Never mind, Vicky. We might have failed to impress Richard with your super-friendly smile, but I like your smile, looks sincere enough to me, and I reckon it will prove to be their loss more than ours!

You're a hard man to please, Haseltine, a hard man

BTW, can't help but notice that the error shows drive E: even though I don't have an E: designated drive. I have two SSDs in this machine, designated as drive C: and drive D: so it seems strange how it's managing to throw-up an error like that anyway!

Thanks both, but I did read the instructions

I'm wondering if it has something to do with Windows and that damned UAC thing. The instructions said to put it in the same Runtime Scripts folder destination that was installed along with Poser itself. Unfortunately, that is in the UAC area of Windows, and it's a problem that stopped the DAZ Install Manager from working the other day, so it might be stopping this from working as well.

I'll reinstall, but I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions correctly. If it doesn't work next time, I'll just have to see if it works by installing the script to a Runtime that is not located in the UAC area of Windows.

TITLE - Peeping Tom's Paradise

DESCRIPTION - Now back in the day, Posette was the woman, and Dork was the man. And just like every other male figure that came after him, Dork had itches that needed to be sctratched. Now granted, he got beat-up in the end, but regardless, you have to admire poor Dork's determination to land the right sort of job, with the right sort of access. Dork became a true master of the ventilation shaft network, clearly demonstrated in this animation by Mary Shelley.

LINK - Peeping Tom's Paradise

Just wanted to rectify something I said regards the CTRL Human system Wolf mentioned. I just took a more detailed look at it and in fact it is NOT the project I thought it was. It is in fact along the very lines I was suggesting is the future, so pretty cool. There is, however, something very similar in development by the establishment that is designed to manipulate and abuse the public that WILL cause unheard of mental health issues for those who use it. Oddly I cannot find the damn thing, and I cannot remember what it's called, but I'm pretty damn sure the word "Human" was part of it.

Hopefully those groups fighting against it were successful in having it banned from ever going into production, but if they haven't, no doubt it will pop up again in the future, and trust me, you'll know it when you see it. It was a shining example of the psychopathic establishment, and the absolute sheer contempt it has for society. It was a seriously nasty piece if work!

But no, the product Wolf talks about is not it, and looks quite cool.

Wolf, I think the clue for its existence is in its name "CTRL (CONTROL) HUMAN". It's just one of the ever-expanding ways that establishment companies get to record everything you do and say, cause in order to interact with something like that, you need to do and say, and that's all the establishment are interested in, what you do and say.

The people behind that crap are Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, the same establishment monsters time and time again. And mark my words, the ONLY effect it will have is on the mental health of the people who use it. I won't be one of them, just like I never wore "Glass" for Google's benefit, just like I never posted a word on Facebook for Zuckerberg's benefit, and just like I never submitted my identity to Google for god knows how many establishment bodies' benefit. I'll "embrace" what I know is right, not what the establishment wants me to embrace.

So in short, not interested mate, not in the slightest, not even when it becomes free and available in Blender

Wolf, having this sort of conversation with one such as yourself is pretty pointless to be honest. Your reply shows you don't really understand what I'm getting at when you say stuff like "the rubbish look of DX9". The look is an aesthetic, and what you see as rubbish, is idealistic to anyone wanting that particualr aesthetic. My point is that PBR renderers that are 100% bent on photorealism, will not allow you to do that, so in effect, they remove the artist's artistic licence to generate the aesthetic they require. So to someone wanting the DX9 aesthetic, Cycles is rubbish, Octane is rubbish, Lux is rubbish. DX9 is just an example of an aesthetic, as is the strange Standard/PBR hybrid renders you get from doing this stuff in Firefly, as seen in my previous post. For that purpose, Firefly is idealistic, whereas Superfly would be rubbish!

