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Subject: Superfly in 11.2 - Extremely Long Render Times


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mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 11:21 AM · edited Thu, 18 April 2024 at 11:55 PM

So I decided to take the risk of not updating my Poser Pro 11.1. I had a permanent license, so I decided to risk it. I was fully aware that it might crap out at any time as numerous people have said on this very forum. I did not take any steps to block it on my firewall. I did that intentionally, as an experiment. Not too surprisingly, that experiment has failed.

On Saturday, my Poser happened to crash and it prompted me that my "trial period" was over. I already had the files all downloaded, so I did the update. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it all went perfectly smoothly. 😁

However, I then noticed that renders were much, much slower. I use Superfly exclusively. I do mostly GPU rendering, but some CPU rendering. I use a GTX 1080 Ti. I went to the forums to do some reading, and I haven't really found anybody saying the same thing. But I did find that there have been a couple of updates since 11.2 was released.

Thinking that might be the issue, I downloaded the latest update and installed it. That seemed to mostly fix it, though rendering was clearly very different now. The progress bar was different and just not rendering the same way. I took a day to play with it, and thought I had new render settings figured out that would give a similar result over a similar amount of time. I let that experiment run for most of last night, and found that the final result was not acceptable even though the render time was only marginally longer.

So as another experiment, I used my old render settings for a final quality render and set it to process overnight. In Poser 11.1, that render would have been finished in roughly 6 hours - long before I woke up. Right now, 3 hours after getting out of bed, that render isn't even 1/3 done.

This means that rendering in Superfly, for me, is taking at least three times longer than previously. Now before we get into details like, "What are your rendering settings?" Or the rest of my machine hardware configuration, I just want to know if anybody else has experienced this?

So everybody, have you found that Superfly in 11.2 is significantly slower? Like more than three times slower?

P.s. I am running the latest version of Windows 10, with all updates, and the latest NVidia drivers for my card.

Sincerely, Mister Phoenyxx


SamTherapy ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 11:38 AM

I don't use Superfly but I found Firefly to be significantly slower than before, when using settings I'd always used in the past.

I was concerned that Poser may trash my settings when I installed 11.2, so I did the old fashioned thing of screenshotting my settings for various types of renders. My final quality settings are now painfully slow. Admittedly, they weren't exactly sprinting along before, but now they're like a sloth on quaaludes.

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mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 11:42 AM

SamTherapy posted at 10:41AM Mon, 21 October 2019 - #4367787

I don't use Superfly but I found Firefly to be significantly slower than before, when using settings I'd always used in the past.

I was concerned that Poser may trash my settings when I installed 11.2, so I did the old fashioned thing of screenshotting my settings for various types of renders. My final quality settings are now painfully slow. Admittedly, they weren't exactly sprinting along before, but now they're like a sloth on quaaludes.

Well that's concerning. I had hoped it was only SuperFly.


GWild99 ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:09 PM

Ditto on super slow super any renders ... Smith Micro Poser 11 Pro was slow; Bondware is probaby 10x slower on CPU; and my GPU renders even slower. It'd be funny, except it isn't.


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:37 PM

By the way all of you reading this, I would really appreciate if you post even if you aren't experiencing this issue. I'd kind of like to get a feel for if this is a global issue for everyone, or if it's limited to only a few people.

Are there people that have not experienced this? Are there some, or a bunch, of you that Poser is rendering at the exact same speed? Or maybe even faster?

Please let me know! 😃


DarthJ ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:50 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:54 PM

I have a machine running on 32 RAM and though I haven't tried anything extreme yet I haven't noticed any slowing down so far. I should try a render on extreme settings and with 30 pixels samples. Took nearly a day on my previous machine. Also, on my previous 16 RAM PC if a render was in progress it would claim my whole computer. Nothing else worked properly : videos, etc ... Now I can render and meanwhile run multiple other programs too.





Rhia474 ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 12:57 PM

I haven't noticed anything slower with my trusty render settings I've used prior to update. Now, granted, I haven't clocked my renders in a long time. Maybe I should.

