Dear all,

The last few days presented messages like "Unbiased renderers are slow", "Octane 2 is slower than 1.5", "are there Firefly alternatives", and the like. Time for some testing myself, so I took my last scene made in Poser/Octane as published in the Rendo gallery:

Rose Garden, http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2474504&user_id=378571&np&np

The scene contains 1 character (V4) with conforming hair, 5 complete clothing sets,  and a few scene props.

The render measures 1200x1200 pixels, and uses texture maps (2000 to 4000 in size), transparency only for some lace-like clothing, reflections in mirrors which could see each other for nice (infinite) mirror-in-mirror effects, simple IDL lighting by two meshlights and hardly any SSS. No refractions or other raytracing demands, no volumetric effects like atmospherics, solid glass objecs or alike. Nothing Firefly has troubles with, Poser 8 / Pro2010 and up.

Hardware makes a difference. My CPU (i7 990x/OC) handles 12 threads @4.0GHz so when yours handles 8 threads max @3GHz then CPU-based renders will take (12x4)/(8x3) = 2 times as long. My GPU (dual 770GFX/OC) handles 2x 1536=3072 cudas (processing units ) @1.2GHz so when you have an single 670GFX with 1344 cudas @ 1.0GHz then GPU based renders will take (30721,2)/(13441,0)=2,75 times as long.

Vue Complete 2014 rendered blazing fast: 5 minutes.

That's in Broadcast quality (Final quality took 3 mins), using the high-end Photometric atmosphere and the Global Radiosity lighting model. It required 4Gb userRAM (Final quality even 10% less) while deploying 8 threads out of 12 only (a Vue limitation in the Artist-series of products), and no GPU processing so it's extremely resource-friendly. 

Vue integrates quite well with Poser, all variations of this produced similar results. The two mesh-lights hade to be made luminant, the three mirrors had to be made reflective and the camera had to be positioned explicitely as Poser direct lights and cameras are not imported. All (220) materials in the scene had to be re-considered for highlight production, but that does not effect render time.

Like Poser, Vue is a biased renderer which applies tricks to establish semi-photoreal results in an acceptable speed at medium-level machinery. Such renderes usualy have issues in properly handling the "raytracing meets transparency meets glass/fluid volumes meets atmospherics" area. Vue does too, but from all biased renderers on the market is does so about the least of all, and produces quite believable results in a wide range of cases.

Vue supports Poser dynamic hair with ease, and supports displacement mapping although that might require manual adjustment of the material settings.

Is Vue always this fast? No, Vue becomes slow when lightrays travel long paths within scattering cloud layers at angles of incidence (sunsets), and becomes a resource hog when it has to deal when extreme amounts of vegetation. But for regular Poser portraying scenes, Vue is fast. In background, it only deploys 2 threads in parallel which slows things down to 25%.

For this kind of work, only Vue d'Esprit is required which takes $200. Other versions add modules for additional Vue functionaity. Note that Vue is not "saving back": when Poser alters the scene one has to make all Vue integration steps anew, and the Vue scene has to be saved as such.

Octane 1.2 required: 90 minutes.

Actually is does a great job even in the first 10% of that, but the mirror-in-mirror areas were extremely persistent in keeping visible noise levels so the quality level was set to 4800 samples/pixel. Except from the usual adjustment of the mesh-light and mirror materials no further adjustments were required. Octane runs completely in GPU, and the 1.x versions do not support dynamic hair nor displacement mapping.

Octane 1.5 required: 70 minutes.

It was mainly a performance update to 1.2, userRAM is obtained from the Poser process which increases from 0.8Gb to 4.0Gb.

Octane 2.0 requires: 80 minutes

So indeed, the new version is somewhat slower. But mainly, it produces different results, including stronger gloss/specular highlights. The mirror-in-mirror noise levels did not disappear faster, so I cannot support the idea that the new version might be somewhat slower but reaches quality levels faster. So I still had to go the full mile: 4800 samples/pixel. This new version supports Poser dynamic hair and displacements.

Note that without the quirky noise-holding areas, good results are derived at 1200 S/p which just takes 25% of the durations mentioned.
Octane + Poser plugin sells for 429,00 excluding all your additional hardware (GPU) upgrades.

Octane does "save back" and in fact is completely interactive with Poser: while rendering one can alter the scene in Poser and the render adapts immediately, while Octane specific materials used will be defined in the Poser file so they're available next time as well.

Poser Firefly required 410 minutes (7 hrs).

85% of this was in the IDL prepass which required 7.5Gb userRAM, 15% in rendering itself which took about 5Gb userRAM. Settings were for high-end results: bounces 12, irr.chache 90, IDL quality 90, samples 3. It was run as a separate process, Light emissin for hair was OFF.

Poser takes all 12 threads from my CPU, and has no GPU processing for render. In background, in can do the same. While rendering, one cannot alter the scene (unless in background, but then the result will not adapt).

Reality3.10/Lux1.3.1

Using this required the usual adjustment for mesh-lights and mirrors, nothing else. Reality ($40) launches the (free) LuxRender as a separate process, so I can continue working in Poser as well. LuxRender does not respond to such changes interactively. Material (re)definitions are saved back into the Poser file so they're available for a next session.

Three render modes are supported:

• No Accellaration: produced 1.6 samples/pixel per minute effectively. To reach the 4800 samples/pixel quality level, 3000 minutes (50 hrs) are required. This mode uses all avaliable CPU-threads but ignores GPU. Ram requirements vary from 3 to 4 Gb.
  I did not persue this render to its final result, so perhaps it could produce a high quality result in the problematic mirror-in-mirror areas much faster than Octane, or: perhaps the 4800 s/p limit is overdoen for this renderer. But even 1200 s/p would require 750 minutus which is about twice as long as Poser itself.

• Hybrid, which uses CPU and GPU to a limited extend, producing effectively 2.1 samples/pixel per minute so 2285 min (38 hrs) are required. Ram requirements vary from 6 to 8 Gb. My observation is that the same quality limit (say 1200) produces noisier results. So, while this rendering mode is faster, getting similar qualities will take about equal amounts of time.

• Pure, which runs in GPU only, has a few quircks in assigning the GPU's to the job (looked into by Paolo at the moment). On top of that it required twice as much ram again (16Gb for this scene), none of it seem to be virtual. And since Lux, Poser, Reality etc  are active too this drove my 24Gb RAM system into disk-swapping. No meaningful performance results therefor, don't use this render mode for serious scenes.

My Conclusions

It's well known that Firefly falls short for structural reasons in properly handling the "raytracing meets transparency meets glass/fluid volumes meets atmospherics" area. That material room has a steep learning curve, and that IDL lit scenes take long times to render at high-quality levels.

These are reasons people look for alternative renderers.

All three renderers mentioned: Vue, Reality/Lux and Octane, offer material preset collections and "material rooms" which are easier to comprehend. They  all produce higher quality results too (Vue being closest to Poser), but Reality/Lux takes takes two to four times longer - compared to Poser - to do so.  On the other hand, it's the cheapest expansion of all.

When you're not on a budget, Vue and Octane offer solutions for rather different workflows. Octane offers a rather interactive way of dealing with camera, light and more in an IDL environment and does require appropriate hardware. Vue requires some serious adjustments to the Poser scene materials but after that it's faster than anything, though not interactive. It does not put high demands on hardware, and it also offers a shipload of extra modules for vegetation, terrains, animation effects and the like (at extra costs).

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though