Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL


Subject: should poser have a new raytrace render engine?

ice-boy opened this issue on Apr 25, 2011 · 111 posts


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 7:04 AM

lets face it. poser renders are very simple. and a simple raytracer can be vreated very fast.

 

if you would do a production render for movies,animations and game cinematics it would take a lot of time.but for simple GI,glorry reflections ,SSS and displacement it can be done very fast. all the info that you need for a patchtracer are online. and now with GPU the rendering is very fast.

firefly is just not good enough anymore. and Luxrender is way to slow for simple stuff.

 

should SM hire a guy like bagginsbill to create a raytracer in the next 1-2 years?

 

here is a short demo from the new Blender photorealistic renderer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k&feature=player_embedded


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:27 AM

Yes, they should improve the Firefly render engine. The Render engine is one of the reason why i really don't like to use Poser anymore for Renders.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


Miss Nancy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:30 AM

SM hired a guy like stefan and his co-workers to re-do the poser render engine, but they hired a guy like bill to do some other stuff with the library, scripts and the shaders AFAIK.  however, they were all agreed that, for the <10% of poser users who know how to do shadows and GI, FFRender needed more work.  in re: some renderers being too slow, that's true, hence for commercial movies they use alotta tricks, shortcuts and hundreds of gofers.  if ya hire 200 d00dz to do some renders and half of 'em are goof-offs, it's still ~100X faster than doing it yerself IMVHO.



bagginsbill posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:43 AM

Stefan knows what to do. Trouble is he's just one and Poser isn't the only program he has to support.


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)


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:49 AM

Miss Nancy, even with a lot of tricks , the FF render engine is despitting.

I have masive memory problems in Poser and only in Poser. One of the reason why i simply switch to Daz Studio , or C4D render.

This should be the first they improove.

I load V4 with outfit, hair , character texture. Thats it, poser 8 go out of memory.

My last image with the Cloister, Poser was not able to render it, but D/S, in 15 Minutes.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


wimvdb posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:11 AM

It depends what you do.

I render 8 v4's with hair and outfit and 3 m4's with hair and outfit in about 10 minutes with IDL, RT, shadows without any memory problems in PP2010

I just depends on your poser settings, material settings, hardware, operating system and your level of perfection

Firefly is a capable renderer and the material room is fantastic and who knows what the future brings.

My experiments with DazStudio, Vue, Carrara and Luxrender have been less than satisfactory, so if Firefly gets a replacement it has to be integrated into Poser just as well before I move over.

 


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:26 AM

wimvdb, I try really everything in the Poser settings, my material settings are good, i overwork mostly the shader from the stuff i buy after BB tuts , or i use his MM.

Well prefection, i work usualy on a image days. Do render over render, try to make it as perfect as possible. ( 100ù perfection don't exist)

I am with understanding how a PC, Software works not a newbie. ( I worked in this genre and Study it)

No, Poser has massive problems with memory, because i am not the only one.

 

But with the material room i agree, this is fantastic in poser. I love it a lot.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


wimvdb posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:43 AM

32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

If you are in a 32bit environment you change a couple of things to get more memory such as:

Those are considerable memory savers.

Best thing though is to upgrade to 64 bit

 


NanetteTredoux posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:58 AM

Iceboy, that looks amazing.

Poser 11 Pro, Windows 10

Auxiliary Apps: Blender 2.79, Vue Complete 2016, Genetica 4 Pro, Gliftex 11 Pro, CorelDraw Suite X6, Comic Life 2, Project Dogwaffle Howler 8, Stitch Witch


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 12:03 PM

This is allready know .

My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine.

But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

 

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 2:43 PM

i am not asking if they should fx firefly. firefly is not a raytracer.

 

CPU's and GPU's are becoming very fast. todays computer are power enough that they can render poser scenes in less then 30 minutes .of course with an optimized raytracer. and not with transparency hair. no. i am talking about glossy reflected skin,real hair and SSS.

 

yes i understand that Poser would be more expensvie. but if you dont have the money you dont need to buy the new version.

 

i am asking if they should create a brand new pathtracer for Poser with simple code.

you dont need complex shaders for poser renders .

you need :

-diffuse

-reflections ( fresnel ,reflection blur )

-refraction ( fresnel ,blur)

-GI

-SSS

-fur and hair support

-DOF,motion blur

-render settings

all of this is automatic with a raytracer. all the info is posted on the net.

 

i am asking if Poser should become a little more expensive for more realism?

 

lets face it. we can not have Firefly for the next 5 years. computers are becoming cheap and fast. and the technology is out there for faster renders. faster. and the code is simple and gets you better and faster results.

 

i am guarantee you that after 2 years all that are complaining would accept the new render and join the group that supported it. every 3D software has a small group that are against raytracers and realism. they are against change. i bet my life that poser users after 2 years would be happy for a new render engine.

 

SSS,shadows,GI,reflections are all very easy to implent in a raytracer. the coders with experience can CREATE a raytracer in 6 months. this is not a 2 year project.

 

i am a poser fan and i will support it. but i am hoping that the company will make some changes for better renders.


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 2:44 PM

Quote - Stefan knows what to do. Trouble is he's just one and Poser isn't the only program he has to support.

if Stewars is good like you then i also support him.  

my question was if they should hire a guy similar to you BB and Stewart. someone who would focus only on the new render engine.


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 2:52 PM

try to understand me. i am a big photoshop fan. i am using photoshop every day tehwhole year. i am using it for photographic images,3D textures,compositing,tinting,3D,...

 

i am a big photoshop fan.

 

but my computer is old. i dont have a good enough computer for photoshop CS5 (latest version). my graphic card is also not good enough for some tools.

BUT i am not complaining that i can not use photoshop. they made changes for the better. they made a better software. just because i can not use it ( this year before i buy a new computer ) that does not mean that Adobe is the devil.

 

so i am asking you to not complain about Poser changes. just because Poser would be more expensive that does not mean they are unfair to you. if you have Poser 8 then you have a good enough 3D program for your needs. but i think in the future Poser could become faster and more realistic for very little work.


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 3:21 PM

honestly Ice- boy.

What are you talking about?

And btw, simple codes dont exist in this case. You need to implement a code in a existing software which should keep his compability.

And Pose has a raytrace render engine.

render real hair without tranparency? Please explain what you mean with this.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 4:05 PM

look at this thread. this is the biggest problem.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2826341&page=3

 

users are angry because they will not be able to use a new DAZ figure because in 2011 a company added new technology. this is not the right way of thinking and it makes me sad.

you have V3 and V4 with the old way of rigging. and now after 4 years a Poser user is angry because V5 will use new technology and he would have to buy a new Poser version. how is this normal? how is this sane?and its the same problem with the renderer.

 

 

this is just not  normal behaviour.


ice-boy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 4:11 PM

Quote - honestly Ice- boy.

What are you talking about?

And btw, simple codes dont exist in this case. You need to implement a code in a existing software which should keep his compability.

And Pose has a raytrace render engine.

render real hair without tranparency? Please explain what you mean with this.

-if they would use a new renderer then all the old materials and nodes would not work. they would have to add new nodes. but the names would be very similar. creating a skin material,hair material,cloth material ,wall material, car material would be easier. you would spend less time and get better results. but you would need new materials.

-i am not an expert. but making a brute force raytracer can be done in 6 months. then you spend 12 months testing,beta,adding tricks,opitmization. in 20 months you have a new renderer that works.


seachnasaigh posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 4:52 PM

(ice-boy) "you dont need complex shaders for poser renders"

But I enjoy building hideous creations with nodes in the material room - animated water ripples, strobe lights, etc.  ^^

Whether V5 is compatible with the next Poser Pro version is a matter of profound indifference to me;  I can use the P9 dolls, Aiko 3, Antonia, or Posette.

I'd certainly be pleased with any improvements in Firefly, and would be willing to pay more for it.  Firefly is slow with IDL engaged and good quality settings, if you have any complex materials.  Transparency and refractions seem to especially slow it.

For the next Poser Pro, I'd have these requests:

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


moriador posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 7:06 PM

Quote - 32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

2GB for each process, 2GB for kernel... poser.exe and ffrender.exe are separate, so maybe you could get to 8GB plus whatever else is running on your machine while rendering? I often exceed 7GB of total physical memory while rendering, but poser.exe has never gone much over 1GB for me. FFrender.exe, on the other hand, regularly reaches 4GB. At that point, it almost always crashes.

The resolution of the render must make a difference, as I can often complete a scene at 2500 x 2500 pixels, but will fail 2/3 of the way through at 4000 x 4000. So when you say that you can render 4 x V4's, so can I. At 1000 x 1000 pixels, I can render almost anything. But at 4000 x 4000 I am seriously limited.

Daz Studio has always been better for rendering larger resolutions. I found it to be the case back when I was using Poser 5 and DS 1, and it's the case now.