What I've noticed, though i it takes longer to load scenes/figured/props since I've updated. Nt sure if that's because all of the external runtimes i have now take longer to path for some arcane reason.


Glitterati3D ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 1:05 PM

I haven't noticed a longer render time and haven't changed my settings or how I render. I use Superfly almost exclusively, and render promos day and night. I just finished 3 complete packages that I submitted over the weekend - 26 Superfly renders.

I use CPU rendering because although I have a nVidia card, it's only 1 mb and takes much longer than just going with good CPU settings.


seachnasaigh ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 1:32 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 1:34 PM

I haven't seen any slowdown of rendering.

(four workstations, twenty render-slave servers, all on 64bit Win7)

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ironsoul ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 2:13 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 2:15 PM

Graytail reported problems with poor performance when using a GTX1080Ti and Superfly (11.2?). Comparison renders using a 1060 and a 1070 both out performed the GTX1080ti by a wide margin (800x600 Syfy cat). Graytail replaced the first GTX1080Ti with another 1080ti model and had the same problem. A comparison with Blender's 2.8 bmw scene also appeared to show the GTX1080ti was slower than it should be but with a render of Blender's classroom it out performed the 1070. You can see the thread in the Poser 11 forum under 1080vx1060. I'm not aware Graytail found a solution. There have been earlier posts (pre 11.2) with GTX1080Ti users reporting slow rendering but it was not clear if that was the card or the scene/render settings.



SamTherapy ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 2:22 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 2:23 PM

Well, regardless of the render settings - since I'm using the same ones I used previously - there's a definite slowdown, even when rendering a single figure with no clothing, hair, background or other props/scene elements.

My machine specs haven't changed since the upgrade and I'm using the same figures I used previously.

I can get a decent speed by using a setting that we experts call "Rough as a bear's arse". 😁

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caisson ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 2:26 PM

No slowdowns here, from P11.1 through various betas to current release (I think I'm current, been away recently and will have to check!). If it was a global issue it would have been seen by now and addressed :)

Remember to check the message log as it will tell you if there are any problem materials, plus specify what Poser is rendering with, memory used and exact time. Specifics are gong to be required to go any further ...

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GWild99 ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 4:03 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 4:11 PM

Adding some numbers:

Here I am using the simplest project I can think of: the default La Femme opening screen.

In all cases, everything I can reset I restored to DEFAULT.

To normalize things, I set the rendered image size to 1440 x 1080.

Load the default La Femme screen. Default Firefly Automatic setting. Render takes 39.48 seconds.
Load the default La Femme screen. Default Superfly CPU setting. Render takes 21.89 seconds.
Load the default La Femme screen. Default Superfly GPU. Render takes 19.38 seconds.

CPU is i9-7900x (10 3.5GHz+ cores, 20 threads -- 32GB) GPU is GTX1080 (2560 1.7GHz cores -- 8GB)

Can you say ssllloooowwww renders? My earlier Poser rendered a frame in just a few seconds; not fractions of minutes. I have a 600 frame animation that use to take a day to render, now it says I'll be waiting a week. Woohoo! The logs tell me my stopwatch and time to get back to a controllable UI are lying to me:

image.png


HartyBart ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 4:05 PM

No slowdowns here. I imagine that a lot will depend on installing Poser 11.2 with "Use existing preference files" checked? Otherwise one's render presets and other speed tweaks might be wiped.

As for the very latest 11.2.x making "rendering ... clearly very different now. The progress bar was different and just not rendering the same way." I would have expected an announcement if there had been such a major change. Can you give us a screenshot of what that looks like for you?



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mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 5:23 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 5:26 PM

@rhia474 If you were seeing slow down, you wouldn't need to time it. It's so drastically, blatantly slower that you can't help but notice. Also, oddly, I'm experiencing the opposite of you. I have found that pops, figures, and saved scenes all seem to load faster now. Just my rendering is so slow that Poser is unusable at the moment.

@Gitterati3D What CPU do you use? I'm running an i7-8700 K with 32 GB of DDR4 RAM. Historically I found my CPU renders were just slightly slower than GPU rendering with the GTX 1080 Ti. So I converted to almost all GPU rendering, as I could also continue to use the system when GPU rendering. Whereas CPU rendering pins the CPU to 100%.

