Eronik posted at 2:47PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418479

SuperFly is superior to FirFly in most every way. For one, it looks more cinematic, especially the graininess which makes animation look like it was shot on film.

What are some tips for optimizing render speeds for animation?

Install Queue Manager on any other computers on your network, and use them as "remotes".

Regarding grainy renders and long render times:

If you have P12, make use of Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. When engaged, Superfly will note when a given pixel no longer changes with continued samples (i.e., "this pixel has already reached Nirvana"), and skips that pixel thereafter, devoting its time to more difficult areas of the render.

With high quality settings, you'll see slow progress at the beginning of the render (same speed as P11), but at some stage the progress will begin to accelerate, and as more pixels are finalized, the render progresses very rapidly. For me, this feature alone made P12 worth it.

I have 2008 vintage equipment, and my video card is not good for GPU renders, so I'm limited to CPU-only renders. Take a look at these P12 Superfly renders which have a lot of metals, volumetric water, meshlighting, etc. No grain remaining, but they did take over an hour to render on my workstation.

undersea ruins

Appleseed Jedi

Cortana and Master Chief

Elven Grey Ship

These are the render settings I used for the Grey Havens renders; zero out the volumetric values if your scene doesn't have volumetric materials in it.

@RedPhantom Do you still see this in the 12.0.500 release?

But the origins may need to be in different places. The second mesh should overlay the first mesh, even if that means that you must adjust the origin Y (not Y trans) of the second mesh.

That said, I'd separate the wings and make them articulated props parented to the jet pack.

Thank you, @RedPhantom and @tim

I filed a bug report, noting that my machines are Win7.

If you load the second OBJ into Poser as an OBJ (not morph target), does it have its origin in the same place as the first OBJ? If not, then you need to change the Y-origin of the second OBJ.

It may be easier to separate the wings, import them as OBJs, set their origin at the hinge points, parent them to the jet pack, and ERC them to open/close together.

RedPhantom posted at 3:07AM Mon, 26 April 2021 - #4417673

I see you're using Windows 7. I wonder if that's the problem. Poser is supposed to be Win 10 and up. I know it works on 7, but maybe there's an issue with this part of it. Do you have a computer with win 10 you can try? Otherwise, you might need to talk to support.

Yes, I know it's Win10+, that's why I pointed out that I'm on Win7. But, I tried the "included" radio button, and I can download and install with that. So, the point of failure is the login of the Renderosity radio button. It may indeed be a Win7 issue. I don't have a Win10 machine; I'm saving up and planning a Win10 workstation (hopefully with RTX 30XX GPUs), but until then all my machines are Win7.

This may sound stupid, but how do I contact support?

I tried several times, on two workstations, so I don't think it's misspelled. Caps Lock is off. I used my Rendo username & password; I also tried email & password. I also whitelisted R'osity in Kamo.

Am I correct that I am supposed to use my R'osity username and password?

Maybe the second OBJ has its origin in a different place. Try repeating the process, but this time note the origin of the first OBJ (open the joint editor window, and you should see the green and red crosshairs appear). When you load the second OBJ, move its origin to match that of the first OBJ.

Here's an example of using a mask to control what is metallic/mirror, and the inverse of that mask for diffuse value.

Firefly render:

Superfly render (using metallicity in the PhysicalSurface root); I think I have the roughness of the metallic/mirror areas too high:

You can render the PoserSurface root in Superfly, though I zeroed out the displacement since Superfly doesn't have micropoly displacement.

As a means of alerting you to missing textures, P12 assigns magenta where a texture image is missing.

So you might see this...

instead of this...

That's why you're seeing purple.

As for why the textures are missing, how are the remotes (render slaves) connected to the master? Cat5 over 10/100MB/s switch? wireless?

The most frequent cause of networked Queue issues is firewall permissions; you should verify that all of the machines have in&out permissions for Queue and FFRender64 (and Poser on the master). But since you are getting the job to the remote, I wonder if the problem is a timeout fault between master and slave. What OS are your machines, and describe your network (hardwired? wireless? Cat5? Cat7? switch speed?)

On the slave, do you see discovery query from 192.168.1.100 in the bottom of the Queue window? That would indicate that the slave "sees" the master PC on your network.

On the master PC, do you see available message from 192.168.1.143 in the bottom of the Queue window? That would indicate that the master sees the slave on the network.

Check firewall permissions on both computers. On the master, verify that Poser, Queue, and FFRender64 have in/out permissions. On the slave, Queue and FFRender64 need permissions.

Yay! I've only rarely seen renders made using anything I've made; it's neat to see what someone does with it.

The depth of field has plenty of distance in which to work.

Corrected the loss of UVs on the ferry's hull strakes and rail filigree, now working on the water material...

After re-extracting the OBJs, etc., I'll upload an SR3 for Grey Havens. The ferry boat and the skiff will be separate uploads.

@RedPhantom Just encountered that about ten minutes ago. My machine is Win7.