Have notice in a lot of threads, that some people don't seem to like Superfly. Personally I love it compared to Firefly. But would be interested in hearing why people don't like it or why you prefer Firefly over Superfly?

(Im not interested in hearing that you would like Vray, Blender cycles, Octane or whatever else you might prefer, only why you prefer Firefly over Superfly :))

Well since you asked, I PREFER Cycles the full renderer to Superfly. I never really understood of liked Firefly that much anyway. So it kind of Piqued me when Smith Micro only went halfway on Cycles to come up with Superfly. Look, if you like Firefly, keep it, use it, good health to you. But dump Superfly and give us Full Cycles.

EClark1894 posted at 9:06PM Sun, 02 May 2021 - #4418231

Well since you asked, I PREFER Cycles the full renderer to Superfly. I never really understood of liked Firefly that much anyway. So it kind of Piqued me when Smith Micro only went halfway on Cycles to come up with Superfly. Look, if you like Firefly, keep it, use it, good health to you. But dump Superfly and give us Full Cycles.

So you like Superfly, but would just like to see more shaders or functionalities which are in blender to be added to Superfly/Poser cycles? If im not mistaken Cycles in Poser is build on that of blender right? (Not very familiar with Blender, just think I remember that it was mentioned at some point)

Yes SuperFly was based on Blender's Cycles, but only at a "general" stage. Blender's Cycles is more complex, with many more nodes than SuperFly, which I believe is what they're trying to upgrade with Poser 12's SuperFly. Also, the nodes SuperFly has aren't built like the Cycles nodes, such as the in and out connectors, and that makes it difficult to get the same result with SuperFly in Poser, that I can get with Cycles in Blender.

Also Blender 3, which may be out at the end of the summer, will have their latest version, Cycles X, which will be even more involved. I use both SuperFly in Poser, as well as Cycles in Blender, and I wish SuperFly were more like Cycles than it currently is in Poser 11.

Just my 2¢, FWIW.

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I think that there are two things that people don't like about Superfly: 1) they don't own a modern graphics card and can't render very fast in Superfly. 2) They are set in their ways and don't want to change the way they work with Poser.

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Miss B posted at 4:50AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418237

Yes SuperFly was based on Blender's Cycles, but only at a "general" stage. Blender's Cycles is more complex, with many more nodes than SuperFly, which I believe is what they're trying to upgrade with Poser 12's SuperFly. Also, the nodes SuperFly has aren't built like the Cycles nodes, such as the in and out connectors, and that makes it difficult to get the same result with SuperFly in Poser, that I can get with Cycles in Blender.

Also Blender 3, which may be out at the end of the summer, will have their latest version, Cycles X, which will be even more involved. I use both SuperFly in Poser, as well as Cycles in Blender, and I wish SuperFly were more like Cycles than it currently is in Poser 11.

Just my 2¢, FWIW.

So if you had to choose between rendering with Superfly or Firefly, you would choose Superfly, if I understand you correct, despite its limitations compared to Blender? I know there are some crazy and in some cases expensive renderers out there, which is why I was specifically asking about Superfly and Firefly :)

ghostship2 posted at 4:58AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418242

I think that there are two things that people don't like about Superfly: 1) they don't own a modern graphics card and can't render very fast in Superfly. 2) They are set in their ways and don't want to change the way they work with Poser.

So basically it's that some people prefer speed over quality?

I don't really know how they would solve that, except increasing the speed of Superfly. But in general higher quality images tend to take a longer time to render than low quality ones, but if people don't care about quality anyway, then that is an issue :)

Show me or link me to amazing Superfly renders, that might want me to use Superfly.

It takes too long to get a decent image on my old, slow machine, for one thing. Just a simple image with one relatively simple model - my MK1 Dalek, for example, takes 37 million billion and a half years before it stops looking grainy.

I can't, for some reason, get my head around the new approach to materials. I can get pretty much what I want, or a reasonable approximation thereof, in Firefly but in Superfly? Noooo.

Finally - and this really is the deal breaker for me - it doesn't support Displacement, which is something a lot of my stuff relies on. Yes, I know about Normal maps - although I haven't ever tried to make one yet - but in my experience, they don't look anything like as good as Displacement.

So, a triple whammy. If, at some point, I can upgrade the machine, I may look at Superfly again but until then, nope.

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complaints I've seen for Superfly are speed, which is often hardware-related, grainy images which is a render settings problem but the settings can vary depending on lighting, and some shaders and people seem to want one setting for all. I've also seen complaints about having to update every shader in a scene because older content and sometimes even newer stuff doesn't come with superfly shaders and firefly shaders usually don't look as good in superfly. There's also the lack of microdisplacement.

All that being said, I'm not one who dislikes superfly. I almost never use firefly anymore. I don't mind taking a little longer to make a scene look good. I would like the microdisplacement though. It would add a lot to images.

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Nevertrumper posted at 6:39AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418256

Show me or link me to amazing Superfly renders, that might want me to use Superfly.

When I refer to quality, it doesn't mean that you can't make cool looking stuff in Firefly, but merely that you get correct lighting and access to PBR with Superfly that you won't get with Firefly.

How a person manipulate a render into something that looks cool, might come from post, which is perfectly fine. So just want to be sure it clear, what I mean with quality.

But here are some examples.

I don't know who made the first two, but I think they are excellent and don't know if there is any post on them. But the last two I included, because I rendered them myself and know that there is no post on them. But I think it shows some pretty good quality from Superfly. And again, as initial renders that you can then take to a post program and manipulate further for a final image, I think is a good starting point.

SamTherapy posted at 7:08AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418258

It takes too long to get a decent image on my old, slow machine, for one thing. Just a simple image with one relatively simple model - my MK1 Dalek, for example, takes 37 million billion and a half years before it stops looking grainy.

I can't, for some reason, get my head around the new approach to materials. I can get pretty much what I want, or a reasonable approximation thereof, in Firefly but in Superfly? Noooo.

Finally - and this really is the deal breaker for me - it doesn't support Displacement, which is something a lot of my stuff relies on. Yes, I know about Normal maps - although I haven't ever tried to make one yet - but in my experience, they don't look anything like as good as Displacement.

So, a triple whammy. If, at some point, I can upgrade the machine, I may look at Superfly again but until then, nope.

It does take slightly longer to render, so clearly it's a nice to have a fast computer, but when is it not? :D

The reason it might take such a long time to get a clear image, can be due to mesh lights and wrong materials. Especially mesh lights are not good in my experience at least, but honestly they don't seem good in any renders I have tried to be honest, not only Superfly.

But since Superfly is PBR, it pretty much work with just 4 basic maps. Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal, then you can obviously add opacity etc. You just have to use the Physical surface node, the only thing it doesn't handle well is glass, ice etc. where you want to use a cycle node instead. At least when it comes to the most basic materials, you don't really need anything other than these 4 maps. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with displacement maps, from what I can see.

Keep in mind that normal maps are very different from displacement maps, in the sense that displacement maps manipulate the geometry itself, so if you don't have enough density it won't work and in most cases ruin your object. Normal maps just work as a 3d bump map. But here is an example of displacement map in Superfly.

As you can see the top left square is just 1 poly, so the displacement doesn't work at all, as we increase the density it gets better. The last one have a SubD of 2, which gives a lot of details, but you will also quickly kill your scene :D

I don't like or use Superfly except to test my freebies because it is way too complicated and way too slow. Over the years, there have been endless threads about how to get something to look right in Superfly. You don't see those about Firefly. There's one thread on the Poser 12 forum right now about how to get skin to look realistic in Superfly. Skin looks fine in Firefly. Criticize me for not wanting to change my work flow, but to me it's about not making my work flow take much longer, such as by having to tweak a bunch of friggin' nodes. When I look at Superfly renders, the only things that look significantly better to me are glass and metal. I don't care about glass or metal.

Now, Poser 12 fixes the speed problem, but it also emphasizes the complexity problem because people are having to waste time because 12 doesn't handle materials the same as 11. Plus, Poser 12 nukes all the Python scripts I use every single day.

I am happy with my results in Firefly. I can quickly test numerous commercial light sets to get just the effect I want. It renders the materials of every product I own. New is not inevitably better.

RedPhantom posted at 7:37AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418259

complaints I've seen for Superfly are speed, which is often hardware-related, grainy images which is a render settings problem but the settings can vary depending on lighting, and some shaders and people seem to want one setting for all. I've also seen complaints about having to update every shader in a scene because older content and sometimes even newer stuff doesn't come with superfly shaders and firefly shaders usually don't look as good in superfly. There's also the lack of microdisplacement.

All that being said, I'm not one who dislikes superfly. I almost never use firefly anymore. I don't mind taking a little longer to make a scene look good. I would like the microdisplacement though. It would add a lot to images.

I think you are correct. In general expecting to get a top notch image out of a render is highly unlikely, pretty much all people I have seen that work with 3D and are considered very skilled, will manipulate and "cheat" as much as possible or when required to get the image where they want it to. Which make sense, its the final image that counts not how you got there :)

And obviously older materials not specifically made for PBR can cause issues.

I don't know to much about microdisplacement, but can't you do most of it with a good highres normal map?

Im not good at cycles myself, so for me, I would just really like there to be a glass node in the physical surface node, so I could avoid cycles all together :D.

RobZhena posted at 7:45AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418265

I don't like or use Superfly except to test my freebies because it is way too complicated and way too slow. Over the years, there have been endless threads about how to get something to look right in Superfly. You don't see those about Firefly. There's one thread on the Poser 12 forum right now about how to get skin to look realistic in Superfly. Skin looks fine in Firefly. Criticize me for not wanting to change my work flow, but to me it's about not making my work flow take much longer, such as by having to tweak a bunch of friggin' nodes. When I look at Superfly renders, the only things that look significantly better to me are glass and metal. I don't care about glass or metal.

Now, Poser 12 fixes the speed problem, but it also emphasizes the complexity problem because people are having to waste time because 12 doesn't handle materials the same as 11. Plus, Poser 12 nukes all the Python scripts I use every single day.

I am happy with my results in Firefly. I can quickly test numerous commercial light sets to get just the effect I want. It renders the materials of every product I own. New is not inevitably better.

But don't you think the reason such discussion is not in Firefly, is because it always look wrong? As far as I know a lot or at least some of the stuff in Firefly is faked, because it can't do it.

It seems to me that a lot of people confuses Superfly with a confusing web of nodes all over the place. But that is where the physical surface node comes in. It is a cycle node just made easy, so you don't have to do all those crazy nodes.

This is a flashlight I made, and the setup on the left is controlling the material of the flashlight itself, and the other is for controlling the light. But only the light setup, is where it can get a bit complicated. The material for the flashlight itself is controlled by just these four maps, which is pretty much the only setup you have to do for a standard PBR material, when using a physical surface node. Changing these 4 you can make it look like wood, plastic or whatever, which is why I personally like PBR are so much, it doesn't really get a lot more simple than that in my opinion. Again, its when you start using glass, water etc. that it gets complicated. Also the PBR materials allows you to use them with other PBR renders without really having to do anything, which is really cool.

Disclaimer: I try to use Superfly these days as much as possible. A lot of rework is needed with materials but the new Mat Room makes it easier. One can always pop back to P11 to use EZSkin 3 for a good shader base, save, the back to P12. ( but wait, that's wooork)...

Now, here are my peeves.

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

A good normal map is sculpted in like zbrush/mudbox etc. You need to subdivide it a lot and sculpt details on the mesh and then bake them to create a normal map/ displacement map etc. Normal maps made out of a diffuse map are just flat and not correct. Also dont save normals as jpg's but tifs or png's. Jpgs loses a lof of the info in the normal map.

As you can see i sculpted a lot of detail on her face and iris. Now this may seem very harsh but dont forget SSS, peach fuzz etc are going to soften the skin up and you'll lose some of that detail.

Rhia474 posted at 10:26AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418284

Disclaimer: I try to use Superfly these days as much as possible. A lot of rework is needed with materials but the new Mat Room makes it easier. One can always pop back to P11 to use EZSkin 3 for a good shader base, save, the back to P12. ( but wait, that's wooork)...

Now, here are my peeves.

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

I think the issue that many models doesn't come with normal maps, depends on how old they are and what software people use. I myself use substance painter. And if you are familiar with PS, it shouldn't be to difficult to learn as it uses a lot of the same concepts, like layers etc.

Here is the basic idea of how to do it and how it works. im still learning myself as it always is when doing 3D :D

But normal maps are generated automatically, and as far as I know there are two common ways of doing it, which you can also combine into generating the normal map.

First way, is to have two models a low poly one and a high poly one, where you model all the changes into the high poly model and then you generate a normal map from that and use it on the low poly. Obviously this take a lot of time, but also gives you a lot of control, but for this you would use a program like Zbrush, mudbox etc. That allows you to work with very high density models.

The other one, is through the texturing itself, which is what substance painter does, so basically you paint your 3D object as you normally would, but you can paint on all channels at the same time.

So here is a table for a scene im working one, which can suit as example.

1. After you have Unwrapped your model and have loaded it into substance painter, you want to bake the textures first.

2. In this menu you choose the resolution and is also where you can load a high res mesh to use for baking. You don't have to if you don't want.

3. Then you just hit baking selected textures and it will automatically bake a lot of different maps that will eventually be used for the various functions. But when that is done, you are basically ready to texture.

4. Basic layer structure as in PS.

5. So you can choose a brush which is either a normal based on (basically you can just paint into the height map as that gets actually combined into the normal map when you export your textures. But as you can see, I created a shape on the table which paint the normal map automatically. Which is very good if you want to make screws or whatever.

6. Where it really shines is when you start using smart materials and want to add scratches and stuff. because you can simply turn off color for instance and only paint the scratches or remove the paint etc. As you can see I have just added a smart material which come with all the required settings you need and because its like photoshop you can just stack these on top of each other, using masks etc. And when you are done, you just export the textures and you get the 4 maps you need (diffuse, roughness, metal and normal map and other maps if you need them.) And those you just hook into Superfly as shown above or Daz Iray. Substance paint uses Iray so you are pretty certain what it looks like there is also how it will look in both Poser and Daz, if you use an HDRI map.

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

all the wrinkles and sagging skin are actually done with normal maps.

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

Yes you need a lot of memory in zbrush too to extract the normals out of the mesh. This is due to the fact that it is subdivided a lot and the details are calculated on the lowest sub and then extracted and placed on the UV map/normal.

Liquid_Ice posted at 11:39AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418301

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.

Yes you need a lot of memory in zbrush too to extract the normals out of the mesh. This is due to the fact that it is subdivided a lot and the details are calculated on the lowest sub and then extracted and placed on the UV map/normal.

Had to update my graphic card as well and luckily you can get some fairly decent ones cheap, if you don't buy the newest of the newest :D.

Looking great with that model you have rendered lots of details going on. Very well done. What I like with substance painter is that for most things it works very well, but if you have to make extreme closeups, you would probably do as you do in Zbrush, but eventually time is also a factor :D

Well i cheat sometimes by using surface maps. But i prefer to make my own brushes for the pores and look at the pores of my reference photos. You can sculpt a pore map iin zbrush or a comparable program and use that as an alpha/brush. This way in poser or daz studio you wont get harsh lines on the skin. Also you have to take in to account poser and studio use tangent space normals and they are calculated differently in both programs.

I think substance painter uses the GPU to run right? and zbrush doesnt. so it is not so important to have 4 gb for instance on your videocard. But a lot of ram is paramount for this.

Liquid_Ice posted at 11:51AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418300

all the wrinkles and sagging skin are actually done with normal maps.

Are those Superfly Renders? Those look actually very good.

No not all. the left one on the second row is. If you follow the correct BPR values and use BPR textures you will get similar results across render engines. Dont forget that some apps use different ways to calculate SSS (maya etc) so there is always a little difference and other options. But the basis still stands BPR should give you similar results in other apps.

Folks Poser 12, helps cut down on the time factor and the graininess that is inherent to SF. The have a post fx option that denoises the image and gets rid of the graininess, they've also improved the rendering speed.

Also, if the Cycles root confuses or scares you, try using the physical surface root, it's more like the poser root node, though easier to use as it does most of the work for you. Take a look at my store for decent SF renders. All the SF renders were done in P12. The longest render times was for Spring Fling, and it was still faster than some of my older FF renders.

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Rhia474 posted at 1:42PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418284

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

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Materialize can make normal maps and other maps and it's free. I'm an idiot and I could use it. But I'm not an artist, so I can't use it very well (but I should really start to try). Bounding Box Software / Materialize

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I only render in Superfly ... but I do have issues with how well the shadow catcher works and micromesh displacement. Otherwise, I really like it and it's much faster with less noise in P12.

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Boni posted at 4:00PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418326

I only render in Superfly ... but I do have issues with how well the shadow catcher works and micromesh displacement. Otherwise, I really like it and it's much faster with less noise in P12.

Wait... they added a shadow catcher? Where was I?