Agree... 64 bit version of Poser would probably resolve my memory issues.

Quote - My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine. But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one suffering with Poser 8 memory issues. I can find no explanation for my problems, either.


PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.


Miss Nancy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:18 PM

if that's 20 mos after they release P9, then they could put the new renderer in PP2012.  but maybe they fixed FFRender so it works better now.  time will tell.  problem: FFRender belongs to them, but if they try to put something else in there, complications may develop.  e.g. nobody is suing them claiming credit for FFRender AFAIK, but what if some patent vultures are watching them, just waiting for the moment when they add something new?  I ain't a lawyer.



TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:44 PM

Quote - look at this thread. this is the biggest problem.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2826341&page=3

 

users are angry because they will not be able to use a new DAZ figure because in 2011 a company added new technology. this is not the right way of thinking and it makes me sad.

you have V3 and V4 with the old way of rigging. and now after 4 years a Poser user is angry because V5 will use new technology and he would have to buy a new Poser version. how is this normal? how is this sane?and its the same problem with the renderer.

 

 

this is just not  normal behaviour.

 

This is the evolution of the technologie. ;)

If all the developer, ingeneer in the worl think like this, we still would riding horses and not driving cars and would have no high tech computer.

 

why should they change the material room for a new render engine? The material room from Poser is one of the best. Efficient and powerfull, would be silly to change it.

better overwork the old one. And you have no issues with the materials and lights and cameras.

When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


TheAnimaGemini posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 10:50 PM

Quote - > Quote - 32bit Poser can only handle a max of 2GB of memory on a 32bit operating system. Of that 2GB a portion of it is used by the program and shared data (DLL's in Windows). So you have 1500-1700MB of data for your scenery. If you look at the task manager or other tool you find out who and what uses up memory. In Poser 7 and 8 I was able to load 3-4 v4's with outfit and I would hit the maximum. No memory leaks, just all the data which Poser uses.

If you go to 64 bit for Poser and the Operating systems, those limits disappear and you can allocate as much as your hardware allows. In very large scenes Poser will sometimes allocate more than 32GB.

2GB for each process, 2GB for kernel... poser.exe and ffrender.exe are separate, so maybe you could get to 8GB plus whatever else is running on your machine while rendering? I often exceed 7GB of total physical memory while rendering, but poser.exe has never gone much over 1GB for me. FFrender.exe, on the other hand, regularly reaches 4GB. At that point, it almost always crashes.

The resolution of the render must make a difference, as I can often complete a scene at 2500 x 2500 pixels, but will fail 2/3 of the way through at 4000 x 4000. So when you say that you can render 4 x V4's, so can I. At 1000 x 1000 pixels, I can render almost anything. But at 4000 x 4000 I am seriously limited.

Daz Studio has always been better for rendering larger resolutions. I found it to be the case back when I was using Poser 5 and DS 1, and it's the case now.

Agree... 64 bit version of Poser would probably resolve my memory issues.

Quote - My friend as example, he has no problem in Poser , with the same config and almost the same machine. But we have not the same software installed. maybe there is a software which simply disturb Poser.

I go out of memory during build up my scene. And believe me, i really try everything.

But face it, Poser is far away to be a good renderer. He has for sure his very good sites, but the render engine is buggy and should be improved.

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one suffering with Poser 8 memory issues. I can find no explanation for my problems, either.

 

On my working PC, where i only render, i have W7 64 bit 8 Giga ram.

With Vue no problem; DAZ no problem , only Poser 8 is a diva.

I a so sick of this. :(And i hate the new library. It is a recource monster .

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


Anthanasius posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:08 PM

I think in one or two years poser will be dead, they dont listen the users.

 

Even the badest engine render GI or transparency maps better than poser.

 

I think we dont need two versions of poser ( P8 and Ppro ), but only one with a lot of work on the engine .

 

Like said ice-boy :

 

i am asking if they should create a brand new pathtracer for Poser with simple code.

 

you dont need complex shaders for poser renders .

 

you need :

 

-diffuse

 

-reflections ( fresnel ,reflection blur )

 

-refraction ( fresnel ,blur)

 

-GI

 

-SSS

 

-fur and hair support

 

-DOF,motion blur

 

-render settings

 

That's all folks :)

 

Génération mobiles Le Forum / Le Site

 


kawecki posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:22 PM

Rendering speed is a direct function on how well done is the code. Using the same algorithm the speed can be very fast or very slow depending only on how you code this algorithm.

Today with modern CPUs with SSE2 you can do four things at the same time and execute two instructions in the same CPU clock, you can add multicores that allow you to execute two, four, six,... tasks at the same time, so the overall multiplying factor can become very big and you even can add the GPU processing power.

But to achieve this formidable CPU potential is not an easy task, you must have total control over the code you create and this only can be done with Assembly language and here comes the problem. Nobody beside video card and firmware makers use Assembler. You have very little control over the code created by a C compiler that also nobody uses it again, all is done with C++ where the generated code is even worst.

Stupidity also evolves!


Miss Nancy posted Mon, 25 April 2011 at 11:51 PM

users are not sure yet whether they want realism or speed.  it's a zero-sum game IMVHO.



TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 12:04 AM

Quote - Rendering speed is a direct function on how well done is the code. Using the same algorithm the speed can be very fast or very slow depending only on how you code this algorithm.

Today with modern CPUs with SSE2 you can do four things at the same time and execute two instructions in the same CPU clock, you can add multicores that allow you to execute two, four, six,... tasks at the same time, so the overall multiplying factor can become very big and you even can add the GPU processing power.

But to achieve this formidable CPU potential is not an easy task, you must have total control over the code you create and this only can be done with Assembly language and here comes the problem. Nobody beside video card and firmware makers use Assembler. You have very little control over the code created by a C compiler that also nobody uses it again, all is done with C++ where the generated code is even worst.

 

Thank you :) I was try to find the last 30 minutes the correct English words for my explantation. :)

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


NanetteTredoux posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 1:03 AM

Cage, would you like to post some pictures of those hairstyles  that you want to do? Perhaps we can figure it out together and learn in the process.

Poser 11 Pro, Windows 10

Auxiliary Apps: Blender 2.79, Vue Complete 2016, Genetica 4 Pro, Gliftex 11 Pro, CorelDraw Suite X6, Comic Life 2, Project Dogwaffle Howler 8, Stitch Witch


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 2:24 AM

Quote - > Quote - why should they change the material room for a new render engine? The material room from Poser is one of the best. Efficient and powerfull, would be silly to change it.

better overwork the old one. And you have no issues with the materials and lights and cameras.

When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

i think we are not on the same page. let me explain.  

i am not saying that they should change how the material room works and looks. please try to understand my bad english. the nodes can look 100% the same. the whole material room can look 100% the same. when

you have a new raytracer then you dont need anymore '' specular'' and ''blinn''. with a raytracer you only need ''reflection''. so insted of 3 different nodes you would only have 1 node. it would look visual the same.


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 2:27 AM

Quote - if that's 20 mos after they release P9, then they could put the new renderer in PP2012.  but maybe they fixed FFRender so it works better now.  time will tell.  problem: FFRender belongs to them, but if they try to put something else in there, complications may develop.  e.g. nobody is suing them claiming credit for FFRender AFAIK, but what if some patent vultures are watching them, just waiting for the moment when they add something new?  I ain't a lawyer.

miss nancy they can fix and make firefly faster  every year. but it will not be the best speed for your computer. i am not talking here about movie productions. please try to understand me. i am not talking here about some expensive stuff.  

pathtracers are bad for animations. but they are fantastic for still renders.


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 2:32 AM

> Quote - [ When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

i dont have 3dsstudio max so i am a little lost. but i am using blender for years.so i found this on google in less then 5 minutes. and this looks to me logical and simple.

how is this material not simple? you ony add producerals or textures for details. and bump images for bump.you have 4 sliders. 4 sliders.

 


kawecki posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:04 AM

Quote - you have a new raytracer then you dont need anymore '' specular'' and ''blinn''. with a raytracer you only need ''reflection''. so insted of 3 different nodes you would only have 1 node. it would look visual the same.

The raytracer and the nodes are two different subjects, both involving realism and speed.

The nodes, much better, the property of the material defines how the material reacts to illumination that receives.

The raytracer or any other method deals on how the lights and light sources interact with the scene, the lights that reach each point of the material and what reaches the eye or camera.

You need both, you can have an excellent raytracer, but if the shader you use fails to emulate the optical properties of the material you use the result will be bad. You can have a very correct brdf of the material, but your raytracer fails to reproduce the shadows and illumination produced by the reflections of other elements of the scene, the result also will not be good.

Stupidity also evolves!


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:09 AM

i said that with a raytraced renderer you dont use anymore blinn and specular. those are cheats. in a raytraced renderer you only use reflections for highlights. in the material room you use less nodes .

so i wrotte nothing wrong.


TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:19 AM

ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore.

What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

Lights has to be changed . This means, all your past stuff you buy, you have to rework in the new mat room because shader nodes don't work properly anymore.

Like you rework in DS, Vue, C4D, Max and so on the materials when you import from Poser.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:21 AM

Quote - > Quote - [ When you want a really great image, simple shader nodes are a no go. For really Photorealistic render, even in C4D ,  Vray , you need really good shaders. Have you ever seen the material room from Vray??Without great nodes, even the Vray render engine produces you crap.

i dont have 3dsstudio max so i am a little lost. but i am using blender for years.so i found this on google in less then 5 minutes. and this looks to me logical and simple.

how is this material not simple? you ony add producerals or textures for details. and bump images for bump.you have 4 sliders. 4 sliders.

 

 

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


kawecki posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:26 AM

Quote - i said that with a raytraced renderer you dont use anymore blinn and specular. those are cheats. in a raytraced renderer you only use reflections for highlights. in the material room you use less nodes .so i wrotte nothing wrong.

Blinn, specular or reflection for highlight all are cheats, it all depend on the material you use. For a perfect metal you have no Blinn, Torrance, Fresnel, highlight size, reflection. You have only a mirror that reflect strictly following the refelection law. Now if you have a rough metal using the Torrance-Cook model will not be a bad idea and if you have a piece of chalk forget all, you even have no reflections.

And I even had not mentioned human hair because if you don't take into account that light is a wave you are in big trouble and for raytracers the light is photons and not wave....

Stupidity also evolves!


kawecki posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:38 AM

Quote - ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

You don't need to change the materials, you can change the raytracer without changing the materials

 

Quote - With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore. What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

It's more a Poser's problem, Poser use shader trees that nobody use. All rendering software use more or less the same or similar materials.

Stupidity also evolves!


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:40 AM

Quote - ice-boy, when you change the render engine, you have to change the material room too.

With a new render engine, the Material room from Poser simply don't work properly anymore.

What do you think why Vray has his own mat room? Why DS user can not use the textures and nodes from Poser properly? Vue the same.

Lights has to be changed . This means, all your past stuff you buy, you have to rework in the new mat room because shader nodes don't work properly anymore.

Like you rework in DS, Vue, C4D, Max and so on the materials when you import from Poser.

but you dont have to change visual how the material room looks. why should we be afraid how the material room code changed? if someone will have any problems with the new material room i would connect all the textures for him. and do presets and post them online.

 

you think if DAZ in 2012 would realese a hair prop you think that they would not create materials and textures for the new render engine? you think they would just throw all the textures in the ''texture'' folder and sell it?

you know very good that if a poser user in 2012 would buy a t-shirt that they would give you all the shaders and materials in the folder.


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:45 AM

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - [  

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

 

you have diffuse,reflections,refractions. this is your normal shader for 80%  objects.

you need color ,bump and specular textures. you need 3 type of textures for realism.you connect all the textures in the right slots.

in the shader you have 3 importan sliders that you change for each object. its very simple.

 


TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:47 AM

I think to change the way how the Mat room looks would make no headache for the Software developer from Poser.

To change the Algorythm yes ;)

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:50 AM

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - > Quote - [  

This is not all what you have in Vray. Vray has much more parameters which you have to connect in a correct way to recieve Photorealistic and beautiful renders.

 

you have diffuse,reflections,refractions. this is your normal shader for 80%  objects.

you need color ,bump and specular textures. you need 3 type of textures for realism.you connect all the textures in the right slots.

in the shader you have 3 importan sliders that you change for each object. its very simple.

 

 

VRay is simple? Now i am speechless  :scared  .  

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 3:58 AM

Ladona i need to first find out if you even have experince in Poser material room?

 

because if someone does not have experiene with CGI materials and textures then  vray would be very complex for him.

 


TheAnimaGemini posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 4:47 AM

Honestly ice-boy,  if you want to insult me, go ahead. :(

Do you understand what you are writting here? You understand simple basics of material rooms and how they work?

It looks like not, because in this case you would avoid to write some of your posts here.

I have a very good understanding in materials from poser, and what is more important, in Mathematic and Physik.

This are the two basics to undestand EVERY material room and his parameters.

Vray is complex. Vray is not only connect bump and reflect, you need to understand the lights, how they works, and much much more.

Go ahead and tell all the Profis who write tutorials for Vray , how to get the best out, that they are on the wrong way, because Vray is easy and really simple.

Sarcasmus off....

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 5:53 AM

i dont want to insult you.


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 8:56 AM

in this paper we can see how the materials and shaders got mroe simple realistic.

 

http://renderwonk.com/publications/s2010-shading-course/martinez/s2010_course_notes.pdf


icprncss2 posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 10:57 AM

Interesting paper but in reading it, it wasn't all roses and kittens.

The had major issues with hair and noise.

One interesting section entitled The Catch had an interesting statement.  They had very long render times, especially when it came to hair and the cost was only offset by the fact that they didn't have to do as many render passes.  That and the comment that their costs didn't go up nearly as much as was thought.  He isn't saying the cost of switching wasn't more, it just wasn't as much as some thought it would be.

 


ice-boy posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 4:06 PM

but those are movie production renders.ALice in WOnderland. and Cloudy.

 

poser scenes are 5% of those renders.


icprncss2 posted Tue, 26 April 2011 at 11:00 PM

True but what's the point of using stand based hair, which Poser has had since version 5, if the render engine cannot reder it properly.  The problems with it were also noted in the same section.

These are just things I found noteworthy in the paper. 

As far as renderers go, I have access to scan line, raytraced and unbiased renderers.  Which I choose depends upon what I want. 

If you want more realism, have you tried an unbiased renderer?  It might give you more of what you're looking for.


ice-boy posted Wed, 27 April 2011 at 10:42 AM

a raytraced render can render strand based hair. so hair like in poser.


icprncss2 posted Wed, 27 April 2011 at 11:38 PM

Firefly has been rendering dyamic hair since Poser 5.  The two biggest obstacles I found to strand based hair in Poser were the materials and system resouces. 


Cage posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 12:00 AM

I wouldn't mind seeing Poser with a better rendering engine than Firefly, but I'd hate to sacrifice the Materials Room, if that would be a requirement for the change.  I quite like Poser's shader system.  :laugh:

(Ha!  I said something positive about Poser!  :woot:  It was bound to happen, sooner or later.)

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.


RobynsVeil posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 12:16 AM

The Poser mat room is a (fairly well) known entity, which to me is an important feature. If they enhance the Firefly render engine, perhaps we'd have access to things like caustics or SSS? Who knows.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks


aeilkema posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 3:06 AM

Are people willing to pay for a change of rendering engine? Some will, but I doubt the majority of Poser users will be willing to pay more money for Poser because of a new rendering engine? If they raise Poser's price too much, they'll loose customers. If they change too much in Poser, they loose customers as well. For SM this must be a though place to be in. They want to move forward, but have too keep their users in mind.

 

While their is much talk here about these things, the people debating represent a very very small minority of poser users. We've got no clue what the majority of Poser users want. Seeing how slow Poser changes each version, it seems like most customers don't want to drift to far from what they know.

 

On the other hand, SM is trying to reach new customers as well andmost likely they should to survive. They can't always build on the original user base. After all, a lot of those traded Poser in for D/S, they're getting older and move on, or don't use Poser that often anymore. A good number of the poser base is still happy with older versions. So SM has to look ahead and the new customers don't care about the older versions. But.... from all the effort it seems that recently SM is trying to reach the lover end of the market again and they're not going to pay for expensive rendering engines. For a while SM made the effort to try and reach the higher end market, but that seems to get less attention these days. Not sure where SM is going, but I wouldn't be surprised that a new rendering engine is not their main concern at all, since they're very busy trying to improve and enhance Firefly.

 

Personally, I still like Firefly and find it a pleasure to work with. For me it's an understandable rendering engine, being able to work out how it works and how to get the results I'm after. I also find it very nice that it gives me a range of rendering options. If I want cartoony, it can handle it. If I want more realistic, it can be done. If I want more studio like, no problem. Interior and exterior renders can be both be well achieved in P8. All without to much problems. It's easy and predictable, so it get's my vote.

 

That's my personal opinion, but no one should listen to that in respect to a new poser version at all, since I'm not going to upgrade at all. Poser is now getting too far from the originall by now, adding all kinds of new features that do not interest me at all and some improvements even annoy me. SM is adding all kinds of techniques I don't need at all. Or perhaps I should say I'm not willing to learn them at all. I like the way Poser works now and suits me fine. I don't need to go beyond, I'm not will to advance into newer developments, since I don't see the use and advantage of them for me at all. I've briefly followed the new D/S developments and some of the things mentioned and thought 'whatever'. I really don't care. I've followed the lux development briefly and thought the same..... 'whatever'. I doesn't excite me at all.