I'm not even going to get into conversations about that digital avatar stuff. other than to say that mocap already had a nail in its coffin long before it even got started. The future for animators is synthesised, procedural motion generation. No one is going to give a crap about mocap, body suits or anything that revolves around that stuff once synthesized procedural motion really takes off. The future is having a bunch of sliders to adjust, that generate and control the motion and randomness etc of your digital actor. Trust me on this, the future is NOT running around a huge hall sweating your bollocks off in a jumpsuit rigged with dots and body sensors, just to grab some mocap that could be done in seconds using a powerful synthesized motion system.

I watched the video you posted, but again, I was not talking about the toon style. Those images in my previous post are a perfect example of what I meant, something ideal for online comics and graphic novels. Something that looks like a 3D rendering while still managing not to look like a photo, and retains a colourful, arty look!

Well guess what mate, Cycles is really really rubbish at that aesthetic, whereas Firefly clearly rocks at it

I have Poser 10 so I'm in luck then

Man, funny how things work out. I've just been looking at other products by the same vendor and it's obvious he's used PBR-Emulator on his renders for those products, and honestly, I could not imagine a better look for using on web comics, graphic novels or whatever. What I like about it is that it looks good but still has that ability to look arty without looking like a photograph. It doesn't look like a photograph or even feel as if it's trying to. And that's what bothers me about dedicated PBR renders, cause whatever you do in them looks as if you wanted it to look like a photograph even when you didn't. PBR-Emulator, however, demonstrates EXACTLY what I was trying to get at early on in the thread, because it allows us to retain control over artistic licence of the overall aesthetic.

I absolutely LOVE it, I mean look at these renders done with it; absolutely perfect for web comics and graphic novels since it looks colourful and artistic without looking like an attempt at photorealism that failed. You cannot do that with a dedicated PBR renderer that is 100% bent on accurate rendering physics, and for that reason, I hope Bondware continue to develop and improve Firefly with more features and accellerated performance wherever possible. Control over the overall aesthetic is something Firefly does incredibly well thanks to its deep rendering abilities and sophisticated node system, and this aesthetic right here is just one example of that!

Sorry to hear that, Nagra, that video is a bit misleading then!

I was just checking-out that PBR-Emulator you mentioned. Gotta tell ya it brought quite a smile to my face. Not so much for what it is, but rather, the result, cause I love the look it gives. It's like some weird cross between a standard render and a PBR render, very interesting. I'm a bit puzzled by it though, I mean, it says it's a plugin, but how is it implemented? To hazard a guess I'd say it gives you a new object to use in the Node Editor, something that loads PBR textures. Is that right, or am I way off?

I'm not upgrading to Poser 11 (but hopefully Poser 12), so I'll be picking-up that plugin anyway, but I am still curious in the mean time!

@Nagra - You might have tried or read about an older version. Here's a video where the AMD dev says that it supports GPU computing on a MAC and with support for different GPUs, not just AMD. Something else I forgot to mention is that it also has a machine-learning denoiser (also mentioned in the video).

Click here for AMD ProRender Video

@Wolf - Dude, that's just more crap designed to manipulate even more than the written form of social media already has. It is no threat to filmmakers or animators. It is only threat to the mental health of those sheeple whom the tech giants successfully con into using it. It will result in more mental health damage than we already have to contend with in society these days. Not surprising then, that the usual establishment suspects are all behind it (Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft).

Regards iClone, are you saying they kept the DX9 renderer as an option? If so, that's great, but I thought it went DX11, pretty sure I read that somewhere!

@Nagra - Sorry, missed your post. Pro Render is designed to run on Linux, MacOS, and Windows, supports GPU rendering on all platforms, and does so with AMD, nVidia, and even Intel graphics. Regards Bondware giving Firefly GPU acceleration through OpenCL, that is exactly what I wish they would do, cause I like the artistic freedom and control Firefly gives, in ways that Superfly does not. With Bagginsbill's Parameter Modulation technique built in, Firefly would effectively become a hybrid renderer, or at least that's the way I see it since he was getting results every bit as impressive as a dedicated PBR renderer.

