So, I loaded P12 and tried rendering a file I had saved in P11...

Only to wait and wait and wait and... you get my point.

I messed with settings and I'm still puzzled. So I loaded up P11 to check that I had the same settings to test.

Both at 15 threads rendering (I always leave one CPU thread free so I can still use my computer well while things render), Separate Process ticked (not sure how that works, but it was ticked on in P11 so I ticked it on in P12 - I did attempt rendering with it off but it didn't seem to helo)

P11 render settings:

P12 render settings:

I then set up an alarm for 5 minutes and started a render in P11. It reached this:

Same file, 5 minutes on the clock, P12 reached this:

... Yes, that's roughly one sample per minute.

What's going on?

Bleh, I pasted the wrong thing and it won't let me edit. I meant the P11 render settings were this:

Have you tried it with the default settings? The other thing is to un check Progressive Refinement.

The other thing to check is the message log and see if there are any materials that are wrong. That may be what is casuing the slow down

separate process is probably messing it up. There were issues with that in P11 for a while. I never use it. Another thing to note is that overly complicated material trees or ones that work but are made incorrectly can impact render times. I'd look at the hair shaders as a prime suspect for this.

ghostship2 posted at 1:54PM Sat, 05 December 2020 - #4406491

separate process is probably messing it up. There were issues with that in P11 for a while. I never use it. Another thing to note is that overly complicated material trees or ones that work but are made incorrectly can impact render times. I'd look at the hair shaders as a prime suspect for this.

Goddammit - these hair shaders are by bagginsbill and took me forever to find a shader that makes hair look good xD I'll give it a try once I'm done rendering these thumbnails (back in P11)

Thanks everyone!

The recent Poser 12 Early Access webinar showed how to do fast rendering - I recall it had Adaptive Sampling "on", not off as you have it.

HartyBart posted at 4:29PM Sat, 05 December 2020 - #4406506

The recent Poser 12 Early Access webinar showed how to do fast rendering - I recall it had Adaptive Sampling "on", not off as you have it.

I tried with both and it was still super slow, which leads me to believe it's something with the materials as ghostship mentioned - I'm gonna try a render without the hair as soon as I'm done with these thumbnails (and they're thumbnails for the hair, so I can't do them in P11 anyway xD)

I'll try to find the webinar you mentioned anyway!

try this for hair:

It's probably the 600 pixel samples ... that's super high. And also you have branched path tracing checked. The combination of those two are what is killing your renders.

It looks like you are using your CPU to render. So, for starters, open the Render Settings window. Go to the bottom left and click the Load Preset button. Then try the "Ultra Adaptive" preset first. See how that preset works for you.

What puzzles me is that I've always used those same settings in P11 and they render well, beautifully and relatively fast. (Relatively being the word here - I use Blender too and THAT is fast lmao)

I ended up rendering promos through the night, so I'm gonna test what you people are suggesting now :) thank you!

Okay, so first I'm trying with Deecey's settings without changing my actual scene.

It's been two minutes it's stuck in this:

I cancelled it, had it reload textures, same thing. Sooo I deleted the shirt, that uses that texture. It's now stuck on one of the skin textures instead. I don't think that's acceptable.

Message log just says "Starting timer for Render:Background".

Loaded my file again, set it to Default Settings. Now it's rendering, but for some reason it goes back and forth saying it's a higher sample or a lower sample. I'm puzzled.

One thing I noticed: I accidentally clicked "Render" instead of "Render in background" once, and it started actually rendering, and now when I render in background it's rendering.

Hair shaders have not been changed.

I'm gonna try with my original settings now just for kicks - I kinda feel like having it "render" not in background kinda "woke up" the renderer, as hilariously as that sounds.

Edit: nah, went back to super slow samples. But now that I know it's not the hair shader, I'm gonna play with the settings. (I hope the problem is not the Progressive Refinement - I love the progressive refinement)

Edit2: Apparently, it likes to get stuck in loading textures at random, and then I have to have it render not-in-background to get unstuck.

And apparently, it really was the progressive refinement. Dang it. Even when I set it to 10 pixel samples instead of 600, it was stuck like before until I ticked progressive refinement off.

(At this point I'm just documenting my discoveries here for anyone who might run into the same problems)

Ok so Render in Background seems to get stuck in Loading textures nearly every time. So at least to me:

-Render in Background is broken

-Progressive Refinement is broken

Which for me is very bad news, as I like leaving a render cooking for a bit and stop it midway, just to check if my lights and textures are good and if I have pokethrough in my scene.

I've been running Progressive Refinement recently and it seems to be working fine. I don't have the Branched Path Tracing checked on for this process as per the manual recommendations.

Have you tried using the Queue Manager? My understanding of render in background (and I could be wrong) is that it is a poor man's way of getting a Local Queue Manager. Back when there was a Pro Version if you had Pro then you can rendered and keep using Poser, if you didn't then you used Render in Background. Basically the same thing except with Queue Manager you can also render on other computers. And there were all types of other reasons to do a background render such as the 4GB memory issue. But since Poser 12 only runs on Windows 10 which is 64 bit that reason is no longer valid.

hborre posted at 11:13AM Sun, 06 December 2020 - #4406570

I've been running Progressive Refinement recently and it seems to be working fine. I don't have the Branched Path Tracing checked on for this process as per the manual recommendations.