 

But I understand it excites others, but only a hand full of people.... the majority if poser users is, as always, silence. I do hope people get what they want in the next version or after.... I'm just to stuck in my ways and too happy with what I have now, to even be bothered to look forward anymore. For me Poser in it's current version is a tool that helps me to get my work done fast and easy, it offers all I need. I don't need to expand, I've got everything I need (even when it comes to content). I've learned Poser as much as possible, created my own content, custom figures, had fun doing so, been there. Now Poser is merely a tool for me and when I look around that's the feeling I get.

 

A few techies discussing what Poser needs to advance, willing to pay for it and help in rethinking Poser, but for most it's just another tool, helping them to create their dreams or getting work done faster or just have fun. I don't think it matters whatever direction Poser takes, there will always be a majority using it silently and if it's not me, it will be someone else. Seems like a lot of people (like me) have lost interest in discussing Poser. Compared the way (and by the amont of people) D/S is being discussed, there's little discussion going on around here and it's always the same few that do discuss.

 

I'm mainly a lurker these days and all I notice is active people going away, new users coming, but they don't join in the discussion. Only a few discussing many things, while it used to be a lot of people discussing these matters. For SM's and your sakes, I hope this is a not a sign for Poser..... but seeing how SM is doing a lot of effort to reach new markets and interacting with the old user base less and less, I hope Poser will be able to survive in the long run and I somehow have my doubts that adding expensive stuff to Poser will be helping in the survival of Poser.

 

I'm just hoping that SM knows what the majority wants and not only listening to a few, I'm sure they know how to reach the silent majority. I'm sure it's though to find out what such a diverse user base wants and needs.

 

Again, don't listen to me when it comes to future version and I hope you all get what you want from Poser in some way.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk


kawecki posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 4:23 AM

What I want is something where the preview mode looks the same as the final render. I don't want to make 50 full quality renders to setup a scene !!!

What I want is that in preview mode the lights illuniate in the same way and intensity as in the final render including the shadows and I want the preview mode in real time. The only difference between preview and final rendering must be size, quality and detail and not the scene to look something different.

 

Beside this, what about something that solves the Navier-Stokes equations ?

Stupidity also evolves!


ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 10:19 AM

aeilkema good post.

 

about the poser users. if they dont want change then this means that they are happy with ther curent poser version? right? so a new poser software will not hurt them.

 

i think the poser community is very specific. you have on the whole world sortware users who are complaining because they dont get new technology in their software. with poser users its different. they are complaining because they are afraid that they will get something new.

 


wimvdb posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 10:27 AM

Or they would rather have improvements on the current renderer, improved animation tools, improved setup tools, improved clothing simulator, improved hair room, improved user interface or one of many other new features which would improve workflow.

For them a new "more realistic" renderer is probably much lower on the "wanted" list

 


ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 10:40 AM

wimvdb its pointless in 2011 to add imporvements to such an old renderer. things changed with CGI.

 

its like trying to make an old car better for todays standards.


ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 10:41 AM

Quote - Or they would rather have improvements on the current renderer, improved animation tools, improved setup tools, improved clothing simulator, improved hair room, improved user interface or one of many other new features which would improve workflow.

For them a new "more realistic" renderer is probably much lower on the "wanted" list

 

its not even about realism. realism comes automatic with a new renderer because of the year 2011.  

a new renderer would be easier and more simple to use. which is what poser users want.


wimvdb posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 10:46 AM

You did not get my point. For most users it is low on the priority list. They much rather have other improvements in Poser.

 


bagginsbill posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 11:22 AM

Quote - wimvdb its pointless in 2011 to add imporvements to such an old renderer. things changed with CGI.

 

its like trying to make an old car better for todays standards.

You're wrong there. But I'm not allowed to tell you why.


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)


JohnDoe641 posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 11:46 AM

Quote - its like trying to make an old car better for todays standards.

Which people do all the time.


wolf359 posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 12:42 PM

@Iceboy instead of beating your head against the wall on this issue, and since your Focus seem to be getting better renders, perhaps it is time for you to just invest in one of the MANY alternatives  to rendering directly within poser.

I have been using poser since "Fractal Design's Poser2"
and I can Say that I never Did What Iwould call a final render within poser itself.
 it was first Meta C's Bryce 2 and so on and so on up until today where where I am using C4D + Vray or the base version of Vue depending on the look I want.

Vue has a low cost option
the new Pose2LuX  seems to be coming along nicely
(Congrats  in order there!!!)

I dont see the point of trying to browbeat SM into giving poser some vray+SSS, quality ray tracer.

The harsh reality of it is
that if you truly want to Achieve exactly what you want with CG
you will have to deploy MORE than ONE program to do so
or be willing to compromise  on your desired results.
and this is not just a Low end "hobbiest " Dilemma

There is a reason why MAYA owners are still buying Zbrush
or Motionbuilder
There is a reason  Why us C4D Owners have Swallowed hard and Sprung for RealFlow or Vray

and trust me there are plenty of threads at CG talk Demanding better modeling tools for C4D along with other gripes about C4D's Shortcomings yet MAXON just reported its most
profitable year ever just as MODO continues to sell quite well
to C4D users.

Cheers



My website

YouTube Channel



ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 2:57 PM

Quote - You did not get my point. For most users it is low on the priority list. They much rather have other improvements in Poser.

poser users also have a big problem with new skinning for figures. weight painting is a BIG NO for them .  

looks like they dont like changes.


ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 2:59 PM

Quote - > Quote - wimvdb its pointless in 2011 to add imporvements to such an old renderer. things changed with CGI.

 

its like trying to make an old car better for todays standards.

You're wrong there. But I'm not allowed to tell you why.

when it comes to software you know everything million times better then me. but i will still writte what  i will now. its easier and better to create a new path raytracer for Poser.

i will not belive that its possible to make Firefly good enough for todays computer.


ice-boy posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 3:01 PM

Quote - @Iceboy instead of beating your head against the wall on this issue, and since your Focus seem to be getting better renders, perhaps it is time for you to just invest in one of the MANY alternatives  to rendering directly within poser.

I have been using poser since "Fractal Design's Poser2"
and I can Say that I never Did What Iwould call a final render within poser itself.
 it was first Meta C's Bryce 2 and so on and so on up until today where where I am using C4D + Vray or the base version of Vue depending on the look I want.

Vue has a low cost option
the new Pose2LuX  seems to be coming along nicely
(Congrats  in order there!!!)

I dont see the point of trying to browbeat SM into giving poser some vray+SSS, quality ray tracer.

The harsh reality of it is
that if you truly want to Achieve exactly what you want with CG
you will have to deploy MORE than ONE program to do so
or be willing to compromise  on your desired results.
and this is not just a Low end "hobbiest " Dilemma

There is a reason why MAYA owners are still buying Zbrush
or Motionbuilder
There is a reason  Why us C4D Owners have Swallowed hard and Sprung for RealFlow or Vray

and trust me there are plenty of threads at CG talk Demanding better modeling tools for C4D along with other gripes about C4D's Shortcomings yet MAXON just reported its most
profitable year ever just as MODO continues to sell quite well
to C4D users.

thanks for this post.  

i actually  was not hoping for a Vray renderer.they spend years working on that.and it needs to be production prooven.  i am hoping for a simple raytracer with simple code . since poser users use somewhere 2 textures for a figure this shouldnt be a problem IMO.


SteveJax posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 3:04 PM

Is it just me or is there a lot of wind in this thread? Tilt! :tt2:


wimvdb posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 3:05 PM

Quote - > Quote - You did not get my point. For most users it is low on the priority list. They much rather have other improvements in Poser.

poser users also have a big problem with new skinning for figures. weight painting is a BIG NO for them .  

looks like they dont like changes.

Most poser users do not rig, so they couldn't care less if they have weight painting or not. They only want better bending. If that is what weight painting gives them, they will gladly take it.

It has no impact on them whatsoever since they only use and NOT create items

Everyone likes changes which are an improvement. Unfortunately some changes which improve one thing make other things worse. So it depends on what they like more.

You can not generalize users like you do.

 

 


wolf359 posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 4:38 PM

***"i am hoping for a simple raytracer with simple code"***

 

Done***..***

 

 

 

Cheers***




My website

YouTube Channel



stewer posted Thu, 28 April 2011 at 4:49 PM

Well played, wolf359!

:thumbupboth:

The original Bryce is indeed the archetypical ray tracer showing what shiny spheres hovering over checkerboards look like.


lmckenzie posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 4:06 AM

Random thoughts...