@seachnasaigh I also have 2 remote machines. One is a Dell R610 with 2 x Intel Xeon X5670 6-core processors and 64 GB of RAM. The other remote is just a crappy little Windows 10 box that only manages to put out 1 or 2 renders a week, but there's no reason not to use it. Obviously both of these remote machines do CPU rendering. They have also slowed down just as much, if not more, as my main machine.

@ironsoul Thanks!

@SamTherapy Same here. Nothing has changed on my machine or in the things I am using. It's just the version of Poser.

@caisson I didn't really think it was a global issue, as I hadn't seen any threads about it. But sometimes you just never know, so I needed to ask the community. 😁 As for my logs, you can see them below. The pertinent part is at the bottom. 68643 seconds rendering, and it was only done 12 out of 35 tiles. That is far more slow than my original estimate of three times slower. This is more along the lines of 10 to 20 times slower. Completely unusable.

logs.JPG

@HartyBart I did make sure that "use existing preference files" was checked during the upgrade to 11.2. The most recent update though, uninstalled Poser completely and then re-installed it. I believe it still offered me that option though, and I still checked "use existing preference files".

As to what I meant about the progress bar, please refer to the following image:

Progress Bar.JPG

Please take note of the "Sample 4131/10000" part of that picture. Prior to the update that 4131 number would jump by anywhere from 5 to 30 each time it moved, just depending on what part of the scene was being rendered. Backgrounds and walls would jump by like 30 each time, while hair would only move by 5 numbers at a time. So like 4131 would become 4136, then 4141, 4146, etc when doing very detailed hair models.

After the update, that number moves by 1's and 2's when rendering the least demanding part of the scene: backgrounds and simple objects. The progress bar reflects what I'm saying as far as my render speeds being inexplicably 10x slower or more. The reason I say, "It's different" is that simple, grey backgrounds shouldn't be "moving the dial" by 1's and 2's. That progress bar should be lightning fast on a simple grey background. So I don't know if the weird bar behavior is an indicator of what's wrong (that my card isn't rendering large chunks at a time like it should), or if it's merely reflecting the much slower rendering progress.

Please keep in mind that I have tried CPU renders both locally and on **two **separate remote machines, as well as a variety of different GPU rendering options. Everything I do on every machine is an order of magnitude slower. Again, so slow that the software is quite literally not usable. It takes days to render the simplest scene.

Here are the render settings that I am using. Some of you are going to look at them and wonder if I'm insane. That's fine. I know they aren't the best, but they the settings that I find work the best for me after weeks and weeks of experimenting when Poser Pro 11 was released.

render settings.JPG

If you have additional questions, then please let me know. If you have any suggestions of things to try, then please let me know also. 😅


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 5:37 PM

GWild99 posted at 4:36PM Mon, 21 October 2019 - #4367789

Ditto on super slow super any renders ... Smith Micro Poser 11 Pro was slow; Bondware is probaby 10x slower on CPU; and my GPU renders even slower. It'd be funny, except it isn't.

@Gwild Did you ever use Reality for LuxRender for Poser? Do you use EZSkin3?


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 6:08 PM · edited Mon, 21 October 2019 at 6:10 PM

I've submitted a ticket about this issue. Meanwhile, any help or suggestions for things to try to help me narrow down this problem would be appreciated.

For instance, is your Poser still installed into a Smithmicro folder? Or have you installed it in a different location? Specifically, my Poser is installed into C:Program Files-Smith Micro-Poser 11.

Did a test similar to GWild. Femme base scene that loads with Poser now at 1440x1080. Used the "GPU Medium quality option" that is one of Poser's included options for render settings. I wasn't sure what GWild meant by "default render settings". See images below:

Render settings:

GPU Medmium.JPG

19, nearly 20, minutes to render this scene is ridiculous. Logs:

Test log.JPG

Result, which isn't a very good quality render. But then I was using "Medium" so I didn't expect a great result. I am including this in case people using the same settings get a far superior rendering result. I've also censored out sensitive areas just to be safe on the forum.

