Hey peeps. So I've been very busy cranking out comic renders in Poser using my preferred engine: Firefly. I encountered a few issues that I thought I really need to share with ya'll.

Firstly, let me show you what I am making. I am making a comic series about my main character Lali that travels per 737 through Africa up to the UK (as a kind of symbolic representation of me moving from Africa to the UK back in 2017). On the way they stop over in Tanzania on an airstrip to visit some friends and all kinds of naughtiness ensues.

I made all the vegetation, grass, trees in 3dsmax, and used landsat images and DEMs to make the terrain surrounding the airstrip. The landscape is a tiled system of over 150 materials that interlock nicely with each other. Many of the assets are kitbashed internet freebies and some stuff from Unreal's model database. The 737 is an adapted version of 2nd_world's 737. And all the girls in the aircraft are erogirl, all loaded to the nines with their standard morphs. The clothes are mostly self-made BONANZA clothing for Evolution adapted for Erogirl, as well as a hybrid M4.

(landy in progress)

In short, the scene is a beast. And its not even the biggest I've ever rendered. Rendering in Firefly, the RAM loaded up to about 27Gb. I have 32Gb RAM available. The renders did not take very long, thankfully.

I've been using Firefly since 2011. I like firefly because all renders by default are sharp, despite the quality. Its the perfect comic renderer, it does a little bit of everything, but everything is sharp... as long as its well lit. And that's Firefly's only drawback IMO: the moment you lack proper lighting, the IDL fails and it blotches. But that is easily remedied by just adding a fake light... and I rarely encounter this issue. Firefly's renders are barebones, but they do the trick... but it can be so much better.

When Poser 11 came out with Superfly, I was extremely excited because I really craved moving on from firefly. I wanted that sweet handling of shadows and reflections. I immediately started rendering in SF the instant it came out. But after rendering about 100 images of a series, I decided I better wait until they improved it... or until I learned more about Superfly. Unfortunately, nothing really changed, aside from a very informative webinar from Nerd and some tutorials from BB.

SF just didn't work well for me. Firefly mats just didn't really work, it was clear this was a very new renderer. I use displacement a lot, all my stuff was set up for firefly, Superfly/cycles SSS looks like cardboard, even with the cycles nodes (and I feel i can tell an SF render from a mile away by now because of it), and the ever-persistent battle for that stupid sweet spot, avoiding grain. It felt like every scene needed a new setting, and GPU renders were totally out of the question with the size of the scenes I was making. Even with a GTX1080 at 11Gb, I would be forced to do texture economy and bloat my HD reserves with lower res versions of all my textures. Just a lot of inefficient work, and I couldn't afford 4 new monster graphix cards. I just wanna get on with it and tell stories.

I have had ONE setting for firefly since 2014, with some minor adjustments for special occasions. I've put all my efforts into advancing my materials, learning from trail and error and the odd BB lesson. Firefly just jumps out at you with bright colors, sharp SSS and sharp edges too. Perhaps a little too sharp on occasion, but it worked... and most importantly, it didn't make a fuss about the size of the scene!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was until Poser 11, when suddenly self-shadowing was a thing... or at least I think it is self-shadowing. Anomalies and 'blotches' occur in Poser 11's Firefly, and I think I might have isolated it to geometry that is too close to either itself or another geometry. Because of this I needed to render a large part of my Machingo Airstrip scene in Poser Pro 2014. The P11 renders were so ugly I don't dare to show them.

Firefly is a great practical renderer. Superfly is a great and necessary addition, but please do not give up on Firefly.

"The fool is not the one that does something foolish, but the one that does nothing at all."