Out of pure interest, as I've abandoned the scene, what would cause the IDL pass to behave like this. It starts off all nice nice and halfway through slows to a crawl and becomes progressively worse. When it fianlly reders there are black bucket-sized artifacts in the problem area.

I've tried changing the render settings, light, etc. but it doesn't help. It's happened once before about month ago in a different scene which I also had to abandon. Perhaps the scene is just too big and I'm running out of memory. Other than that PP2012 has been rock solid, even on quite complex scenes. Any thoughts?

PP2012 SR 1.2, 12gb RAM, Intel Core i7, Win 7 64

Edit - my picture is too low quality, I'll attempt to post a better one, hang on.

Another attempt-

Are you using the D3D render script and what is your settings? Or try turning off irradiance caching. Sorry I can't think of something better ;).

Laurie

Thanks Laurie - I wasn't running any scripts apart from EZSkin.

I just read at RDNA-

Irradiance Cache: Used for AO and disabled for IDL. If you're doing IDL, leave this at 0.

So this might be an issue, though it was set very low, but not at 0. But I've done this (through ignorance) for all of my IDL renders without a problem so far, apart from the one other time I mentioned. As for settings, I tried a huge combination of render settings attempting to fix the issue, then gave up.

I'm thinking that possibly the pz3 was somehow corrupted because the scene did render without the problem when I did initial test renders. But when I added some elements and re-saved/re-opened the problem began. As I said, I've given up on the scene and the issue has only happened once before, so no big problem with PP2012, just curious.

Couple of thoughts! PP2012 SR3 solved several issues I was having with IDL, such as the black artifacts. Also I find that every once in a while I need to shut down and reboot my Pc. It seems Poser will start doing strange things if I leave it up and in use for several days without rebooting.

Chris

Quote - Irradiance Cache: Used for AO and disabled for IDL. If you're doing IDL, leave this at 0.

Totally bogus. Ignore that.

IC is used with IDL. In fact, it was very difficult to NOT use IC with IDL until SR3.

Now there is a switch where you can turn off the irradiance cache.

Setting the IC value to 0 does not turn it off - it turns it on to the maximum.

The IC value is a measure of how much you want to trade accuracy for speed. The lower the number, the faster and less accurate. When set to 0, you are choosing the fastest and most incorrect results. When set to higher values, you are choosing slower and more accurate results.

The true setting of this value was not possible through the standard render setting dialog. That dialog was adjusting your value. The true value is reached via the D3D Render Firefly Python script.

So - the purpose of irradiance caching is to remember and reuse nearby samples, instead of calculating every sample. This is an accelerator both for AO and for IDL. Its use (at all) creates artifacts. Turning it off does not involve setting it to 0 - that maximizes its use.

If you really do turn it off, your render will be 20 times as long. At least. A two-minute render will easily take an hour.

---

Could you point out where you got that totally incorrect information? If it's in a thread, I'm going to go debunk that.

I can't stand the way people post absolutely the opposite of truth and act like they know what they are talking about.

I should have said "uncheck" irradiance caching rather than "turn off" ;). Uncheck is what I meant.

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - Irradiance Cache: Used for AO and disabled for IDL. If you're doing IDL, leave this at 0.

Totally bogus. Ignore that.

--- Could you point out where you got that totally incorrect information? If it's in a thread, I'm going to go debunk that.

bagginsbill - I can't find my way back to that particular quote. When I Google the quote it refers me to an RDNA thread where it isn't.

The default Poser setting is 32. Do you suggest I just leave it there for IDL renders, or is there a preferred setting? I generall use one infinite light, sometimes with a specular light, within an RDNA IDL Studio sphere.

There is no such thing as a preferred setting. It depends on what is most important to you - speed versus accuracy.

When I'm doing a quick lighting test render, speed is most important.

When I'm doing an almost-ready test render, speed has some importance but I'm also trying to assess lighting and artifacts as well, so at that point I raise it.

I may adjust other values as well, such as IDL samples, which may allow me to lower the IC value again.

Your question is a little bit like asking what is the preferred angle to keep your car wheels at.

ashley, I haven't seen that increasing pattern of precalc blocks.  it appears the preview is on the left and the precalc is on the right, but neither is the final render.  is there some listing for number of polygons on the objects, or object sizes in MB?  the pz3 size may not include the obj sizes, as they may be referenced by the pz3.  it might help to post a screenshot of the d3d renderFF settings, in the unlikely event something is extreme there, e.g. samples.  is atmosphere enabled?