Femme Test image censored.jpg


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 7:36 PM

Well the plot thickens, and I may have been wrong about some of my determinations. See blow:

log 2.JPG

So I also use a GTX 1050 Ti, but I don't usually use it to render. It just drives my monitors. These tests were performed using the same test scene above (Femme default scene at 1440x1080), with the same render settings (GPU Medium Quality).

  1. As you can see from the log, if I use the 1050 Ti and the 1080 Ti together then I get a much more reasonable result: 37.56 seconds.
  2. The GTX 1050 Ti by itself actually renders quite quickly as well: 111.17 seconds.
  3. The GTx 1080 Ti by itself though, then takes 691.01 seconds. So the 1080 Ti is operating much more closely to its proper abilities when working with the 1050 Ti.
  4. Out of curiosity, I did a CPU render with the same "GPU Medium Quality" settings which gave 238.69 seconds. Much faster than the GPU render, though not up to the 1050 Ti speeds. But then I was using GPU settings that were not optimal to a CPU.
  5. Using "Medium Quality" (just regular Medium Quality, not the GPU one) I get a much better result on the CPU of 43.98 seconds.

So I may be wrong that my CPU renders are out of whack as well as my GPU renders. I said that based on some test renders I did using CPU Ultimate Quality settings. Those tests weren't performed with the settings I would normally use for a CPU render. So that is my mistake I think. CPU renders seem like they might be fine on my machine given results above.

So this begs the question of whether it's an issue with 1080 series cards, or is it related to having multiple cards in your machine?

Can anyone confirm that they run multiple GPUs, not SLI, in a single machine and do not have any render time slow downs?


DarthJ ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 7:49 PM

mr_phoenyxx 100 pixel samples ? That is crazy. No wonder the machine takes days to render. For quality I use 20 pixel samples, maximum 30.





caisson ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 7:51 PM

Loaded default scene, using 11.2.309 (latest beta build). No material or lighting changes - as the log shows, I have started Poser, adjusted the render settings to those posted above (except bucket size as I don't have a suitable card for GPU so I'm CPU only) and then hit the render button.

render settings.png

No point posting the render, it's the same. Here's the log -

log.png

So the 1080Ti results are way off.

I would note that Superfly has not had any significant update since P11 was released back in late 2015 IIRC. I used to render on a GTX 660Ti which was released in 2012 and got times around 20% faster than my CPU. The 1080Ti was released in 2017 according to Wiki, so I suspect that Superfly simply does not work well with later GPU's where the architecture has changed. This has been the case with Octane Render; every time a new round of Nvidia GPU's has been released the software had to be updated to work properly with it.

What about CPU results?

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caisson ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 8:03 PM

Didn't see last couple of posts; from what has been posted I think this is a GPU issue which will need Superfly to be updated ;)

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mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 8:18 PM

DarthJ posted at 7:16PM Mon, 21 October 2019 - #4367893

mr_phoenyxx 100 pixel samples ? That is crazy. No wonder the machine takes days to render. For quality I use 20 pixel samples, maximum 30.

I knew someone would say that. :)

Here is the issue though, this exact same machine before the update to 11.2 would render a 1600x1200 scene in about 6 hours.

My personal experience has been that with anything less than 100 pixel samples, I don't get a decent result. I would be curious to see all of your render settings to compare.


DarthJ ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 10:00 PM

Your last render settings make my PC slow down when I render. Would take quite a while to finish. I rendered this one below on the "GPU high quality" preset (20 pixel samples) though with CPU, not graphics card. Took 489.61 seconds (about 8 minutes) to render without slowing down my PC

CO COWERING.jpg





ghostship2 ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 10:10 PM

@mr_phoenyxx

your render settings are borked. I run less samples but get cleaner results. I run 70 (4900 samples.) Yes, my card is slower than yours and has less memory but I also have a 970 that I run at the same time usually. take a look at my results. You will also note that there is more light in my image because I'm running more diffuse bounces. speed test.jpg

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


willdial ( ) posted Mon, 21 October 2019 at 11:24 PM

@mr_phoenyxx

The 1080 Ti should be faster than the 1050 Ti. I saw some posts from a couple of years ago with people complaining about slowness in Cycles with the 1080 Ti. Unfortunately, they don't mention a fix.

