I just did a test scene with one figure, one prop and one scene prop (streets of the mediterranean) and one light as a test. I Tried to render it, first a high level but it was still rendering the points after 10 hours, so I tried lower, still took forever, so I tried at 5 quality and I know it took at least three hours to render the red points. So, is it just me, the scene, the computer or IDL? The same scene without IDL rendered in under five minutes with no other settings changed. Thanks

Ayuh.

(transparencies e.g. hair take immense time to render with GI/IDL, and not just in Poser)

No transparencies at all except some possible planes for grass but I don't think the scene had them. It was a bald, naked skinned figure without even eyelashes or eyebrows. It just took forever, maybe I should try a smaller scene like the glow box bagginsbill just posted but I wanted to try something approaching what I would really do.

Use D3D's render script and start with the settings shown for previewing. Build up from here to get settings for final renders. If you have 4 or more cores, keep your bucket size low to speed things up.

Not the newest or fastest computer but not too bad dual core, 2.66 GHz.  I have tried to reduce the settings some to see if that helps but then I will try the glow room and see how that goes.

The raytrace bounces were set up too high so that was part of the issue. I reduce the quality of the IDL to 1 and that, combined with the raytrace bounce, rendered much quicker.

That being said, does the render history seem to loose images? It looks liek a lot of them went away (but I can still get to them inside of P7)

Raytrace bounces "too high" means different things for different purposes.  For behavior that's closer to the real world, 7 or 8 bounces is better.  1 bounce is OK for preview and testing, but it's literally light hitting a surface, bouncing once, and then being completely absorbed by whatever it hits next.  This might be the appearance you want and it certainly renders faster, but it is less realistic.

You also want to turn down the Diffuse_Value of all surfaces in the scene to 0.8 (lower for specific materials that you want to have less diffuse value), so that the amount of light bounced is gradually tapered off as it would be in the real world.  I have a script that does this for all surfaces in a scene, but be aware it is ALL SURFACES IN THE SCENE - if you have some material that needs to have a different diffuse value you'd need to set that manually after running the script.
http://sites.google.com/site/fleshforge2/Home/free-stuff/set-diffuse_value-to-0-8-script
http://cid-b233dcaeefa9709c.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Poser%20Freebies/Diffuse%5E_Value%20Script/Diffuse%5E_Value%20Script.zip

I will test and see what it does with the lower IDl and more raytrace bounces but I think it was at 6 that it was taking forever.

Also, be aware that significant bump/displacement mapping will slow the render considerably.  You may need to assess how much of that feature you would like to include in your scene.

The first few times I rendered I had no displacement at all and they were still slow

pjz, my impression garnered from other people I respect is that # of raytrace bounces is more oriented toward how many reflections etc etc you need. For the purpose you describe, wouldn't IDL bounces be more important?

Ghostofmacbeth, for final renders with IDL, you generally don't need as high of settings as you would otherwise. I usually try to get my scene to render with about 6 pixel samples (never more than 10), roughly 300 IDL samples, and a shading rate of 0.2 or even 0.4. (Without IDL, I find shading rate is a lot more critical, although since P8 even conventional lighting renders better at higher shading rates, IMO.)

Personally, I rarely render with more than 3 raytrace bounces unless I've got a ton of reflections. But pjz has far more experience than I do, so FWIW.

Of course, what you are doing with your final renders will determine exactly how high of quality you want. I just post to forum galleries with a bit of enlargement, usually.

BTW, when you do get to rendering hair with IDL, by all means get your hands on some dynamic models. Strand-based hair now renders incomparably faster than transmapped hair does.

Thanks but there isn't much for dynamic hair at all so I will have to ignore that bit of advice.

I know no one will say it, but yes, IDL is really slow. You can improve the speed a lot by changing settings, but it will always be (a lot) slower the regular render. Why do you think SM did so much effort to improve the render speed of P8 over the previous versions? Without that IDL wouldn't even be an option at all.

Yes IDL is slower than non IDL rendering in most render engines - it has to do a lot more calculations than would otherwise be needed.

Speed - Quality.  pick one :biggrin:

Quote - Thanks but there isn't much for dynamic hair at all so I will have to ignore that bit of advice.

There are about a half dozen hair models that I'm aware of. All of KaiZ's hair, and lululee's Dixie, all available here at Rendo. I think lululee plans on doing more. (There are various threads on dynamic hair here from the past three months or so.)

