Running on Windiws 8.x, I see Vue 2016 NPR Styles presets at:

C:ProgramDatae-onsoftwareVue xStream 2016NPR StylesListed

And

C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoaminge-on softwareVue xStream 2016ConfigCollectionsNPR Styles

Also empty folders for them at:

C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoaminge-on softwareVue xStream 2016ConfigCollectionsActivationNPR Styles

And

C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoaminge-on softwareVue xStream 2016ConfigSelection PresetsNPR Styles

However, no BitmapsNPRLevel02.jpg etc. Possibly they're being generated procedurally 'on-the-fly', according to the preset settings, and then wiped after the render completes?

The original official comparison chart at http://my.smithmicro.com/Poser11andPoserPro11FeatureComparison_v6.pdf shows that .FBX is (was?) a Pro only feature. If Digitell's chart is also correct then perhaps FBX features are enabled for Standard when you apply one of the Service Release patches, Shadow_Fyre?

If you're going to be doing many undersea pictures, it might be an idea to look at getting a copy of Vue. Poser 11 -> Vue 2016 is really easy and automatic, and it would give you access to all Vue's one-click presets for atmospheres and underwater realism.

Go: Top menu bar | Edit | General Preferences | Library | File Search | set to Shallow (or None) | OK.

I just looked at the upgrade prices. For you, US $299 for an upgrade from Vue 2014 Complete to 2016 Complete, is likely to be a better way to spend $300 than a GTX 1060 graphics card. Given all the rendering improvements in Vue 2015, and the stability fixes and other improvements in 2016.

Yes, I agree with Ironsoul - if you're getting a new PC for Vue then two extra sticks of motherboard RAM may be a good insurance against crashes. 16Gb rather than 8Gb. According to my research Vue may rarely touch the extra 8Gb, but when it does nudge into it for big scenes... it'll be that 'gotta have it moment' that may prevent a crash and lost autosaves. For instance, I can just about work with Cornucopia's new huge Green Canyon scene + Poser imports, on 8Gb with onboard graphics and wireframe preview. But I had two annoying crashes which I suspect might have been avoided by the OpenGL having access to 16Gb of RAM. Of course, if you're not loading vast natural landscapes with clouds and big ecosystems, then you may not need it. Someone doing architectural space-port / city / vehicle pictures probably wouldn't need an extra 8Gb of RAM. Same goes for those importing the stock 'three Poser characters in a room', but that sort of scene is probably best done in Poser + SuperFly anyway. Poser lets you work the artistic camera-framing of tight interiors much more easily than Vue does.

I guess the thing to do is get the new PC with the standard 8Gb RAM, but make sure the motherboard has the empty slot(s) needed to expand it to 16Gb if needed.

Good onboard graphics will still be needed for Vue's OpenGL preview and updating preview window, though. So it's not like you can just get the most piffling onboard graphics possible. If you can get the PC company to slot something good like a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb slot-in graphics card, for an extra $300, then it's worth considering. A powerful graphics card will help power Vue's OpenGL windows + scene previews. But be prepared for an increased electric bill, a hotter PC, a required power-supply upgrade to power the card, plus possibly an annoying whirring noise from the card/PSU fans.

As for Poser, SuperFly is very nice, and a good graphics card will help with speed there. But even with onboard graphics you can get adequate results from a fast 4000 pixel preview render in SuperFly, reduced to 2000 pixels to take off most of the jaggies. That sort of approach would let you quickly render posed characters in a transparent-background PNG, to be dropped into the Vue render using Photoshop and blended in to the lighting scenario. Also, I assume you know that you can push Poser 11 files to Vue 2016 for quality rendering, very easily, and Vue knows how exactly to translate the textures nicely (Smith Micro and E-on have been working together for decades now). The advantage there is that a handful of online render farms are happy to see Vue files. As well as Pixelplow, also check out the garagefarm.net online render farm, who now offer Vue online rendering.

If you're not a high-end videogamer who needs a hot $4k PC, and who only does about one Vue final-render a week, then the Pixelplow online renderfarm is probably the way to go. That would ding your wallet for a mere $60 a year, or thereabouts. Easy and cheap to test it, too, to see if it can do what you want. So far as I know, they're the only farm who accepts Vue files, and perhaps their Vue service may not last forever.

On your specific question on the onboard graphics, my Vue 2016 R2 xStream does fine with onboard graphics, though the preview window is small and sees a lot of features being turned off as the scene complexity increases.