I'm not seeing any slowness from 11.2 update. But, I'm running a regular 1080 on Windows 7 with older drivers. I only update when absolutely have to update.

As for the 100 Pixel samples, Superfly is noisy especially for indoor scenes. To get a clean image, you have to crank up the samples or use a denoiser.


ironsoul ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:12 AM · edited Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:15 AM

If this was an issue with the 1080 series I'd expect to see more people report the issue, the posts of very poor performance had one card in common which was 1080ti. I've seen two posts which suggest 1080ti can work ok, one of these posts was from Jura who appears to operate a 1080ti with two other cards in the same rig. My suggestion is to follow graytails post and tryout the same sample scene and compare render times to see if you have the approx same render time. note cross post with willdial.



A_Sunbeam ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:54 AM

Not sure if this helps, but here are some details. I haven't found Firefly to be any slower than before. I rarely use Superfly. This on an old (2009) MacBook running El Capitan. 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8Gb RAM. Card is NVIDIA GeForce 9900 M 256 Mb.


ironsoul ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 1:08 AM

Most likely a futile, "throw enough mud at the wall" type suggestion - considering the impact of the dual card. Could Windows and Poser be offloading display and OpenGL rendering onto the 1050 leaving the 1080ti free for ray tracing only? One thought is these two functions are throttling the 1080ti. It is possible to control how CUDA is used in the Nividia control panel 3d settings so it may be possible to mimic this behaviour when using one card only.



DarthJ ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 8:15 AM · edited Tue, 22 October 2019 at 8:18 AM

This is the same render now with Gostship2's settings. On CPU though, graphics card RTX2070 doesn't want to render. Took 6682.64 seconds. About 1 hour and 51 minutes. The image is indeed brighter, maybe even too bright, see orange shadows. The "grainyness" is gone at 70 pixel samples.

CO COWERING 2.jpg





mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:43 PM

ironsoul posted at 11:41AM Tue, 22 October 2019 - #4367924

Most likely a futile, "throw enough mud at the wall" type suggestion - considering the impact of the dual card. Could Windows and Poser be offloading display and OpenGL rendering onto the 1050 leaving the 1080ti free for ray tracing only? One thought is these two functions are throttling the 1080ti. It is possible to control how CUDA is used in the Nividia control panel 3d settings so it may be possible to mimic this behaviour when using one card only.

Maybe? That's over my head to be honest. But I mean if I'm not using the 1050 Ti to render, meaning it's set in Render Settings to only use the 1080, then the 1050 should not be involved in the render at all. At least in my mind anyway. Also, I don't think it explains the behavior that the 1050 Ti is faster on its own, and the two cards together work correctly and are way faster than either card alone.


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:45 PM

willdial posted at 11:44AM Tue, 22 October 2019 - #4367917

@mr_phoenyxx

The 1080 Ti should be faster than the 1050 Ti. I saw some posts from a couple of years ago with people complaining about slowness in Cycles with the 1080 Ti. Unfortunately, they don't mention a fix.

I'm not seeing any slowness from 11.2 update. But, I'm running a regular 1080 on Windows 7 with older drivers. I only update when absolutely have to update.

As for the 100 Pixel samples, Superfly is noisy especially for indoor scenes. To get a clean image, you have to crank up the samples or use a denoiser.

Thanks will! It hasn't been an issue until 11.2. Previously my 1080 Ti was faster than anything else on my machine: CPU or 1050. I've tried doing lower pixel samples with a denoiser. It doesn't look good in my opinion, which is why (as you commented) I crank the pixel samples up in order to get any kind of decent render.


Rhia474 ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 12:50 PM

Try to crank up bounces instead to accurately represent light. 30-50 samples is usually enough for me if there are enough bounces (ghostship's settings above are really good, but unworkable for my older graphics card).

On the other hand, there was a thread regarding Superfly presets specifically being switched up/erroneous in 112.2 and not sure they ever got fixed. As I never use presets that come with the program, this was not an issue for me.


