I guess i'll alternate between area rendering and reducing my raytrace bounces for the meantime. I'll check if lowering pixel sampling works too. I'm gonna upgrade to win 7 64-bit when i update my comp later this year anyways.

Yeah, the horde werewolf takes a lot of memory. Other people i talked to said that it's normal. In most cases, i can get 2 werewolves to render if i reduce the raytrace bounces to 1. What impact on quality does this have though from reducing the RB from 2 down to 1 for a simple scene?

And does rendering it till it stops, then area rendering the rest of it (this combines both renders into one) seem like a good solution for now?

This problem also completely disappears when using depth map shadows, but i don't really like using those anymore =P

Yeah, i'm rendering in a separate process. I did try to tick off light emitter, but that doesn't seem to work on the horde werewolf. It still runs out of memory =(

Quote - Let me show you something. Because everytime I see canned posts like this I cringe, because then I know you really haven't worked with it, you're just repeating stuff somebody said. Just like you tinker in photoshop, I tinker in zbrush. Just like you, if I don't like something, I have no problem fixing it.

Now I bought SAV's Alpha male M5 and there's a few things I wanted to change bodywise on it, so I did. So I sculpted a different body on him. Hips, chest, abs, glutes, feet, thighs... just like Blackhearted did with the Girl Next Door for V4. Then I softed up the shape so it doesn't have any hard cuts in it. Instantly, this body shape blows away anything you could do with M4 or Gen3. (And I haven't shown you his back ;) ). The same thing could be done with a female model if you or someone else wanted. This is a shift on how you do things, and sure M5 has less polys to work with... but it doesn't look like it's really made a difference when you figure out how to work the mesh.

Now, I wanted to put him in something sexy... guess what? No one really made sexy underwear for M4... but they sure did for David 3... and I have lots of gen3 stuff sitting in my runtime.... so bam... he's wearing David 3's underwear. Did I buy more stuff? Nope, and let me tell you... this looked a disaster on M4 because when i converted it, it put a nasty split right up the crotch. And also: I didn't have to do much fussing with clothing, because now this custom body shape is going to fit work with all my clothing. And now, i get to pull my gen3 clothing that I could never use with Gen4 and play with that as well.

tbh, i don't see a vast improvement on him compared to M4/V4 figures you see in the gallery, especially those with ezskin2 or high quality textures, or with V4 WM. It's all dependent on the artist. Theres hundreds of examples but here's one using V4.2.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2396815&top_rated&&page=2&np

She looks nice, smooth, and sure she has a few minor creases, but other than that the quality is very similar to what you posted. Art wise the V4.2 image looks better imo. The average user won't even notice the diffence.

But that was my point. You said you sculpted his body and softened it. The average user won't know how to do that, and probably doesn't even know what a mesh is, or even care. Most of my M4 clothes looks good on M4. M4 and V4 look really good. I don't use M3. For me, and the average user, there's no point in fitting something to Genesis, when i can just fit it on M4! That's why we stick with what works for us and what we prefer using. I have no plans on updating to Genesis in the near future.

"Nope the person said nothing about DSON"

I did mention DSON in my post =)

I stick with M4 and V4 because quality and appearance wise, Genesis just isn't much better, especially for those huge file sizes. And for the majority of poser users who are casuals like myself, that's all that really matters, is the appearance. Add that i'm more of a photoshop postwork whore, and that makes Genesis even more irrelevant. Bad bends or creases? Easy fix in photoshop. Slight quality difference? Easy fix with softening techniques/HDR toning and for those more advanced users, Luxrender/Reality. In some cases, Genesis products look worse than some of their older ones. Sanctums Horde Werewolf looks way better than the Genesis MS Werewolf. The Horde werewolf was made like 3-4 years earlier too.

A lot of us already have bought a ton of products for M4/V4 too, and don't want to buy everything again. Genesis does make some things easier, but that doesn't matter since we're already comfortable with how the Generation 4 products work, so we're used to things like morph injections and what not.