VedaDalsette posted at 5:22PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418319

Materialize can make normal maps and other maps and it's free. I'm an idiot and I could use it. But I'm not an artist, so I can't use it very well (but I should really start to try). Bounding Box Software / Materialize

That sounds pretty cool, actually. Let me grab it and see if I can figure it out. Many thanks for the recommendation!!

A Superfly render could be as terrible as a Firefly render if the lighting technique is poor. I'll pick speed over quality... an acceptable quality, as I love to postwork in Photoshop. What I cannot work with is grainy renders. It's pointless trying to do any postwork on a noisy render. I like renders where you cannot count the pixels in it LOL

I always work in Firefly. Several reasons. Most all the content I have will only look good in Firefly. I tried Superfly and like many said, grainy renders and takes forever to render. I do a lot of toon like renders for work and so Firefly works best for that. I am just happy with Firefly..works for me!

Digitell posted at 8:25PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418339

I always work in Firefly. Several reasons. Most all the content I have will only look good in Firefly. I tried Superfly and like many said, grainy renders and takes forever to render. I do a lot of toon like renders for work and so Firefly works best for that. I am just happy with Firefly..works for me!

I can understand the annoying grain, which does increase render times to get rid off.

This is from an article talking about PBR.

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8. Can a PBR system be used to create stylized art?

Yes, absolutely. If your goal is to create a fantastical, stylized world, having accurate material definition is still very important. Even if you’re creating a unicorn that farts rainbows, you still generally want that unicorn to obey the physics of light and matter.

A great example of this is Pixar’s work, which is very stylized, yet often on the cutting edge of material accuracy. Here is a great article about PBR in Monsters University: fxguide feature on Monsters University

https://marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/

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So PBR is not only for realistic renders, not saying that Firefly is not best for you, just that it is a misconception to think that PBR is restricted only to realistic renders.

I had to google PBR... all I got was: Professional Bull Riders and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, I'm guessing it's neither one of those...

@Digitell - I can understand that... I wouldn't doodle too much either trying to setup materials, shaders when you're on task and you have several images you want to create, you have to work off of presets and pick progress over perfection.

TwiztidKidd posted at 9:38PM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418346

I had to google PBR... all I got was: Professional Bull Riders and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, I'm guessing it's neither one of those...

@Digitell - I can understand that... I wouldn't doodle too much either trying to setup materials, shaders when you're on task and you have several images you want to create.

PBR= Physically Based Render

Regarding grainy renders and long render times:

If you have P12, make use of Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. When engaged, Superfly will note when a given pixel no longer changes with continued samples (i.e., "this pixel has already reached Nirvana"), and skips that pixel thereafter, devoting its time to more difficult areas of the render.

With high quality settings, you'll see slow progress at the beginning of the render (same speed as P11), but at some stage the progress will begin to accelerate, and as more pixels are finalized, the render progresses very rapidly. For me, this feature alone made P12 worth it.

I have 2008 vintage equipment, and my video card is not good for GPU renders, so I'm limited to CPU-only renders. Take a look at these P12 Superfly renders which have a lot of metals, volumetric water, meshlighting, etc. No grain remaining, but they did take over an hour to render on my workstation.

undersea ruins

Appleseed Jedi

Cortana and Master Chief

Elven Grey Ship

These are the render settings I used for the Grey Havens renders; zero out the volumetric values if your scene doesn't have volumetric materials in it.

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EClark1894 posted at 8:46AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418347

PBR= Physically Based Render

Thank you EClark1984... it's pretty obvious I'm new here lol Thanks again!

TwiztidKidd posted at 9:21AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418377

EClark1894 posted at 8:46AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418347

PBR= Physically Based Render

Thank you EClark1984... it's pretty obvious I'm new here lol Thanks again!

Here are two quick videos to understand what PBR render is and why it is very useful. I suggest you watch them in the order I linked them.

What is PBR? Physically-Based Rendering Explained

Real-Time Physically Based Rendering: A quick explanation

With these two you should have a pretty good understanding of what it is and why one would consider to use it. :)

This video might be easier to understand than the second one or you can watch both :)

PBR Explained for 3D Artists - Physically Based Rendering

Thank you for the explanation of PBR. I had never heard of it either.

@searchnasaigh-this is very good to hear about the Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. The long render times can make or break the work flow.

@TwiztedKidd- yeppers! I have a process I use and when I am working with deadlines, messing about with the nodes and all really doesn't work too well for me.

Digitell posted at 10:45AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418384

Thank you for the explanation of PBR. I had never heard of it either.

@searchnasaigh-this is very good to hear about the Adaptive Sampling w/Threshold. The long render times can make or break the work flow.

@TwiztedKidd- yeppers! I have a process I use and when I am working with deadlines, messing about with the nodes and all really doesn't work too well for me.

Sure, no problem.

Now where I think it becomes very interesting talking about PBR is when we look at how we use Poser. Doesn't really matter whether you are a content creator or just using the assets for creating art or whatever.

But lets say I create something and I make all the textures etc. and it looks great to me in the scene I have made and I render it in Firefly. However now another content creator also make something, which looks great in their render.

However combining our two works might not look all that good together, because we approached it very differently. Meaning this person might have made metal slightly different than I did, because that worked for them or their glass or whatever.

Meaning that there is not a common guideline for content creators to approach what they are making to make sure that what they make will look correct regardless of what scene they are thrown into.

However if both me and content creator B is both working with the PBR standard, it shouldn't really matter, or at least not as much, which objects or scenes they are used in, as they will react more or less the same. Which to me, would be a huge benefit for everyone. Because people know that whatever they buy will be more or less compatible given they follow the same approach.

For content creators we can remake the textures and turn them into PBR somewhat easy, but for people that just want to make art and have a huge library of stuff, this could be a potential nightmare.

So to me it would be a huge benefit for the community if all content creators would start doing PBR materials rather than Firefly.

@3D-Mobster- What you are saying makes complete sense very true..BUT.., what about the artists/customers that already have tons of stuff in their libraries that dont render so well with Superfly. If they prefer Firefly, because that is what the bulk of their library works well in..and all content creators are now making only items that work in Superfly..that would leave out the Firefly users. So the most logical thing to do would be to provide materials that work well in both Superfly and Firefly. It would not be good to only provide 1 and not the other..That is my opinion.

That is what is being done now, vendors are providing both Firefly and Superfly textures for renders. However, will this approach last? It may get tiresome providing 2 sets of textures but, then again, DS does support Iray and 3Delight ATM.

Digitell posted at 11:34AM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418395

@3D-Mobster- What you are saying makes complete sense very true..BUT.., what about the artists/customers that already have tons of stuff in their libraries that dont render so well with Superfly. If they prefer Firefly, because that is what the bulk of their library works well in..and all content creators are now making only items that work in Superfly..that would leave out the Firefly users. So the most logical thing to do would be to provide materials that work well in both Superfly and Firefly. It would not be good to only provide 1 and not the other..That is my opinion.

There is nothing to do about old content, unless the content creators or people themselves make new textures. Which they could grab a free copy of Substance painter and learn the basics and would be able to convert the textures fairly quick. Given that they already have all the objects with UVs etc. But besides that, nothing as I can see it would be able to fix that, since a lot of the stuff was made before Superfly even existed, so it obviously weren't taken into consideration. But I can see it from both sides, the content users and content creators, but ultimately I still think everyone wins from a transition to PBR.

For users of Firefly, certain products might not work correctly in Superfly, which is obviously annoying. But for the most part you can render it in Superfly so it looks good enough. For instance I only use M4 and V4, which doesn't have Superfly textures, but still you can render them and they look fair enough in my opinion.

On the other side as content creator, you spend a shit load of time modelling, Unwrapping and in general preparing all these objects, and you want to deliver the best possible product to people. So seeing your hard work, getting butchered in Firefly is really annoying, especially because the amount of time you have to spend with it trying to fix the materials is absolutely insane in my opinion. Which is obviously a process that content users won't know about. But I think most content creator will agree that it is not easy to work with Firefly, especially compared to the quality you get out of it. Not saying that some people can do it very well, as some people have a very good knowledge of it and how to use it. But it is the few rather than the many. This is from a work in process of a soap dispenser I made for a new product, which is going to be part of a whole house, but it is rendered in Superfly. Should I make the materials for it in Firefly, given that Im not the best at using it, I could probably spend 30-40 minutes simply trying to get to something that I would find acceptable. Like the plastic, soap etc. But still it would be far off from the quality of the Superfly render. Which again would annoy me, because I want to deliver the best quality and what I vision it should look like, and PBR just helps so much with that.

Superfly as such doesn't exclude anyone, ultimately it will still be up to the content creator to decide whether they want to make materials for Firefly, Superfly or both of them, actually the benefit of PBR is that you will also automatically get materials for Iray in Daz3D at the same time, so it actually include more :D. Besides that a lot of the maps used for Superfly will function well for Firefly anyway. So Firefly users wouldn't notice a huge difference, they would still have the same issue as they have now, with inconsistent quality in the materials. But for content creators it could greatly increase the quality of their products and workflow, and make sure that products are working well together across the marketplace.

So again to make it very clear :D Its not a Firefly or Superfly kind of thing, one doesn't prevent the other. But rather to improve the consistency between products.

People assume they have to choose between a grainy image and speed. This image was rendered in 43 minutes. The only postwork was a fix to the part in the hair. The bump is too strong, but there's no grain

This image was entered in 4 minutes. It looks terrible. The same postwork was done

Here's the same image with the denoiser and the same hair fix. Has a more airbrushed look.

And this was the original firefly image I did back in Poser 7. I've lost the original scene file so the Superfly remders were a reconstruction. This had the hair postwork and teeth whitening. I have no idea how long it took to render. It would have been longer than 43 minutes, but it was also done on an older computer.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

It is not that I dislike Superfly, I am just more comfortable using Firefly. I have no desire to change my workflow at this point. Maybe down the line when I have more time to study on Superfly settings and more time for rendering, but now I am happy with the Firefly :)

RedPhantom posted at 2:21PM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418405

Here's the same image with the denoiser and the same hair fix. Has a more airbrushed look.

The denoiser seems very aggressive, would personally prefer using more samples instead as it ruins all the details or maybe do some light touch up in PS.

She's cute... here's a light touch up in PS

Great work TwitzidKidd! The hair look so real with this touch up!

Thank you... just a couple smart filters... I can't paint hair as amazing as you do... I can draw stick figures though but not very well lol

I'm curious about how long does it take to render a 2048 x 2048 portrait upclose with Superfly or 4000 x 4000?

that's amazing. Never seen Sydney looking so good

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

Digitell posted at 6:18PM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418406

It is not that I dislike Superfly, I am just more comfortable using Firefly. I have no desire to change my workflow at this point. Maybe down the line when I have more time to study on Superfly settings and more time for rendering, but now I am happy with the Firefly :)

The funny thing is, a lot of BPR created textures should work in firefly ( textures NOT shaders). If you want to follow real BPR values and workflow, you have to forget everything you have learned about 3D shaders and textures. BPR follows real rules of the world. If you have ever followed a photography course you will benefit from that a lot creating stuff in BPR mode. Rendering should be faster too, when you just use BPR materials.

Is there anything wrong with firefly? no not at all. You can get really good renders out of it.

@samTherapy One of your Daleks with mostly firefly mats.(some were glowing like the eye lens here) @ Someone taked about how glass was complicated in Superfly. Couldn't be further from the truth. Lighting: I'm not using any poser lights at all in this image. I'm also not using any mesh lights or dome. This scene is lit entirely by the "background." It's in your objects list when you open the mats editor. The background has an HDRI on it. You get real highlights, shadows and speculars.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

@TwiztidKidd what photoshop filters are you using?

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

I prefer Firefly. I sort of fell in love at first sight with Firefly. It was such a huge improvement over the P4 renderer. I was one of those who spent hours adjusting the old MAT files to take advantage of Firefly. (I happened to come across some of them recently, and boy, do they look terrible. Not sure if Firefly changed, or my aesthetic did, but they're baaad, LOL.)

I don't particularly want to do photoreal renders. My style has always been more illustrative than realistic, and I'm more likely to use Photoshop to make a render look hand-drawn than I am to try for something that could be mistaken for a photograph.

I also found Superfly really slow and noisy. That's been improved in Poser 12, but I still prefer the look of Firefly. It seems clearer and sharper, somehow.

I also find a lot of Superfly renders fall into the uncanny valley for me. I think part of it is that some things can look SO realistic, like skin and eyes, but others are very difficult. Like hair. It either looks painted compared to the rest of the render, or it has a really plasticky, Barbie doll look.

Firefly, to my eye, has a more similar level of fakeness for everything, so is less jarring to me.

randym77 posted at 11:20PM Tue, 04 May 2021 - #4418435

I prefer Firefly. I sort of fell in love at first sight with Firefly. It was such a huge improvement over the P4 renderer. I was one of those who spent hours adjusting the old MAT files to take advantage of Firefly. (I happened to come across some of them recently, and boy, do they look terrible. Not sure if Firefly changed, or my aesthetic did, but they're baaad, LOL.)

I don't particularly want to do photoreal renders. My style has always been more illustrative than realistic, and I'm more likely to use Photoshop to make a render look hand-drawn than I am to try for something that could be mistaken for a photograph.

I also found Superfly really slow and noisy. That's been improved in Poser 12, but I still prefer the look of Firefly. It seems clearer and sharper, somehow.

I also find a lot of Superfly renders fall into the uncanny valley for me. I think part of it is that some things can look SO realistic, like skin and eyes, but others are very difficult. Like hair. It either looks painted compared to the rest of the render, or it has a really plasticky, Barbie doll look.

Firefly, to my eye, has a more similar level of fakeness for everything, so is less jarring to me.

I think this is where a lot of people misunderstand PBR, it is very good for doing realistic renders. But doesn't really have anything to do with that. Even if you are doing none realistic renders you are still interested in the lighting being correct and that you can adjust it without your materials getting screwed up. Which will happen in Firefly, if you adjust the light, you would potentially have to fixing your textures to look correct in that new setup, which is a huge benefit of PBR.

The main issue when people make cartoon images is that often the materials etc, they used are not specifically created for it, but rather they turn photorealistic ones into a cartoon looking one, which might not always work very well.

Superfly is slower, there is no doubt about that, and with anything in 3D we all wish that it would be faster, so I don't disagree with you on that. :D Hair is often an issue, because it is extremely difficult to make. Poser hair room doesn't really allow for making good hair and its not particular Posers fault, because even the more professional hair applications are extremely difficult to use if you have to style dynamic hair. So often hair are more or less like helmets you put on your character, which can often end up looking a bit stiff.

But for instance these are PBR renders as well, but with materials that support such toonish look.

Toonish is okay, but not really what I'm going for. I like images like the one used for the Poser 12 splash screen. No way would anyone mistake it for a photograph. The hair is just real enough. It doesn't distract by looking fake. The image is romanticized, idealized, but not really toony.

And I have never found a Superfly material that makes Poser's dynamic hair look good. It doesn't exactly took realistic in Firefly, but you can get a glamorous, shampoo-ad look with it.

And actually...I am not that interested in getting the lighting correct. I just want it to look nice. I will often turn off shadows on certain things. Just as with a photograph, I might darker some parts of an image and brighten others. I don't want to duplicate reality, I want to improve on it. ;-)

Dunno if you've seen this thread, but Erogenesis posted in defense of Firefly a couple of years ago:

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2936633

I like his crowd scenes. I sometimes do large crowd scenes, and even rendering in pieces and pasting them together in Photoshop...I can't imagine doing that in Superfly. Not until it gets a lot faster.

randym77 posted at 12:41AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418440

Toonish is okay, but not really what I'm going for. I like images like the one used for the Poser 12 splash screen. No way would anyone mistake it for a photograph. The hair is just real enough. It doesn't distract by looking fake. The image is romanticized, idealized, but not really toony.

And I have never found a Superfly material that makes Poser's dynamic hair look good. It doesn't exactly took realistic in Firefly, but you can get a glamorous, shampoo-ad look with it.

And actually...I am not that interested in getting the lighting correct. I just want it to look nice. I will often turn off shadows on certain things. Just as with a photograph, I might darker some parts of an image and brighten others. I don't want to duplicate reality, I want to improve on it. ;-)

Dunno if you've seen this thread, but Erogenesis posted in defense of Firefly a couple of years ago:

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2936633

I like his crowd scenes. I sometimes do large crowd scenes, and even rendering in pieces and pasting them together in Photoshop...I can't imagine doing that in Superfly. Not until it gets a lot faster.

Obviously if one does not care about lighting being realistic/correct, which is perfectly legit, then PBR is of little interest. :)

And as I said, working with dynamic hair is a nightmare, doesn't really matter if its Firefly or Superfly, the whole process is nasty :D And would probably think that making a good hair shader is easier compared to styling the hair in the first place, so it looks good. So personally I don't mess around with it. In such case, I wouldn't favour either of the render engines.

