Anthanasius - The first cache is being ignored (it's in red) once IDL is turned on, so it doesn't matter what it is set to.

I changed the transparency on the light fixtures from 90% transparent and 5% diffuse to 100% transparent and it sped up the render by about 10 minutes.  This tells me that my speed issues are because of my attempt to make the light fixtures partially transparent.

What I need to do is make the fixtures a separate prop or body part so I can make them invisible in ray tracing.  Trekkiegrrrl tried to talk me through it using the grouping tool, but I made a big mess when I tried that.

I've opened the figure's .obj file in Hexagon (V2.5) and can find the "body part" and material groups I want to make as a separate body part.  Is there a tutorial somewhere that would talk me through the steps I need to split off a new body part?  (Does this even make sense?  Am I using the correct terms?)

Also - I have 2 questions on point lights.  Does Poser treat these as infinitely tiny points or do they really have a size?  Is there any significance to the inner or outer circle that represents the point light or is it just the icon that was chosen?

Thanks again for the assistance.  This is a learning process.

 Upping the bucket size from 16 to 32 added 2 minutes to the render (from 50+ to 52+).

Threads are at 2 because it's an old hyper-threaded processor.

I'm wondering if it's the partial transparency that's hurting.  Let me turn that off and try it again.

If there is something I can do with the render settings that will speed this up, I'd love to hear about it.

As always, thanks for the input.

 Dropping both Blur Radius to .5 and Shadow samples to 16 cut the render time to 1:32 (hours:minutes!).  I know - I made two changes so I don't know which one had the impact.

I then dropped Shadow samples to 4 (leaving Blur Radius at .5) and render time is down to 32:14 (minutes:seconds!!!!!).  That's still a little long for a draft render.  I'm going to dread the final render(s).

I still like what I'm getting so I'm going to play with a couple of other things later tonight and see what happens.

Is there any documentation on what units the Blur Radius is in?  Is there any documentation on Shadow samples at all?  There's not much in the Reference Manual (shadow samples is not mentioned at all that I could see).  I did a quick scan of the forum and didn't find anything definitive.

Once again, thanks for the input, it is appreciated.

In my scene there are several visible light sources.  These should each produce shadows, though not as strong as in my original image.  I think the blur radius and samples on the lights is part of what I need to keep playing with.

TrekkieGrrrl:  Way Cool!  I'm going to go give that a shot right now.  Between this and the light settings I think I may get what I think I want!

I've attached the latest render - with the lights changed to have a blur radius of 1 (from 0) and the shadow samples to 32 (from 19).  It only took 2:24 to render (that's hours:minutes!) up from 20ish minutes for the first version.

I also adjusted the lamp_glass material to be 90% transparent and 5% (gamma corrected) diffuse white.  I'm not sure I'm liking the glass, but not sure how to fix it.  Maybe I need to reduce the intensity of the light some more?  Once I get the rest of the lights built I should still have enough light for the scene.

Thanks for all of the input.  I'll post another render later with an update.

 Quick update - the change to the blur radius and shadow samples is looking real nice, it's just slowing the render to an absolute crawl (it was taking about 20 minutes before, I have no clue how long this is going to take).  I'm going to kill it here in a few minutes (I want it to get down a little lower on the door wall to see how that looks before I stop it).

I know better than to change multiple things at the same time, but I did it anyway.  Does anyone have an idea of which parameter is slowing down the render?  Blur radius or shadow samples?

Thanks again for the help.

 Many thanks for the input.

Anthanasius:  A couple of reasons - It adds more light and shadow to the environment.  I also don't have my final scene(s) fully figured out yet.  I'm not sure what camera angles I'm going to need, so I want to make sure I have light everywhere I might need it.  Oh yea, I forgot - there is also a mirror in the scene (cropped out in the picture I posted) that may reflect what is behind the camera.

hborre:  I'm not using IBL  (I never figured it out and then 8 came along with IDL which is easier for me and I think works just as well for my current level of expertise).

