Without going into a lot of detail (it's late): this is merely a quick, general statement concerning my personal observations on P6 SR1.

The thread title pretty much says it all.

SR1 solved some of the memory problems that I was having -- but not all of them.

Three Mil figures, with clothing and hair - misc. props, and a much-clutterd background can still cause Poser to lock up on a render. This is with 2G of RAM.

Turning off raytracing allows a render to occur without crashing. But that sort of defeats the purpose here..........

I can compensate somewhat for the lack of rendered raytracing in Photoshop. But it's a pain.

However -- prior to SR1, I wouldn't have been able to render the image at all, raytracing or no.

---

Overall:

EF did a good job with SR1.

But it hasn't turned out to be a panacea.

So -- I am about 83% satisfied with SR1 as a "fix" to the haunting memory problems found in Poser.

And P6 overall gets about an 87% satisfaction rating.

With SR1 added into the mix, we're almost there. So close, so close......

However:

(and this is a big qualifier)

If I didn't like to do such admittedly complicated scenes in Poser, then my satisfaction rating would probably be close to 95%.

Message edited on: 06/21/2005 01:41

What was your bucket size when rendering with raytracing on? If it was default (64), try a lower setting like 32. It will take a bit longer to render, but might cure your lockups.

If bucket size doesn't help, you might alternatively consider doing a full render without raytracing (so it completes all the way, like you mentioned), then go back and just spot-render (with raytracing ON) those objects or areas of the scene that have raytraced materials, and simply composite the spot render areas over the original one in post. Since you're already doing post effects to fake raytracing, this might be easier and look better?

Just a thought. ;-)

Message edited on: 06/21/2005 02:20

I have Given up on the notion of doing final renders in poser it just too slow when rendering high quality. I will continue to export my poser content ,Via plugins, to cinem4DXL 8.5

Postwork to fake raytracing, I don't know how to do that. Any links?

What was your bucket size when rendering with raytracing on?

The bucket size was down to 8 -- it was still a no-go.

Deleting items from the scene is the next step. It's unfortunate, but that might be the only thing that will work.

Postwork to fake raytracing, I don't know how to do that. Any links?

No, I don't have any links -- and by no means can I claim to be a PS expert.

But I've found that by playing with the image in Photoshop, I can at least "fake" raytracing......to an extent. The results that I've achieved in PS aren't as good as the real thing. But it helps.

It's done through a combination of PS Dodge (burn) in appropriate areas for shadows / applying rendered lighting effects / adjusting the image's Hue-Saturation-Lightness / adjusting the Curves / tweaking Brightness-Contrast......and other properties as needed.

The results are work the effort. But, like I mentioned, it's a pain. And it OUGHT to be unnecessary. But when P6 won't allow a raytraced render -- and you still want the scene -- then you do what you can.

Hope that this helps.

I should mention that there seems to be an unintended side-effect to rendering in Poser without raytracing:

To me, some of the skin tones on Poser figures look better when the raytracing is turned off. The overall scene looks less "photo-realistic", but --- for some reason --- skin tones occasionaly come out with more "pop".

But I'd still rather that the P6 rendering would work as it should. And not constantly lock up on rendering scenes that I can render with ease when they are imported into another app -- like Vue Infinite (which I have).

Once again -- and this, too is unfortunate -- Vue doesn't "do" skin tones as well as native Poser does. Don't get me wrong -- VI is a FANTASTIC app. But it's not geared primarily towards human figures.

So you take your pick, and you deal with the results.

No render, or render without raytracing in Poser ------- or else you can render the same scene with ease in Vue Infinite, and lose some on the skin tones.

sigh

Do you have texture filtering turned on? Disabling that can save enormous amounts of RAM, and having it enabled is often what causes stuck or aborted renders.

Texture filtering is off. I tend to leave texture filtering off by default. I've rarely seen it improve an image: and there are times when it actually seems to degrade an image.

