Hey, why not propose a "poser merchant guidline" to standardize library hierarchy? I know everyone like to use his/her own structure, but i think they are more or less the same.

Well, when i want to make a final render, i want to make sure everything is at the highest level, and yes, it takes a long time to do it! But hey, who told you rendering a nice image is fast? I just put everything at max, an render it over the night, thats it!

i dont think there is a "basic setup". It really depends on what you want to do.. As a general rule i advice to turn off reytracing and displacement usage, shadow casting, any extra feature unless you really want to use that feature, since the rendering time jumps with those set. I also advice to use min shade rate 2, pixels sample 3 for test renderings, and max of 1024 texture size. For final render of course everything should be set for the max amount; 0 min shade rate (not only in the rendering setting, but also in the bject itself!), 36 pixel samples, raytrace, shadows displ. set, end any extra feature if you use them. Post filter 2 with sync sounds to be good. But asking even only approximate rendering time is i think you shouldnt do since that really depends on the scene/settings/machine power (in this order)

There is one, select all + apply material at the top left menu in the material room.

LOL i dont consider myself as a guru :) but thanx. (if it was to Ajax, i agree :) Ok, back from the math papers, if you do add dNdv and dNdu AND do the calculation afterward you will not have the right result. The reason is pretty ease, if you add those vectors, its like you transform one to the other, hence the lenght will be smaller (or equal), then the original |dNdu|+|dNdv|. Furthermore if dNdu and dNdv points absolutely in the opposite direction (and thats not uncommon), the proposed addition will show a small value, which will not reflect the change of the surface. If only you could do a "normals forward" on_that_node, or call an abs function of the vector's axis', would you get 'similar' values, but even then there would be a difference (and would lose its extra speed).

Thanx and welcome :) I hoped someone with a more decent english knowledge will do some tutorial from the pure nodes i made ;) And yes, Ajax was right about the restrictions of the geometry , but as always there is no general solution for a shader problem like this; since only a geometry built up from fractals would be perfect(which is mostly true for the real world(...)). About the last adviced restriction, im not quite sure if the difference will be just a small amount. I have to look at it more since i didnt think about a shorcut like that, but as far as i feel know it wont be a better result, but will be quicker by far. Since its a bit more comlex than just say something vaguely, ill check and let you know about the result. (And yes that requires more from those nasty vector calculus.)

Well, thats something like 'how far is far' value, but you really have to try the real value, because it depends on the size of the facets, the point of view, and the geometry. For normal human poses and polygons the 50 was a nice value.

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So it crashed P4 rendering for me. :) Ill keep on trying.

Rite, thats exactly what i want, but just didnt try P4 render engine. though why does Firefly crash?