

You talk fondly of the past.  Back then people with poser had to spend allot of time to make an image/animation look as good as it would be now in a short time.   You admire that.  Guess what?  I couldn't care less what you admire.  I'm glad things look good in a shorter amount of time and require less technical know how.   I am confident that trend will continue.

Guess what else?  As technology grows there will be more and more people like me.   You can continue to grumble like a old fusspot for the rest of your life, or you can accept that technology will improve and people with no interest in modeling or creating models will be joining the 3d community. 

You might wonder: What could these people possibly want to do if not create thier own models and thereby get the admiration of folks such as yourself?

Well if you actually read what you were responding to, the guy you linked to said he is interested in animation and creating animations.   He is like me.  Perhaps you should look at people like him and myself this way:  We woudl like to write and direct the movie but not have to be the costume designer.    Did Steven Spielberg stitch every piece of clothing used in the movie E.T.?  Did he himself apply everyones makeup and manufacture E.T.'s costume?  

I don't care whether you believe Steven Spielberg is an artist or not.  Nor do I care whether you admire what he and other directors do. (perhaps in your mind only the costume designers are worthy of admiration, whatever I don't care.)  But if you accept the fact that some people in the 3d world now want to do what Spielberg does as opposed to what the costume designers do, then you will not find yourself getting so "torqued off."  

We don't want to do the same things you are interested in doing.  Sorry, if this bothers you but there really is no reason to get mad about it.   And yes its completely irrational for you to get torqued about it.  

Creating models for a 3d animation and writng and directing a 3d animation are simply two different interests.

You tell poser users to think of a good story before they do thier animation.  Well guess what?  you have to do that no matter what software you use.   I have seen plenty of bad animation made with non-poser applications.  Learning how to make your own models in LW3d or Wings will not make your plot better.  In fact taking time to learn those programs will simply take time away from your story creation.    Poser is for people who want to spend the most time on the story and directing part of 3D animation.  No other software I am aware of does better at that then poser.
   
And one more thing please.... please..... stop telling others what they should be doing with thier free time.  Most of us are not "Kids" who need to be told what to do. 

Spanki we are thinking the same way.   On the other hand if you use your voucher for that month the total cost is only $40 for the base set, the morphs and the PC membership.   You don't get the extras of the V4complete (the hair is the only one of real interest to me) but you do get the platinum club freebies and $2.00 items.