My condolences, I knew her by her products, what a talent she was! The Poser / DAZ community has lost one of our brightest stars. :(

Thanks again for your answers Paul and wimvdb.

Quote - Then go ahead with that. If you do run into the texture slot problem you can always consider getting a 600 series for larger scenes. But do get that extra videocard (which ever it is) to offload the OS UI to that card to improve your UI responsiveness.

Now I wonder if that extra card, being a lower end card than the 580s, will lower my computer performance in other graphic software like Adobe or 3DCoat and Z-brush, viewport response in Poser and DAZ Studio or the dual 580's still get used by them even though the monitor is not connected to the 580's?  How does windows 7 deals with two different drivers? 

Quote - Is the information above the numbers for the GTX580 1.5GB or the GTX 580 3GB?

All 500 series cards have 64/32 texture slots.

Hmm so the card memory doesn't has to do with texture slots then.  Again, I still have a lot to learn.  :( Thank you guys.

Then 64 rgb slots sounds like a very few slots, 144 sounds much better.

So for renders that use more than one skin layer like wounds on top of a skin texture map those would be occupying two RGB slots?

Quote - I ran out of texture slots before I ran out of memory. And you can reduce texture size, remapping props and figures is not as easy. I gave you the limitation of using a GTX580, if you think that is not a problem in your case, then all is fine. I just want you to be aware of it before you buy your second video card

 

But I already have two 3GB GTX 580s.

Quote - Paul, it is not just "very large scenes". If you take a default V4 figure it already takes 8 RGB maps and at at least 6 grayscale maps, add a hair piece and add at least 2 RGB and 2 transmaps, add skirt, shoes and shirt and another 3 of each. So 2 clothed figures take at least 30 RGB maps and 22 grayscale maps. Add a few props and you run out of grayscale maps on a 64/32 GTX 580. And 2 figures with a few props is not a large scene by any means in Poser. When I was testing the GTX 580 I was unable to load 90% of my scenes without removing the bump maps

 

 Your 580 is a 1.5 GB of ram which is a very small amount, I gather 3 & 4 is more appropriate but does that extra 1Gig between the 580 3G & the 680 4G makes such a big difference?

A GTX580 has 64 RGB slots and 32 Grayscale slots and an additional GTX580 will double that (so 128 and 64). A texture connected to a diffuse channel takes a RGB slot and a texture connected to transmap/bumpmap will take a grayscale slot.>>

Is the information above the numbers for the GTX580 1.5GB or the GTX 580 3GB?

Quote - Paul can you confirm if the texture slots can be added up if you have two cards, for example in my case two GTX 580 each one with 3GB?

They are not added.  When you have 2 cards, the scene (simultaneously) gets loaded into both cards, and they both contribute to the render (effectively doubling your render speed).  So in your case, you have 3GB VRAM (which is plenty) and 64 RGB and 32 Grayscale texture slots.  The 600 series cards are capable of unlimited texture maps, however in order for Octane to be backwardly compatible with older cards, Octane has a limit on the 600 series cards of 144 RGB and 68 grayscale (plus another 20 HDR images) - so you can see the 600 series cards offer much more to the Poser user /IF/ you are working we very large scenes.  If your standard render is a couple of figures plus clothing plus a few props, you are unlikely to go near the 64 RGB limit - it's really the big environment props which use 100+ individual texturemaps where you will need to make the out-of-camera shot elements invisible to get into the 64 RGB texturemap limit.

Paul

I mostly want to use Octane to render animations of characters so I guess the 580s will be good enough.  What type of card should I use if I want to use a cheaper card for the OS, since I don't have onboard video.  I have a Zotac GT 430 2GB DDR3 with a measly 96 cuda cores that I can add to my third PCI-e slot, will that work? 

Quote - In this case you can render it without the bump maps. Go to the material editor, right click on the scene line and select remove bump maps. You will see that 600 something bump maps (actually references) are removed. Now the image statistics say you only use 10 grayscale maps and you can render it

Thanks to this tip I was able to load the scene though with scenes this big I cannot rotate the camera while Octane renders, I need to pause the renderer, rotate the camera in Poser viewport and hit the play button to resume/update the render.

I have to correct myself at one point in the explanation: I am not so sure anymore that the texture slots can be added up if you add 2 cards.>>

Paul can you confirm if the texture slots can be added up if you have two cards, for example in my case two GTX 580 each one with 3GB?

I actually researched this a lot before diving in for the GTX 580's and even though I read in the Octane forum that the Kepplers are coming thru in performance I don't know if they will ever match the 580's, I could be wrong but I've read that Nvidia made many compromises to get the Kepler cards optimized for games and energy consumption that resulted less performance for graphic computing applications not only Octane but After Effects and others who use the GPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/351813-33-kepler-fermi-kepler-noticably-effects

I was going to go for a 690 and was told by a beta tester of the DAZ Studio Octane to stay away from Kepler, and that the Octane programmers were disapointed on how incredibly slow they were compared to Fermi.  I suspect that the comment that Kepler had finally come thru means that the speeds are closer to what a top of the line fermi can produce.

You mentioned there is an addon that automatically reduced texture resolution.  I wish there was a way to use the system ram to bypass the GPU ram limitations.

If so why do Octane developers still prefer to use multiple GTX 580s? Perhaps Paul can clear this up.

Thanks for the information and confirming about the light, excellent work on this plugin and on Poser Phisics. Easily the most exciting plugins for poser right now.

I ran the light script and it created the emitters but I move the lights in Poser and can see Poser viewport reacting to this but the Octane windows stays the same.  The demo version says 1.0.

I have to go, so any other question will have to be answered later today>>

I understand.  Thank you so much for sharing all this information.

I was able to load a Jack Tomalin set into the Poser Octane demo just now, its the "Casa del Diablo" castle.  I tried to move the lights in Poser to see the changes in realtime but it doesn't do anything, maybe I need to setup something in Octane or the demo is limited this way.