As best I can tell, the light is just above the bottom of the fixture.  I think the light is still too intense which is causing the effect you are noticing.

Plutom:  Unfortunately, I can not uncheck casts shadow for the light fixture.  The light fixture is just two material groups on the figure, not a body part.

Bagginsbill:  I've tried dropping the transparency to 70% and adding in some diffuse at 20% and it looked like it had been pasted on in postwork.  I then tried 20% translucence and it didn't do anything at all.  Once the computer comes back up (Poser crashed on me, so I'm rebooting just to make sure everything is good) I'll try a render with 90% transparency and 5% diffuse.

I'm also increasing the blur radius to 1 and the shadow samples to 32 as a start (they were at 0 and 19) and I will keep playing with that.

I was afraid that was my choice with the florescent lights.  I'll probably start with 2 point lights per fixture (there are 5 fixtures total) and add a third if needed.  (I don't have the computing resources to go crazy).  How much green are we talking?  RGB(250, 255, 250)?  (I always thought florescent lights looked bluish - maybe I need to go get my eyes checked.....)

hborre:  I've played a little with self-illuminating things in Poser, but never been happy with my results.  (I'm probably doing something wrong).  Does they light from a self-illuminated object behave the same as light from a Poser light?  (i.e. IDL, reflections, etc.)  If so, I will need to go back and play with them some more.

Thanks for all of your comments, I do appreciate it.   I'll post an update later this afternoon (I hate it when real life gets in the way of my hobbies.....)

What M4 texture was used for the pics on the first page of this thread?

Ok, let me make sure I have this clear.

If I'm going to use nodes to adjust an image,  I need to remove the gamma correction (using a color math node to raise the image to the 1/2.2 power {or is that taking the 2.2th root of the image?}), do whatever voodoo I need to do with nodes, then reapply the gamma correction to the result (using a color math node to raise the image to the 2.2 power) just prior to attaching it to the root node.

Do I need to do this to displacement/bump maps as well?

Thanks.

For some reason, it's making the Line of Sight thingie visible.  Not sure why that's happening.

I'm on a Mac and I am having a problem with the buttons.  I use File -> Run Python Script to run vssMainButtons.py and it runs fine and adds the buttons to the Python Menu.  However if I click on any of the three buttons, nothing happens.  The bottom Main Menu button works fine.  I can run macro1.py using File -> Run Python Script and it looks like it's working (I think I remember you saying that macro1 and wacro1 are the same - if not, I need to re-do all of these renders).

I added a print stqatement to vssMainButtons.py to show me vssFolder and it's getting the correct path (without using the hack), and I quickly got lost trying to figure out what was happening next.

If there is more I can do to help troubleshoot this, let me know.

Using Poser 7.0.2.132 on Mac 10.4.11
Raytrace Bounces 2
Irradiance caching 70
Pixel Samples 3
Min Shading Rate .50 (probably should be .20 for the skull cap to look right)
Using Displacement
Post Filter Size 1
Post Filter Type box

Most texture filtering turned off (man, what a pain - does anyone have a script to do that or do I need to write one?)

Using Apollo/BF Alexander, maximus wear, 3 dream universal skull cap, daz cyc, pjz studio lights

Quote - I've tried painting a body hair map with some success.  The problem is, it's very difficult to actually get the hairs to show up in a render without making them too thick.  One particular trick is you probably need to turn Minimum Shading Rate wayyyy down (like to .2 or smaller) or the texture is simply not sharp enough to show up well.

Interesting.  I did not think to try that.  Thank you.  If I am starting to understand things, that means that unless I'm doing a real close shot, that level of detail will not be that visible.

By the way, I like the background and lighting you used in that shot.  Would you be willing to share?

Thanks.

Quote - SetStartupScript - doh. That was a complete miss on my part. What a good idea.

Have you tried it?

I have not tried it yet.  It will be the weekend before I get a chance (I hate it when work gets in the way of the important things in life).  If no one else has a chance to play with it before then, I will give it a try and report back here.

Thanks.