I read through the post and the arguments and he/she does have sort of a point. But also makes it clear that he/she is stuck with Firefly materials for the objects used, which doesn't always render to well in Superfly. He (just going to refer to him/she as he, as I don't know the gender) also point out that noise is an issue and that using Octane would be nice etc. And even though it might be better (haven't tried it) it also have noise issue just as all PBR renders, as far as I know. So its a constant battle for everyone as far as I know, and people use denoisers etc to get rid of it, which can be good, but on the other side, a lot of people actually add a bit of noise to their images afterwards in PS, because it makes them look more real rather than the Barbie/plastic look you talk about, as it looks more like it is a photograph taken with a camera. And even people that uses these other render engine might just let it render all night. So it is an issue in general with PBR and not just Superfly.

Of the images he have shown in the thread of the Firefly ones, I really like the last one, not sure if there is some post work going on or whether it's just the complexity and composition of the scene, but it looks very nice. But to me at least, the rest of them seems off when it comes to the lighting, having this sort of flat or dead look you often get from Firefly renders, like the shadows and shading is not really what you would expect.

This is obviously a personal preference, but I don't like this half realistic look. Where you use very realistic models, with detailed textures etc. to then butcher them in flat lighting. And its not a critic of his work, because I think it's an issue with Firefly more than anything else, because it is extremely difficult to get good looking images out of it. And in general lighting is very difficult to do good in my opinion, struggle a lot with it myself. But to me, I prefer it being clearly cartoon or realistic, the inbetween doesn't work in my opinion.

This is a render done in Iray by one of the content creators here on Renderosity, which I think really show the benefit of PBR and how much more alive renders become. The slight noise in the image, works very well and makes it look a lot more real than if it was just a smooth render, think its a very good image.

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/vyk-ritchie-for-v-8-1/149326

This is something completely different, but was getting some inspiration for a project im working on so decided to hit Ikea website hard :)

What most people probably don't know is that a huge amount of images you find on their website is actually 3D, which makes sort of sense, as it would take forever for them to setup all the kitchens etc. But this is from their website and at first it looks very realistic, until you start looking very closely, like the cookies, the even surfaces of the content in the jars etc. Anyway just a fun fact for those that might not have known :)

I actually DID know that about IKEA. But I don't particularly like that super real look. As someone earlier in this thread said, Superfly can do really good glass and metal. The problem I run into is that other things don't look as realistic, so you have this photographically realistic gun, bottle, etc. but the figure doesn't look nearly as realistic, so the image looks "off." (Actually, I run into this with Firefly, too. Sometimes I'll intentionally make shaders look less realistic.)

It's a matter of taste. I like that flatness you dislike. The dramatically lit images you like look very "3D" to me, like video game stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but just not what I'm aiming for.

I'm not opposed to Superfly. I've bought Superfly materials...but find I don't use them much. I don't often need what Superfly provides, and it's not worth the longer, noisier renders.

And I actually like and use dynamic hair. It does have its issues, and I would love it if they improved it, particularly the memory issues, but I use it a lot more than I use Superfly.

I think this is something that everyone should think about. Firefly isn't going away just because you use Superfly. In fact, for the same reason they won't give me full Cycles in Poser, they can't do away totally with Firefly. Superfly is a HYBRID. It uses both Cycles AND Firefly nodes. And that's actually what I object to. What may work fine in Firefly is crap when using it in Superfly or trying to use it in Cycles. I know for certain that several nodes that I want to use in Cycles is missing in Poser. And I respect workarounds, but they don't always work properly. One good example would be the Firefly colorramp node. Perfect for Firefly, not so much for Cycles. And let's not forget that there are several nodes missing all together for Cycles. I would accept the explanation that the development team just ran out of time for development of these nodes, except for one thing, if time was the factor, why not just add the nodes in during the intervening years? I also firmly believe that this hybridization has not only slowed down, but discouraged any development for Cycles in Poser and any materials for use in Poser. I admire Ghostship. He's had the determination I lacked, to wrestle with Poser's compound nodes. There may be others but I don't know of them.

randym77 posted at 7:05AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418451

I actually DID know that about IKEA. But I don't particularly like that super real look. As someone earlier in this thread said, Superfly can do really good glass and metal. The problem I run into is that other things don't look as realistic, so you have this photographically realistic gun, bottle, etc. but the figure doesn't look nearly as realistic, so the image looks "off." (Actually, I run into this with Firefly, too. Sometimes I'll intentionally make shaders look less realistic.)

It's a matter of taste. I like that flatness you dislike. The dramatically lit images you like look very "3D" to me, like video game stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but just not what I'm aiming for.

I'm not opposed to Superfly. I've bought Superfly materials...but find I don't use them much. I don't often need what Superfly provides, and it's not worth the longer, noisier renders.

And I actually like and use dynamic hair. It does have its issues, and I would love it if they improved it, particularly the memory issues, but I use it a lot more than I use Superfly.

Agree, that certain objects stand out is an issue that everyone faces unless they create everything themselves, especially humans as you correctly say, because we are so good at recognizing them, so if they are just slightly off we spot it.

And you are correct the images are from video games :)

TwiztidKidd posted at 7:26AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418417

Thank you... just a couple smart filters... I can't paint hair as amazing as you do... I can draw stick figures though but not very well lol

I'm curious about how long does it take to render a 2048 x 2048 portrait upclose with Superfly or 4000 x 4000?

The same image at 2048x2048 took 10657 seconds lol or 2:57 on my 10 year old machine with an AMD FX-8120 CPU and no GPU.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

EClark1894 posted at 7:13AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418452

I think this is something that everyone should think about. Firefly isn't going away just because you use Superfly. In fact, for the same reason they won't give me full Cycles in Poser, they can't do away totally with Firefly. Superfly is a HYBRID. It uses both Cycles AND Firefly nodes. And that's actually what I object to. What may work fine in Firefly is crap when using it in Superfly or trying to use it in Cycles. I know for certain that several nodes that I want to use in Cycles is missing in Poser. And I respect workarounds, but they don't always work properly. One good example would be the Firefly colorramp node. Perfect for Firefly, not so much for Cycles. And let's not forget that there are several nodes missing all together for Cycles. I would accept the explanation that the development team just ran out of time for development of these nodes, except for one thing, if time was the factor, why not just add the nodes in during the intervening years? I also firmly believe that this hybridization has not only slowed down, but discouraged any development for Cycles in Poser and any materials for use in Poser. I admire Ghostship. He's had the determination I lacked, to wrestle with Poser's compound nodes. There may be others but I don't know of them.

Didn't know that, in fact I don't really know a lot about cycles at all :D

Couldn't they combine some nodes in Firefly, so it could work with the metal and roughness from PBR? So it could use the same maps, if that was possible and they could improve the shader for these that would go a long way.

Since I don't know a lot about cycles I take your word for it, that certain things are missing. What nodes do you lack, I mean what limitations do you find when using cycles of stuff that you can't make due to these missing ones?

Also since you seem to have a much better understanding of cycles than me, maybe you can help me with some glass issues :D

So here is a simple setup, a plane with a glassBsdf and a thin box with the same material. My issue is that the glass shader seem to behave rather weird when working with a double faced object like a box. Where you get this dark shadow as if the glass is not completely transparent, even though I have the color to all white. Lets assume it was a window with double glass in it. Do you know what is going on or how to fix it? I have tried to tell the box to not cast shadows, but didn't help so I assume its from the shader. Also have cranked up the transparency bounces so there should be more than enough.

I like dynamic hair. It's a pain to style but once you have it created, it can look good. In superfly, it renders faster than transmapped hair of a similar style and thickness. The legacy stuff that comes with Poser needs a lot of work to get it to look good. But that's no different than any other legacy content. Hair is too coarse and sparse to accommodate the old hardware. With today's computers, you could jack up the settings so it looks good and the computer won't have any trouble. The image I did of Sydney I quadrupled the density of the hair and raised the vertices to 100 and my 10-year-old computer didn't bat an eye. Granted, I didn't drape it, but with that style and pose, it didn't need it.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

I'm sorry the filters are not available on the market, they work in conjunction with a library, a database of photos, which you need a log in to access.

The closer you get with the camera to her face to capture the details the longer it will take to render also, especially if the face texture is 8K

3D-Mobster posted at 10:15AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418456

EClark1894 posted at 7:13AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418452

I think this is something that everyone should think about. Firefly isn't going away just because you use Superfly. In fact, for the same reason they won't give me full Cycles in Poser, they can't do away totally with Firefly. Superfly is a HYBRID. It uses both Cycles AND Firefly nodes. And that's actually what I object to. What may work fine in Firefly is crap when using it in Superfly or trying to use it in Cycles. I know for certain that several nodes that I want to use in Cycles is missing in Poser. And I respect workarounds, but they don't always work properly. One good example would be the Firefly colorramp node. Perfect for Firefly, not so much for Cycles. And let's not forget that there are several nodes missing all together for Cycles. I would accept the explanation that the development team just ran out of time for development of these nodes, except for one thing, if time was the factor, why not just add the nodes in during the intervening years? I also firmly believe that this hybridization has not only slowed down, but discouraged any development for Cycles in Poser and any materials for use in Poser. I admire Ghostship. He's had the determination I lacked, to wrestle with Poser's compound nodes. There may be others but I don't know of them.

Didn't know that, in fact I don't really know a lot about cycles at all :D

Couldn't they combine some nodes in Firefly, so it could work with the metal and roughness from PBR? So it could use the same maps, if that was possible and they could improve the shader for these that would go a long way.

Since I don't know a lot about cycles I take your word for it, that certain things are missing. What nodes do you lack, I mean what limitations do you find when using cycles of stuff that you can't make due to these missing ones?

Also since you seem to have a much better understanding of cycles than me, maybe you can help me with some glass issues :D

So here is a simple setup, a plane with a glassBsdf and a thin box with the same material. My issue is that the glass shader seem to behave rather weird when working with a double faced object like a box. Where you get this dark shadow as if the glass is not completely transparent, even though I have the color to all white. Lets assume it was a window with double glass in it. Do you know what is going on or how to fix it? I have tried to tell the box to not cast shadows, but didn't help so I assume its from the shader. Also have cranked up the transparency bounces so there should be more than enough.

There is no one kind of glass. Most people assume that glass is glass and they use the shader thinking it will treat it as such. But remember, Cycles and Superfly are PBR renderers, so there are some lighting and opacity issues that you will have to account for in your settings. That's not as difficult as you think, you have to do the same thing for Firefly, but it's more a matter of what you expect. Think of it like this: looking through a window is not the same as looking through a glass bottle or even eyeglasses. But you expect less or no distortion looking through a window, unless you're looking through it at a weird angle, while you do expect distorions looking through an eyeglass, bottle or even water. Yet people can, will, and have used the Cycles shader to be all of these in a render.

Off hand, except for the color ramp node which I mentioned earlier, I can't be specific on which nodes are missing in Superfly. I do know that a couple of missing nodes are math nodes, I believe, and I think an input and a color node are missing as well.

The Displacement node is also missing in Poser. There may be a few others that I've overlooked. In terms of glass, don't forget refraction and how thickness can play a role in how it interacts with light. Bagginsbill has covered many topics concerning both Firefly and Superfly with examples of overcoming supposed impossible renders. Unfortunately, many of those discussions have faded into the internet void because they were posted at RDNA before its demise. You can still find many posts here at Rendo if you search deep enough or use Google.

hborre posted at 11:56AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418469

The Displacement node is also missing in Poser. There may be a few others that I've overlooked. In terms of glass, don't forget refraction and how thickness can play a role in how it interacts with light. Bagginsbill has covered many topics concerning both Firefly and Superfly with examples of overcoming supposed impossible renders. Unfortunately, many of those discussions have faded into the internet void because they were posted at RDNA before its demise. You can still find many posts here at Rendo if you search deep enough or use Google.

That reminds me. I miss RDNA's forum. Bagginsbill dropped a lot of knowledge in there and now it's mostly gone. I have a few pages that I saved, but not much. I also hate the fact that I have to do a deep search to find past posts by Bagginsbill here on Renderosity. I still have his posts about nylons on my mac somewhere.

EClark1894 posted at 11:58AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418468

There is no one kind of glass. Most people assume that glass is glass and they use the shader thinking it will treat it as such. But remember, Cycles and Superfly are PBR renderers, so there are some lighting and opacity issues that you will have to account for in your settings. That's not as difficult as you think, you have to do the same thing for Firefly, but it's more a matter of what you expect. Think of it like this: looking through a window is not the same as looking through a glass bottle or even eyeglasses. But you expect less or no distortion looking through a window, unless you're looking through it at a weird angle, while you do expect distorions looking through an eyeglass, bottle or even water. Yet people can, will, and have used the Cycles shader to be all of these in a render.

Off hand, except for the color ramp node which I mentioned earlier, I can't be specific on which nodes are missing in Superfly. I do know that a couple of missing nodes are math nodes, I believe, and I think an input and a color node are missing as well.

This is a test from Vray with very thickness of glass, some ridiculous :D But it behaves as I would expect, meaning it doesn't cast a shadow.

I looked up some Blender cycle tutorial and it seems like they have a new shader "PrincipledBsdf", not sure how new it is :D. which someone used earlier here in the chat, but that seem to be able to make clear glass, so it might simply be an issue with the GlassBsdf not sure.

RedPhantom posted at 12:00PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418457

I like dynamic hair. It's a pain to style but once you have it created, it can look good. In superfly, it renders faster than transmapped hair of a similar style and thickness. The legacy stuff that comes with Poser needs a lot of work to get it to look good. But that's no different than any other legacy content. Hair is too coarse and sparse to accommodate the old hardware. With today's computers, you could jack up the settings so it looks good and the computer won't have any trouble. The image I did of Sydney I quadrupled the density of the hair and raised the vertices to 100 and my 10-year-old computer didn't bat an eye. Granted, I didn't drape it, but with that style and pose, it didn't need it.

I'm kind of the opposite. I like dynamic hair because you can drape it. I usually don't bother to style it.

Even with a souped up computer, there are issues with collisions with dynamic hair. If Poser runs out of memory, the hair will go through the figure. There are workarounds. It would be nice to have improvements in the hair room, or even the workarounds included with Poser.

3D-Mobster posted at 12:11PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418472

EClark1894 posted at 11:58AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418468

There is no one kind of glass. Most people assume that glass is glass and they use the shader thinking it will treat it as such. But remember, Cycles and Superfly are PBR renderers, so there are some lighting and opacity issues that you will have to account for in your settings. That's not as difficult as you think, you have to do the same thing for Firefly, but it's more a matter of what you expect. Think of it like this: looking through a window is not the same as looking through a glass bottle or even eyeglasses. But you expect less or no distortion looking through a window, unless you're looking through it at a weird angle, while you do expect distorions looking through an eyeglass, bottle or even water. Yet people can, will, and have used the Cycles shader to be all of these in a render.

Off hand, except for the color ramp node which I mentioned earlier, I can't be specific on which nodes are missing in Superfly. I do know that a couple of missing nodes are math nodes, I believe, and I think an input and a color node are missing as well.

This is a test from Vray with very thickness of glass, some ridiculous :D But it behaves as I would expect, meaning it doesn't cast a shadow.

I looked up some Blender cycle tutorial and it seems like they have a new shader "PrincipledBsdf", not sure how new it is :D. which someone used earlier here in the chat, but that seem to be able to make clear glass, so it might simply be an issue with the GlassBsdf not sure.

May I see your glass bsdf setup?

EClark1894 posted at 12:15PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418475

May I see your glass bsdf setup?

Its the one you use there, just plugged into the Surface of a CyclesSurface node and I just made the color white in the GlassBsdf

SuperFly is superior to FirFly in most every way. For one, it looks more cinematic, especially the graininess which makes animation look like it was shot on film.

What are some tips for optimizing render speeds for animation?

Eronik posted at 2:47PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418479

SuperFly is superior to FirFly in most every way. For one, it looks more cinematic, especially the graininess which makes animation look like it was shot on film.

What are some tips for optimizing render speeds for animation?

Install Queue Manager on any other computers on your network, and use them as "remotes".

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Eronik posted at 3:29PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418479

SuperFly is superior to FirFly in most every way. For one, it looks more cinematic, especially the graininess which makes animation look like it was shot on film.

What are some tips for optimizing render speeds for animation?

Agree with seachnasaigh, alternatively reduce the resolution or quality, trying to find something that you think is acceptable.

Just some fun information :)

This is from Monster University:

The 2,000 computers have more than 24,000 cores. The data center is like the beating heart behind the movie's technology. Even with all of that computing might, it still takes 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University, according to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi.

