Ok droogs, I splurged and now I have this spanking new copy of Poser 13 on my rig 

And I've yet to notice a difference. 

Anything exciting I should look out for?
I mean, I've done a few renders and they came out as expected. Sure, I set up my preferences to match my Poser 12 settings and sorted out my scripts menu but so far, I am missing a seismic shift in the earth rotation or rendering supernova.. Should I expect that?

Naturally, my examination of the materials room was merely cursory, so I expect here is where I expect (to quote Monty Python) "My nipples explode with delight". 

Not downloaded the core content library because I suspected that it is the same as Poser 12 but maybe I'm wrong.

New Features in Poser 13

• Updated SuperFly render engine utilizing the latest open source Cycles engine.  GPU renders of complex scenes benchmark at under half the time required for the same scene on Poser 12.
• New Post FX options for rendered images including: denoise, exposure, saturation, gamma, brightness, contrast, bloom, blur and pixelate.
• Updated animation rendering system for better productivity rendering movie sequences.
• GPU rendering on remote nodes with Queue Manager allows creation of a powerful render farm on your local network
• New app launcher with Recent and Start Up scene templates
• Updated Walk Designer and Talk Designer for better compatibility with all figure types and support of imported libraries.
• Improved adaptive sampling for faster renders.
• Improved Intel Open Image Denoise (OIDN) that uses AI to denoise SuperFly renders.
• HDRI environment rendering for SuperFly.
• Enhanced shadow catcher and included HDRI environments enable realistic 360-degree VR-like environments inside Poser
• Improved morph and weight map copying system makes creating clothing easier.
• Streamlined installer, less than a 1/4 the size of previous version.
• Improved included content delivery using Poser's content library. One click installation of included and store assets.  Over 25 GB of updated and re-organized content from Poser versions over the years.
• Mac version coming soon as included update with Metal GPU support and M1/M2 support through Rosetta.
• New online help system works in your web browser with translation & bookmarks.
• Downloadable PDF version of the manual for off-line reading

https://www.posersoftware.com/store/products/293

Thank you. 

Was however aware of the release notes and the advertising blurb and also tend to expect anyone that buys software to be aware of the sales-description. No, in my post I was after straight-forward practical, day to day differences to Poser 12. The subject did come up especially with respect to materials and nodes.

Been using Poser and co since Poser 6, so I tend to go for practical advantages, tips, tricks and newsisms rather than blurb on the back of a sales carton. In this case, I was just surprised how little difference there was to Poser 12.

The difference in rendering speed for high quality Superfly renders is astonishing. The HDRI environment rendering support as well. Those two alone were worth the upgrade, along with the Displacement node being introduced in Cycles.

Hmmmm some good things to get to grips with. Thank you Rhia474!

Read mention of the HDRI environment support aswell but am a wee bit confused because I could do HDRI Environments in Poser 12 to and have been using Snarly's EZDome, so I can only suspect something else is meant.

Rendering speed.... Hmmm it's funny but coming from Firefly, Poser 12 and Superfly was already an eye opener with respect to speed. I expect the difference will come into play as I render larger scenes. Suspected that the differences in this case are "under the hood" as they say and not obvious at first glance. 

Far too early for even the vaguest hint of the suggestion that I might regret the upgrade. I am thinking that the various improvements become more obvious, the more I use Poser 13. Already noticed there is now a Volume BDSF and since all fantastic effects are pretty important to me, getting to grips with this will be important. I need fog and dust, smoke and if I can poison a few of my figures with toxic fumes, the better! :D

Try the render presets if you haven't already. If you are using older settings they may be slower than necessary.

Try using Optix if you have a suitable GPU and haven't been already.

I did not really like the PostFX denoise when it was all or nothing, but it's great that you can tune how much denoising you want now. The PostFX bloom is really great when you are doing the sorts of things is makes sense for (e.g., lights or ambient materials in darker settings) and irrelevant otherwise, but it's worth rendering something appropriate so you can play with it.

I tried all sorts of test scenes with OptiX and it was night and day compared to P12. The render presets are great to test your speed and quality with, and are very convenient. DoF also was fixed.

With HDRI I spent the money on the HDRI script Ken1171 put to the marketplace here, for real HDRI without need for a dome or jpgs. It really made a noticeable difference in how a scene is lit. Of course, we need to keep in mind that not all HDRI images are created equal--in my opinion, still too many low quality ones are used OR used with outdated additional lights. But that's an entirely different rant.

Weirdly, when it came to the render settings, I was kind of missing the old presets because I was used to fiddling with them to get things just right. That said, I gave Optix and others a go and became immediately suspicious along the lines of "It's blurry... I'm sure it's blurrier... This can't be right...There's a grain on the nose, or is that my monitor?