And even though i'm using poser pro 2012, there's a lot of people still using earlier versions, which Genesis is not compatible with. And i keep reading that DS-on has quite a bit of problems. It's just not worth it imo.

Ahh ok. I guess every lighting setup has their ups and downs. I still find using diffuse IBL's with HDR files or high quality LDR files to be really good, though slightly less quality than that of IDL. I'll just go with the flow and use whatever lighting the situation calls for i guess.

I did try moving the characters, but for some reason, no matter where i moved them, it still rendered the exact same spot from the image. I'm wonder what i'm doing wrong.

Sweet. It all makes sense to me now. No wonder why my earlier images looked washed out. I tend to light with multiple lights because i go for certain effects, whether it be multiple shadows, colors, etc, so i guess for me it's better to go with non-GC. Before, non-GC was too dark, but ever since i discovered and learned IDL with bagginbills dome, and using HDR in diffuse IBL's, it's no longer a problem for me. The one thing i do like about GC though is it makes postwork easier. It's easier to darken shadows than trying to brighten them up, since nothing is there to brighten up. I guess it all comes down to preference. But it's nice to know that ezskin looks great under non-GC, since now i got both options with it.

After experimenting a bit with it in poser, it seems that as you increase angle start closer to angle end, it just makes the circle uniform in intensity at a longer distance. If angle start is equal to angle end, it's a perfect circle with no fading out. Is there any real use to angle start other than that?

Thank you! That's exactly what i needed.

Ahh ok. So in order to use gamma correction, i need to make those changes so it corresponds to linear workflow. I kinda like the look with GC, but i can produce the same results using IDL or a diffuse IBL to brighten the scene, so i'm not sure which is better suited for me. Do i have to make any changes to make EZSkin 2 look good with Gamma correction ticked off? Anything with Ezskin 2 looks good with GC enabled, but i haven't really tried it without GC yet.

hborre: Yeah, i tested out the half room with both IDL and IBL. Even though with the same HDR file attached to them brings similar results, the IBL does wash out shadows whereas the IDL gives some very nice, realistic ones with the 2 lights i added for the room. This is easily becoming one of my preferred setups, because not only does it give me full control and brightens the scene well, but i can leave gamma correction ticked off. GC is something i've learning to hate very quickly =P Thanks for all your help man. I learned a lot from this thread. I'm curious, do you usually render with Gamma correction on? I used to always leave it ticked on before, but now i prefer to leave it ticked off since it tends to make images look flat and dull, killing highlights and shadows.

Miss Nancy: Yeah, lighting has a very high learning curve, and there isn't one comprehensive tutorial out there that explains them all in detail. I had to use multiple tutorials and the advice of other people to finally understand lighting. I pretty much understand IBL, HDRI, AO, shadow-map vs raytrace pretty well now, the only thing i had to learn was how to use IDL. And with the help of you guys, i have a good understanding of it now =)

Are you using gamma correction ticked on? Sometimes gamma correction washes out shadows.

hborre: I have a few scenes where it's a room with 3 sides, but missing the ceiling and front so light can get in. What i did was use bagginbills dome with the doge2.hdr file to light up the scene. I kept the camera at 75mm because the room walls from my angle blocks the doge2 image completely, so it doesnt matter if it's blurry or not. But for this case, i used two lights for the scene, for shadow purposes. Everything lighted really well. For indoor scenes, is it ok to use multiple lights with the dome/IDL to get the look and shadows we want?

This could also be done by applying that same doge2.hdr file to a diffuse IBL, but i noticed the shadows didn't come out as good as with IDL and bagginbills dome.

Yeah, i just read it, but it looks pretty complicated and time-consuming to use. I think i'll take the photoshop route on this one, or use other techniques such as rendering shadows only, then manipulating it within PS, or placing a prop on the ground and make it fit well within the photo, and grab the shadows on there.