From a workflow view point the standardised node layout of the physical root node does allow a certain amount of integration/automation. For example the ability to integrate with Substance painter allows for rapid prototyping and exporting of textures - instance a base texture across muiltiple mat zones, apply light baking and weathering on top of that instance and then bake. Using instancing its possible to create a number of texture sets that look quite different but are just a few clicks different, The flaw in this argument is the lack of automation between substance painter and Poser, there was a Cycles proposal back in 2015 on how to integrate PBR with a principle node and the mat file associated with its OBJ file but that doesn't appear to have been picked up. I suggested a simpliar approach with Poser 12 enhancements, don't think that was picked up either. Not trying to sell Substance Painter but for anyone who likes texturing but not the material room it is an option to consider and it doesn't need to be photo realistic there was a tutorial on this site for using SP with toon like textures (light baking).

The following are generated using SP and the physical root node as examples

ironsoul posted at 5:17PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418486

From a workflow view point the standardised node layout of the physical root node does allow a certain amount of integration/automation. For example the ability to integrate with Substance painter allows for rapid prototyping and exporting of textures - instance a base texture across muiltiple mat zones, apply light baking and weathering on top of that instance and then bake. Using instancing its possible to create a number of texture sets that look quite different but are just a few clicks different, The flaw in this argument is the lack of automation between substance painter and Poser, there was a Cycles proposal back in 2015 on how to integrate PBR with a principle node and the mat file associated with its OBJ file but that doesn't appear to have been picked up. I suggested a simpliar approach with Poser 12 enhancements, don't think that was picked up either. Not trying to sell Substance Painter but for anyone who likes texturing but not the material room it is an option to consider and it doesn't need to be photo realistic there was a tutorial on this site for using SP with toon like textures (light baking).

Agree, even if people don't want or have time to learn a 3D application, simply learning substance painter, which can be done fairly fast would pretty much blow new life into all their content. Doesn't really matter how old an object is. So I would strongly suggest that to anyone.

@3D-Mobster - ask one of the mods to remove that picture from Monsters Univ, last thing you need is Disney showing up asking questions.

TwiztidKidd posted at 5:57PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418490

@3D-Mobster - ask one of the mods to remove that picture from Monsters Univ, last thing you need is Disney showing up asking questions.

Surely they wouldn't do that, its freely available on the internet.

Try to do a search on Monster university on google, there are like 1000s of pictures. :)

Looking at the monster image - Interesting thought if P11 devs had gone down the Renderman route instead of Cycles, maybe we could claim fair use for education purposes.

Yes, yes, yes, actually Disney owes Renderosity for hosting and advertising their image for free

ironsoul posted at 6:48PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418495

Looking at the monster image - Interesting thought if P11 devs had gone down the Renderman route instead of Cycles, maybe we could claim fair use for education purposes.

I just looked it up, as I know that Disney can be very protective, but there shouldn't be an issue with simply posting their image.

---

A Disney character's name or image can be used without a license if it is a fair use. "Fair use" is a term that broadly refers to using the image in a limited manner that promotes freedom of expression.

I couldn't express more freedom than I did when posting that image, even if I tried, so guess its fair use :D

Wow, just realized reading this thread that it's not only possible to render with a GPU, but it's actually faster too. Happy days!

ironsoul posted at 7:01PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418486

The following are generated using SP and the physical root node as examples

Those are some kick-ass renders, and texturing. Do you offer texturing as a service?

Eronik posted at 7:12PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418500

ironsoul posted at 7:01PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418486

The following are generated using SP and the physical root node as examples

Those are some kick-ass renders, and texturing. Do you offer texturing as a service?

Substance painter uses Iray as default, which means that you can export directly to both Daz Iray and Superfly. Its a lot of fun and if you have just a basic understanding of PS and layers its really not that difficult to learn.

You can get a 30 days free trial to learn and play around with it if you want. Just export any object from poser that you want to texture and load it directly into it, since you already have all the UVs on the objects you just have to paint them :)

Here are some demonstration and some introduction videos.

Paint in 3D with Substance Painter

Introduction to Substance Painter - Ultimate Beginners Guide

This might help with those having grain issues in superfly https://www.posersoftware.com/article/516/poser-basics-how-to-control-the-quality-of-your-superfly-renders

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

Well 3D-Mobster, not sure what UV mapping is, but most likely these outfits don't have them: (by the way, these are SuperFly renders)

These are all raw OBJs from Maya, with colors assigned to the polygons for poor man's texture mapping. We're kind of OK with the way they look, because at least the style is consistent. Might give SP a go, but would rather outsource the texturing if anyone would be interested in a "little" collaboration.

Thanks for the SP tip, never heard of it before but the demos look very impressive.

Eronik posted at 8:42PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418507

Well 3D-Mobster, not sure what UV mapping is, but most likely these outfits don't have them: (by the way, these are SuperFly renders)

UV Mapping= UV mapping is the process of translating a 3D surface with volume and shape onto a flat 2D texture image. A way to visualize how that works is to consider an object that was wrapped as gift. A UV map is similar to the careful unwrapping of the object and pressing the wrapping paper flat (much like a map of the earth that has the same constraints as a UV map). The actual execution of the UV mapping process requires some science and much art, but, like modeling, texturing, or even rendering, understanding the tools is an important part of understanding the process.

Thanks EClark! Got any recommendations for some easy to use apps that can do this? Preferably free :)

Oh and while on the OG topic of SuperFly, are there any procedural texturemaps that could be used on models that do not have UV mapping? Especially ones that are made specifically for clothing in Superfly? There are a few stock cloth procedural maps in P12, but I still get streaks and rendering oddities when applied to these raw models.

Eronik posted at 9:48PM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418511

Thanks EClark! Got any recommendations for some easy to use apps that can do this? Preferably free :)

Oh and while on the OG topic of SuperFly, are there any procedural texturemaps that could be used on models that do not have UV mapping? Especially ones that are made specifically for clothing in Superfly? There are a few stock cloth procedural maps in P12, but I still get streaks and rendering oddities when applied to these raw models.

UV Mapper and Blender are the only ones I've used. Blender is free, but UV mapper last I heard has both a free and one for sale.

Some of the other modeler's have UV apps and I THINK so does Substance Painter.

Thanks mate! Will sniff these out.

Superfly vs Firefly

The only adjustment between these two renders was the intensity of the light. Firefly takes about 20% less lighting intensity.

Bottom line: Firefly looks CG and a bit 1990-ish, whereas Superfly is more cinematic and gives us half a snowball's chance in hell to compete against Maya & Blender artists.

Cute outfits, but IMO, you should UV map them. A lot more versatility that way. You can still use procedurals even if they're mapped.

I believe Maya lets you UV map your models. Most 3d modeling software does.

I don't believe this is the appropriate format for such advice - try blender, for example. If I had to use cad software for that, I would create the "perfect shape" and then use free form modelling to add imperfections.

Unfortunately, I believe that the best way to model fabric is still to do so in real life. There are products that do this, but they are typically very high-end and of limited utility to the home gamer.

"non dead eyes" sorry, still dead eyes, which is not a matter of render, settings or use of shaders, but posing. Those eyes don't have a focus. Looks like being lost in thoughts.

I actually like the Firefly hair better. Looks more natural to me.

And neither image has convincing velvet, IMO. Ghostship (I think) did a nice Superfly velvet shader.

There's an amazing artist here who's mastered Superfly very well, his renders are super-cool: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/?uid=NobbyC

... and he just switched to rendering in Blender lol

randym77 posted at 10:43AM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418537

Cute outfits, but IMO, you should UV map them. A lot more versatility that way.

That would be the next step, and 3D-Mobster is doing an epic job tutoring me on this subject.

Nevertrumper posted at 10:46AM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418548

"non dead eyes" sorry, still dead eyes, which is not a matter of render, settings or use of shaders, but posing.

Oh I beg to differ my friend, her eyes are very much focused on a little ball that is used for controlling her eyes, because in animation the very last thing you wanna do is use the dials for that. Unless you're animating a deranged individual suffering from PTSD, the dreaded 1000 yard stare that plague a few renders out there.
Here she is lookin' at you.

But the "non-dead" remark was about the way the eyes pick up light sources in the scene. In this case a fireplace and a candle, something Firefly simply no comprende. If you are familiar with anime, they depict zombies and dead people by rendering the eyes without the little white dot in them.

TwiztidKidd posted at 2:01PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418558

There's an amazing artist here who's mastered Superfly very well, his renders are super-cool: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/?uid=NobbyC

... and he just switched to rendering in Blender lol

People render in all sorts of things, Blender have the benefit that Octane come free with it as far as I know. Actually I render far more in Vray than Superfly, but I still use Poser a lot, because its so easy to work with figures in it, and when Im done I just export the figure to 3ds max and render there. It, very common in discussion here on Renderosity to read how people talking down certain programs due to one thing and therefore reach the conclusion that something else is just better in every single way. But reality is that most people that use 3D applications, switches between them for various reasons. Some might like to model in one program, animate in another, do UVs in a third, to then combine it all and render it in yet another program, to then finish it all in PS :). They all serve some sort of step in whatever workflow people catch on to over time and that they prefer. And given that blender is free means that people don't have to learn blender if they don't want to, but can simply do as me, pose and make the scene in Poser export to Blender and render using Octane, and simply learn how to do that. That doesn't mean that Poser is useless, it just fills one step in the process of making whatever you like, in the end its the final image or animation that is important, not how or which programs you used to get there :)

And people shouldn't feel bad about using premade props, people do this all the time, they just don't take credit for having created them.

3D-Mobster posted at 2:52PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418576

TwiztidKidd posted at 2:01PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418558

There's an amazing artist here who's mastered Superfly very well, his renders are super-cool: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/?uid=NobbyC

... and he just switched to rendering in Blender lol

People render in all sorts of things, Blender have the benefit that Octane come free with it as far as I know. Actually I render far more in Vray than Superfly, but I still use Poser a lot, because its so easy to work with figures in it, and when Im done I just export the figure to 3ds max and render there. It, very common in discussion here on Renderosity to read how people talking down certain programs due to one thing and therefore reach the conclusion that something else is just better in every single way. But reality is that most people that use 3D applications, switches between them for various reasons. Some might like to model in one program, animate in another, do UVs in a third, to then combine it all and render it in yet another program, to then finish it all in PS :). They all serve some sort of step in whatever workflow people catch on to over time and that they prefer. And given that blender is free means that people don't have to learn blender if they don't want to, but can simply do as me, pose and make the scene in Poser export to Blender and render using Octane, and simply learn how to do that. That doesn't mean that Poser is useless, it just fills one step in the process of making whatever you like, in the end its the final image or animation that is important, not how or which programs you used to get there :)

And people shouldn't feel bad about using premade props, people do this all the time, they just don't take credit for having created them.

I've been using Poser since version 2, and seems like I recall even back then people were using Carrara to render their Poser scenes in. Honestly, I never understood the point or the appeal, but hey different strokes... Of course, i was using Bryce because I needed backgrounds and Bryce would do them. Here's the cover of a book I wrote back then. I used Bryce to make the environment and texture the ship, and the undersea domes.

Here is an artist talking about all the programs he uses and what he uses them for. Thought it would be interesting for people to see.

My Most Used Programs For Creating 3D Art

EClark1894 posted at 2:59PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418582

I've been using Poser since version 2, and seems like I recall even back then people were using Carrara to render their Poser scenes in. Honestly, I never understood the point or the appeal, but hey different strokes... Of course, i was using Bryce because I needed backgrounds and Bryce would do them. Here's the cover of a book I wrote back then. I used Bryce to make the environment and texture the ship, and the undersea domes.

Remember Bryce, damn that could do some amazing landscapes at the time, played with some demo a long time ago, does it still exists or did Vue or what they are called buy them? Never learned how to use it though, just that it looked very cool :)

3D-Mobster posted at 3:47PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418576

But reality is that most people that use 3D applications, switches between them for various reasons. Some might like to model in one program, animate in another, do UVs in a third, to then combine it all and render it in yet another program, to then finish it all in PS :) ...

Dude, it makes no difference what programs an artist uses--the more tools he got in his toolbox, the better he can express himself.
And the audience couldn't give a flying rat's missing tail what tools were used so long as the final product is entertaining and looks good.

Hop on over to NewGrounds and have a look at the top animations for 2020. It's a mixed bag, but once you watch a few of these, you ain't gonna care what it was made with, you just gonna enjoy the trip.

3D-Mobster posted at 5:22PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418584

EClark1894 posted at 2:59PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418582

I've been using Poser since version 2, and seems like I recall even back then people were using Carrara to render their Poser scenes in. Honestly, I never understood the point or the appeal, but hey different strokes... Of course, i was using Bryce because I needed backgrounds and Bryce would do them. Here's the cover of a book I wrote back then. I used Bryce to make the environment and texture the ship, and the undersea domes.

Remember Bryce, damn that could do some amazing landscapes at the time, played with some demo a long time ago, does it still exists or did Vue or what they are called buy them? Never learned how to use it though, just that it looked very cool :)

It's still around. DAZ owns it now, version 7.

Bryce is still around at DAZ and I got mine for free.

EClark1894 posted at 5:55PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418593

It's still around. DAZ owns it now, version 7.

hborre posted at 5:55PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418597

Bryce is still around at DAZ and I got mine for free.

Watched some videos, could only find some from 2015 (latest), it seems a little outdated, at least from the videos I saw. but could probably work nicely if one were going for some comic style landscape or something.

Bryce was the first 3D software I ever used, version 4 to be exact, which was long before DAZ got their hands on it.

It's the reason I became a member here at Renderosity back in 2000 as, at the time, it was the only Bryce forum around. DAZ's Bryce forum is about the only one I've visited in many a year, because David Brinnen and Horo know the software backwards, forwards, and inside/out. I have most of their Bryce goodies from the DAZ store back in the day.

In more recent years, however, I've used it to create interesting abstracts, a few of which are on page 3 of my Gallery here at Renderosity.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Miss B posted at 6:06PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418599

Bryce was the first 3D software I ever used, version 4 to be exact, which was long before DAZ got their hands on it.

It's the reason I became a member here at Renderosity back in 2000 as, at the time, it was the only Bryce forum around. DAZ's Bryce forum is about the only one I've visited in many a year, because David Brinnen and Horo know the software backwards, forwards, and inside/out. I have most of their Bryce goodies from the DAZ store back in the day.

In more recent years, however, I've used it to create interesting abstracts, a few of which are on page 3 of my Gallery here at Renderosity.

Those are really cool, very creative, didn't know Bryce could even make such stuff, thought it was all about landscapes. :)

Miss B posted at 7:41PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418599

Bryce was the first 3D software I ever used, version 4 to be exact, which was long before DAZ got their hands on it.

It's the reason I became a member here at Renderosity back in 2000 as, at the time, it was the only Bryce forum around. DAZ's Bryce forum is about the only one I've visited in many a year, because David Brinnen and Horo know the software backwards, forwards, and inside/out. I have most of their Bryce goodies from the DAZ store back in the day.

In more recent years, however, I've used it to create interesting abstracts, a few of which are on page 3 of my Gallery here at Renderosity.

As I said, I started using Bryce back during Poser 2. It was actually my 2nd 3d software. I actually bout Bryce 2, 2, and 4 before I stopped using it. I did think that when DAZ bought it it would merge better with Poser, but at that time at lease, it seemed like they actually diverged even more. I still have version 6 in my product library at DAZ, but I haven't used it.

Hmm, I didn't even know there WAS a Bryce forum. Think I'll give it a quick look-see.

Bryce & Poser - Most Viewed Rendo Image

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/siege-s03-/322332

Oh, man, I remember "Siege." Posted in 2003, and still amazing.

I have a copy of Bryce, that I got free from DAZ. Never used it much, though. I much prefer Vue. Though I'm much less enamored of it now that it's gone subscription.

WOW!! I don't remember if I saw it back then, but that is one amazing piece of artwork, no matter the software used.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

EClark1894 posted at 10:07PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418602

Hmm, I didn't even know there WAS a Bryce forum. Think I'll give it a quick look-see.

I don't think it's very active these days, but I'm sure there are archived threads you can visit.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

i was never able to manage the Bryce editor window and renders took for ever.

3D-Mobster posted at 8:40AM Fri, 07 May 2021 - #4418600

Those are really cool, very creative, didn't know Bryce could even make such stuff, thought it was all about landscapes. :)

Those were created with tutorials, though I don't remember where the tutorials are. Those were done quite a while ago, so I'm not sure if there are still links available to them in the Bryce forum at DAZ.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Blender have the benefit that Octane come free with it as far as I know

This is incorrect.

While there is a free stand alone version of octane that requires in internet connection(IIRC) and supports only one GPU. it does not come with a Blender installation.

Blender ships with Cycles(the complete version) and its realtime Veiwport engine EEVEE. There is also the AMD Radeon ProRender for Blender that is a separate install.

I have the these three engines installed but as animated filmmaker I use EEVEE almost exclusively and some time cycles for smoke& fire sims

There is also the free Luxcore engine for blender.

Bryce, like Carrara and hexagon is "necro-ware". Dead programs with no further development/updates and only exist because Daz makes the installers Available

Bryce is still a 32 bit brute force raytrace application built on the ancient code of Eric Wenger ,the french musician who created it.