Didn't like the denoiser before and probably won't use it much now either.

As for HDRI.... I've used a few Daz Iray ones, which I converted to sIBL using sIBLEdit and then dropped into EzDome and that's been ok. Only trouble I had with that was getting the sun colour right in sIBLEdit. (missing some trick I expect) Mate told me that the 16k HDRI's from CG Axis are fantastic but I've yet to try them. Essentially, I have stuck to the EZDome method most of the time but shvrdavid's HDRI Setup over in my Superfly thread (https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2990609/superfly-help-and-examples-especially-with-respect-to-pbr-textures) is really quite fantastic.
Do get fireflies with some HDRI's and especially sundown ones.
Single biggest issue with HDRIs has been the scaling to be honest. Background houses and stuff looks enormous and off every time, so that I have fixated on Puresky HDRIs becaue other ones look bad.

Didn't realize DoF was broken in 12! :D :D :D  Bugger! And there was me using it and marvelling at how it was finally usable compared to Poser 10 etc... *dons "Dunce Hat" and goes to stand in the corner*

I have two of Ken1171s scripts already and especially the "go physical" one has been a massive time saver.

Pantherin75 

Just a few things concerning Poser13: you have a new way to start the program, active by default. One that lets you start with a few pre-installed scenes plus the ones you can create and add. In the example below: Externe, Studio 1 to Studio 4.

To add yours, just prepare a new empty scene and add it here:

Example with a simple clothed pinup on Mondello Beach, installed with the included part:

The ground shadow is computed by using  a simple PoserSurface node with Shadow_Catch:_only active, as it's now useable again with Superfly, and it's in the external scenes by default.
So that there is no need anymore for the EZDome and its EZSun, and it's more efficient. Same with the Shadow Catcher.

By default, to turn the HDRi, you will have to modify the second parameter here:

It's in Radians, 0 = east, 1.57 = north, -1.57 = south.
Or... you will have to use a setup freely and generously provided by one the forums members (sorry can't remember who, but someone else will probably remember 
In my experience, I've found that 2.2 is often a nice setup

I have experimented with combining HDR emission with Blackbody Kelvin temperature for variable atmospheric effects. Results are very satisfactory.

I have experimented with combining HDR emission with Blackbody Kelvin temperature for variable atmospheric effects. Results are very satisfactory.

I still can't understand how you manage to make a shadow with an HDRI.

I have just loaded the default Mondello Beach  startup scene, added the character and rendered:

If you take a look at the pose scene, especially at the GROUND object (I have changed its default display mode)

The shadow is computed thanks to its material, especially the right checkmark:

thanks I will try

Will have to give the Mondello Beach  startup scene another go, as it didn't do anything for me when I tried it out. 

I am still trying to figure out what irks me about many renders I do with HDRIs and EZDome. The renders that I liked were small scale ones using a simple wall and floor + pbr textures combination and generally predominantly area lights. This is an example of one that irritates but I cannot put my finger on what bothers me. It's an  EZDome setup with no sun and a Daz Studio freebie from Xmas.
Please excuse the quickly cobbled together figures and clothes. If you really need reasons and answers, then this is that phase in Jedi Lore where heroes had issues with modesty and had to wear a star-shadped denim patch of fabric above non-disclosed, forum friendly non-event-masses. As you can imagine, the individuals did Disney proud with whatever they did in their decidedly limited attire.

Oh and I made a mistake. There is a sun in the HDRI and in this case, coming in from the figures right hand side.

The problem with HDR illumination is that it is ambient environmental lighting. It is best to provide an infinite light to sharpen and define the directional shadows.  Where EZDome is concerned, the HDRI should provide ambient lighting from the outer dome and a sharp background image of the inner dome. The infinite light (Sun) should be added, as necessary, to simulate the time of day.  This means that the HDRI should be convoluted, or modified, to provide pure, ambient environmental illumination to your scene.  

I have discovered that you can create varying specular and diffuse HDR lighting from the same source image.  But you required third-party software to make the modifications.

For Y-Phil,

I mentioned integrating real-time lighting with HDR to change the mood of an environment. Below are two renders, one using the natural lighting from the HDR, the other given a warmer, overall tone.

The difference between the two images is that I added a Blackbody node, set to 3600 degrees Kelvin, to the right image.  The Blackbody node was connected with a Mix node, as illustrated below:

You can get a shadow with an HDRI. But it depends on the image and what kind of lights are in the image. In this first one, it's an indoor room with a window to give light. The shadow is very faint. It probably wouldn't have shown up if I'd bothered to line her up with the floor.

This second one is the same scene with a sunny outdoor image. You can see the shadows much better. The shadow is at a different angle because the sun was in a different spot than the window.

