Thought I'd do a quick and dirty render of G8F in case the OP is interested. It's not the best render ever (or even close), but I wanted to see how fast a basic render should be (haven't done one in a while). This is a dial-spun G8F with the textures/shaders for Kallisto (only mod was to the translucency color) with a stock pose. the lighting is the default DS HDRI only. The render took a little under 8 min. on a laptop with a GTX 970M, so 1+ long simple renders are definitely a bit too long (unless your CPU bound).

Hmmm ..... maybe you should show us a couple of your 30-60 sec. HQ Poser renders so we can show similar quality DS samples with their render times (I checked your gallery, but the renders didn't seem to be of the same high quality as the one you posted above). It would also help if you were to share what your hardware is, since render times in Iray can be dramatically different depending on hardware used. Would also help to know if you are using Firefly or Superfly in Poser and Iray or 3Delight in DS?

Of course if you have really already decided to use Poser and never try DS again, then what is the real reason for posting?? Just for the record, I've been using Poser since version 3, but haven't upgraded from PP 2014 to P11. I just find DS to be a better fit for me, but I don't do many animations.

I forgot to mention that I have quite a bit of experience with PhotoScanner from Agisoft (creating 3D models from photos). I also have Vue Complete, but just barely learning it.

I'm interested, but not on facebook (I could of course change that if I had to). I'm currently working on a G8F character that I hope to release for sale, so I'm going through that learning process now. I must admit I'm not an experienced modeler (though I have done some), but very willing to learn more. I'm not a great texture artist either. But I am pretty decent at rendering with Iray (and Octane), and good at setting up Iray materials/shaders, and posing. I have a basic toolkit, Hexagon, Blacksmith3D, Gimp, Carrara, DAZ3D, PoserPro 2014, etc. Please take a look at my gallery(s) linked below to see if you think I might be "trainable", and if your interested, please leave a site mail and I can give you more details about available time, background, etc..

**namja1955 said: **"Not sure if it's a lighting issue, a render setting issue, or something else. Looking for some tips/hints on what to look for and try"

Uuummm ..... yes. If your render took 2 hours, it probably needed more time to render (thus the grain in your image) as the DS default time is 2 hours. If this is the case, then under "Render Settings>Progressive Rendering" increase the "Max Time (secs)" to something like 14400 (4 hours), this should give ample time for the image to fully resolve.

Improved lighting should also speed the time for the image to resolve (get rid of the grainy appearance). What lighting are you using, and are you using GPU or CPU rendering?? I would expect the default HDRI to render much faster than this, but if that is what you were using (no other lights), then try rotating the dome to about 25 to see if that helps ("Dome Rotation" under "Environment Settings" in "Render Settings"), this will put a bit more direct light on the figure which should improve render speed.

Hope this helps

Sorry to see you go, but it sounds like a great new chapter in your life. Gods speed and take care!

My guess is aren't setting the "Resolution Level" to Base and the "Subdivision Level" to 0 before exporting (see attached), or, if it is Genesis 8, you need to also turn off (maybe remove - I don't remember exactly which) the eyelashes before exporting as well.

Hope this helps

Typically, you have to "bake" the morph along with any other MR morphs and/or your own custom morphs. To do this you need to dial the morphs as needed, then export the figure at base resolution (typically to .obj), zero out your morphs on the figure, then use morph loader pro to re-import your morphs. You can find detailed video instructions for the morph creation process here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRzELNMh86qwS20f1eP0IpA

wendyvainity posted at 1:56PM Sat, 26 August 2017 - #4312981

it's a part of their plot to kill Carrara

I speculate

I guess we can speculate here

and the cheek of a certain mod on that forum saying they did not want to settle for a lesser featured figure than in Rass Spudio!! or Poser for that matter, HickDeads

Or, to add to your speculation, maybe it's just that either they weren't smart enough to figure it out, or that they didn't care (weren't able to care??) to even try, because those in charge have decided Carrara is not worth their time ($$$$), and there will be no further investments in doing anything related to Carrara.

Typos???? Really? That's just ....... well ........ uuummmmm ...... sloppy! Did you try reloading your typo fixed version back into DS? Does it work better, the same, or does it not work? Makes me wonder how it works in DS, maybe they have some sort of error handling to make these mistakes non-mistakes??

Thanks Misty, and thanks for all your work on this!!!

