I'm holding out for LENR, to power my own render farm, into retirement...

http://climate.nasa.gov/news/864

If only it was available now, I could also be a bitcoin millionaire ;-)

Hmmm... although since everyone else could also access the tech, if I could, probably not...

Quote - > Quote - I take it if my figure has SSS mats (or other complex shaders) in Poser, that I don't have to strip the shader down to just it's texture maps before I work with the scene in Reality? i.e. does Reality Studio ignore any Poser shader nodes it doesn't need, if they are present?

That is correct. Reality knows how to traverse the Poser shader tree and convert all those nodes to the closest useful representation. Using simpler materials simply makes the process slightly faster and takes less memory.

Cheers.

Excellent - thanks Paolo :-)

Quote - well it makes a change from conspiracy theory's about poser :)

:-)

My boxed PP2014 Upgrade seems to only have Macintosh installer DVDs in it, certainly...

...which suited me okay, since I have a mac ;-) I presume I must have picked that option at checkout...

Quote - and this has what to do with rendo/poser/daz studio?

it is about time there was an "OT" forum

Rendering needs power doesn't it?

;-)

Quote - > Quote - My main issue / point of concern is probably material setup time, as opposed to render time.

... 

Your best approach for scenes is to avoid fancy shaders and scripts that take advantage of Firefly. That's what they are designed for: to use some of the most esotheric and advanced features of Firefly. If you use a different renderer they are out of place.

When you use Reality and LuxRender you gain many of the same benefits for free; just use the standard materials that are associated with the models. If it's a figure that you set up then just use the standard mat files of Poser without SSS. Reality sets its own SSS for there is no need to have complex shaders at the source. In fact you will get excellent results out-of-the-box using the standard Poser shaders.

If you need glass there is no simpler approach than right-clicking on the material in Reality and selecting "Glass". The same is for Metal, Velvet or Cloth.

Start with a new scene and keep it simple. There is much less need to tweak shaders with Reality when you use the approach described above.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Paolo

But I do appreciate this difference... i.e. Reality just needs the texture maps (diffuse, bump, etc) and perhaps procedural patterns (if these are assigned in place of, or as well as, an image map).

The set up time I'm referring to is the time it takes to go through each material zone, in Reality Studio, and assign a material there (e.g. glass, metal, velvet, cloth).

This is, in effect, not too different from what I now do in Poser (as all these fancy shaders I am using there are, to a great extent ready-mades and... now with EZ Mat moreso... quick to apply to the base textures).

The time it would take to set up materials in a scene like the one I posted would likely be about the same either way.

But I would have to choose one or other path at the outset... or duplicate effort.

Hence, as I say, I probably just need to gradually familiarise myself with Reality enough so that I can make that choice, of which renderer I am going to choose to use for a given image, upfront, when I have an idea for an image and start to build the scene for it.

Anyway...

...just further to what you said there above, I have a quick question that I hope you don't mind if I interject here...

I take it if my figure has SSS mats (or other complex shaders) in Poser, that I don't have to strip the shader down to just it's texture maps before I work with the scene in Reality? i.e. does Reality Studio ignore any Poser shader nodes it doesn't need, if they are present?

Many thanks

My main issue / point of concern is probably material setup time, as opposed to render time.

I'm quite used to long render times. The scene below (click to view at full size 3072 pixels wide on DA site) took around 12 hours, maybe a bit more, to complete, with Firefly. This scene is lit with ambient lighting and a couple of point lights (including one placed within the foreground orb). It is rendered "IDL only".

I suppose if Lux took much longer than this sort of 12-24 hour mark though, for the same kind of scene, it could be an issue.

But, initially, it is just the amount of work to set up materials for everything in such as scene that is holding me back from jumping into Reality more.

Don't get me wrong, I have been through and replaced all of the shaders in this scene with BBGlossy2 and other Bagginsbill shaders.

But my workflow is fairly optimised now for doing that. Especially now, using the beta of Snarlygribbly's EZMat add-on.

It's probably just a familiarity thing really... I suppose... and also committing to going through the same sort of process, instead using Reality Studio.

But this is why I am just experimenting with Reality, in small increments for now, I guess...

...once I know it better I'll get an idea of when I might want to use it, for a given scene, and when I'd be better sticking with Firefly.

In terms of the discussion on entropy and negentropy, I find this, somewhat related or thematically linked, concept interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory

;-)

Just checked... and there IS a torus in the Poser props Primitives folder ;-)

I've definitely found the new Progressive Mode render option, for Firefly, in PP2014, to be a big help, when setting up lighting and quickly gauging what the final result will come out like, using a fast test render... including for IDL renders.

But, yeah, absolutely... the on-the-fly adjustment in Reality / Lux, is a major attraction there.

Yeah, no doubt, if unadulterated realism is your aim, then Reality and Lux will get you further down that path, ultimately... since Lux is a more physically accurate type of render engine, fundamentally. But it needs to be mastered, like anything else. A better camera doesn't a professional photographer make...

...although the right equipment can help a lot!

I am always thrilled to see how much it is possible to crank out of Firefly though! ;-)

It's Firefly's versatility that keeps me very much addicted to it...

Just run EZSkin on the whole figure?

Lovely work! :-)

Quote - Well not to dispute your point, as I have seen some great things out of reality, but this side by side is almost a bad example the other way...  ie the 'before' picture is extremely basic... such that if poser started pissing that out I'd abort the render after the first line!

There is some value in to what the OP is trying to do though. I suspect for it to have its intended effect you'd need to know both programs well enough to get the very best out of them.  Its cool to see comparisons though.

 

Quote - Hello.

Thank you for doing the test and posting your result.

The Reality/Lux image is really not showing what the combination can do. This is, of course, because of the limited experience with the programs. You just need to give yourself more time and become familiar with the Reality materials :).

Here is an example by an expert user:

While the example was created using DAZ Studio, the result shows the level of realism acheievable. Also keep in mind that the version of Reality used is 2, not 3.

Below there is an image made with Reality 2, by Elianeck.

 

Cheers.

Yes, sorry Paolo... but Poser's native Firefly can much more closely match the Lux / Reality result shown above, I'd say... the Reality render looks great though, of course ;-)

Both render engines take some knowledge to get the best from, I guess. I'm still at the point of being much more proficient / in my comfort zone with Firefly, personally. Playing around with Reality though...

Awesome :-)