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 1:07 PM

@ghostship2 I think you missed the point? I wasn't trying to get a high quality render result. I was trying to come up with a standard test that would complete quickly in order to compare render times. A standardized test is the only way to do valid comparisons in order to determine what's going on.


ghostship2 ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 4:44 PM

rendering 10,000 samples per tile ain't gonna be quick.

mr_phoenyxx posted at 3:43PM Tue, 22 October 2019 - #4367993

@ghostship2 I think you missed the point? I wasn't trying to get a high quality render result. I was trying to come up with a standard test that would complete quickly in order to compare render times. A standardized test is the only way to do valid comparisons in order to determine what's going on.

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


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 5:00 PM

ghostship2 posted at 3:58PM Tue, 22 October 2019 - #4368021

rendering 10,000 samples per tile ain't gonna be quick.

mr_phoenyxx posted at 3:43PM Tue, 22 October 2019 - #4367993

@ghostship2 I think you missed the point? I wasn't trying to get a high quality render result. I was trying to come up with a standard test that would complete quickly in order to compare render times. A standardized test is the only way to do valid comparisons in order to determine what's going on.

Correct. Before the 11.2 update, it would take roughly 4 to 6 hours depending on the scene. Now it takes days. I'm aware that I don't use the most optimal render settings, but they worked perfectly fine before the update. Now they don't. My render settings haven't changed. Something about Poser has.


SamTherapy ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 6:29 PM · edited Tue, 22 October 2019 at 6:29 PM

If I may leap in here, I believe many of you are missing the point entirely.

OP - and me - are not saying "How can I speed up my renders?" OP - and me - are saying "When using the same render settings as before, render times are significantly longer in 11.2."

The issue isn't about adjusting render settings, it's about why on earth has it suddenly fallen off a cliff?

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ghostship2 ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 7:22 PM · edited Tue, 22 October 2019 at 7:26 PM

I'm not missing the point. I'm running the same software that everyone else here is running and haven't noticed any difference in render times up or down. What I am reading is that the OP is using ridiculous render settings that WILL INCREASE RENDER TIMES to crazy levels. I suggest using settings that optimize light diffusion, lower noise and speed render times before we get all insane about 12 hour render times. Optimize your settings first, then if your render times are still crap you can gripe and moan about it.

There was a standard render test scene over at SM forum that someone posted a few years ago. It uses figures and props that come with the program and represents a typical Poser scene with figure, hair, clothing and a room with appropriate lighting.

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


willdial ( ) posted Tue, 22 October 2019 at 7:40 PM

@mr_phoenyxx

What version of Poser 11.2 are you using? Bondware released a new installer on 10-11-2019 02:10 am. I'm still using the version I downloaded on the first day.


EClark1894 ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:10 AM

How many cores are you using?




seachnasaigh ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:27 AM

EClark1894 posted at 11:18AM Wed, 23 October 2019 - #4368099

How many cores are you using?

I was wondering that too, Earl. Perhaps when installing P11.2 the core usage number was reset?

For folks on Windows machines, open Task Manager (press CTRL + Shift + Esc simultaneously). Select the performance tab. You should a graph UI; it shows you how much memory (RAM) you're using and how much processor (CPU) capacity you're using. If you're rendering, the CPU% should at/near 100%. This is my workstation Urania; she is rendering now:

Task Manager - performance tab - 100pc CPU.PNG

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OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

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mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:48 AM · edited Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:50 AM

ghostship2 posted at 10:32AM Wed, 23 October 2019 - #4368034

I'm not missing the point. I'm running the same software that everyone else here is running and haven't noticed any difference in render times up or down. What I am reading is that the OP is using ridiculous render settings that WILL INCREASE RENDER TIMES to crazy levels. I suggest using settings that optimize light diffusion, lower noise and speed render times before we get all insane about 12 hour render times. Optimize your settings first, then if your render times are still crap you can gripe and moan about it.

There was a standard render test scene over at SM forum that someone posted a few years ago. It uses figures and props that come with the program and represents a typical Poser scene with figure, hair, clothing and a room with appropriate lighting.