My website

YouTube Channel

Miss B posted at 1:42PM Fri, 07 May 2021 - #4418639

Those were created with tutorials, though I don't remember where the tutorials are. Those were done quite a while ago, so I'm not sure if there are still links available to them in the Bryce forum at DAZ.

Ahh ok, don't worry, Im not about to get into Bryce :)

wolf359 posted at 1:43PM Fri, 07 May 2021 - #4418666

Blender have the benefit that Octane come free with it as far as I know

This is incorrect.

While there is a free stand alone version of octane that requires in internet connection(IIRC) and supports only one GPU. it does not come with a Blender installation.

Blender ships with Cycles(the complete version) and its realtime Veiwport engine EEVEE. There is also the AMD Radeon ProRender for Blender that is a separate install.

I have the these three engines installed but as animated filmmaker I use EEVEE almost exclusively and some time cycles for smoke& fire sims

There is also the free Luxcore engine for blender.

Bryce, like Carrara and hexagon is "necro-ware". Dead programs with no further development/updates and only exist because Daz makes the installers Available

Bryce is still a 32 bit brute force raytrace application built on the ancient code of Eric Wenger ,the french musician who created it. Ahh ok just heard it was, haven't actually tried Blender for a very long time.

EClark1894 posted at 9:32AM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418582

3D-Mobster posted at 2:52PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418576

TwiztidKidd posted at 2:01PM Thu, 06 May 2021 - #4418558

There's an amazing artist here who's mastered Superfly very well, his renders are super-cool: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/gallery/?uid=NobbyC

... and he just switched to rendering in Blender lol

People render in all sorts of things, Blender have the benefit that Octane come free with it as far as I know. Actually I render far more in Vray than Superfly, but I still use Poser a lot, because its so easy to work with figures in it, and when Im done I just export the figure to 3ds max and render there. It, very common in discussion here on Renderosity to read how people talking down certain programs due to one thing and therefore reach the conclusion that something else is just better in every single way. But reality is that most people that use 3D applications, switches between them for various reasons. Some might like to model in one program, animate in another, do UVs in a third, to then combine it all and render it in yet another program, to then finish it all in PS :). They all serve some sort of step in whatever workflow people catch on to over time and that they prefer. And given that blender is free means that people don't have to learn blender if they don't want to, but can simply do as me, pose and make the scene in Poser export to Blender and render using Octane, and simply learn how to do that. That doesn't mean that Poser is useless, it just fills one step in the process of making whatever you like, in the end its the final image or animation that is important, not how or which programs you used to get there :)

And people shouldn't feel bad about using premade props, people do this all the time, they just don't take credit for having created them.

I've been using Poser since version 2, and seems like I recall even back then people were using Carrara to render their Poser scenes in. Honestly, I never understood the point or the appeal, but hey different strokes... Of course, i was using Bryce because I needed backgrounds and Bryce would do them. Here's the cover of a book I wrote back then. I used Bryce to make the environment and texture the ship, and the undersea domes.

Something I meant to mention but forgot a few days ago... as you can see this is Book One of what was actually meant to be a Trilogy. I did write two more stories in the trilogy, but I never published the books. I even went so far as to start a fourth story before I finally quit. I originally bought both Poser and Bryce to make an animated storyboard of my story. This was actually a few years BEFORE SeaQuest DSV first came out. There was some interest from an agency and I bought Poser when they asked for a pitch. Just thought I'd tell the story. :)

EClark1894 posted at 11:01AM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418719

Something I meant to mention but forgot a few days ago... as you can see this is Book One of what was actually meant to be a Trilogy. I did write two more stories in the trilogy, but I never published the books. I even went so far as to start a fourth story before I finally quit. I originally bought both Poser and Bryce to make an animated storyboard of my story. This was actually a few years BEFORE SeaQuest DSV first came out. There was some interest from an agency and I bought Poser when they asked for a pitch. Just thought I'd tell the story. :)

You could always self publish them today or simply as an ebook or something :D

Superfly renders - these are not as good as a pro artist but what is missing?

If superfly is bad why are bad why are they include in site promos? I know this post will be ignore because it doesn't conform to the idea that Pose is bad

ironsoul posted at 11:58AM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418732

Superfly renders - these are not as good as a pro artist but what is missing?

Think they look very good, people complaining about them or what?

ironsoul posted at 12:13PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418732

Superfly renders - these are not as good as a pro artist but what is missing?

There is nothing missing. These are very good imo

Not aboout the renders, its more a general complaint about the assertion Superfly was a mistake, I've used many render engines and they all have problems :) I'm jusr saying we need to work with the constraints . Not sure if that makes sense.

Its not a criticism, just saying that peope that decide to work with poser are not backward or behind the times, just part of their work flow.

I would just like a objective discustion on if Superfy was good or bad. My own option is it works ok but I#m not a pro.

I get what you're saying. Of course every renderer has problems. But still poser is lacking some stuff but we have to do with what we got

ironsoul posted at 1:00PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418745

I would just like a objective discustion on if Superfy was good or bad. My own option is it works ok but I#m not a pro.

I personally love it compared to Firefly, which shouldn't be understood as Firefly then equal useless, because it have its uses. But to me the key arguments for Superfly are these:

1. PBR workflow, which means that it is highly adoptable between several applications which also uses PBR (which is almost all of them today). This means that you can easily transfer textures and materials from one application to another. Hardly any application as far as I know, can work with Firefly textures. Which means that you have to set them up in whatever program you are using if you want to get the most out of them. Whereas you can almost just plug and play PBR textures into another application and expect a very similar result.

2. PBR materials react much better to different lighting environments than Firefly does, meaning you could potentially have to fiddle with your materials the moment you change lighting because they suddenly look different than what you would expect.

3. Its much easier to create textures for, which you know work well across several render engines. They are in general also a lot easier to understand, as you basically work with "largely" two types of materials, metallic and non metallic and in most cases, its fairly easy to understand, wood equal non material and iron equal metal. :)

4. For a market like Rendo, there is a much better chance that content fit well together if everyone uses the same basic technic of making stuff, my metal would be exactly like someone else's. A good example is the "One glass shader to rule them all" thread, look how different people make glass, which is because we have to make the shader from scratch. Not needed in normal PBR only when you have to mess with cycles.

5. Much more realistic lighting, which is preferable regardless of whether you want to make toon renders or realistic ones. You can always adjust and manipulate an image later on, but it is almost impossible to fix bad lighting. Unless you do some serious paint over.

6. Firefly is good if you need something fast and for something specific. But where realism is not important.

7. Pretty much all professional 3d tools today (if not all) uses PBR, so you can create textures in them and get instant feedback and not having to jump back and forth between programs all the time and things not looking as you thought, to then go back and make new adjustment.

8. Downside with PBR is that it is slower to render.

These are just what I can think of.

FIrefly vs Supefly = why are we arguing

Not my decision but are not both good?

Mybe tajking the discussiion outsude of thread, just get tired of Superfly being presented as a mistake, its just a tool and what we make of it is down to expectatiion.

ironsoul posted at 4:58PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418752

Mybe tajking the discussiion outsude of thread, just get tired of Superfly being presented as a mistake, its just a tool and what we make of it is down to expectatiion.

I've never said Superfly was a mistake. I just think Full Cycles with ALL the nodes would be better, for development if nothing else.

ironsoul posted at 4:58PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418752

Mybe tajking the discussiion outsude of thread, just get tired of Superfly being presented as a mistake, its just a tool and >what we make of it is down to >expectation

Many of the complaints I see about "superfly" is that its material system is missing several vital nodes such as the color ramp, compared to Blender.

But most poser users buy premade content ,with only a tiny percentage even knowing what a color ramp does, let alone use this node to build their own materials.

As a Blender user I can attest that the color ramp is critical to making many types of complex shaders such as this procedurally scratched metal (See pic)

Also there is no rendered veiwport display as there is in Blender cycles. Tthat is a poser core software limitation not a fault of Superfly per say

However if you want to truly get the full features of the Blender render engine /material system then you will have to manually port your poser content over to Blender for rendering as no actual bridge to Blender plugin exists for poser'as They do for for CC3 pipeline or Daz studio.

My website

YouTube Channel

Actually, I was going to try to make materials for Poser, but missing nodes and nodes that jump around when you uncompress them, made me quit.

EClark1894 posted at 9:45PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418767

Actually, I was going to try to make materials for Poser, but missing nodes and nodes that jump around when you uncompress them, made me quit.

I'm not sure what you mean by "uncompress them", but I would recommend you get Structure's free Node Tidier script. It gives you several options for how you want the nodes to appear. It says it's an update, so possibly will work with Poser 12.

Structure's Node Tidier 3 : Updated

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

ironsoul posted at 2:35AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418743

Its not a criticism, just saying that peope that decide to work with poser are not backward or behind the times, just part of their work flow.

Dude, do you know who is behind the times? Artists who use paintbrushes with something called water colors. And behind those are our ancestors who used burned up sticks to express themselves on some cave's wall. Art is art! Regardless of the tool used to express an idea in a human's mind. The only unfortunates lacking in any kind of artistic inclination complaining about a given tool are those who don't know how to use them.

Otherwise, those render samples are very impressive!

Ironsoul; I'm in your camp. I've said it before and I'll say it again. An artist (or most any other profession) is only as good as his ability to master his tools. The best watercolour artist on the planet may be a complete failure with oils. Is it the fault of the brush? Is it the fault of the paint? Is it the fact the artist is a hack? No, it means he needs more practice and theory on how oil paint reacts with his canvas/backing board of choice. Firefly, Superfly, iRay, 3Delight; Arnold, Octaine; and the band played on. Which is the best? Which is abject crap? Answer depends more upon which render engine the person normally uses than anything else. Oils, water colours, tempra, gauche, and all the rest are just ways to express yourself. Render engines are no different than paint. Learn what to expect from your paint and how to correctly apply it and you can paint a masterpiece or a bedroom wall. It's down to skill at that point.

BTW I haven't touched Firefly in a couple of years now. I saw the advantages to a PBR workflow a long time ago when it comes to cross platform rendering and repeatedly showed images from Superfly and iRay challenging viewers to identify which was which. The maps I produce in Substance can go directly to either engine and with the same HDRI environment there is no real way to discriminate between them.

A lot of folk that don't like Superfly haven't tried it. A lot of folk complaining of long render times have not used a modern version of Poser. Those that complain that their video card is not supported for Superfly renders are not trying CPU renders. The number of missing nodes from Cycles can be counted on one hand with fingers left over. The biggest complaint is no Colour Ramp like in Firefly or Cycles. That node is reproducible with a lot of add clousure nodes chained together and dropped into a compound node. That is Earl's and other's complaint along with compound nodes that expand to off the screen so they have to scroll the screen to see the entire shader. Not sure how that is a Superfly issue. Has nothing to do with the render engine.

Eronik posted at 8:15AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418788

ironsoul posted at 2:35AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418743

Its not a criticism, just saying that peope that decide to work with poser are not backward or behind the times, just part of their work flow.

Dude, do you know who is behind the times? Artists who use paintbrushes with something called water colors. And behind those are our ancestors who used burned up sticks to express themselves on some cave's wall.

Oh dang, wait, I didn't get that memo! Quick help me hide these before the Outdated Police comes to get me LOL!

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.

Joke aside, the best tool is the one you deal best with. It's a personal thing. I've left Firefly behind years ago, because I love Superfly more. And I've tried other things, and even though I have a new complaint about Poser's bugs every day, it's still my favorite end tool for 3d characters.

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.

Miss B posted at 8:36AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418781

I'm not sure what you mean by "uncompress them", but I would recommend you get Structure's free Node Tidier script. It gives you several options for how you want the nodes to appear. It says it's an update, so possibly will work with Poser 12.

Structure's Node Tidier 3 : Updated

Miss B, thanks for this link! It'll be great to have neat nodes.

---

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

parkdalegardener posted at 10:25AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418807

A lot of folk that don't like Superfly haven't tried it. A lot of folk complaining of long render times have not used a modern version of Poser.

I don't think this is true. I'm using the latest version of Poser. My video card is supported, and I've done both CPU and GPU renders. The render times are still a lot longer for Superfly than Firefly.

Superfly is slower, and that just doesn't fit my style of work as well as Firefly. Hyperrealism isn't my thing. I confess, I use a lot of trial and error, adjusting poses, camera angle, lighting, etc. Even using low quality rendering to test setups...Superfly is slower than Firefly. (Since you can also use draft mode in Firefly. I have Poser set to default to the minimum quality in the Auto Settings in Firefly, because I do a ton of test renders before cranking up the settings to do a final render. And often end up doing several of those, because I keep changing my mind about what looks best.)

Maybe it would be less of an issue with a better preview, but so many Superfly materials just don't look anything like they'll look like when you render. So I end up doing even more test renders...which are soooo slow compared to Firefly.

I get faster renders in Superfly than Firefly. A LOT of it is knowing what to set up in the options - the more rays for something you set, the longer it'll take and a lot of times those rays will be calculating nothing at all.

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.

Miss B posted at 10:44AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418781

EClark1894 posted at 9:45PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418767

Actually, I was going to try to make materials for Poser, but missing nodes and nodes that jump around when you uncompress them, made me quit.

I'm not sure what you mean by "uncompress them", but I would recommend you get Structure's free Node Tidier script. It gives you several options for how you want the nodes to appear. It says it's an update, so possibly will work with Poser 12.

Structure's Node Tidier 3 : Updated

I was using the wrong word. But basically, it's a compound node that's been expanded. The nodes tend to jump all over creation. I got so tired of chasing them down that I just quit trying. Like I said, it's bad enough to be missing a few nodes that you really need to make a material, but then to expand a compound node to work on it some more and then find the nodes are scattered all over, well ***** it!

EClark1894 posted at 11:01AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418824

Miss B posted at 10:44AM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418781

EClark1894 posted at 9:45PM Sat, 08 May 2021 - #4418767

Actually, I was going to try to make materials for Poser, but missing nodes and nodes that jump around when you uncompress them, made me quit.

I'm not sure what you mean by "uncompress them", but I would recommend you get Structure's free Node Tidier script. It gives you several options for how you want the nodes to appear. It says it's an update, so possibly will work with Poser 12.

Structure's Node Tidier 3 : Updated

I was using the wrong word. But basically, it's a compound node that's been expanded. The nodes tend to jump all over creation. I got so tired of chasing them down that I just quit trying. Like I said, it's bad enough to be missing a few nodes that you really need to make a material, but then to expand a compound node to work on it some more and then find the nodes are scattered all over, well ***** it!

That's why I suggested Structures Node Tidier. It's free, and does the job well, and YOU decide how you want the nodes to line up, as there are several options available.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Structure's Node Tidier has been updated to work with Poser 12, according the read me.

But it doesn't work in Poser 11. I guess Python isn't backwards compatible.

No, because it's a different language version. Python 2 is in P11. Python 3 is the current language version and that is in P12. Alas, the two don't talk, hence the breaking of many scripts.

Does the node tidier include the missing Cycles nodes? No? Oh well.

I even bought a book and a kit on how to make more Cycles materials. Fat lot good that did me. Yeah, I could make the material in Blender, but I couldn't import it into Poser. The necessary nodes weren't there.

I better stop now, before I get angry and say something I don't really mean.

randym77 posted at 12:31PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418831

But it doesn't work in Poser 11. I guess Python isn't backwards compatible.

AHA! I was wondering if it would cover both, but yes, now that I think about the incompatibility of Python 2 and Python 3, I realize it's a totally different version.

That said, however, I wonder why Structure didn't leave the earlier version of Node Tidier available for those who don't have, and won't be upgrading to Poser 12 any time soon.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

EClark1894 posted at 12:41PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418837

Does the node tidier include the missing Cycles nodes? No? Oh well.

That's not the purpose of the Node Tidier. It's purpose is to take the nodes that already exist, and move them around to an easier way to see them all, so it's easier to work with them. It wasn't meant to "add" any nodes.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Miss B posted at 1:04PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418839

EClark1894 posted at 12:41PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418837

Does the node tidier include the missing Cycles nodes? No? Oh well.

That's not the purpose of the Node Tidier. It's purpose is to take the nodes that already exist, and move them around to an easier way to see them all, so it's easier to work with them. It wasn't meant to "add" any nodes.

I know it wasn't but the nodes jumping around when I expanded them just frustrated me . They weren't the ONLY reason I quit trying to make materials for Cycles in Poser.

EClark1894 posted at 1:38PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418767

Actually, I was going to try to make materials for Poser, but missing nodes and nodes that jump around when you uncompress them, made me quit.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are talking about, but can't you just share the Mc6 file in the material library? There is a position for each node in them from what I can see?

@3D-Mobster: I fail to understand what you are questioning and meaning by share and position. Could you elaborate further on what you are implying?

hborre posted at 7:10PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418858

@3D-Mobster: I fail to understand what you are questioning and meaning by share and position. Could you elaborate further on what you are implying?

