Like many others, I bought Poser 5 early on, but went back to Poser 4 because of the extremely slow rendering speed. All of the new capabilities of 5 did not make up for the long wait of the render, which at the end of the day is the purpose of the entire exercise. Now, I notice that Curious Labs does not list Poser 4 as a product currently for sale. Has anyone figured a way to speed up Poser 5 renderings? I havn't heard much about this problem since 5's initial release. Thanks. K.B.

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html#1

http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html#1

Curious Labs renamed Poser 4; the product is now called Poser Artist. Same program, new box. If you can't get the Firefly renderer up to speed, you can try the old P4 renderer, which is still included in P5. It's almost as fast as P4, and some (but not all) of P5's advanced shaders will work with it.

Something I've recently learned about P5 rendering is that it's a mistake to just turn everything on or set qualities to max before doing a render. Basically, the thing seems to be: decide what you want/need, and use that. If you don't need the displacement thingie, turn it off. If you're not using something that needs ray-trace (reflect or refract, for instance) turn it off. I'm still very much a P5 newbie, but I'm very happy with the results I'm getting from P5 using this approach. Of course, P5 has a heck of a renderer, and if you want reflections, depth of focus, atmosphere, and realistic refractions through transparent objects, you gotta expect to pay those extra minutes (or hours!) for it. Over the past few days I've been adding more and more to the mix, just to see how far I can push it - to the extent that the picture I currently have in the oven has been baking for about 7 hours. But that's with loads and loads of reflective/refractive objects and a high number of ray trace bounces. For your ordinary basic pics, P5 needn't take much longer than P4, IMO. Up to now, when I wanted those fancy effects, I did a render in Vue d'Esprit, which seemed to take even longer for similar effects. Now I can just do them within Poser itself. Initially I loathed, detested, hated, and cussed P5, and as initally released it partly deserved it. It's still not perfect, but it's a heck of a program and in term of value for money I don't think there's anything that comes close to touching it. Just all IMO, of course! Morphy

Attached Link: http://gallery.mec4d.com/details.php?image_id=47

Here's some motivation ;)

Thanks a nice pic, stewer. So far I've been playing with the renderer and the cloth room - I haven't even looked at hair yet. Morph

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html

One of the unfortunate consequences of rushing P5 to market was less than complete documentation, and as a result, people have had to rely on experimentation and word-of-mouth to discover just how good P5 can be when you figure out what you're doing. Check Stewer's FAQ's for some of "the missing manual."