All our Apollo renders? That'll take a while, lol. I'll start with this one:

Talus Maximus texture, Sapphire Fox hair, my character, render in Octane.

Anim8dtoon, thanks! That render was done in Poser, years ago. I used to re-do the eye materials and added in reflections so they gave off these highlights. Apollo was originally made in 2005, before Poser 7, and the versions before it faked reflections, so the materials for the figures did, too. First order of business: delete reflection maps and add in reflections in the reflective materials like corneas and eyewhites. (Nowadays, I use Octane for rendering, which has no need for faking anything.)

And, no, Apollo was not always free. It was before my time, but I remember talk about him having been for sale for close to 100 bucks before Anton decided to give him to the community.

As a long-time exclusive user of Apollo, I'm very happy to see renewed interest in him. Yes, he's in some ways superior to many figures out today. All he needs is a decent weight-mapping (that I'd be happy to pay for, even).

Back during the days when the forums at contentparadise still existed, Anton was developing Apollo 2.0 and getting close to finishing him when the forums disappeared, and Anton with them. I've been looking for alternatives to Apollo's versatility ever since, but no joy.

(This is also Apollo, dialed up only using the dials he comes with: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/elena_c/11539234/6609/6609_900.jpg )

Sorry to butt in like this, but don't give up on Apollo just yet. With a bit of fiddling, he can be made to look like this:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2621108&user_id=510426&np&np

or like this:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1497365&user_id=510426&np&np

or even like this:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1954152&user_id=510426&np&np

Most versatile male figure I ever worked with, and a crying shame that he never received his promised update. Not without his problems, but a lack of morphs isn't one of them.

goes back to lurking

Great renders, everyone! :)

(Oh, and I checked nudity just in case.)  

Hi all, I've been following developments with interest and would like to offer my services as a beta tester in Carrara 8.5 beta and/or Carrara 8.1 if needed.

I also offer to test Dawn in Octane via Octane for Poser to see what the sub-d looks like in an unbiased renderer if there's interest.  

I found the culprit for the memory hog, and it's not the strand-based hair at all, but a hair prop called WildHair Male (which I love, but have been having trouble with in Carrara as well). Once I eliminated that from my scene, the Cuda errors ceased.

Since I'm working with a Genesis figure anyway, I substituted the Wildhair with the WildMane hair (for Genesis), and the render is currently in progress. :)

Thanks for your help, face_off. Very happy to be able to continue with a scene despite the Cuda errors with the fix of the current beta. Keep up the good work!  

Thanks for the reply! I enjoy the plugin very much. It replaced my old workflow (export from Carrara, import into DS to fix Carrara smoothing issues, export, import into Octane) with neat in-scene rendering. I even decided it warranted uprading from Poser 7, and I still think it was worth every cent.

Yeah, I know I'm at the lower end hardware-wise, but it's a laptop and I can't change cards. I've looked into external graphic cards options, but it seems I need a card slot for it that I don't have, and there's currently no USB support for external graphic cards. Oh well. My next computer will certainly take graphic card performance into account, lol. In the meantime, I'll just reduce scene complexity and do closeups rather than scenic renders.

I'm currently at work, away from my Octane setup, but I'll see if I can send you the prop later today, when I'm home. But you're probably right about the vertices. I've done instancing resulting in many more vertices than I have in this scene, and it never was an issue.

I'll re-download the current plugin version first thing when I get home (I don't think I have the latest one) and see if that fixes it. Thanks again for your work and quick response to user issues. Mucho appreciated. :)

Re: Poser dynamic hair in Octane for Poser

Hi, I've tried making a dynamic beard prop for Genesis and got both into the plugin okay. Looked beautiful, too. However, about eight minutes into the render, the Cuda device failed with multiple error messages that kept popping up, and I finally had to kill Poser via the task manager. (Win 7, 64 bit, Nvidia 540 M on a laptop with 12 Gig RAM.) It's a reproducible phenomenon.

Since this only happens with other renders if I'm close to the card memory limit, I suspect there's a memory issue there because of too many vertices. No idea why it takes so long to crap out. I'll experiment with reducing vertices per strand and/or number or strands.

tl;dr: In principle, it works. In practice, it's a memory hog. :)

I got into 3D via Poser and used it for a while (then Poser 7), and then I got into Carrara with version 6.0. Realistic lighting (especially caustics and true IBL, or near enough as makes no difference) lured me in. Now, I can safely say that for a near photorealistic render, it takes me about a quarter of the time to set up the scene in Carrara compared to Poser. Plus, the render is quicker on average.

Poser materials will always remain a mystery to me, while Carrara materials are straightforward and intuitive (at least to my admittedly not very mathematically minded, uh, mind).

Of course, support for Carrara leaves something to be desired. Since DAZ bought it, priorities have shifted. We're still waiting for usable soft physics simulations (cloth), and the SSS is not as convincing as Poser's, as somebody else already stated. Still, you can do some amazing stuff in Carrara, including full environments. There's a lot less making do with crutches and fakes (even though the renderer is not unbiased).

As for crashes, yes, Carrara does crash. I haven't had enough experience with the newest release of Poser to make a comparison. 

I too used to do things exclusively in Poser, but since I got Carrara, I haven't even opened Poser except to install new stuff into my library so I can use it in Carrara. It renders faster (about ten times faster by my guess) and looks more realistic, and it has cool stuff like working caustics, blurry reflections, and sky light and indirect lighting. Plus posing is easier once you've gotten used to Carrara's translation tools. I never felt the need to do anything in Poser anymore, and I'd heartily recommend any Poser user (or DS user, for that matter) to give Carrara a try. Chances are you'll love it.