If you use Auto (final) render, slide the dial to where you get 2048 on Max Tex size. Then hit render now. Going higher really puts the squeeze on resourses. 2048 should be plenty for a scene with 3 figures. I'm surprized you crash. It usually tells me there is not enough memory to load a texture and clicks off to the workwindow. Before you pass final judgement, I would assess RAM and memory management. This is where a lot of crashes really come from. I had blackout (DOS) crashes with SR1 until I flipped slots with 2gigs...just an example of how personalized it can be. Have not crashed 1 time since... Bucket should take care of itself. There is a tab in prefs to set it up. It reduces itself auto. as needed.

Thanks to everyone for all of your suggestions. They are greatly appreciated.

Bucket should take care of itself. There is a tab in prefs to set it up. It reduces itself auto. as needed.

Yes, I have that feature activated. It works sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't.

I set up Max Texture size in manual mode -- Max Texture set to 1026.

Basically, I've used all of the tricks that I am familiar with......these tricks work in some cases. But there's a point beyond which Poser just can't seem to go. And that threshold point is lower than it is for other apps. Poser regularly chokes on renders that other applications (like Vue Infinite) won't even blink over.

I'll try shutting down basic system processes. See if that makes any difference. I'll also try deleting individual objects out of the scene. I've occasionally had problems in the past with P4/P5 scenes where one object -- be it a prop, hair, or something else -- somehow "corrupted" the scene.

Xeno - I almost always comp my renders in P5 and I suspect that's the way it's going to be with P6. The built in Shadow Catcher is going to be very useful but I suspect the P5 Shadow Catcher trick will work fine, too. Same with the Reflection Catcher maxxxmodels and I played around with.

Once again -- and this, too is unfortunate -- Vue doesn't "do" skin tones as well as native Poser does. Don't get me wrong -- VI is a FANTASTIC app. But it's not geared primarily towards human figures.<<<<<< Just curious but what is it about vue that does not render skin tones well ?? everything else in vue seems to render nicely in the images ive seen ( i dont have vue thats why im asking)

"Just curious but what is it about vue that does not render skin tones well ??" It has no scattering option, that I've seen, in it's materials. Skin scatters light, and representing that in renders makes it look more real. Face_Off's real skin shader, for example, provides a fake SSS node structure for "scattering" forward light, and the fastscatter node can be used for scattering backlight. Used together, the reasults can be almost as good as a subsurface scattering material. Edit: I see in the Vue forum, someone came up with a way to fake this using Vue shader system now too... but only for forward scattering... not backlit scattering. Also, Vue doesn't have blinn specular shading, that I know of, which is a way to more realistically represent skin highlights.

"Just curious but what is it about vue that does not render skin tones well ??" Try this: change skin materials to "one sided" and "back lit" in the materials lab (or whatever it's called in Vue.) Place a subtle pink/red spotlight behind the figure. Voila! Kinda-sorta subsurface scattering in Vue. Only problem with this technique is that it can do odd things in some cases to Poser figures' eyes. This can be fixed in postwork or by doing a second area render of the eyes and then compositing.

Attached Link: True SSS skin shader example...

***"Only problem with this technique is that it can do odd things in some cases to Poser figures' eyes."*** Not a very good solution for animation either, xoconostle, where lighting situations may change dramatically. It also doesn't represent "scatter-through" effects, like where your ears turn red when lit brightly from behind. Here's an example of true SSS (front and back/multi-layered) as done in Mental Ray with only one light source, to show what I mean. Disregard the eyes... and texture. This is really only a test of the shader. Click the link attached, or just put this in your browser... http://www.3dknockouts.com/videos/MR_skinshader/ The difference between this shader, and what we can accomplish in Poser, for example, is that the shader never has to be tweaked when the lighting situation changes. You can have fully animated light sources, change from day to night, whatever... and the shader automatically returns the correct SSS.

"Not a very good solution for animation either, xoconostle, where lighting situations may change dramatically. It also doesn't represent "scatter-through" effects, like where your ears turn red when lit brightly from behind."