C4D's render engine is in it's 3rd iteration. When Daz got 3Delight, it had been around for years & already used in production. If you look at VRay, Vue, etc., they are all either the product of years of development by companies that are either dedicated to building render engines, or firms that have a goodly amount of development resources to devote to the process. FireFly (IIRC) was bought - from Pixels3D, the same way the hair, cloth and face rooms were bought. While it's certainly been around a while, I'm not sure that it's a good comparison, i.e. one developer, working for different companies, with perhaps different priorities, compared to the others. Maybe it's fatally flawed or behind the times, or maybe it just hasn't had the resources given to it in order to develop as fast as it might have.

The choices as I see them are:

  1. Continue to develop FireFly, building on the current base.
  2. Start from scratch, tailoring a new engine to the current material system.
  3. Start over and develop a new materials system and render engine.
  4. Buy/license a new engine and material system.

I don't pretend to know which would be best. A new material system (not just the interface) would involve a lot of pain for users & content creators. You could maintain backward compatibility but that has its costs - probably why they dropped the P4 engine. Trying to do anything with only one developer, even a great one, is probably going to take longer than people would like.

The GPU revolution seems well underway so any choice needs to take that into account. Even folks who render 'simple' scenes in terms of materials may want to render scenes with lots of figures and GPU acceleration would be welcome. With even browsers incorporating hardware acceleration these days, I'd say it's going to be a requirement for any credible 3D application.

I think the V5 issue is somewhat misstated here. I don't think that anyone doesn't want figures that pose more naturally; some simply balked at the idea of having to buy a new version of the program to get it.

As Aeilkema said, there are a lot of (sometimes conflicting) priorities they have to look at. The release of Poser Debut seems to say that they're trying to hit all the marketing niches. Maybe that's good, maybe not. Poser has been lucky to have only one real competitor, but having that competitor being your 'frenemy' certainly complicates matters.

Whatever they come up with, I gotta see skin before I'm impressed. It's all about Vicky. I really don't care if the temple is the photo-spitting image of Mayan architecture if she doesn't look luscious - YMMV :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken


aeilkema posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 4:45 AM

I think one of the major problems with Poser is (and has almost always been) the constant lack of communication. DAZ has changed their policy somewhat on that and is communicating much more on what they are doing and often surveying their user base how to go ahead and scanning their wishes. They put out information on what's comming (as much as they seem fit to do) and have open beta participation programmes. Although no one knows what DS4 will completely be like, a rough sketch is already known and details are filled in and showed along the way. By now DAZ has build up a good community / user base that's involved in the development of D/S, openly suggesting features and improvements and DAZ taking them to heart.

 

With SM no one of us has a clue what they're even up to and those who know are not allowed to tell. SM does not communicate with their customers at all and closed all the communication venues on purpose. By the time the user gets to know what the next poser will be like, all is set in stone and we can either like it or not.

 

I know we've got the once a year poser survey, but who knows if they even listen to it at all or it's just courtesy, making us believe we involved somewhat. If you don't publish survey results, no one knows if you've listened or not.

 

There's no doubt in my mind Poser would grow a lot more if SM would change their policy on non-customer interaction. They could have build up (or somewhat taken over) an active user base, but refuse to do so and we see the results of it. The DAZ community is growing, while the Poser community is decreasing and less active. Most people I know from way back have either moved on, given up on Poser (some died which is sad), but most of them are over at DAZ, abandoning Poser. Some are still around though...... Communcation has always been a problem for the owners of Poser, I don't know why, but they seem to have a real problem with it.

 

It's fun to discuss something amongst ourselves, but it would be really meaningful if SM joined in.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk


ice-boy posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 10:15 AM

stewer is that you ?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=974578&page=4&pp=15


bagginsbill posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 10:28 AM

ice-boy,

Of course it's him. Did you not notice that under his avatar in CGSociety forum, in every post he makes, it says:

 

Stefan Werner

Senior Software Engineer

Smith Micro

Germany

 

Sometimes I wonder about you.


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)


wolf359 posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 10:32 AM

"Whatever they come up with, I gotta see skin before I'm impressed. It's all about Vicky. I really don't care if the temple is the photo-spitting image of Mayan architecture if she doesn't look luscious"

 

 

Interesting ,While one can Appreciate your honesty on the matter of vicky
I find it  rather sad that both programs (DS&Poser) have been reduced somewhat
to being a platform for ONE Naked Female model.

Daz has the advantage of having been able to build their entire program& Content regime around ubiquitous V-Chick and thus can introduce modern industry standard innovation going forward
While SM plays the part of the poor cousin trying to stay compatible while clinging to vestigial, cobbled together legacy code from the 1990's.

I remember one person saying how he was ready to move on to Autodesk 3D MAX
for better...well everything
but alas the on thing that held him back was losing a fully functional V-Chick.

One can only speculate on where DS&Poser might be today absent the dominance of this ONE model and here loyal worshippers

lastly I think posers node based Material System has not been the boon many thought it would be in fact I personally think that node based mat rooms in general are becoming less & less relevant in light of the new breeds  of GPU/CPUrender engines and their preset material structures.

Cheers*** ***



My website

YouTube Channel



aeilkema posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 11:49 AM

Quote - nteresting ,While one can Appreciate your honesty on the matter of vicky
I find it  rather sad that both programs (DS&Poser) have been reduced somewhat
to being a platform for ONE Naked Female model.

 

DS never had a different reputation, imo, and Poser was reduced as soon as DAZ grew bigger. It is sad, I don't blame the applications, but DAZ's marketing strategy for this. They've given Poser a certain name and once that stuck it automatically transferred to D/S once it was released. DAZ does a lot of good, but they sure don't give D/S and Poser a good reputation in the 3D world.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk


lkendall posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 12:53 PM

"Daz has the advantage of having been able to build their entire program & content regime around ubiquitous V-Chick and thus can introduce modern industry standard innovation going forward"

Except they don't introduce industry standard features and precious little innovation. The features of DS are proprietary, expensive to implement, on the back-end not front edge of industry innovation, and are not even fully compatable with the other programs that they sell. Their subdivision is anything but industry standard. Their dynamic cloth is anything but industry standard. DS is proprietary by intention, not necessity. But, they have stuck so close to Poser that SM doesn't even have to put much effort into making their own content. And, they are unlikely to introduce any new content that will exclude Poser users (hence the plausible rumors that SM and DAZ are in communication about their plans for future development, and neither companies are denying it).

Any future version of DAZ studio will be fully compatable with all of their previous content. Who really thinks that the next version of DS will only work with V5 and no other content? Does anyone believe that users of new versions of DS will be unable to open or convert their former scenes?

"While SM plays the part of the poor cousin trying to stay compatible while clinging to vestigial, cobbled together legacy code from the 1990's."

Absolutely not so. The core code of Poser 8 has been completely rewritten using "modern" programming standards. Hence the ability of PoserPro 2010 to run in 64 bit mode. The interface consistant with previous versions is cosmetic not systemic. Compatability with previous features (Which DAZ will certainly maintain also) does not mean that the new versions of Poser are not possitioned to advance with technology, and implement features that users want. In fact Poser has implemented many features in their product line that DS has not yet added.

The "rivalry" between the two companies benefits both, and I welcome it. It is far more likely that the development that WE want to see in our prefered programs and content will occure if there is competion between DAZ and SM. If one program ever lags seriously behind the other, than the other will have little reason to invest in improvements.

SM sells a wide variety of popular software applications and content, and they sell thru multiple popular outlets. They do not buy software that does not have a future, and they have the capital to invest in the development of their product lines. SM actually has the resources to buy DAZ if they want it. They chose Poser.

The material node system is powerful, and does not need to be replaced, but improved. Poser would rival anything on the market if the program had nodes that could be programmed with its Python script, if the Python script was allowed to call external libraries and programs, if the features and capabilites of Poser were fully exposed to its Python script, and if there was the capability to link directly to other rendering engines from inside Poser. With these tools innovative programmers could add feature after feature to the program.

I don't use it myself, but how about a version of either program for Linux? That would open up some serious market growth.

DAZ Studio is a great application, and can be highly recommended to people looking for a program with its features. But, it is not enhanced in the slightest by underestimating or belittling Poser. If Poser did not exist, there would be another program on the market in its slot, because no application will satisfy everyone. Far better if DS and Poser concentrate on improving what they do well, and implementing what their customers want. Let people migrate to and from these platforms as they will, there are still over 6 billion people not using either program so I do not think the potential market is completely saturated.

lmk

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.


wolf359 posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 2:14 PM

"Let people migrate to and from these platforms as they will, there are still over 6 billion people not using either program so I do not think the potential market is completely saturated."

All of the human population can not realisticly be assumed to be a potential market for any commercial product that is not Eaten,lived in, or worn on the body for protection& Warmth so yes market saturation for a software program is quite possible considering the limited use of such a product.