Vue uses the CPU for the final render, not the graphics card. Lesser version of Vue are limited to rendering on 8 CPUs (8 pure cores) and you would need Vue Infinite or xStream Vue to use more cores or integrate with a local render farm (or a home render-farm-in-a-box like the Boxx RenderPro 2). A graphics card will help speed up Vue's preview window, though, and let you run at larger size and with more settings enabled.

Thus Vue Complete can't do better than 8 cores. Cheapest I could find an Octa-core (8-core) i7-6900K kit on Amazon was a hefty $842, and that's assuming you have an existing PC it can just slot into with no hassle.

But if you're stuck with getting a fast i7 4-core CPU, then upgrading to Vue 2016 R2 should make a big big difference - as there was very significant render-time optimisation in Vue 2015, plus a few more tweaks on that for Vue 2016. You can download the latest Learning Edition to test that.

Or... you can get a www.pixelplow.net render farm account, assuming you have a credit card and fast upload on your broadband, and then have their fast CPUs render your Vue scenes for you. For that you're looking at their standard $10 deposit, and then probably about $1 a render.

There are numerous advantages to Pro, listed at the Smith Micro site in great detail. Here are what I see as the core advantages...

• Graphics card render acceleration (but needs a very fast NVIDIA CUDA-powered card).
• Collada and FBX import/export.
• Use HDRi to light your scenes.
• 'Render in background', and much improved 64-bit rendering.
• Save renders as .PSD Photoshop files, with multipass render passes as layers inside the file.
• Network rendering with the render Queue Manager.
• PoserFusion plugins (render your scene in Lightwave, 3DS Max, Maya and Cinema 4D). (Though Vue is the best option there, because it knows how to handle the Poser materials).
• A more cost-effective upgrade path to Poser 12.

Many thanks for the help, bagginsbill. For those wanting to access the PoserPython manual quoted, I see that access to it is built right into the Help menu inside Poser 11.

I'm now thinking that a more general Macro Recorder and Player could be made in Python, for use in automating all aspects of Poser. Something that would run like Photoshop's Actions, and thus be even more widely useful for users beyond just multi-pass rendering.

The Python Software Foundation appears to have free code for that, in their PyAutoGUI module which is a free... "cross-platform module for GUI automation for human beings. Control the keyboard and mouse from a Python script."

In terms of having such a useful "PyAutoGUI for Poser" tool made and extended to handle PoserPython, perhaps this is something that the community might crowd-fund for. I'd certainly chip in $10 for that, to have something like Photoshop's Actions up-and-running in Poser 11.

In the meantime I'm now looking into more general Windows software automation tools, for recording and playing back actions on any type of software. Not ideal, but it appears that it would do the job. On a first 30 minute hunt, it appears that Jitbit Macro Recorder and Quick Macros are the top dogs, with both also able to output .exe files to share recorded actions. WinParrot 2.x appears to be the freeware pick.

If you also render out a sketch layer of a suitable type (you may need to experiment for a while, on that) and the same size as your toon render, then in Photoshop you can use a big soft eraser to remove most of that sketch layer, just leaving shading that looks sort-of like hatching (see picture, below). Of course you have to run an Action to knock out all the white first, leaving just the sketch lines laid over your toon lines and colour flats layers.

DragonWhy asked: is "this feature the same in Poser 11 as it is in Poser 11 Pro version?"

Yes, Poser 11 Standard and Poser 11 Pro both have the Comic Book mode.

Looks interesting, but would require me to convert my existing DAZ Studio 4.8 database to PostgreSQL. That, on its own, sounds interesting, since it is said to be faster than the standard CMS on 64-bit Windows. But, judging by a half-hour on the forums posts and reading the documentation, wrangling an install of PostgreSQL appears to be a bit of a nightmare and probably more trouble than it's worth. And.... if there's no PostgreSQL installed, then Database Tamer can't run.

Thanks, Rebapd, your DAZ hint helped me find it. I looked on the DAZ Store, and it's Oskarsson's "Futura Clothes for Genesis 3 Female". Sorry about the DAZ cross-over in the Poser forum!

The old policeman's helmet (mentioned above) was actually from Ness's Period Reproductions freebies, where I seem to remember that commercial use was forbidden. Still online though, via https://web.archive.org/web/20130531064504/http://www.nessrepros.co.uk/downloads/Police_Props.zip

I have a ..PW Mike24th helmet.cr2 which is the right type with the pointed front and the long back, but was presumably from Poser World (I grabbed their one-time "all you can download" offer) and thus is no longer available.