MistyLaraPrincess posted at 1:57PM Sun, 20 August 2017 - #4312544

build of my dreams lol

Core i7 3D Modeling & AutoCAD System Intel i7 6950X Up to 4.0Ghz (10 Core) 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD & 2TB HDD, Windows 10 Pro, NVIDIA Quadro M4000 w/8GB, 750W PS, Mid-Tower, Liquid Cooled https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ299UJ

Hmmmm ...... I'd dump the quadro for a liquid cooled 1080Ti (faster, more memory, and a lot cheaper) and probably go with a Threadripper 1960x CPU from AMD (again, faster for rendering, More cores, and a lot cheaper) and save a lot. Compare the one you posted with this one: https://www.amazon.com/CyberpowerPC-SLC8700A-Supreme-Threadripper-Computer/dp/B074NBYQBN/ref=sr_1_sc_5?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1503259689&sr=1-5-spell&keywords=treadripper

Stan - have you looked at Xeon based used systems on Ebay?? You could get a really nice refurbished dual CPU workstation (HP, Dell, Or Lenovo) for under $600 (but it might be tough to put a good graphics card in it and stay under $600). Just a thought, If you plan on using CPU rendering, then they might really improve your rendering speed on a budget.

Definitely interested!!

Sorry to intrude, since I don't have the latest version of Poser. However, I have had a lot of experience with Octane and Iray, and have been able to get trans-mapped hair to look good in them. There are some vendors that don't put burned in lighting highlights in their hair textures, and use textures that show individual strand details (or nearly so) - those are the ones you want to use for a PBR renderer, otherwise the hair will always look a bit off. Then you want to use bump and or normal maps to "break up" the flat glossy surface (actually, using displacement helps a bit more, and would be the best choice if Superfly handles micro displacement well, or you can increase render time subdivision levels), you also want enough gloss to make the individual strands show, but not so much that everything reflects light. Two other factors that help a lot are of course a good trans-map, and adding a bit of SSS to the hair.

Hope this helps someone, it's mostly just a matter of picking the hair with proper texture maps, and adjusting those to work well if the renderer of choice.

EClark1894 posted at 6:29PM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289900

DustRider posted at 12:19AM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289896

Just my opinion and point of view.

I have Poser 2 through PoserPro 2012, but haven't upgraded to PoserPro 11. I was excited about Cycles coming to Poser, and was hoping that SM would finally either provide better support for Genesis figures or have their own "great" figure. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed with both. Even though I know Cycles is an excellent render engine, I was rather underwhelmed by the renders from SM, and extremely disappointed by the renders from the early adopters. This made it seem like a product that wasn't quite ready for prime time. Then there were all the issues with the new figures, this really made if feel like a product that was pushed out the door way tooo soon. The lack of instancing was also a big negative for me.

I'm a Carrara user "first", and have been using DS a lot more since the introduction of Iray, and Poser in now in a distant 3rd place. P11 for me just didn't provide enough bang for the buck compared to what I already have with Carrara and DS (I also have the Octane plugin for both). I still check out the Poser forums every now and then to see how it is progressing. So for me, it's not dead yet, but it is on a wait and see status (life support??).

Keep in mind, I was able to create great renders (or at least great to me) within a few hours of installing the DS beta with Iray, as were many, many other people. With Superfly, there were very few inspiring renders being posted (with the exception of a small handful of users) for months. Superfly "shouldn't" be that hard to use and get great results from. This also gave me great pause, not being sure what was the real problem with the inability to create great renders.

Anyway, between Poser and DS, for me, the way I like to work, and to the results I want, right now I like DS better (and I prefer the Genesis line of figures). I'll keep watching Poser to see what happens in the future. For those that prefer Poser, I wish you and SM the best of luck, and maybe someday I'll be a P11 (or later) user again.

I don't know quite how to respond to you Dustrider. Superfly really isn't that hard to use once you really invest a little time into learning it. But no you're not going to instantly be producing Michangelo or DaVinci grade "great renders" out of the box either. If you couldn't draw well with a crayon, giving you a paintbrush probably isn't going to help much.

I guess I was trying to say something, without actually saying it (seldom works). There were several issue regarding the implementation and general user results of Superfly that concerned me, but the quality of the render engine wasn't one of them. Keep in mind the following are opinions based on what I could get from various forum posts and other web sources, as a perspective purchaser.

First, IMHO, it seemed as if Superfly (PBR renderer) was a quick last hour addition to P11 in response to Iray in DS. Maybe it wasn't, but it did seem that way, and perceptions are very important. If we were to view DS and Poser as "competing" products, then I would expect SM to provide at least a rudimentary set of shaders/scripts/lights to provide good quality skin with the most popular figure for poser (V4) when launched. I would also expect them to provide an outstanding texture/shader set for their own flagship new figures. I would expect many outstanding renders from both SM and beta testers to show case the new render engine. Additionally, I would expect that early adopters would also be producing a lot outstanding renders within 1-2 months. From what I saw in the forums, this wasn't the case (but this is what happened when DAZ introduced Iray in DS).