As I said I might have misunderstood what he meant, but it sounded to me like people were annoying with how nodes in the material editor behaves and them jumping around when they make materials or something. But maybe they mean something else?

3D-Mobster posted at 7:20PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418268

RobZhena posted at 7:45AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418265

I don't like or use Superfly except to test my freebies because it is way too complicated and way too slow. Over the years, there have been endless threads about how to get something to look right in Superfly. You don't see those about Firefly. There's one thread on the Poser 12 forum right now about how to get skin to look realistic in Superfly. Skin looks fine in Firefly. Criticize me for not wanting to change my work flow, but to me it's about not making my work flow take much longer, such as by having to tweak a bunch of friggin' nodes. When I look at Superfly renders, the only things that look significantly better to me are glass and metal. I don't care about glass or metal.

Now, Poser 12 fixes the speed problem, but it also emphasizes the complexity problem because people are having to waste time because 12 doesn't handle materials the same as 11. Plus, Poser 12 nukes all the Python scripts I use every single day.

I am happy with my results in Firefly. I can quickly test numerous commercial light sets to get just the effect I want. It renders the materials of every product I own. New is not inevitably better.

It seems to me that a lot of people confuses Superfly with a confusing web of nodes all over the place. But that is where the physical surface node comes in. It is a cycle node just made easy, so you don't have to do all those crazy nodes.

I would say that all of the foregoing discussion about complex nodes demonstrates that your suggestion that the physical surface node is One Node to Rule Them All is incorrect. Way too complex and way too slow, at least in Poser 11.

RobZhena posted at 7:54PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418862

I would say that all of the foregoing discussion about complex nodes demonstrates that your suggestion that the physical surface node is One Node to Rule Them All is incorrect. Way too complex and way too slow, at least in Poser 11.

I think you misunderstood what I meant with it. The physical surface node from what I understood, is simply one which is made to handle the most generic cycle setup in one Node, rather than you having to make them from scratch through cycles. (Its some time since I heard it, so might recall wrong).

But from what I understood, everything you have in the physical node you could also make using cycles, there is no difference. besides you not having to combine these cycle nodes together all over the place yourself.

Whether its slower or not, I have no clue as I haven't tested it, but see no reason to think, that it should be.

I don't believe I have ever said that the Physical node was a Node to rule them all, but rather that it is perfectly suitable to handle almost all normal or standard materials, like wood, metal, stone, paint, plastic etc. But that there are some things that it can't do, like water, glass, ice, which is why I made the other thread about Glass.

Also this doesn't concern any of the missing nodes that people talk about, this is a general issue with Superfly or Poser or what you want to call it.

But a lot of people, including myself, don't like using cycles because I don't know what is going on in it. I don't know what will happen when I use a Mix node and plug "fac" into a lightpath or geometry nodes -> Position or what it is called. I can't visualize what is going to happen or even why I would do it in the first place, because I have no clue what it means.

If you use the physical surface node with the exceptions of those mentioned above, it can handle it, by simply using texture maps. which are much easier for people to understand.

If you know that White is maximum Roughness and Black is no Roughness, then a Grey is somewhere between these. And therefore it is both visually and in general easier to understand when looking at a texture map. compared to looking at a lot of nodes.

And personally I haven't found any material I haven't been able to make using the Physical node with the exception of those materials mentioned above, and there might be others obviously, but can't think of them right now.

Where cycles is very good and if I understand what some people are complaining about when it comes to missing nodes, is because you can make procedural materials by building them from scratch and lacking certain nodes can be very annoying. But for most people, as others have also mentioned, they don't use cycles because they make little sense. Whereas the Physical node works pretty much exactly like Firefly and is visually easy to understand.

So I hope that made it more clear what I meant. Besides the ones I mentioned, what materials have people issue with creating using it?

3D-Mobster posted at 7:20AM Mon, 10 May 2021 - #4418861

hborre posted at 7:10PM Sun, 09 May 2021 - #4418858

@3D-Mobster: I fail to understand what you are questioning and meaning by share and position. Could you elaborate further on what you are implying?

As I said I might have misunderstood what he meant, but it sounded to me like people were annoying with how nodes in the material editor behaves and them jumping around when they make materials or something. But maybe they mean something else?

Okay, I had to go do a little research and dig up my copy of the Cycles Encyclopedia. BTW, while looking through the encyclopedia, I noticed two things, Poser has added two nodes, at least in P12, and some of the nodes have been renamed in Poser.

Here are the nodes that I have determined to be missing in Poser.:2049:

Colorramp node.....

Vector Curves node.....

RGB Curves node.....

Procedural node....

Point Density node.....

Attribute node.......

RGB node ( This is an iffy. It MAY have been renamed the Color node in Poser since RGB basically means the same thing.

Also there are NO output nodes at all. (Again, this MAY be integrated into the root Cycles node.

I did notice that Bondware has added two PrincipledBSDF nodes. One is for Hair.

I recommend checking out the Blender Manual linked here. You will get an overview of what each node will do with some examples. Well worthwhile if you want to seriously grasp the basics of cycle. There are plenty of tutorials posted on YouTube if you care to spend time watching the videos and taking notes. There are also plenty of images with shader node arrangements scattered throughout the internet and readily available if you do a Google search.

There is nothing that can be done about the absence of critical nodes, the coding in Poser does not lend itself to such features so you may need to be creative and construct an alternate compound node to fit your needs. Forget any nodes with curves, the feature does not exist at all in Poser and introducing them will destroy backward compatibility with P11. As for the latest P12 PrincipledBSDF and PrincipledHair nodes, they will prove useful. I've used the PrincipledBSDF node successfully for improved SSS for skin; the PrincipledHair needs to be worked with to achieve the right balance for strand-based hair, there hasn't been enough testing yet to find that sweetspot.

The color node or the simple color (firefly) could be used in place of the RGB node. My limited understanding is that the Attribute node is based on different functions of blender like the quick effects (smoke) and the node is tied to those. Or it's used as a way for more advanced users to create their own node function. Unless we get those options, the node is useless in poser anyhow. I believe the output node would be the equivalent of Poser's root nodes.

I think your list of nodes might be a little old. I don't see the procedural node listed in the current version of blender, and looking through the nodes, I saw a few others I don't remember in Poser, but I didn't double-check so I may have missed them. But I realize that blender is changing and adding frequently and it takes time to adapt the nodes to poser and test them to make sure they work as they should and don't cause the computer to explode. We may see some of the newer nodes eventually. I too hope for a color ramp and the RGB curves nodes. I know that you can use the FF color ramp sometimes and I have, but there are aspects of the cycles one that that old one doesn't have

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hborre posted at 9:26AM Mon, 10 May 2021 - #4418903

I recommend checking out the Blender Manual linked here. You will get an overview of what each node will do with some examples. Well worthwhile if you want to seriously grasp the basics of cycle. There are plenty of tutorials posted on YouTube if you care to spend time watching the videos and taking notes. There are also plenty of images with shader node arrangements scattered throughout the internet and readily available if you do a Google search.

My issue is not to understand the descriptions or at least most of them.

But for example in the other thread "One glass shader to rule them all" someone asked about diamonds.

So here we have a nice one:

I can see what is going on and what effect im after.

But when simply starting with a cycle shader, it just doesn't make a lot of sense how and why I would connect different things.

This is the final image of a shader I copied.

And the result:

But to me at least, the shader itself doesn't just seem logically to me, meaning starting with the cycle node and then just adding stuff. And obviously that would probably make more sense the more time you spend using and building them, and trying out different things. But my huge interest in making stuff, is not the technical side of creating shaders. I much more prefer to use others. So im happy others really enjoy making and sharing them, but for me personally Im more interested in the artistic side of just making stuff or what to say.

But thanks anyway, I do occasionally look in that manual you linked.

RedPhantom posted at 9:51AM Mon, 10 May 2021 - #4418904

The color node or the simple color (firefly) could be used in place of the RGB node. My limited understanding is that the Attribute node is based on different functions of blender like the quick effects (smoke) and the node is tied to those. Or it's used as a way for more advanced users to create their own node function. Unless we get those options, the node is useless in poser anyhow. I believe the output node would be the equivalent of Poser's root nodes.

I think your list of nodes might be a little old. I don't see the procedural node listed in the current version of blender, and looking through the nodes, I saw a few others I don't remember in Poser, but I didn't double-check so I may have missed them. But I realize that blender is changing and adding frequently and it takes time to adapt the nodes to poser and test them to make sure they work as they should and don't cause the computer to explode. We may see some of the newer nodes eventually. I too hope for a color ramp and the RGB curves nodes. I know that you can use the FF color ramp sometimes and I have, but there are aspects of the cycles one that that old one doesn't have

Well here's the thing... I did mention that I saw where Poser had included the Principled BSDF and the Principled Hair BSDF nodes to Poser 12. I was trying to be fair by mentioning them. And I grant you that the Cycles reference book that I used has probably gotten a little dated. Cycles is moving on. But which is more like to be happening, Cycles losing a few nodes to get more in line with Poser, or Poser needing to add a few more nodes to get more in line with Cycles? Now, I'll probably need to buy another Cycles encyclopedia soon to find out what new nodes it's added. Truth is, I may wait a while since Cycles X is about to come out, putting Poser even further behind than it already is.

3D-Mobster, your diamond looks great. I tried to build maybe that same Blender mat, but it kept coming out too dark and too blue. I couldn't get it right. Of course, I didn't use a good diamond object either. I tried building one from a Bucky ball and cone, but it was too sloppy. I've gotta get a good diamond object.

---

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

VedaDalsette posted at 2:11PM Mon, 10 May 2021 - #4418921

3D-Mobster, your diamond looks great. I tried to build maybe that same Blender mat, but it kept coming out too dark and too blue. I couldn't get it right. Of course, I didn't use a good diamond object either. I tried building one from a Bucky ball and cone, but it was too sloppy. I've gotta get a good diamond object.

Might also be because you are not using an HDRI map to light the scene, otherwise it will have nothing to reflect etc.

You can get a lot of free ones here:

https://hdrihaven.com/

Thanks! I've gotten a lot of hdrs from hdrihaven. Great resource. Anyway, yesterday I DID use an HDRI map to light it, but it was hopeless. So today I tried your mat (AND I finally screwed my head on straight and looked for a diamond object in freestuff and found a good one!). I used the Superfly Loop lighting with an HDRI. (Tried it without the lighting and it looks kinda the same, only slightly darker.)

The diamonds have a lotta colors, so maybe I should double-check the mat setup, but, at least, they look like diamonds instead of blue glass now! Thanks so much.

---

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Figured out what I did wrong. In the Red, Green, and Blue glass nodes, I had the roughness at .001 (like the white one). Changed them all to 0 like in your example. And I subdivided them for the halibut.

---

W11,Intel i9-14900KF @ 3.20GHz, 64.0 GB RAM, 64-bit, GeForce GTX 4070 Ti SUPER, 16GB. 

Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

The diamonds belong in Cybertenko's treasure chest. (A different kind of chest than the usual chests you see on Rendo.)

---

W11,Intel i9-14900KF @ 3.20GHz, 64.0 GB RAM, 64-bit, GeForce GTX 4070 Ti SUPER, 16GB. 

Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

if anyone is still interested in the original Tidy Node script that structure did, it is in his file locker expressly for sharing... it should work for any version of Poser prior to P12. .

Tidy Nodes Python - original

drop the script at the end of this path:

Runtime:Python:poserScripts:scriptMenu

someone please correct me if i'm wrong on that path - i may be misremembering as it's been a long time mucking with such things... thanks!

Thanks, Giana!

I think it will work anywhere you put it, but if you want it to show on the scripts menu, you have to put it there. (I usually run Python scripts using File -> Run Python script instead.)

you're welcome :)

thanks for the tip!

Thank you so much Giana! Very much appreciated! :)

I just went through the sticky thread of Poser 12 renders on the Poser 12 forum, and in my humble opinion, the number of truly outstanding render can be counted on the fingers of one hand, most of them by a single vendor. Ah, Superfly.

You are assuming everyone who renders Superfly posts on that thread. A better sampling would be to check the galleries and using Superfly snd Poser 12 specifically as keywords. I personally post on the galleries only and I imagine many people are the same, for various reasons, most of them not vendors or not commenting in forums a lot.

RobZhena posted at 8:38PM Mon, 17 May 2021 - #4419302

I just went through the sticky thread of Poser 12 renders on the Poser 12 forum, and in my humble opinion, the number of truly outstanding render can be counted on the fingers of one hand, most of them by a single vendor. Ah, Superfly.

Not really sure how you determine the potential of a render engine like that? You can take the best of the best render engine on the market, that doesn't mean that it will just automatically throw out super images one after another. For an image to look interesting or good, it requires so much more than a specific render and there is a good chance that a lot of people capable of making such images, spend a whole lot more time on them and have a completely different background than the average Poser user have, they might also have access to programs that they might not have.

This is from Zbrush, would you call that a good render, that Superfly impossible could do?

My guess, is that you would agree that the model is interesting and looks good. The render it self is absolutely nothing special and could easily be done in Superfly. That doesn't mean that Zbrush render engine is awful and bad.

This is also from Zbrush..

Where a lot of compositing have be done in Photoshop. So I looked up his profile and this is what it says, have removed his name just in case:

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My name is *** and I’m a passionate character artist. I have done various tutorials for 3d World, 3D artist, zbrushworkshops.com and have also been working for Pixologic as a beta tester for ZBrush. I’m currently employed as a senior character artist at *** in Stockholm, Sweden where we do game cinematics and other VFX jobs.

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My point being that I highly doubt that the average Poser user have a similar background. Get a person like this to render something in Superfly and give it the same treatment that he would do with any of his renders and I bet you that it would look pretty damn good.

The problem most people seem to have when you read posts like these, is that they expect the 3D render to look absolutely amazing and interesting without any post work, when the truth is that they rarely do.

I think people still don't really know how to get the best of out Superfly. While they've been using Firefly for almost 20 years.

A lot of Superfly renders still look unpleasantly grainy to me. And it seems to be really hard to get hair to look good in Superfly. The renders that really impress me have been ones without humans in them.

randym77 posted at 10:10AM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419421

I think people still don't really know how to get the best of out Superfly. While they've been using Firefly for almost 20 years.

A lot of Superfly renders still look unpleasantly grainy to me. And it seems to be really hard to get hair to look good in Superfly. The renders that really impress me have been ones without humans in them.

Honestly I think that is an issue for all renders or in general 3D, whenever we deal with humans, skin shaders and hair are really not easy to make good.

Even if you take something like Nvidia hairworks, it looks cool, and do believe it is one of the top of line things for making hair in games at least. It still looks slightly off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IltIVf_TeFg&ab_channel=NVIDIA

Then you have the whole skin shader etc. So in Posers defence, most 3D apps (at least from what I have seen) have a hard time dealing with these things. Especially for us hobbyists, that doesn't have a long career in professional 3D, even in a lot of hollywood movies etc. with huge budgets, the characters still seem to struggle with these issues.

For the most part, the grain is simply because people don't bother waiting for it to render. Not saying that Superfly couldn't improve on it, but PBR rendering just takes slightly longer.

Superfly got a very rough start back in the day when it turned out its implementation was missing a significant number of nodes that were key in many a popular Blender tutorial. This left a lot of people unsure how to work around the limitations of the Cycles implementation, and made the learning curve even steeper than it already was.

Some were able to make something work, but quite a few of those work-arounds were very complex and weren't easy to adapt by less knowledgeable users (this being the vast majority). Add to that a very sparse selection of built-in materials, something that over five years on has not meaningfully improved (why is there no default library of dozens of common materials?), and it's little surprise that Superfly became 'too much of a hassle' for many users. It didn't help that many prime content creators had by then started moving away from Poser, which meant that there was also no supply of examples to learn from.

PBR or texture based materials could in theory circumvent the imperfect Cycles implementation, but PBR requires a whole lot of new textures that many older Poser products simply don't have. That's where the lack of many new releases comes in again. Without a steady supply of new products, the Poser library of many users remained fixed in the Firefly era with no textures to support PBR renders and no Cycles materials to make Superfly seem worthwhile.

To this day the number of Superfly material packages is very limited. Poser itself still for some reason offers barely anything useful on this front.

It's a shame, too, because it is very possible to make Poser Superfly render great images. It's just a huge hassle to go spend hours reworking textures and materials rather than making actual scenes, which is what I suspect most users simply want to do.

You sum it up eloquently and elegantly, @adosity. If nothing, lack of normal maps makes a ton of figure skin maps hard to convert without outside help. Lack if decent tutorials with simple language explaining whai is what specifically for Poser users is also an issue (there are attempts on this forum, but I must confess I grew frustrated trying to actually reciprocate ANY of those, literally on my P12).

So we forge on. But the lack of help and P12 Superfly specific content is felt keenly for those who aren't already gurus of nodes.