This is the setup of the scene. Lights 1-4 are "work" lights that light the preview but don't render. The main light is my starting point for lighting a render until I have the proper lights set up. It's turned off for these renders. All the light and shadows are from the HDRI on the background texture. The setup was based on the Mondello beach scene that comes with Poser.

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2978435/a-change-of-environment-the-easy-way is a link on how to use the Environment preview to help you set up the background texture.

hborre posted at 7:19 PM Wed, 19 February 2025 - #4493793

For Y-Phil,

I mentioned integrating real-time lighting with HDR to change the mood of an environment. Below are two renders, one using the natural lighting from the HDR, the other given a warmer, overall tone.

                        

The difference between the two images is that I added a Blackbody node, set to 3600 degrees Kelvin, to the right image.  The Blackbody node was connected with a Mix node, as illustrated below:

                                     

Excellent, thank you

After many setbacks, I arrived at a result but without going through Environment preview, but by background and adding a light

The problem with shadows where HDR's are concerned is matching the shadow color and sharpness/blurriness. Until you can painstakingly match all the variables, you will still have renders that will not look right. 

Pantherin75 posted at 4:37 AM Wed, 19 February 2025 - #4493776

Weirdly, when it came to the render settings, I was kind of missing the old presets because I was used to fiddling with them to get things just right. That said, I gave Optix and others a go and became immediately suspicious along the lines of "It's blurry... I'm sure it's blurrier... This can't be right...There's a grain on the nose, or is that my monitor?

You can of course tweak them.

Didn't like the denoiser before and probably won't use it much now either.

You can overdo it, especially if there is a lot of noise to begin with, but personally I find that using some gives good results.

Single biggest issue with HDRIs has been the scaling to be honest. Background houses and stuff looks enormous and off every time, so that I have fixated on Puresky HDRIs becaue other ones look bad.

Changing the camera's focal length will shift things closer or further away.

Pantherin75 posted at 3:46 PM Wed, 19 February 2025 - #4493790

Will have to give the Mondello Beach  startup scene another go, as it didn't do anything for me when I tried it out. 

I am still trying to figure out what irks me about many renders I do with HDRIs and EZDome. The renders that I liked were small scale ones using a simple wall and floor + pbr textures combination and generally predominantly area lights. This is an example of one that irritates but I cannot put my finger on what bothers me. It's an  EZDome setup with no sun and a Daz Studio freebie from Xmas.

I feel like the lighting might be too uniform. That could be a result of this particular HDRI. You could also add lights. If you have area lights, maybe you are filling in too much. Less can be more. Try adding them only from one side. Or cheat and just add a little spotlight on the character from a single angle, set to inverse square to keep it from illuminating too much else.

Personally I would also add DoF which helps cover up a lack of detail in the HDRI (as well as looking more realistic) and I tend to add a tiny bit of contrast in PostFx.

This particular scene also has a very limited color palette, which could be an appropriate artistic choice depending on what you are doing, but it makes it feel more muted overall.

Found the time and did experiment by adding a sun. Perhaps I should view HDRI more like ambient lighting of the past and maybe those tried and tested ways of scene composition from Firefly/3Delight are not entirely a thing of the past. The difference may just be "Less is more".

As for DoF.
Been using Dof regularly but never considered it with respect to the size of the HDRI imagery. Been using it far more to bring out my figures.

*sigh*

I take it with the newer versions of poser they have changed rendering with an alpha background. Basically making the ground invisible no longer seems to work like in Poser 10 or 2014... And there is nothing about it anywhere...

Just want to damn well render a portrait against an invisible background. Piece of piss in poser before but now..... Arghhhhhhhhhhh

Ok, what hoops do I have to jump to get that to work?

To have a transparent background check here

I just realized that the shadow system doesn't work directly if you add Mondello Beach to a scene because of a whole bunch of interactions, but that it works immediately better if you start with Mondello Beach from the startup Scenes

vince5 posted at 4:27 PM Sun, 23 February 2025 - #4493876

I just realized that the shadow system doesn't work directly if you add Mondello Beach to a scene because of a whole bunch of interactions, but that it works immediately better if you start with Mondello Beach from the startup Scenes

Then I have deleted all lights and background, and I have added the Mondello Beach startup scene, using the "double-V",:

and then, after having zoomed out a little bit and:

RedPhantom posted at 1:12 PM Sun, 23 February 2025 - #4493870

To have a transparent background check here

It's frustrating that Poser 13/12 just often feels like nothing is straightforward, everything takes ages and all the script freebies that did help in the past,
are no longer there. It's a huge uphill struggle.

I have kept almost nothing from my various attempts due to lack of memory, but I remember that the first time Mondello beach did not appear, the second I had Mondello beach and the ground, the third Mondello Beach without ground or shade until this thread which made me put everything back in place