I'm gonna try without Branched Path Tracing, thanks!

Richard60 posted at 11:14AM Sun, 06 December 2020 - #4406572

Have you tried using the Queue Manager? My understanding of render in background (and I could be wrong) is that it is a poor man's way of getting a Local Queue Manager. Back when there was a Pro Version if you had Pro then you can rendered and keep using Poser, if you didn't then you used Render in Background. Basically the same thing except with Queue Manager you can also render on other computers. And there were all types of other reasons to do a background render such as the 4GB memory issue. But since Poser 12 only runs on Windows 10 which is 64 bit that reason is no longer valid.

Queue Manager is a no-go for me. The entire reason why I use Progressive Refinement is so that I can se how the render is going, and stop it whenever I feel like it's good enough - with the Queue Manager I have all or nothing, I can only seen anything when it's done rendering.

Edit: okay, turning Branched Path Tracing off seems to have made it MUCH faster. Still running slower than rendering in P11 though, I think, but now it's acceptable, while rendering not in background. Render in Background seems to be taking some 4 seconds per sample instead of the previous one minute.

Richard60 posted at 11:24AM Sun, 06 December 2020 - #4406572

Have you tried using the Queue Manager? My understanding of render in background (and I could be wrong) is that it is a poor man's way of getting a Local Queue Manager. Back when there was a Pro Version if you had Pro then you can rendered and keep using Poser, if you didn't then you used Render in Background. Basically the same thing except with Queue Manager you can also render on other computers. And there were all types of other reasons to do a background render such as the 4GB memory issue. But since Poser 12 only runs on Windows 10 which is 64 bit that reason is no longer valid.

There is a couple of misconceptions here, P12 can run on Windows 7 64-bit. Several individuals have reported that P12 is fully functional. Render in Background allows you to continue refining and editing your scene while your image 'cooks'. The downside of it is that it prevents you from initiating another render. On the other hand, Queue Manager can handle several renders in tandem while you continue working in Poser. Send your render to QM, work on your scene, and send that to QM as another render. Although you have the luxury to use a second computer for rendering, ATM QM will only render Firefly, not Superfly unless something has changed that I am not aware of.

OK so Poser runs on Windows 7 but it is 64 bit which removes the 4GB memory limit, just not officially for W7.

• Local and remote queue rendering now allows GPU for SuperFly renders. #483, #350

This is from release notes for Poser 12.0.300. So Poser has been able to render SuperFLy on the QM for a while.

As noted in another thread, the QM is now using the GPU when requested for Superfly as it should (although it didn't in the first release), but there are some problems still. Those problems might be failure to load some textures (affected objects showed up in white), in which case it might be related to what Ohki is seeing with Render In Background having trouble loading textures (although with a different result). For example maybe some types of paths are not being handled properly, and Render In Background gets stuck on them while the QM skips them. That's just speculative though.

The QM isn't of any use for progressive rendering though, no way around that. Personally I tend to run a quick render at a low quality to check the image, then run it again at a higher quality, but consequently I end up doing a lot of high quality renders I end up throwing away and redoing because something wasn't quite right. For me, I do that because the cancel button never works right (and didn't in Poser 11 either).

Well THIS is new. Very much not good for my usual HDRI backgrounds as lighting!

Is that for textures used in Poser, or render output, or...?

I tried loading a file with a texture larger than that set up to the scene background, and I soon as I went into the Materials tab with that selected, I got that warning. The HDRI's preview looks like a plain color in P12. Been using these in P11 for years.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 2:40PM Fri, 11 December 2020 - #4407129

Well THIS is new. Very much not good for my usual HDRI backgrounds as lighting!

Yep, that was listed in one of the update notes ... "File locator dialog now launches when opening scenes that have missing image maps or environment textures. A warning also prompts when textures exceeds 4096 pixels."

So is this going to be fixed, or is the size limit a new "feature"? 4096 pixels is not that big.

Given that all decent HDRi images are larger than that this is an issue. And it started with the update on the 25th. Was this bug reported yet, or should I?

Anything larger than 4k is apt to slow down Poser. I have seen it with 5-8k HDRI. If you are looking for sharpness 3k should be enough. Unfortunately, HDRShop is no longer available to down-size large images to a manageable resolution.

I understand that it slows Poser down and wish to continue. It doesn't give me the option - it simply doesn't load the image. P11 dealt with it just fine. This is a downgrade.

Agreed. It should be an option, not a hard limit.

ShaaraMuse's packages in the RMP include 16K HDRI's. In case you want a sharp background in a high-res render. (They also include a bunch of smaller versions, for other situations.)

I've not gone to P_12 yet, but running 'branched' and 'progressive' together by accident usually chokes my PPro_11 Superfly. YMMV...

Um, losing that top-end HDRI support seems unfortunate if you want to build a complex scene by stacking rendered 'cels'...

For taming HDRIs to manageable resolutions, you could try free Irfan View. Just give it time...

The resolution is completely manageable in P11 - and I render in it just fine with those settings together. I'm reporting what appear to be issues with P12 :)

As I've written in another thread: using P12, I've created a 16384x8192 jpg picture, with a vic4 character and one spot. Then, I have been able to use it as a background picture for P11 and P12. Could this be related to the quantity of RAM available on the graphic card?