Cheers



My website

YouTube Channel



lkendall posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 4:06 PM

"All of the human population can not realisticly be assumed to be a potential market for any commercial product that is not Eaten,lived in, or worn on the body for protection& Warmth."

LOL! Of course not, hyperbole is rhetorical not logical.

"so yes market saturation for a software program is quite possible considering the limited use of such a product."

That might be for software used to calculate the number of coils of wire to wrap on a transformer, or to develop a pattern for a Singer embroidery machine. Certainly not for applications like word processors. When speaking in the billions that is not likely for DS and Poser products. Even in the USA, the average population is growing daily more sophisticated in terms of their use of technology (computers).

Among the six billion people made our neighbors by the Internet, the potential market of folks that could be interested in DS or Poser dwarfs those who already know about these products. The increasingly worldwide nature of this market is well demonstrated in this forum and marketplace (where our international friends charitably put up with using English, almost exclusively). Both DAZ and SM are well aware of local and global trends, and show every indication of actively positioning themselves to attract (a lot) more users, not just satisfying those of us who already use their applications.

But, whatever the future does bring, I hope the up-coming releases from DAZ and SM will contain a lot of interesting features. They will be sure to stimulate some lively conversations after the fact. Seeing that actual firm information about those features is so closely guarded, for now, speculative discussions like this are about all we have to bid the time (except rendering).

Cheers in return,

lmk

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.


Cage posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 4:59 PM

Quote - LOL! Of course not, hyperbole is rhetorical not logical.

Quote of the day!  :thumbupboth:  :thumbupboth:

===========================sigline======================================================

Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.


RobynsVeil posted Fri, 29 April 2011 at 6:27 PM

"I don't use it myself, but how about a version of either program for Linux? That would open up some serious market growth."

The only thing that keeps this ol' girl in Windows is Poser. If there were a Linux version, I'd willingly go back to the GIMP (from PS3) for most of my 2D stuff and be done with Windows nonsense. "Networking with credentials is only available for Win7 Pro..." pshaw! What utter rubbish! We had it in WinXP! Now I have to log in to my desktop from my laptop every morning simply because the "Remember network Credentials" tickbox: doesn't.

"must look into VMWare - I really must"

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks


lmckenzie posted Sat, 30 April 2011 at 7:10 AM

Forgot you were in the house Wolf or I wouldn't have mentioned your bête noire. Actually I would have, but the point was that  Poser is about people IMO, not architecture or cubist neo-realism. Those things are all well and good and I want them to look good, but at the end of the day, I want Vicky, Aiko, Stephanie, Posette etc. etc., ad epiderminum to look as real as possible. That is a technical challenge unto itself which products such as SkinVue for Vue, vReel Skin for C4D & MentalRay's Fast Skin strive to achieve. Creating some new 'raytracer' without taking that into account is, again IMO, foolish.

Scrabble points for working in vestigial again but you'll never top your own 'vestigial versions' :-)

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken


stewer posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 6:24 AM

Quote - stewer is that you ?

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=974578&page=4&pp=15

It's me, although the photo is a few years old - I never changed it since signing up at cgsociety. As a reminder, whatever I write there or here at Renderosity is 100% my opinion and I do not speak for Smith Micro. So please do not try to interpret anything about the future direction of Poser from this post here, it's all just my very own personal view.

My thoughts on a few things mentioned in this thread:

Software modernization: Software is not like a car and not like a building. I can rip out the very foundation of a program and replace it with something else and still have a lot of the upper level code intact. Also, code doesn't age, rust or deteriorate - perfectly working code written 30 years ago is still perfectly working code today. Best example: Unix. A system that was designed decades ago for room-sized machines with text terminals is now playing videos and 3d games on my cell phone. There are many dramatic changes that a good programmer can do to existing software without having to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Ra tracing: There's nothing revolutionary or new with ray tracing or path tracing, both have been around for decades. The main reason why they're getting more attention lately is faster hardware that reduced path tracing render times from weeks to hours. Poser uses a ray tracer for things like reflections or shadows since verison 5 and expanded its use to AO and IDL, in 6 and 8 while making numerous improvements to the tray tracer itself on the way.

Unbiased: Doesn't mean what most people think or what marketing departments want you to think. It doesn't mean physically correct, it doesn't mean path tracing, it doesn't mean artifact free and it doesn't mean converging to the correct result. I could put a physically based path tracer in front of you and pretty much the only way to tell whether or not its biased would be studying its source code. In fact, most renderers that advertise being unbiased are biased anyway. (Does their max bounce option go to infinity - real infinity, not just 2^32?)

GPU acceleration: cool stuff, I love how much computing power we can get these days for so little money. However, there are severe limitations: CUDA and OpenCL don't do more than 128 textures, and textures have to fit into main memory in addition to geometry and code. Before Poser 7, textures were what made many scenes run out of memory when rendering, but the current version of FireFly can handle pretty much any number of textures in any size using less than 100MB RAM for them. I'm sure some day we'll be able to use texture and geometry caching for GPU ray tracing, but at this point, I haven't seen any practical solution for this problem.

There were a number of things thrown in together in this thread that are separate - physical shaders, ray tracing, progressive rendering and path tracing. Shading models like the one used in Cycles don't depend on ray tracing, if you look at the other sessions in that SIGGRAPH 2010 course, they are being used in games too. Also, changing a renderer from REYES to ray tracing will not add global illumination or change the way its shading works (you can try it out with 3Delight if you like, the Hider option: the render will look the same as before).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm against any of those things and I'm impressed as well by all the cool things that keep coming out. It's just that you don't go from a simple demo to a robust production engine in just a few months - for example, the Arnold renderer mentioned in the SIGGRAPH presentation that ice-boy linked has been in the works since 1997.


ice-boy posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 8:22 AM

stewer and bagginbsill.  try out a windows build of Cycles.

http://www.graphicall.org/106

 

change the shading mode to ''rendered''. and Cycles will change the rendering on the fly.

 

maybe in the future a connection with Cycles and poser ?

 

 


aRtBee posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 8:30 AM

interesting thread on the Poser renderer, again.

Between the lines, some people were reporting memory issues. Poser 8 is a 32bit program which can address up to 2Gb user memory under normal conditions. You can boost this to 3Gb, I did a tutorial (in the Rendo Tutorial area) to tell you how. P8 does not do so automatically in a 64-bit environment.

Rendering as a seperate process saves you from the Poser-overhead, giving a bit more room as well. Don't forget to make the FFRender.exe 3Gb-aware as well, then !

happy rendering.

BTW, I agree on Steves analysis on GPU benefits. Luxrender uses GPU for just a few routines in the process, while MAX as well as Octane and 3DCoat use GPU mainly for speeding up the interactive work in the viewports. In the meantime, one can do raytracing with FireFly (just set the materials accordingly, this was exactly what the REYES engine is about) and it is faster than Bryce. So, what's up?

- - - - - 

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

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


bagginsbill posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 8:58 AM

What's up is that soft/blurred reflections are missing in Poser. That's the look characteristic of the unbiased renderers that people notice is lacking Poser. The other aspect is how easily the many unbiased renderers correctly produce the Fresnel effect, whereas in Poser you have to at least build the Schlick approximation yourself and that's 4-5 nodes more you have to work into a shader. Most users can't/won't do it. When they render with, for example, LuxRender, they marvel at the realism of the surfaces. It's just those two things.


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LaurieA posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:12 AM

The biggest thing that bugs me about Poser is the materials (sorry BB). There is little to no documentation on any of the nodes, what they do or how to use them. Most of us go into the material room long enough to cry and leave again. The preview is minimally useful at best - in order to really see what that great material you just made looks like, you have to render it. 99 times out of a hundred it looks nothing like the preview or even close to what you were hoping for. Glass is a joke - can't even make it transparent, no caustics. Reflections are slightly better, but not great either. And there's no SSS. For folks who render primarly people and skin, this is important ;).

Lighting is another thing. Not that it hasn't improved. It really has. And things like BB's envirosphere and the addition of IDL were very welcome, don't get me wrong. VSS has also been a godsend for those of us who are material room deficient. Even taking all that, there isn't much that I would miss about the material room or the Firefly renderer if it were to go bye-bye ;).

edit: I would really miss dynamic hair and cloth tho...lolol. I wish they would improve Poser in those areas.

Laurie



bagginsbill posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:41 AM

No need to apologize to me when noting that nodes don't help people. I don't need nodes, I don't want them, and I don't use them. I write shaders as what they are - software. My matmatic converts them into the language of nodes, not because that is desirable, but because it's all we're offered. I have to do it that way. I'd much prefer to just write the shader as a C++ component and give it to you as a fait accompli.

The premise of nodes is you have the freedom to make it do anything, with training wheels so you can't fall down. You may not get what you want, but it will never crash. That's not true of free-form software components. And the sad thing is the training wheels limit you. You can't actually build any sort of material with Poser nodes, because some things are just impossible to say. The language of the nodes is too restrictive. There are no light loops, I can't directly get at certain key things like launching my own rays, so a good number of physical phenomena simply can't be implemented as is.