I appreciate your suggestions. I do. But the render settings do not matter to this issue. I understand the point you are trying to make, but I can use the lowest setting available for the fastest render possible, not caring about the quality of the result, and my system will take ten times longer to render as soon as I tell it to use only my GTX 1080 Ti. It performs properly with a CPU render, with the 1050 Ti, and with the 1080 Ti and 1050 Ti working in tandem. It only does **not **work properly when I tell it to use the 1080 Ti by itself, and that is a problem. Especially when it's not a little slower. It's a lot slower.

That is the problem I am trying to solve. Adjusting render settings is meaningless to the issue. The effect occurs at all render settings.

I do like your suggested settings for high quality renders though. I tried them out, and I agree that the result is superior. Once this problem is solved, I will likely use your settings moving forward. 😀

I also thought about using that test scene you mentioned. I remember it well from the Smith Micro forums. Honestly, I just didn't feel like going there to track it down. I felt the default La Femme scene was easier and faster to use.

Also, I'll share the results of the test I did with your settings. This is the La Femme default scene at 1440X1080 with 70 Pixel Samples and 6 Diffuse Bounces. The exact settings you suggested.

GTX 1080 Ti by itself - 26705.03 seconds. Almost 8 hours to render!

GTX 1080 Ti + 1050 Ti - 1387.46 seconds. 38 minutes.

Whatever is wrong with the 1080 Ti or my Poser, it needs to be fixed. This is a serious issue.

Also, just out of curiosity, I ran the same test with my usual settings of 100 pixel samples and only 4 diffuse bounces. Render time with the 1080 Ti + 1050 Ti was 2381.48 seconds. So my usual settings are about 20 minutes slower than your suggested settings, and provide a slightly dimmer result. As you pointed out, your settings are superior. I'll be using them moving forward.

But I still need this very odd issue with 1080 Ti's (or with my specific install) figured out.


seachnasaigh ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:50 AM

To check how many threads Poser is set to use, edit : general preferences...

edit -- general preferences P11'2.png

When this UI windows opens, click on the render tab, and check the threads setting.

edit - GenPrefs - render - threads.PNG

Set the number of render threads to be equal to the number of processor cores you have. If you have a simple quad core, set it to 4. For a HyperThreaded quad core, set it to 8. My workstation Cameron has two HyperThreaded hex core processors, so 2x2x6 = 24 threads.

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


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:54 AM

EClark1894 posted at 10:51AM Wed, 23 October 2019 - #4368099

How many cores are you using?

That might apply to some of the people that are saying they see slow down even on a CPU render, but that doesn't currently apply to my specific situation. I'm using GPU renders. But to answer your question, my Poser is set to use all 12 threads of my 6 core, hyper-threaded processor.


seachnasaigh ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 11:55 AM

I can't help with GPU rendering, as I have yet to put anything worthy together for GPU rendering.

The volumetric samples and bounces seem to be the slowest effect; if you aren't using volumetric materials in a scene, set both to zero.

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


caisson ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 1:05 PM

mr_phoenyxx, the problem is that the 1080Ti and Poser are speaking different languages and do not understand each other. The 1080Ti was released in 2017, Poser 11 in 2015. GPU rendering is still relatively new and nowhere near as mature or stable as CPU rendering, and the various cards have gone through major changes internally over time. It could be that the slowdown you've seen is to do with changes in the graphics drivers. It isn't Poser because Superfly has not been updated since the initial release. Octane Render is exactly the same - when I was using it, every time a new round of Nvidia cards got released it would have to be updated to work properly. At least you don't have a new RTX card as they just don't work at all.

So I think that both Poser and the 1080Ti are working, they just cannot communicate efficiently. If your rendering speed is good when using two cards together then that is your best solution for GPU rendering right now; alternatively switch to CPU. The long term solution is for Superfly to get an update (and I hope that it's high on the dev teams list).