Here's a PBR render Baggins made in Firefly using his Parameter Modulation technique, so just imagine this technique built-in to Firefly, and GPU-accelerated:

Just to be clear, when I say comics, I'm not talking about toon style renders or anything like that, I'm just talking about the general look a non-PBR renderer gives using its standard shading models etc. PBR renderers are geared towards photorealism, and aren't as good as non-PBR renderers at allowing you to stray from that. PBR renders look impressive in a photoreal sense, but that is not always wanted, especially in art, and to me PBR renders don't look as artistic as standard renders.

The same is true of iClone and the movies that come out of it lately. I totally love iClone, and Reallusion are certainly showing the competition how it's done. But for all its advancements, the movies coming out of it lately are not a patch on the stuff that used to, and I think that's a direct effect of PBR, cause suddenly, the creators of the movies appear to be sooooooooo bothered about realism that they appear to be forgetting what iClone movie making is all about, that being camera technique, lighting, and telling a good story. There was a time I used to actively keep up on everything that came out of it, but since the realism fetish kicked in, the movie making has gone downhill to the point I only bother to check for movies maybe once a month, as opposed to pretty much daily which is what I used to do.

Ironic thing is, when iClone was DX9, I was always quite vocal about iClone being behind the times in the render department. I kinda regret that now, although to be fair I did have a point since reflections were pretty much a no go back then! Just feels like everything has gone from one extreme to the other, and that's not good IMHO.

I wish they'd find a way to speed-up Firefly using the GPU of both AMD and nVidia cards using Open CL, and yes, I did say Firefly, not Superfly! Would also like to see Bagginsbill's Parameter Modulation thing become part of Firefly, integrated in a way that people will understand how to use it. Would also like to see Aperture Ratio activated for Firefly so that we can have Anamorphic Bokeh in Firefly (which sadly, currently only works in Superfly).

Sorry adp, missed your post. Well all I can say is they need to ditch Cycles and replace it with AMD's Pro Render which is Open Source, interactive, and hardware agnostic meaning you get GPU accelleration on both AMD and nVidia cards. AMD even encourage developers to integrate it into their programs. I'm afraid I'm not impressed by this Superfly thing in the least, I'd honestly rather use Firefly, and actually, unlikely as it is, I wish they could somehow enable Firefly to use GPU acceleration, even if it's only for certain calculations. I saw Bagginsbill demonstrate something called "Parameter Modulation" in Firefly, and man, it looked like a PBR render!

And here's a thought, something which admittedly might sound nostalgic but, you know what? PBR renderers are very fine indeed, but they inherit a problem where being physically based means we loose some artistic licence. It's like, when I look at online renders, comics etc, fantasy images, for some reason I always prefer them done in Firefly than Superfly. So an inherent problem with Superfly (and all other physically based renderers), is it makes your art look as if you want it to look real, even though that might not be the case. So it kinda even puts pressure on you, since the rendering pyhsics are spot on, it makes every model and texture other than the best, look very amateur, whereas with something like Firerfly, you are not entering that physically accurate realm unless you want to.

Sounds crazy, I know, but if I had to choose only one, I'd choose Firefly over Superfly, because the possibilities are superior, and as long as you learn the sort of stuff Baggins has learnt, you can do physically accurate stuff as well, so best of both worlds! If Firefly had Anamorphic bokeh, a way to make the Parameter Modulation knowledge Baginsbill has be easily usable, and preferably, some way to accelerate Firefly using a GPU, that would be ABSOLUTELY killer!

We'd have a sort of Hybrid Render engine that is only 'Physically Based' if and where we want to be. So damn frustrating that this stuff isn't released. I'd much rather pay Bagginsbill for a way to do Anamorphic Bokeh and Paramater Modulation in Firefly, than pay for this upgrade, and I'm not even joking, not in the slightest! On the plus side, I did read somewhere that Bondware are planning to improve the rendering situation, but I'm guessing that will be for Superfly, not Firefly, cause while I hope I am wrong, I'm guessing they're every bit as led down the garden path as every other developers appears to be, completely ignoring how much artistic licence and freedom is lost with a PBR-only renderer!

Not realtime as such, just interactive, it's one of the things that makes Cycles, Cycles, but it doesn't appear to behave like that, wow