I see what you mean about Hairworks. Nice animation, but the shaders don't quite look right. Though I'd be happy with static hair. I use dynamic hair, but mostly for posing, not for animation.

I like the idea of less dense hair if you're further away. Kirwyn did a sort of version of that for his Genesis dynamic hair (which was created before DAZ took the name - it has nothing to do with DAZ). The hair had two skullcaps, each with hair, so you could use just one for distance shots, and both for closeups.

adosity posted at 10:58AM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419426

Superfly got a very rough start back in the day when it turned out its implementation was missing a significant number of nodes that were key in many a popular Blender tutorial. This left a lot of people unsure how to work around the limitations of the Cycles implementation, and made the learning curve even steeper than it already was.

Some were able to make something work, but quite a few of those work-arounds were very complex and weren't easy to adapt by less knowledgeable users (this being the vast majority). Add to that a very sparse selection of built-in materials, something that over five years on has not meaningfully improved (why is there no default library of dozens of common materials?), and it's little surprise that Superfly became 'too much of a hassle' for many users. It didn't help that many prime content creators had by then started moving away from Poser, which meant that there was also no supply of examples to learn from.

PBR or texture based materials could in theory circumvent the imperfect Cycles implementation, but PBR requires a whole lot of new textures that many older Poser products simply don't have. That's where the lack of many new releases comes in again. Without a steady supply of new products, the Poser library of many users remained fixed in the Firefly era with no textures to support PBR renders and no Cycles materials to make Superfly seem worthwhile.

To this day the number of Superfly material packages is very limited. Poser itself still for some reason offers barely anything useful on this front.

It's a shame, too, because it is very possible to make Poser Superfly render great images. It's just a huge hassle to go spend hours reworking textures and materials rather than making actual scenes, which is what I suspect most users simply want to do.

I believe it have been like that for a long time, despite many users having pointed it out. A program like Poser mainly exist due to its content and for a long time (Not blaming Renderosity) it seems that those in charge of the development of Poser doesn't really get it. Which is sad.

Keep in mind that Daz is their biggest competitor and it is free. You want Poser to stand out you have to make something unique and the easiest way to do that in my opinion and what clearly drives a lot of users are the characters. And Poser in my opinion need to deliver it with top of line characters each release, you can't release characters that are outdated or that people don't think is attractive or want to work with.

And I completely agree in regards to the materials, which I can understand why confuses people, because those they have included and call Superfly materials are not PBR materials, meaning they don't make use of the roughness, metal settings, but is rather a weird Firefly textures, using fake maps to work (or not work), but the problem is that the material doesn't work in PBR, because its completely wrong. And its extremely complicated compared to what a true PBR texture look like.

The one on the left is the Superfly material and the one on the right is how the true PBR shader of brass should be, look at how differently the materials react to light.

If the material weren't ruin already the moment you change the lighting conditions, its destroyed. And keep in mind I haven't actually increased the lighting in the scene, I only change the color of the ground the spheres are sitting on to complete white and the sphere on the left is behaving completely crazy.

It makes no sense that they make Superfly and marketing it as a PBR render to then supply it with wrong materials, which does nothing to ruin it and confuse people of how to use it. To me, its like they have this idea that it has to work in both render engines, so it doesn't matter if its correct or not. Its such a weird way of doing it. Because Firefly materials will not work in Superfly, they are build completely differently, because they are faked.

And if you compare the setup for both sphere, they look like this, look how simple the PBR setup is, compared to the Firefly and trying to fake it and then it still looks wrong:

So why would they ruin Superfly (PBR) because of Firefly users, when they know it doesn't work, they must know that these materials are not true PBR. But obviously people looking at them might think, well sure these are Superfly textures, otherwise they wouldn't include them. But look at the difference, when using the correct PBR node, compared to trying to fake it. Of course the Superfly is going to look as bad as Firefly, because it doesn't make use of the benefit it has, but rather tries to fake it as well. Its not a good way to sell Superfly or PBR, when they choose to include non PBR materials as if they were, because people look at these and think they have to make them like that.

And again I think the issue is, they were/are (Hope Renderosity changes it) so keen on keeping Firefly alive that they are willing to ruin the newer stuff in Poser, to me its just baffling I don't get it. They want to maintain Firefly, that is perfectly fine, but then make specific materials for it and don't try to make a PBR/Firefly material that doesn't work and try to sell it as if it is. Even content creators not especially well into PBR, might use these metal materials as a starting point, thinking that they are perfectly fine.

Stop it!!! :D

randym77 posted at 12:14PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419429

I see what you mean about Hairworks. Nice animation, but the shaders don't quite look right. Though I'd be happy with static hair. I use dynamic hair, but mostly for posing, not for animation.

I like the idea of less dense hair if you're further away. Kirwyn did a sort of version of that for his Genesis dynamic hair (which was created before DAZ took the name - it has nothing to do with DAZ). The hair had two skullcaps, each with hair, so you could use just one for distance shots, and both for closeups.

I actually tried using poser cloth room for hair and you can get it to sort of work, but the problem is as you increases the number of hair it sort of breaks down :D Personally I don't make any animations, so hair dynamics is not especially important to me, but it would be cool if there were a very good and easy to use solution.

Rhia474 posted at 12:58PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419428

... So we forge on. But the lack of help and P12 Superfly specific content is felt keenly for those who aren't already gurus of nodes.

And speaking of not having to becomes nodes gurus, where would one find good starter sets of SuperFLy textures, especially procedural?

I remember people trying to use the cloth room for hair back in the early days of Firefly. I think they mostly just textured fairly large pieces of cloth to look like hair. For certain styles, it was okay.

Dynamic hair can be useful even for still images. Even the best hair doesn't have morphs for every situation. This is Kirwyn's dynamic hair, made longer and with a glossier shader:

There really was some nice work done with dynamic hair years ago. Kirwyn had some fantastic ideas, and there were a lot of different shaders that ranged from realistic to shampoo-ad shiny. But really, there's been no improvement in the Hair Room since Poser 6 or 7. (I think the above image was rendered in Poser 7.)

Eronik posted at 1:22PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419442

And speaking of not having to becomes nodes gurus, where would one find good starter sets of SuperFLy textures, especially procedural?

This is were PBR becomes very handy :D

I believed we talked a bit about it earlier, the substance painter etc? And if you have followed along in this thread, one of the benefits of PBR is that it works across different render engines... hint hint :D

This is a PBR texture from: Freepbr loaded directly into Poser's Physical node, using the four common maps you need (Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal). Which means that you can use any PBR texture you can find on the internet that use them and use them directly in Poser and expect them to be correct. You want them tileable you can probably find them. I found this site just doing a quick search. :)

This is how you hook it up:

Thing to notice, the diffuse might be called Albedo

Set Roughness and Metal to 1, and make sure that Roughness, Metal and the Normalmap when you load them in is set to Custom gamma value 1.0 in the load box.

randym77 posted at 1:37PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419444

I remember people trying to use the cloth room for hair back in the early days of Firefly. I think they mostly just textured fairly large pieces of cloth to look like hair. For certain styles, it was okay.

Dynamic hair can be useful even for still images. Even the best hair doesn't have morphs for every situation. This is Kirwyn's dynamic hair, made longer and with a glossier shader:

There really was some nice work done with dynamic hair years ago. Kirwyn had some fantastic ideas, and there were a lot of different shaders that ranged from realistic to shampoo-ad shiny. But really, there's been no improvement in the Hair Room since Poser 6 or 7. (I think the above image was rendered in Poser 7.)

That is so very nice looking hair, that looks very good, I think

Thanks. I know it's too glossy to be realistic, but that's my taste. I have not been able to get dynamic hair to look very good at all in Superfly.

I had success using some of what VinceBagna made for P11, some of those dont work well in P12 any more. Now if someone could explain how to add things like etchings on metal armor...

Bump would seem most appropriate?

---

W10 Pro, HP Envy X360 Laptop, Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, Intel UHD, 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Mudbox 2022, Adobe PS CC, Poser Pro 11.3, Blender 2.9, Wings3D 2.2.5

My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

...AFAIK displacement requires a correspondingly high resolution of subdivision in Superfly. Not really practical, besides something like etchings would best be served by bump. Displacement would be ridiculous overkill.

---

W10 Pro, HP Envy X360 Laptop, Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, Intel UHD, 16 GB DDR4-2400 SDRAM, 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Mudbox 2022, Adobe PS CC, Poser Pro 11.3, Blender 2.9, Wings3D 2.2.5

My Freestuff and Gallery at ShareCG

The single biggest thing that made Superfly easier for me to understand was realising that Specular has a completely different meaning -

• in Firefly, Specular is a hack to provide fake reflections (to use raytraced reflections in Firefly you would have to add a Reflect node to the material)

• but in Superfly, as everything has real raytraced reflections all the time, Specular means Base Reflectance.

This is why Firefly is often claimed to be faster. It isn’t, it’s just doing a lot less work. If you add Reflect nodes to every material to compare directly with Superfly you will find that speed difference …. quite different. For kicks, try adding some strong DoF too. Like for like, Superfly is way faster.

The second thing that helped me was a basic understanding of the PBR Metal/Rough workflow. Like, the difference between metal and not-metal. Base reflectance vs fresnel. What roughness means.

And start simple. The Physical Surface is good simple root that can do a lot of materials. Use the most basic light setup there is - a single white infinite at 100% intensity. Take Andy (or any simple prop with a single mat zone), make him metal. Then colour it. Then not-metal. What is the difference between roughness at 1, at .6, at 0.05. Add some procedurals as bump, see what difference it makes; add some more to roughness. Experiment. Get the basics first then move on and apply to more complex materials. Don’t start with skin ;)

And don’t bother with normals unless you know what tangent basis is, or the difference between OpenGL and DirectX, just use bump. It’s easier.

I have a thread going specifically for examples using the Principled BSDF here - volumetric SSS, glass, foliage, PBR textures etc.

If anyone wants to read about PBR, these are great sources of info courtesy of Marmoset Toolbag -

PBR Theory

PBR in practice

PBR Conversion

(I didn’t get it when I first read them, but the pictures are good. Eventually it sunk in.)

Oh yeah. The only nodes ‘missing’ from Superfly are those that have User Interface elements that Poser doesn’t have - the ability to draw curves, for example. Back in 2015 the developers decided that, given the number of nodes affected and the amount of time it would take to write all the code needed for the UI, which was not trivial, there were more important things to do.

They did a lot of work to enable mix ’n’ match as far as possible between existing Poser nodes and new Cycles nodes, and with the three root nodes you can create a single material with one root for Firefly and a different root for Superfly, and the render engine will use the right one. They also mapped all the new nodes as close as possible to the existing Poser nodes, so that a Superfly render with old materials would have a chance of not being terrible. This has created a very flexible material system but it is not often possible to take a material someone else has made for Blender and copy it directly for Poser node for node. However, being physically-based means that it is easier to create materials for Superfly without needing highly complex shaders if you can get to grips with some of the basics.

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Not approved by Scarfolk Council. For more information please reread. Or visit my local shop.

caisson posted at 4:12PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419457

The single biggest thing that made Superfly easier for me to understand was realising that Specular has a completely different meaning -

• in Firefly, Specular is a hack to provide fake reflections (to use raytraced reflections in Firefly you would have to add a Reflect node to the material)

• but in Superfly, as everything has real raytraced reflections all the time, Specular means Base Reflectance.

This is why Firefly is often claimed to be faster. It isn’t, it’s just doing a lot less work. If you add Reflect nodes to every material to compare directly with Superfly you will find that speed difference …. quite different. For kicks, try adding some strong DoF too. Like for like, Superfly is way faster.

The second thing that helped me was a basic understanding of the PBR Metal/Rough workflow. Like, the difference between metal and not-metal. Base reflectance vs fresnel. What roughness means.

For me, it's that it is easy observable in the real world.

• A metal is something that is an electric conductor. And you always work with the outermost layer. So a painted metal pipe for instance is not metal as there is paint.

• Roughness is easy understood, if one looks at it, like how "dirty"/beaten or uneven an objects surface is. A mirror have 0 roughness so its reflection is very high. A piece of wood have a high roughness and therefore doesn't reflect like a mirror.

So its pretty easy to take any object look at it and describe it based on these two values.

• The diffuse color is simply the color of the object, nothing else.

• Normal map is just a 3d bump map that is autogenerated. (No one makes these by hand, that would be insane), so as you said a grayscale bump map can do if needed.

Whereas if you work with fake materials and have to replicate an object, its a lot harder to describe it and even harder to put together all the nodes.

3D-Mobster posted at 7:15PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419446

This is a PBR texture from: Freepbr loaded directly into Poser's Physical node, using the four common maps you need (Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal). Which means that you can use any PBR texture you can find on the internet that use them and use them directly in Poser and expect them to be correct. You want them tileable you can probably find them. I found this site just doing a quick search. :)

This is how you hook it up:

Thing to notice, the diffuse might be called Albedo

Set Roughness and Metal to 1, and make sure that Roughness, Metal and the Normalmap when you load them in is set to Custom gamma value 1.0 in the load box.

That site is amazing. I'm rendering a quickie tabletop (wood) with a patterned brass texture on a ball, and it already looks 200% better than most stuff I tried as 'Superfly shader' before for those type of textures.

Thank you. Off to obsess a bit and experiment. Those tutorials Caisson posted go WAYYY over my head. Heck, most of his explanations go way over my head, I really need small words. Or just tell me 'this goes here, hook it up', this is the value. LOL.

Rhia474 posted at 7:56PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419468

That site is amazing. I'm rendering a quickie tabletop (wood) with a patterned brass texture on a ball, and it already looks 200% better than most stuff I tried as 'Superfly shader' before for those type of textures.

Thank you. Off to obsess a bit and experiment. Those tutorials Caisson posted go WAYYY over my head. Heck, most of his explanations go way over my head, I really need small words. Or just tell me 'this goes here, hook it up', this is the value. LOL.

Completely agree with you, because a lot of people confuses Superfly with a complex web of cycles nodes, adding this and multiplying that. Which is very useful when creating certain shaders, like the glass one we had a long discussion about in another thread and some diamond shader. So you still need a few of them for these materials, which is obviously a shame, because such materials should have been supplied with Poser, these would have been extremely useful. Like having a good PBR glass shader, water, diamond, gems etc. Where the physical shader struggles and because these are the ones that 95% of all people have issues with, because they don't know how to hook up all these nodes.

What is especially nice with PBR textures (using texture maps as above) is that they are extremely easy to read or understand. And since you have used some of the textures from that site, you would probably agree that they are very easy to understand, because they are just grayscale maps, the more white there is, the more rough a material is, so you can simply open the roughness map in Gimp or Photoshop and adjust the white/black values, if you want to make it more or less rough. You don't have to worry about any of the other maps.

And again, since these are PBR you know that they will look correct regardless of which lighting you use and that they will look the same for someone else that uses it as well.

Because as you can see in the example I showed above with the brass spheres, lets assume it was part of a product, so I adjust the lighting in my scene so it looks good in my promotional renders, however anyone that would buy it, might get completely different results, because the material react so differently depending on the lighting they use. And its extremely difficult for content creators to combat this, because how could we? We can't test all lighting settings that people might use to make sure that the product looks like we intended. But PBR solves most of these issues, despite the glass, gems, water etc. because they require cycle shaders and people might create them differently. So I would suggest (If you like the results of the glass shaders in the other thread) that you copy them down and save them to your library. Because it seem to work for all types of glass.

3D-Mobster posted at 9:52PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419446

This is a PBR texture from: Freepbr loaded directly into Poser's Physical node, using the four common maps you need (Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal).

Thank you for the link. I just downloaded about 20 of them, and bookmarked it to look for some more. That's definitely a great resource.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Agree that Bondware really should include some good Superfly shaders with Poser, and indicate which renderer they're meant for. The dynamic hair shaders included (and the dynamic hair) look god-awful rendered with Superfly. Even some Poser 11 Superfly shaders no longer work in Poser 12.

This must be a right pain for vendors, with basically three renderers to support (or at least consider). At this point, there's probably a lot more people using Firefly and Poser 11 Superfly than Poser 12, which makes it hard to get rid of one.

3D-Mobster posted at 10:34PM Tue, 18 May 2021 - #4419446

This is a PBR texture from: Freepbr loaded directly into Poser's Physical node, using the four common maps you need (Diffuse, Roughness, Metal and Normal). Which means that you can use any PBR texture you can find on the internet that use them and use them directly in Poser and expect them to be correct. You want them tileable you can probably find them. I found this site just doing a quick search. :)

Thanks for the link Mobster! Except that all this PBR talk is really making me thirty for a cold PBR :)

To your health!

Wow, that glass shader is amazing! ?

randym77 posted at 4:00AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419482

This must be a right pain for vendors, with basically three renderers to support (or at least consider). At this point, there's probably a lot more people using Firefly and Poser 11 Superfly than Poser 12, which makes it hard to get rid of one.