I've been working on it as well, but I'm just learning, so it will probably be a few months before I can make anything available.

first, build something simple.
A floor, a ball, a box, 1 light
Some simple colors or textures, and experiment. Do many small renders.
Use the normal Poser 8 render box first and learn its features.

Testing:

Cast shadows ON
Raytracing ON
Raytrace bounces, start at 1,2,4,6,8 . . . . . (i test render at 1, 2 for glass, more if realy needed)
IC 0, te be read as zero, equal NOTHING, (curent P8 versions, never go over 50)  (I mostly use from 0 to 10)
Indirect Light quality take, 5, 10, higher if really realy needed.
Pix samples 3, 6 if needed
Min shading rate 1.00 for draft, 0.2 for detail
Bucket 32
Smooth poly's ON
Use displacement ON

Simple scene, start low, build up, learn.
Only then,  with that experience, goto D3D render engine, and learn some more.

KISS allways works.

Quote - Yes IDL is slower than non IDL rendering in most render engines - it has to do a lot more calculations than would otherwise be needed.

Speed - Quality.  pick one :biggrin:

That's oversimplifying things..... a lot. Without IDL you can get excellent quality without IDL, people having been doing that for years and with the excellent light improvement P7 & P8 have offered, quality isn't dependent upon IDL alone. Even if one would never use IDL, quality can be achieved.

IDL isn't a synonym for quality at all, far from it. If you don't know how to use it, your scenes will end up looking worse then when using regular lights. Regular lights and IDL both give excellent quality as long as you know what you're doing..... that's they key to quality.

Knowing how to use IDL will give a better quality render than knowing how to use "regular" lights.

Using anything without knowing what you're doing compared to doing something you know... well, we all know how that usually ends.

But in truth, IDL is too simple for most people's habits. They're used to killing the scene with lights; that's probably the biggest reason why IDL renders look bad for them. With IDL, I almost never use more than two lights. Often, one.

IDL, like the word means, Indirect Light.
But indirect Light, is also "light".
it is just not coming from a "light".

it gives a lot more options to settle the shadows, the interaction between objects and their natural reflections.

There is only "One sun". And by day, I do not put on extra lights...(not outdoors anyway ;-) )

It requires some serieous "rethinking" about the use of light, and shadows.

For slower PC's, keep the settings low, and use the "minimum needed".
Like modern logistics work, delivery "just in time".
"Ligth" , just in time.
For outdoors, and certainly with BB's great Env sfere, that mostly means only one light.
And even that one, I often turn to lower intensity.
But the result is, that you need to play more with the softer shadow settings.
There are no "hard" shadows in real life.
Turn on a light in a room.
Where does the light come from? Look around you?
How does the rest of the room get its light? The floor beneath the table? it is not black I hope?

Start with the lower render settings, and work your way up.
Corrections can be made "on the go", and you'l save yourself a lot of time.

Actually, IDL means "Indirect Diffuse Light." :)

I love the fact we now have direct access to shadow samples for raytraced lights. Default is 19, for some reason, but I like to put that up to 60 minimum, usually 100+.

Here's a related question. Would upgrading the computer help? Which would help more, a faster processor or more memory? I'm having the same problem and at time hate to sacrifice quality, but I also don't like my computer tied up for days. I currently have a 2 gig processor and 1 .25 gig memory. I'm definitely updating my memory maybe the processor too. can poser 8 utilize more than 2 gig of memory or do you need 64 bit programs for that?

Unless you've got 64 bit, having more than 3-4 GB of RAM isn't going to do you any good. And no, Poser 8 isn't a 64 bit app, so the only good 64 bit would do is relieve the stress on the computer for other things. (Which is no small consideration.)

Poser Pro has a 64 bit renderer, and PP2010 will be a 64 bit app, as well. That's really the way to go... but of course, that's more $$ again.

Is your 2 GB processor single core, or dual? If you're already on dual core, my guess is that upgrading the RAM would give more short-term relief.

Although P8 cannot use more than 3 GB of memory, if you had 4 GB of memory instead of 1.25 GB, then P8 would often be much faster.

At 1.25 GB, your OS is using a lot, the editor uses a lot, and the renderer is only getting less than 600 MB. That's not enough and you end up swapping. Increasing the memory, even only to 2 GB will make a big difference from 1.25 GB. Because while it is less than 100% increase overall, for the amount that the renderer will be given it is much more than a 100% increase.