The reality is that a physically correct shader is a lot of math, and the math should be left to developers, not artists. (Unless you're Da Vinci - then you do both.)

This is the belief system shown to work for LuxRender et al. A handful of brainiacs produce a new built-in shader, and the rest of the people have no idea how it works, but they can plug in the color map, dial in the "shine", and it looks great.

I would not like to see Poser become "closed" like that - some dynamic component assembly is great. What I would like is for me, a software developer, to produce a new "Poser Surface" - or maybe 100 new ones - and skip all the nodes just to create the fundamental nature of the material - glass, metal, plastic, etc. The nodes are very cool for patterns and such, but not cool at all for the actual interaction with light.


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)


stewer posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:47 AM

Quote - stewer and bagginbsill.  try out a windows build of Cycles.

http://www.graphicall.org/106

Thanks, but I already compiled my own in Ubuntu.


bagginsbill posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:49 AM

The other problem with nodes is familiar to everybody. 

  1. Spaghetti

  2. No composites

In my previous job, I built a "node" based system for doing complex analytics against disparate data sources. It was very powerful but complexity overwhelmed people quickly. More than 50 nodes, and nobody understood how the analysis worked. And any common themes had to be built over again by hand in each solution.

In version 2, I introduced composite nodes. These were like integrated circuits. Users saw and used one node. Inside, there could be hundreds. They didn't need to see those. They just saw a few plugs on the outside. With this refinement, the node system took off. Today, there are hundreds of people using that system, and many of them are business people with no understanding of software development. Yet they "write" programs comprising 5000 or more steps in them in minutes.

Poser needs the same - libraries of composite nodes. Users who want glass would load the glass node - which is built from Shlick's approximation for Fresnel, and a handful of other nodes to mix and blend the reflections and refractions. All of this stuff inside, and you don't have to think about it or even look at it.


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)


wolf359 posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 10:12 AM

Quote - " I don't need nodes, I don't want them, and I don't use them. "

'

 

Thank You Sir!!
I continue to be Amazed at the insistance of some C4D users that Maxon implement
the mighty node based shader building system while at the same time drooling over the prebuilt shader libraries we have for Maxwell

Some are even demanding that Adobe make photoshop "node based"
while I under stand the true power of node based shaders I have never been personally interested  in  doing all that "wiring" myself .

Cheers



My website

YouTube Channel



LaurieA posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 10:16 AM

Quote - Users who want glass would load the glass node - which is built from Shlick's approximation for Fresnel, and a handful of other nodes to mix and blend the reflections and refractions. All of this stuff inside, and you don't have to think about it or even look at it.

It's similar to what we're trying to achieve with Pose2Lux actually. Prebuilt shaders that still use the texture maps of the Poser model or totally new ones that one can apply in the exporter. Obviously it's not perfected yet, but some of us are working on it behind the scenes. However, some adjustment by the end user with preview is planned for a future release.

I find it ironic too, that writing a shader for Luxrender by hand is easier for me to understand than using nodes in Poser. Go figure ;). Even LuxBlend makes more sense...lol.

edit: and yes, Snarlygribbly is a bit of a brainiac. That's a compliment...lol.

Laurie



Cariad posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 11:03 AM

Quote - It's similar to what we're trying to achieve with Pose2Lux actually. Prebuilt shaders that still use the texture maps of the Poser model or totally new ones that one can apply in the exporter. Obviously it's not perfected yet, but some of us are working on it behind the scenes. However, some adjustment by the end user with preview is planned for a future release.

I find it ironic too, that writing a shader for Luxrender by hand is easier for me to understand than using nodes in Poser. Go figure ;). Even LuxBlend makes more sense...lol.

edit: and yes, Snarlygribbly is a bit of a brainiac. That's a compliment...lol.

Laurie

We're lucky to have Snarly that is for darned sure.  Otherwise I would probably still be staring crosseyed at the .xml.  I can write a material by hand for P2L far faster than I could ever put one together for Poser and I don't need to worry about whether or not my math nodes are in the right order, just whether or not the .xml is formatted correctly, which with a good text editor is easy.

Which reminds me, my sanity break from skin is over, time to get back to work on it.

 


ice-boy posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 1:58 PM

Quote - What's up is that soft/blurred reflections are missing in Poser. That's the look characteristic of the unbiased renderers that people notice is lacking Poser. The other aspect is how easily the many unbiased renderers correctly produce the Fresnel effect, whereas in Poser you have to at least build the Schlick approximation yourself and that's 4-5 nodes more you have to work into a shader. Most users can't/won't do it. When they render with, for example, LuxRender, they marvel at the realism of the surfaces. It's just those two things.

and from what i understand its hard to have fast soft/blurred reflectiosn in firefly because it is firefly.


bagginsbill posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 3:11 PM

Who said anything about fast? The unbiased renders are not fast. If Poser could do it in an hour or two I'd be fine with it. Trouble is it won't do it at all. And it isn't because it's Firefly. The same argument could have been applied to why we had no IDL, which we now have.

I would say more about this topic, but it would require that I discuss what is going into the next Poser and I'm not allowed. But the point you should realize is that the reason Firefly is limited is time and money - i.e. because Poser is cheap. It has nothing to do with Firefly technology.


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)


ice-boy posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 4:29 PM

i should have wrotte ''faster'' and not fast in general.


ice-boy posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 4:31 PM

Quote - Who said anything about fast? The unbiased renders are not fast. If Poser could do it in an hour or two I'd be fine with it. Trouble is it won't do it at all. And it isn't because it's Firefly. The same argument could have been applied to why we had no IDL, which we now have.

I would say more about this topic, but it would require that I discuss what is going into the next Poser and I'm not allowed. But the point you should realize is that the reason Firefly is limited is time and money - i.e. because Poser is cheap. It has nothing to do with Firefly technology.

unbiased renders are not fast. but biased raytracers are super fast.


lkendall posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 7:22 PM

I would like to see a container node added to Poser, with a variable number of programmable input plugs, and even a variable number of programmable output plugs. (In Poser all of the nodes except the various Root Nodes have only one output plug. The Root nodes have no output plugs). Inside the (opened) container node, one could make as complex a node set-up as needed. Outside the (closed) container node it could look like the Root Node, with lines where values, or colors could be changed, and plugs for attaching spagetti connections. I would like the various channels/lines to be namable by the "programmer" for clarity. If one is going to go to the trouble of making something like this, go ahead and give it tabs or pages. (If I am allowed to really dream provide for internal connections between the tabs/pages).

I would like to see a node that can be programmed with the Python Script language built into Poser (and some lines/channels on the Root Nodes that can be programmed by the users using Python). I do not know enough about the possibilities to be able to dream of what some of the people in these forums could do with Python programmable nodes.

I would like to see most of the capabilities, functions, procedures, and variables exposed to Python, or available in a (reasonablly priced or free) SDK. I would like for Poser Python to be able to link to compiled libraries, and call external executable files.

I would like to see a nodes library. In the Advanced Material Room, right click in the nodes window, and have a library choice there under the New Nodes menu. I would like to save nodes there that I have set up. Even simple things would be a boon to me like a math node that makes an image negative. I just can't remember a lot of those things, and have to look them up time and time again. Why not name and save the node, and just add it already set up.

With additions like this, Poser could move from low-end to high-end very quickly, as people who can do the math make nodes that the rest of us can use. Well, as all can see, I have a very active fantasy life.  :)

lmk

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.


bagginsbill posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 8:40 PM

lk, that's exactly what I built in my last job. Multiple inputs and outputs. The names were whatever the user wanted.

I also built things called "bundles" - these were composite wires. You could combine various wires in a bundle, and then you could connect all the wires in the bundle to other nodes by just dragging one fat wire. Inside, you unbundled to get the individual wires again.

There were also user-defined parameters that could be assigned to a composite. These parameter values were then available to configure the interior nodes. For example, you could set the scale on one top-level parameter, and inside it would alter the scale of all the internal nodes that require synchronized scaling.

There could be composites within composites, of course. And once a useful composite was built, it was a single click to publish it as a new library component.

The most cool thing about it was this: if a library component was updated (to fix a bug, or make it faster or whatever) then all the deployed copies in specific solutions were automatically updated as well. It was not a copy - but a reference.

I have several patent applications filed in the US and Europe on all this. Still waiting for the lawyers to sort it out.


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)


RobynsVeil posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:08 PM

Quote - ...The most cool thing about it was this: if a library component was updated (to fix a bug, or make it faster or whatever) then all the deployed copies in specific solutions were automatically updated as well. It was not a copy - but a reference...

I.e, a class? The more I work them, the more impressed I am with the concept!