True; It's not actual SSS. However I meant to address the issue of skin tones of imported Poser figures looking "dead" or "gray," as is a frequent complaint. This trick does help make Poser figure skin look slightly more realistic and "alive" in most cases. In some, especially when the sun is behind the figure, it's not necessary to add the back light. I haven't done much animation in Vue so I hadn't considered the issues there. Of course you can parent the back light to the figure's head (or whatever part,) but now that you mention it this technique would probably work best for still images, as it would be a major pain to correct the eye area transparency issue in an animation. Perhaps someone reading this will find it useful to play with for their still Vue images. :-)

Message edited on: 06/21/2005 19:12

XENOPHONZ, if texture size, filtering off and a lower bucket size don't help, then the size of the raytrace database might be your problem. If that's the case, deleting objects might help. However, before you go that far, you should give it a try to uncheck 'Visible in Raytracing' on the properties palette of the objects you were going to delete. Uli

"I'm at least 93.27% satisfied. E-frontier did an excellent job. P6 SR1? 5 stars. Or 4.85 stars rounded up." Message edited on: 06/02/2005 15:18 That is down 10% from your last rating, what caused the 10% drop?

That is down 10% from your last rating, what caused the 10% drop?

Time.

As indicated in those early threads, those figures were based upon a short-term evaluation. One must always allow for the caveat of additional/extended experience. There's no telling what an extra couple of months or so might turn up along the way.

At that point -- immediately after installing SR1 -- there was a certain heavily ray-traced scene in particular that I was finally able to successfully render with SR1. Thus, flushed with triumph and completely covered in glory -- I was in the ecstasy of newly discovered wonders.

However, additional work since then has revealed that all was not as it seemed right out of the gate.

Hey -- sometimes the runner stumbles.

83% ain't bad. It's just not as good as 93.27%.

As I indicated earlier, I give P6 an overall 87% rating. The 83% rating was specifically for SR1: and not for P6 as a whole.

So -- if we take 83%, 87%, 93.27% -- and given that the earth isn't flat -- and that an ant can chew through a dill pickle in approx. 5.3 hours -- and that the average human spends around 42% (or so) of his lifetime sleeping.......how long will it take a man in a car travelling at a variable speed of 45mph to 37.58mph to reach Andromeda? Assuming that the man weighs 157 lbs, and is 5'-9" tall?

What conclusion do we reach from all of this?

Whenever anyone figures it out, please get back with me. Inquiring minds want to know.

I am at least 83.15% satisfied.

My &*!!!!^%$$#@!!! scene still won't render.

*if texture size, filtering off and a lower bucket size don't help, then the size of the raytrace database might be your problem. If that's the case, deleting objects might help. However, before you go that far, you should give it a try to uncheck 'Visible in Raytracing' on the properties palette of the objects you were going to delete.

Uli*

Thanks for the suggestions, Uli. I'll give it a go. Perhaps in another week or so.

I am going to be doing some travelling -- no, not to Andromeda. So the forums will get a much deserved XENOPHONZ-free break for a while.

Perhaps my scene will render properly when I come back. You never can tell.

Thanks for the helpful comments, everyone -- including the suggestions for Vue. If I can't get P6 to do what I want it to do, then Vue might become (once again) my Poser scene renderer of choice.

I have yet to install Sr1... "Time" will tell. Thanks Niles :)

One thing about SR1 versus original Poser 6, which I've not seen anyone else report, is a reversion back to Poser 5 response times in the UI. On my system Poser 5, original through SR4, was almost unusable due to huge lag, over- and undershoot when adjusting any dial, etc. Bad with just 1 figure,intolerable with 2 or more. SR4.1 finally improved this to where Poser 5 was at least usable. Origianl Poser 6 had this almost fixed. It was not as smooth as Poser 4 or ProPack, but was definitely Ok. But Poser 6 SR1 has reverted back to Poser 5 SR4.1 response in this area - or worse. Worse in that in addition to slow response, sometimes the parameter dials will not move at all, without clicking on something else first, waiting, clicking back on the dial, etc. I don't know how they could do this much damage in a 0.1 SR revision but... Also has anyone else noticed that Poser 6 (original and SR1) do not stack mouse clicks any more? In all previous versions of Poser you could click ahead on slow actions, eg. loading a figure, and each action would be serviced in turn. Not on Poser 6 - it seems to clean the mouse click queue after each command execution for some strange reason. And could they not have fixed the re-display of the parameter dial window after a Daz V3/M3 injection in SR1? Having to move the camera to get the new morph dials to appear gets old fast. (They didn't leave this in to negatively differentiate Daz products by any chance did they?)