----------------------------------------

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


GWild99 ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 1:05 PM · edited Wed, 23 October 2019 at 1:08 PM

By default - so that everyone uses the same scene and settings - there is a RESTORE default button in Render Settings. But 100% factory sets render size to 1970's 640x480 and branched ray tracing. So be sure to disable branching and increase rez to a usable 1440x1080 ... but here's my 640x result, for grins.

image.png

Using that, and the Factory La Femme image.png


GWild99 ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 1:16 PM

Lol - and now logging isn't working ... got that first shot above and now the log is just hanging ... too funny. Why is Poser code so buggy?


seachnasaigh ( ) posted Wed, 23 October 2019 at 4:31 PM

For CPU rendering, networked rendering would sure speed things up. Distributing samples for Superfly, and buckets for Firefly.

The Vue renderer and Lux distribute samples/tiles over a network.

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


mr_phoenyxx ( ) posted Thu, 24 October 2019 at 12:48 PM

caisson posted at 11:37AM Thu, 24 October 2019 - #4368116

mr_phoenyxx, the problem is that the 1080Ti and Poser are speaking different languages and do not understand each other. The 1080Ti was released in 2017, Poser 11 in 2015. GPU rendering is still relatively new and nowhere near as mature or stable as CPU rendering, and the various cards have gone through major changes internally over time. It could be that the slowdown you've seen is to do with changes in the graphics drivers. It isn't Poser because Superfly has not been updated since the initial release. Octane Render is exactly the same - when I was using it, every time a new round of Nvidia cards got released it would have to be updated to work properly. At least you don't have a new RTX card as they just don't work at all.

So I think that both Poser and the 1080Ti are working, they just cannot communicate efficiently. If your rendering speed is good when using two cards together then that is your best solution for GPU rendering right now; alternatively switch to CPU. The long term solution is for Superfly to get an update (and I hope that it's high on the dev teams list).

I am aware of all of that. I've had similar issues in other software packages with updating NVidia drivers and seeing changed behavior. However, that is not the case this time. What you are saying does not make sense. I was already running Poser 11.1, which is older than Poser 11.2 as you indicated. I'm not sure when the 1080 Ti was released, but I will take your word for it as far as Poser 11 being older than the 1080 Ti.

My NVidia drivers were already running the latest iteration. My Windows was already as up-to-date as it could be. Those updates were actually done the week before. And my 1080 Ti was working properly in Poser 11.1 with all those updates installed. I am running the exact same drivers, the exact same hardware, the exact same OS as what I was using with Poser 11.1. The only change was moving to 11.2, which then broke my 1080 Ti in Poser. So yes, it's a Poser issue, as that is the only thing that changed. They may not have announced that they changed the version of Superfly, but they have clearly done something.

Which I mean that isn't surprising. It's a different version. Obviously they have changed things. I am also not 100% convinced that it's the 1080 Ti. What I am saying is that there is some combination of specific things happening on my computer that has broken GPU rendering in Superfly with my 1080 Ti by itself. At the moment, the only tests I can think to do seem to indicate that the problem is the 1080 Ti or its drivers. But the change wasn't done in the hardware or in NVidian's drivers. The change was in Poser. So in my opinion, Bondware is responsible for fixing it.


gate ( ) posted Thu, 24 October 2019 at 3:52 PM · edited Thu, 24 October 2019 at 3:57 PM

@ mr_phoenyxx

LOL .... might be the best solution to make a roll back to Poser 11.1 and check if it runs smooth again it is still possible as the Sm manual activator is still online I also think it should as the ones who had Purchased the 11 licence at SM can insist to have it running , I guess this would solve many issues for the time being until Bondware got things running smooth. If you have to start manipulating to many things on the system to make a Program work it sure ain't a good thing. and besides the Pytons there seem to be many other things on 11.2 that need system tweaks, also the more you reinstall , and uninstall such a 3D Programm the more the probability is that it craps out your registry and driver settings. The moment they will tell you to reformat your windows or say to fix your machine means there is something terribly wrong if it worked right before. Better get some restore points in Windows before installing new versions He He


ghostship2 ( ) posted Thu, 24 October 2019 at 4:41 PM

here is a link to that standard test scene

http://www.sharecg.com/v/86389/browse/11/Poser/Superfly-render-test-scene

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


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