It would be geniunely brilliant if, in one of the next sorties of Poser, matmatic could somehow be integrated and one could write "composites", so no nodes as we traditionally know them would be used or could be seen at all: they'd be like part of a specific PoserSurface, maybe.

And no, I'm not hinting you comment on the likelihood of something like this anytime soon, BB - I do respect non-disclosure agreements. 😄

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks


kawecki posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 9:27 PM

Quote - The other aspect is how easily the many unbiased renderers correctly produce the Fresnel effect, whereas in Poser you have to at least build the Schlick approximation yourself and that's 4-5 nodes more you have to work into a shader.

It has nothing to do with biased or unbiased renderers, if you put Fresnel equations into any renderer, biased, unbiased, raytracing, scanline, z buffer and so, you will have Fresnel effect in the rendering.

It only depends on the math you use for illumination, you can use Maxwell that is complete, Fresnel or even the Schlick approxiation and it will do almost the same for Fresnel effect. Approximations for math functons words pretty well, the eyes don't have the precission of a digital measurement instruments and so it will see no difference.

The involved math can be very complicated, but from the point of view of the artist, you only need to define the characteristic impendance of the two mediums and all is done by the math. If you want to ignore polarization of light you can use real numbers for the characteristic impendance instead of complex numbers and if you want to sacrify even more you can use the refraction index instead of characteristic impendance.

Stupidity also evolves!


SteveJax posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 10:38 PM

Lot's of interesting stuff.


lkendall posted Sun, 01 May 2011 at 11:13 PM

bb:

I could use containers or composites in Poser, you could REALLY use them. I would say imagine how structures like this could be used with VSS or Mathmatic, but apparently you have already imagined this.

Nesting these structures inside of other containers/composites is better than pages or tabs. I like that. The "bundles" are a great concept. One really only needs one input conduit seeing that inside the structure the connections "un-bundle." Fascinating.

lmk

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.


msg24_7 posted Mon, 02 May 2011 at 4:04 AM

Quote - ...
I would like to see a nodes library. In the Advanced Material Room, right click in the nodes window, and have a library choice there under the New Nodes menu. I would like to save nodes there that I have set up. Even simple things would be a boon to me like a math node that makes an image negative. I just can't remember a lot of those things, and have to look them up time and time again. Why not name and save the node, and just add it already set up.

...

lmk

For the time being, why don't you do it, like I do...

I save all those small snippets of nodes as single materials to my library
and apply them to a hidden dummy sphere in my scene, then copy to the
material needed.
I am sure, provided one knows a little about python, one could create Wakros to handle this more efficiently.

 

Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.


stewer posted Fri, 13 May 2011 at 8:47 AM

Attached Link: http://renderman.pixar.com/products/news/rps16.0_release.html

Pixar just announced RenderMan Pro Server 16 - introducing features like progressive ray tracing and physically based shaders. Ax I was saying - you don't need to throw out old features to add new ones, and above all, you don't need to start from scratch.

ice-boy posted Fri, 13 May 2011 at 10:24 AM

but renderman already had the old tools fixed and fast.from what i understand Firefly is not like that.

 


cherokee69 posted Fri, 13 May 2011 at 11:51 PM

I'd like to see Poser be able to use the Up, Down, Left, and Right arrow keys to be able to move a prop or object just a little. Getting precise movement with the dials is tricky unless to have to keep changing the number settings which takes alot of time.


philebus posted Sat, 14 May 2011 at 5:07 AM

I woud also love to see composite nodes - they would make life much easier for many of us, if only by making things a lot more tidy. I use Postworkshop which saves its node based postwork as Styles - essentially composite nodes - which can then be used as nodes in other styles. While there are the 'primitive' building blocks, their own pre-sets are composites that (in version one) you could unpack to see just how complex they were. You can use these as building blocks and starting points for constructing your own styles, so you can have much of the work done for you, leaving you to tinker to get exactly the look you want, using six to a dozen nodes where you might have needed to juggle with a hundred.


232bird posted Mon, 16 May 2011 at 10:46 AM

Good thread.  I used to get all upset because I couldn't get a render to ever come out right.  didn't know as much then, though.  However, now that we have a way to get a scene to Luxrender, I actually kinda like Firefly.  I can usually have a decent quality render in less than two minutes, IDL included (cheating a little bit though, I got a six-core Phenom just for this purpose).  While the renders are nowhere near unbiased quality, they actually turn out really well considering that, and I love not having to wait fifteen minutes before I even have a clue what it is going to look like.  I can use it for a preview then let Lux churn out the final.

Now that Firefly has IDL support, plus D3D's Render Firefly script, I think the only thing missing is a little more physics in it.  I would like to see the light do some bending around objects (like real light), I think that would really add to the realism.  I expect that would be a pretty big change to the renderer and don't think it will be implemented because of cost factor for SM's target customer base, but just thought I would mention it.


kawecki posted Mon, 16 May 2011 at 4:25 PM

Quote - I would like to see the light do some bending around objects (like real light),

This is called diffraction, the direct application of Huygens principle and wave nature of the light. Don't expect that the so called "phycically based" rendferes take into consideration this.

Stupidity also evolves!


RobynsVeil posted Mon, 16 May 2011 at 5:32 PM

Are you sure?

Diffraction refers to various phenomena which occur when a wave encounters an obstacle. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word "diffraction" and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1665.[2][3] In classical physics, the diffraction phenomenon is described as the apparent bending of waves around small obstacles and the spreading out of waves past small openings. Similar effects occur when light waves travel through a medium with a varying refractive index or a sound wave through one with varying acoustic impedance. Diffraction occurs with all waves, including sound waves, water waves, and electromagnetic waves such as visible light, x-rays and radio waves. As physical objects have wave-like properties (at the atomic level), diffraction also occurs with matter and can be studied according to the principles of quantum mechanics.

While diffraction occurs whenever propagating waves encounter such changes, its effects are generally most pronounced for waves where the wavelength is on the order of the size of the diffracting objects. If the obstructing object provides multiple, closely-spaced openings, a complex pattern of varying intensity can result. This is due to the superposition, or interference, of different parts of a wave that traveled to the observer by different paths (see diffraction grating).

The formalism of diffraction can also describe the way in which waves of finite extent propagate in free space. For example, the expanding profile of a laser beam, the beam shape of a radar antenna and the field of view of an ultrasonic transducer are all explained by diffraction theory.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks


RobynsVeil posted Mon, 16 May 2011 at 5:39 PM

Refraction:

In optics, refraction occurs when waves travel from a medium with a given refractive index to a medium with another at an angle. At the boundary between the media, the wave's phase velocity is altered, usually causing a change in direction. Its wavelength increases or decreases but its frequency remains constant. For example, a light ray will refract as it enters and leaves glass, assuming there is a change in refractive index. A ray traveling along the normal (perpendicular to the boundary) will change speed, but not direction. Refraction still occurs in this case. Understanding of this concept led to the invention of lenses and the refracting telescope. Refraction can be seen when looking into a bowl of water. Air has a refractive index of about 1.0003, and water has a refractive index of about 1.33. If a person looks at a straight object, such as a pencil or straw, which is placed at a slant, partially in the water, the object appears to bend at the water's surface. This is due to the bending of light rays as they move from the water to the air. Once the rays reach the eye, the eye traces them back as straight lines (lines of sight). The lines of sight (shown as dashed lines) intersect at a higher position than where the actual rays originated. This causes the pencil to appear higher and the water to appear shallower than it really is. The depth that the water appears to be when viewed from above is known as the apparent depth. This is an important consideration for spearfishing from the surface because it will make the target fish appear to be in a different place, and the fisher must aim lower to catch the fish.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks


kawecki posted Mon, 16 May 2011 at 9:42 PM

Quote - The formalism of diffraction can also describe the way in which waves of finite extent propagate in free space. For example, the expanding profile of a laser beam,

Want to complicate more our existence, what about Bessel beams ? A laser beam that has no dispension and can overcome obstacles in its path.

And Airy beams, a beam of light that can bend ?

Stupidity also evolves!


232bird posted Tue, 17 May 2011 at 1:04 AM

Quote - This is called diffraction, the direct application of Huygens principle and wave nature of the light.

Yeah, I know, lol.  Couldn't think of the word.  Felt like I was spelling with wooden blocks and making choochoo sounds while I was writing "bending".  You're right about diffraction, maybe ambient occlusion is what I was going for.  And not the fake stuff like older versions used.  Even a quick render with default scanline settings in Max seems to have smoother light distribution.  I think if that were sorted out in Firefly it would become a lower end competitor for the other mainstream, non-bajillion dollar renderers out there, like Mental-Ray, C4D, etc.  Or maybe not, but I think it would make it a heck of a lot easier for those with less experience/Poser knowledge to produce better renders and avoid some frustration.