It is in my opinion a big issue, because which users should you make content for and which render engines? Then one could argue that we could just include materials for all of them. But I don't think people know how long it takes to make textures, PBR makes it slightly faster and allow all vendors to use the same basic method to describe the most common used materials that you will basically find in all scenes, which is really awesome.

Obviously the big issue as you also say is that both vendors and users, have different versions of Poser. Which obviously was an issue the moment Superfly was introduced, its to be expected, as its a completely new render engine. However Poser 12 have access or uses different nodes than Poser 11 does. And when Poser 13 comes out at some point I can only imagine that it will be even worse, because obviously users of Poser 12 want to make use of the benefits with their version and so does potential users of 13, but for vendors to make content for as many users as possible, it makes sense to make them for lowest possible version of Poser :D Which means that you have to use the nodes which are available in all the versions. And that is simply when we are talking Superfly, then you have to deal with Firefly as well, because a lot of people prefer using that, due to whatever reason.

So even for content creators there is probably not a huge incentive to switch to Poser 12, because as long as the majority of the community is stuck in Firefly or earlier versions of Superfly, the benefits which potentially comes with Poser 12 and above, is not really needed. I don't think that Poser 11 or 12 improves on Firefly compared to Poser 10 or maybe even 9, for instance?

And that is a huge issue, and I also think that its the wrong way for Poser to go, their strategy for Poser is wrong in my opinion. If you compare it to Daz and their method of doing it. Content creators as well as the users, will always work with the same version, some might choose not to upgrade, but 95% or more of the community will use the latest version.

I have no clue how many people are using the different versions of Poser, absolutely no clue, and I don't even think that Renderosity knows. They obviously have some sales indications. But I don't think they have any good numbers to work with when it comes to each version of Poser.

I suggested it back when they started talking about Poser 12, that they should make it free and I still think that it is the way to go. Yes, they might lose a bit of sales from Poser itself, but it will probably also boost the number of users, which will potentially buy content for it. So what Renderosity ought to do, is to boost and work on getting top of the line content. Like investing in top of line characters, animals etc. boost the relationship (not that it is bad) with content creators. Because content is what drive both Daz and Poser. Without that, these programs dies it's that simple really.

But constantly releasing new versions of Poser, which lets be honest is quite expensive, especially when you as a user also have to buy all the content. So the strategy they are using, is sort of like driving a knife deeper and deeper between content creators and users and their own business model, where the gap constantly gets wider and wider.

So if I were them, I would change the strategy for Poser completely.

1. Make Poser free.

2. Release high quality models (humans and animals like what initially drew people to Poser, yes it will have an initial cost, but it would be money well spend)

3. Make constantly small improvements to Poser, like adding new shaders and other minor improvements, that will help the average user.

4. Listen to the community about what changes they would like and slowly implement them, not in one huge release, but as above slowly over time.

5. If they want they can work on a more massive version in the background and release that when ready.

6. Work closely with the content creators and work on getting Poser out there so people are made aware that it exists and it's now free and there are lots of content for it. Basically increasing the user base. And as that happens, the sales in content should follow, which most likely will draw in more content creators as well, which again will most likely increase their revenues from content sales.

And finally everyone is working with the same version of Poser, which will make the marketplace a lot more consistent.

I personally think that if they are continuing with the strategy they have now, that they are potentially going to kill Poser, because it becomes too complicated or to messy for content creators to work between all these versions and for users also having to navigate between it, to find content that works in their version is not the right way to go.

Eronik posted at 5:28AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419483

Thanks for the link Mobster! Except that all this PBR talk is really making me thirty for a cold PBR :)

To your health!

If that is a 3D render, I have to say well done. That looks freaking awesome :D

Hopefully that will help me on my holy quest for spreading PBR to the masses :D

(PS. I think I missed the name of the beer, anyway looks awesome regardless :D)

3D-Mobster posted at 6:49AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419499

However Poser 12 have access or uses different nodes than Poser 11 does. And when Poser 13 comes out at some point I can only imagine that it will be even worse, because obviously users of Poser 12 want to make use of the benefits with their version and so does potential users of 13, but for vendors to make content for as many users as possible, it makes sense to make them for lowest possible version of Poser :D

I think this a major factor holding Superfly back. It's seen as not finished yet. Vendors and users are hesitant to commit, because Poser 13 (or even the next update of Poser 12) might break the shaders that used to work. You have the early adopters who are excited about a new toy, but most users don't want to learn a whole new system when it might go away with the next update.

Someone updating Snarly's scripts to work in Poser 12 would be a big help. Even if you know what you're doing, adjusting shaders for an entire human figure is a pain in the butt. If you don't, forget about it.

I do think they may have released Poser 12 too soon. They probably needed the money, but for most users, it's probably not worth it to upgrade, and I suspect it's kind of made a mess of the content market.

Not sure about your marketing plan, though. It sounds like that would leave them in turf war with DAZ, and I don't think they'll win.

Sorry randym & Mobster, but that beer shoot is an actual picture. And every time I scroll through this thread, I feel the urge to drink one of them beers, the PBR (short for Pabst Blue Ribbon) :}

But we could make it a fun challenge and see who can come close to that pict with SuperFly.

randym77 posted at 8:16AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419506

I think this a major factor holding Superfly back. It's seen as not finished yet. Vendors and users are hesitant to commit, because Poser 13 (or even the next update of Poser 12) might break the shaders that used to work. You have the early adopters who are excited about a new toy, but most users don't want to learn a whole new system when it might go away with the next update.

Someone updating Snarly's scripts to work in Poser 12 would be a big help. Even if you know what you're doing, adjusting shaders for an entire human figure is a pain in the butt. If you don't, forget about it.

I do think they may have released Poser 12 too soon. They probably needed the money, but for most users, it's probably not worth it to upgrade, and I suspect it's kind of made a mess of the content market.

Not sure about your marketing plan, though. It sounds like that would leave them in turf war with DAZ, and I don't think they'll win.

I don't think its a huge issue that Superfly is not a 100% completed, this issue is with all renders, where you have new and improved versions being released, which might require some adjustments to shaders etc. Stuff like that can be worked around, if people have access to the same versions. The problem is, that a person might make a product using a node in Poser 12, which means that it will probably just make an error in Poser 11, so potentially all those people are removed. Which is why vendors would probably target the lowest possible version. Which again sort of ruin the idea of a new release, because in a program like Poser which is 99% content driven, you want your content creators to adapt to the new features as fast as possible, because they help "sell" your product, otherwise what would be the point of a new version in the first place?

But as it is now, since users and vendors are split all over the place, its a nightmare for everyone, including Renderosity, because obviously they would like people to buy Poser 12 and content for it. That is how they make money, but the content creators are basically stuck in an old version and a lot of users are not going to upgrade to Poser 12, because of a single piece of content. So its kind of like everyone is stuck in a deadlock. Because even for vendors buying Poser 12 is still expensive, its not like we make millions of dollars from this. I think by far the most of us do it, because we enjoy making 3D and making a bit on the side is nice. But you have to remember that pretty much all content creators have experience with other 3D programs as well, which means that if we are working on personal projects, we wouldn't go through the whole process of turning them into products, which does take a lot of time already. So further complicating the whole process for us, I simply don't think is very beneficial for anyone in the community or again Renderosity themselves.

I don't know Snarly's scripts as I rarely use any scripts at all. But if they are useful, probably Poser should include a version of them which does whatever they do, because as you say it might be something that people really want.

Whether they released it to early or not, I don't know. But I definitely think they released it with the wrong price tag :D

In regards to Daz, they are already in a tug of war with them, and I don't think its about Poser winning over Daz or the other way around. But a lot more about Poser adjusting to things and the market they are in. Because again, they need users because that's how the make money and the users want content. So Renderosity have to figure out how the please these two sides, while making profit as well. And I just don't think that the way they are doing it now, is going to work in the long run, because they don't really satisfy any sides at the moment as I see it, because they drive this knife between the user base purely due to their own releases, which divide users and ultimately affect their own business model. And at some point, someone is going to give and then it all collapses. Because as I see it, it will only get worse with Poser 13 or 14 etc.

Eronik posted at 9:00AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419509

Sorry randym & Mobster, but that beer shoot is an actual picture. And every time I scroll through this thread, I feel the urge to drink one of them beers, the PBR (short for Pabst Blue Ribbon) :}

But we could make it a fun challenge and see who can come close to that pict with SuperFly.

Yeah that could be a fun challenge, I really don't know how to make the foam though :D

BB's Glass of Beer (for FireFly, not SuperFly)

You might be able to get ideas from this for a SuperFly shader.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

bagginsbill posted at 9:34AM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419518

BB's Glass of Beer (for FireFly, not SuperFly)

You might be able to get ideas from this for a SuperFly shader.

Ooh, that's nice. I like the condensation on the glass.

@3D-Mobster: Oh, Snarly's scripts are amazing. I use them a lot. Probably EZskin is the most used. It will fix the shaders of popular figures for Firefly or Superfly with one click. A lot of the older shaders look terrible in today's Poser, but EZskin fixes them. SceneFixer does something similar, but isn't specialized to specific figures; you can even use it on props.

The scripts no longer work in Poser 12, because of the Python issue. Supposedly, he's working on fixing them. But he may be waiting until Superfly is more settled, since skin shaders seem to be among things that are different, and might be changing again.

He also has fun stuff like Snow Machine. It lets you put snow (or other materials) on flat surfaces in a somewhat natural fashion.

I think for the final version of this image, I reapplied the leg textures after running Snow Machine, since as moving parts, they would not accumulate much snow.

I love those scripts. All of them, and I used them daily with P11.
I am willing to wait however long it takes to get them right in P12. Remember, these are free and worked on in free time, so it's not as simple as ' a dev cycle'. I would even be willing to pay. Heck, perhaps it should be crowdsourced.

I have absolutely no use for 'SuperFly' or any PBR shader system because I'm happy THIS side of the uncanny valley. (Not to mention that if cranked to 11, as Bagginsbills excelent example demonstrates, Firefly is quite capeable on its own.)

I'm a hobbyist and old school Poser user. I like my "easy" workflow and with PP 2014 and Poser 11 installed, I can do everything I want. I can rig, I can sculpt, I can make new figures, I can hack and slack by editing cr2's, I can build completely new stuff in Wings3D. I (more or less) have the material, cloth, setup and the hair rooms figured out (at least on a basic level).

I don't even need better figures because with all those tools to my disposal, I can do anything with all the figures I already have. Just for kicks, I recently transferred G2 Vicky's face over to Posette/NEA, just to see how "un-Posette" I can make her. :-)

So whatever I can think of, I can do in Poser. (Mostly PP 2014 as Poser 11 has some slight "hick-ups". But its subD morphbrush is very, very nice!)

So what I need from Poser is to render faster and to especially allow instancing for huge outdoor scenes! Genesis style "one click" cloth conversion/rigging would also be a very welcome feature. (Not to mention complete Genesis integration. Not just because of Genesis, but because 99% of the "cool stuff" content is now FOR Genesis, and conversion always takes extra time. (I have Studio installed on another computer, so if push comes to shove, I can still simply export the object files)

But a borrowed and incompletely integrated shader system from another app was really the last thing I would have wanted. Nor do I need for my huge library of python scripts to be broken. How big are the chances that scripts like "Mag-Cloner" will be ever updated? Or "MorphMirror". Has "Scenefixer" been already updated?

Besides, if I'd want true photorealism that badly, I'd simply pick up Blender. It's free and there is a huge community out there trying to teach.

So, here we are. No interrest in 'SuperFly" at all and no interrest in Poser 12 (so far), either.

Give me full on instancing and/or Genesis integration (or at least true one click conversion of Genesis content), and we can talk.

Otherwise, thanks, but no thanks.

Rhia474 posted at 12:35PM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419532

I love those scripts. All of them, and I used them daily with P11.
I am willing to wait however long it takes to get them right in P12. Remember, these are free and worked on in free time, so it's not as simple as ' a dev cycle'. I would even be willing to pay. Heck, perhaps it should be crowdsourced.

I would also be willing to pay. Though I'm not sure if money is really the issue. If it is, someone set up a Kickstarter.

For everyone asking for starter/example materials for Superfly, I just want to remind everyone that there's a folder under my name in Materials/Superfly/Afrodite-Ohki included with P11 and P12 - all of these are free for use and merchant resources, and you can include them in your creations as they come or edit them however you'd like.

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.

And for that, I thank you, Ohki.

hborre posted at 1:35PM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419537

And for that, I thank you, Ohki.

My pleasure! :D

- - - - - - 

Feel free to call me Ohki!

Poser Pro 11, Poser 12 and Poser 13, Windows 10, Superfly junkie. My units are milimeters.

Persephone (the computer): AMD Ryzen 9 5900x, RTX 3070 GPU, 96gb ram.

Afrodite-Ohki posted at 2:13PM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419536

For everyone asking for starter/example materials for Superfly, I just want to remind everyone that there's a folder under my name in Materials/Superfly/Afrodite-Ohki included with P11 and P12 - all of these are free for use and merchant resources, and you can include them in your creations as they come or edit them however you'd like.

I've seen them in my Runtimes, but haven't had a chance to play with them . . . yet. I guess I'll be doing that now that you reminded me they're there.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

Nice collection Ohki!

Boni also created a set which I believe can be found @ ShareCG, maybe even here in the Rendo freebee section.

bagginsbill posted at 5:23PM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419518

You might be able to get ideas from this for a SuperFly shader.

I tried using it and it seems to work nicely for Firefly, but as you also pointed out not so much for Superfly.

Creating foam is really not easy :D

Its extremely complex or at least well above my abilities with cycles. With all the bubbles etc. I wouldn't even know where to start :D

I was wondering, given that you are very good at all this node based texturing, have you tried Substance designer? because I would assume that it is a playground for you with all these nodes, and maybe you could make some nice PBR textures along the way, like foam :D

Substance designer

randym77 posted at 5:33PM Wed, 19 May 2021 - #4419520

@3D-Mobster: Oh, Snarly's scripts are amazing. I use them a lot. Probably EZskin is the most used. It will fix the shaders of popular figures for Firefly or Superfly with one click. A lot of the older shaders look terrible in today's Poser, but EZskin fixes them. SceneFixer does something similar, but isn't specialized to specific figures; you can even use it on props.

Ahh ok, I know EZskin, haven't really used it though. But that seems handy. Might have to look into that at some point. Thanks

randym77 posted at 7:37AM Fri, 28 May 2021 - #4419520

Oh, Snarly's scripts are amazing. I use them a lot. Probably EZskin is the most used. It will fix the shaders of popular figures for Firefly or Superfly with one click. A lot of the older shaders look terrible in today's Poser, but EZskin fixes them. SceneFixer does something similar, but isn't specialized to specific figures; you can even use it on props.

The scripts no longer work in Poser 12, because of the Python issue. Supposedly, he's working on fixing them. But he may be waiting until Superfly is more settled, since skin shaders seem to be among things that are different, and might be changing again.

I agree his scripts are great! I honestly couldn't see myself moving over to Poser 12 without EZSkin especially. So the good news is he is indeed still working on Poser 12 versions.

Poser scripts by Snarlygribbly

I have Poser 12, but still use mostly Poser 11. Because of Snarly's scripts. Glad to hear he's still working on converting them.

BTW, here's the final version of the snow machine image I posted above.

I think I ended up re-grouping the dinosaur to get a lighter amount of snow on the legs, at Snarly's suggestion. Now I'd probably just use Photoshop. ?

randym77 posted at 12:49AM Sat, 29 May 2021 - #4420066

I have Poser 12, but still use mostly Poser 11. Because of Snarly's scripts. Glad to hear he's still working on converting them.

BTW, here's the final version of the snow machine image I posted above.

I think I ended up re-grouping the dinosaur to get a lighter amount of snow on the legs, at Snarly's suggestion. Now I'd probably just use Photoshop. ?

That's without any post-work? That looks awesome!

Poser scripts by Snarlygribbly

Thanks. I might have added the falling snow in post. It was awhile back.

I do remember that Snow Machine applies to material zones, so you can have different amounts of snow on different parts, with the right material zones and a little fiddling. But mostly, it just works automatically. The only reason I had to faff with it was because I was showing snow on an animal that was supposed to be moving. It really is an amazing script.

Rhia474 posted at 10:20AM Tue, 01 June 2021 - #4419532

Heck, perhaps it should be crowdsourced.

I think that's a great idea, if that's what Snarly needs, then I'd support it.

That said, the recently released SkinEdit product might solve a fair bunch of the Poser12 SuperFly issues? (not tried it yet).

Going forward, I want to stick as pure as I can to only using PBR via the Physical Node as that's clearly the future and best for content creators imho.

SkinEdit is great. I tried it, and it works on a lot of earlier skins, but not all. You actually need some knowledge of how skin shader setups work to get all it offers out of it, while EZSkin was literally a 'click and done ' solution. I believe there is place on the market for both.