Yes, I know that it takes time to learn a new render engine. But my expectation is that more users should have been able to produce great renders within 1-2 months. These expectations are based on my own experiences using Poser (Firefly, Reality/Lux), Daz Studio (3Delight, Iray, Octane, Reality/Lux, Luxus), Carrara (Carrara's internal renderer, Octane, LuxCore), and Vue Complete. With all of the mentioned applications and render engines, I have been able to produce images in less than 2 weeks that I would consider better than 90+% of the images I saw posted for almost a year from Superfly. Of course this is just my opinion, which may be completely different than most other people (but I kind of doubt it), but it is an important factor in my decision to not purchase the upgrade yet.

I'm not so concerned that I can't produce something I would be happy with using Superfly, because I feel I could. What concerns me is that for a product where the quality of the images being produced by said product are very important to "lure" new (and old) users to invest in the product, I haven't seen a lot of the WOW factor that I would expect is needed to attract the masses. This makes me question what/where the focus for Poser now is. As so many have noted, is it for the 3D figure "tinkerer", those that enjoy creating and doing their "own" thing, and don't really care about the visual quality of their renders, and/or the figures/textures/shaders they use? If that is the case, then I'm definitely not too interested in Poser going forward. Not because I don't enjoy tinkering too, but my ultimate goal is to create images I find visually pleasing, and that I'm proud of.

Also, I have a huge personal investment in this hobby in terms of time (learning and making/tweaking stuff) and funds (buying things I don't have the talent and or time to make such as human figures and accessories). As Poser and DS/Carrara diverge, I feel a bit compelled to protect my personal investment, and look at which may be moving forward in a direction that both best fits my interests and goals, and is pushing technology to improve and attract a strong new user base.

I know what I'm about to say won't be popular here, but it is my honest opinion, and ultimately the factor that tipped the scales away from upgrading to P11. So much of what I saw in the forums with the release P11 was ..... ummm ..... the same old group, doing the same old thing(s). Many of the images coming from Superfly were simply uninspiring. Then there were the people fixing the poor quality figures for SM (this, to me, was totally unprofessional on the part of SM, Charles states that "content is king" the they push out figures like Pauline and Paul ...... really???). The whole release of P11 seemed very unprofessional to me. Yes, SM has addressed and fixed many of the issues, but it really turned me off, and made me feel that maybe Poser isn't for me anymore.

Poser could be so much more than what it is, and P11 could have been a must buy for me had there been a lot of drop dead gorgeous images from Superfly, and had Pauline been a great figure "out of the box", and if they had added instancing (come on SM - it's 2016!!). I really hope they can turn the ship around, and make me want to get Poser again. Just waiting to see now.

Just my opinion and point of view.

I have Poser 2 through PoserPro 2012, but haven't upgraded to PoserPro 11. I was excited about Cycles coming to Poser, and was hoping that SM would finally either provide better support for Genesis figures or have their own "great" figure. Unfortunately I was a bit disappointed with both. Even though I know Cycles is an excellent render engine, I was rather underwhelmed by the renders from SM, and extremely disappointed by the renders from the early adopters. This made it seem like a product that wasn't quite ready for prime time. Then there were all the issues with the new figures, this really made if feel like a product that was pushed out the door way tooo soon. The lack of instancing was also a big negative for me.

I'm a Carrara user "first", and have been using DS a lot more since the introduction of Iray, and Poser in now in a distant 3rd place. P11 for me just didn't provide enough bang for the buck compared to what I already have with Carrara and DS (I also have the Octane plugin for both). I still check out the Poser forums every now and then to see how it is progressing. So for me, it's not dead yet, but it is on a wait and see status (life support??).

Keep in mind, I was able to create great renders (or at least great to me) within a few hours of installing the DS beta with Iray, as were many, many other people. With Superfly, there were very few inspiring renders being posted (with the exception of a small handful of users) for months. Superfly "shouldn't" be that hard to use and get great results from. This also gave me great pause, not being sure what was the real problem with the inability to create great renders.

Anyway, between Poser and DS, for me, the way I like to work, and to the results I want, right now I like DS better (and I prefer the Genesis line of figures). I'll keep watching Poser to see what happens in the future. For those that prefer Poser, I wish you and SM the best of luck, and maybe someday I'll be a P11 (or later) user again.