I own the Spartacos, Lynn, and Sissy LeBeaux sets.  My experience with them is:

Sissy: Renders amazingly fast for transmapped hair (I use it a lot).

Lynn: The dreads are fast and the fro is fairly slow.

Spartacos: Fifteen jillion years with any sort of decent settings.

The old Karmir hair is efficient as well, but it's a much simpler mesh than some of their recent ones.

So where on this continuum are Sonia and Kouros, for instance?  I'd love to know in order to help with purchasing decisions.  I can never get enough long hair, and I love SAV's morph support, but Spartacos render times are prohibitive for use in my promos.

This would get more response in the Poser forum I think so I will move it for you :)

Jumpstartme2 has moved this thread from the Community Center forum to the Poser forum as of Tuesday, July 10, 2012 5:05 pm.

Draft renders, small resolution

Without IDL:

Sissy -- 0:28

Lynne Afro -- 0:48

Sonia -- 1:19

Kouros -- 2:56

Spartacos -- 3:57

With IDL:

Sissy -- 0:52

Lynne Afro -- 1:41

Sonia -- 2:10

Kouros -- 6:36

Spartacos -- 7:40

Yeah, some are quite slow.  I still love 'em lots.  But if you've got a tight production timeline, indeed, they are not the most efficient hair sets out there. 

Oops! Thanks, jumpstartme2. :)

And much appreciated, moriador, that's exactly what I needed!  Looks like Sonia is a good bet for me with my new machine but I might want to give Kouros a miss for now.

The OP doesn't mention where they're rendering, Poser or DS?   If Poser, then have you tried unticking the Visible in Raytrace option in the properties tab of the hair?   It will cut down times a lot.  If you don't want it to reflect in a mirror or water then you can do without raytracing on the hair.

Quote - The OP doesn't mention where they're rendering, Poser or DS?   If Poser, then have you tried unticking the Visible in Raytrace option in the properties tab of the hair?   It will cut down times a lot.  If you don't want it to reflect in a mirror or water then you can do without raytracing on the hair.

I do that for all test renders. But I find the lack of raytraced shadows to be unconvincing. So I deal with the long render times.  But I suppose it might work quite well in some lights.

I use DAZ Studio 4.  There's not an option to turn off raytracing on a single object.  If there were I still wouldn't for reasons cited above, though.  My rule is that if I have to turn off anything that makes it look worse than the rest of the scene, it's not a viable product for my renders.

Quote - I use DAZ Studio 4.  There's not an option to turn off raytracing on a single object.  If there were I still wouldn't for reasons cited above, though.  My rule is that if I have to turn off anything that makes it look worse than the rest of the scene, it's not a viable product for my renders.

Well, I don't know how much you can extrapolate from Poser's render time to Daz's.  This being the Poser forum, I tested in Poser -- which I suppose you figured. :) The moderator who moved the thread didn't think to ask, I suppose.

My experience is that they're not dissimilar on similar items.  I think Poser may handle layered transparency a little better and soft shadows a little worse, but that's entirely subjective.

Quote - My experience is that they're not dissimilar on similar items.  I think Poser may handle layered transparency a little better and soft shadows a little worse, but that's entirely subjective.

Well, that's actually good to keep in mind, then, when I play around with both. Thanks.

Quote - > Quote - My experience is that they're not dissimilar on similar items.  I think Poser may handle layered transparency a little better and soft shadows a little worse, but that's entirely subjective.

Well, that's actually good to keep in mind, then, when I play around with both. Thanks.

And, my experience is the opposite.  I find DS render times to be much longer on EVERYthing, and DS taxes the processor much harder.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - My experience is that they're not dissimilar on similar items.  I think Poser may handle layered transparency a little better and soft shadows a little worse, but that's entirely subjective.

Well, that's actually good to keep in mind, then, when I play around with both. Thanks.

And, my experience is the opposite.  I find DS render times to be much longer on EVERYthing, and DS taxes the processor much harder.

I think he means that the relative times, comparing the render time of one hair to another hair, are about the same.  We can't really talk about absolute terms when we're not sharing the same PZ3.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - > Quote - My experience is that they're not dissimilar on similar items.  I think Poser may handle layered transparency a little better and soft shadows a little worse, but that's entirely subjective.

Well, that's actually good to keep in mind, then, when I play around with both. Thanks.

And, my experience is the opposite.  I find DS render times to be much longer on EVERYthing, and DS taxes the processor much harder.

I think he means that the relative times, comparing the render time of one hair to another hair, are about the same.  We can't really talk about absolute terms when we're not sharing the same PZ3.

Ahhh, OK.  Makes sense.

I used the Sonia hair in my last purely Poser render, and I found it rendered quite quickly in comparison to other hair models in the past.  In fact, I really liked working with the model as a whole.  Currently working on a project importing it into Vue, and still loving it.

This tip saved my sanity for DS4 and hair with raytracing: apply the ubershader2 over it, do the 'alt click to preserve current settings' trick if you can. (I forget the exact key sequence, but someone more conversant in DS can likely chime in.)

You can actually leave raytracing on for the hair -- but turn off AO in the surface settings. It's way down toward the bottom of the list with US2, I believe. It's often the AO on hair that makes it utterly murderous on render times in DS4 in my experience. Raytracing stings a bit, but not like the AO does! :)

It's ctrl click, and that's a good tip, I'll try it!  Thank you. :)

I ran into nightmare render times until Fisty recommended it -- so trust her as the brains behind that one, she knows her stuff! :)

The Uber shader that comes with DS4 will do the same as Ubersurface 2.

You just hold down Ctrl down when applying the shader, a box will pop, up choose ignore and the textures will be preserved.

Ubersurface 2 is very useful but the basic one does the trick.

 I type real slow

Quote - This tip saved my sanity for DS4 and hair with raytracing: apply the ubershader2 over it, do the 'alt click to preserve current settings' trick if you can. (I forget the exact key sequence, but someone more conversant in DS can likely chime in.)

You can actually leave raytracing on for the hair -- but turn off AO in the surface settings. It's way down toward the bottom of the list with US2, I believe. It's often the AO on hair that makes it utterly murderous on render times in DS4 in my experience. Raytracing stings a bit, but not like the AO does! :)

Excellent. Thanks.