Digital Art Zone

Comparing both Poser and Daz Studio, what are the advantages and disadvantages to both?

Fortunately, this Holy War question has a short answer. They both can use LuxRender.

ropeman - 05 November 2012 12:06 PM

Fortunately, this Holy War question has a short answer. They both can use LuxRender.

So they both can have grainy unfinished renders? Not sure that was what the OP was talking about.

But seriously Lux isn’t necessarily better, just different. And even going in that direction there are alternatives for both programs in that area.

EDIT: Might as well put my 2 cents in here for the OP. If you have both software packages then learn the renderers yourself and formulate your own bias. I think it largely has to do with time, a lot of people don’t devote time to learning how to get a good render using different engines and so they tend to support the one they know best. I look at rendering engines as a challenge and try to get the most out of each one I play with. I tend to find that I like using one or another for different things.

I strongly feel that there are a lot of good renderers available to Poser/Daz users, but even the built in engines are really good if you learn them.

Thank you, I was just wondering since I do not have Poser yet and just weighing my options

I of course would say that whichever one you use, the better render engine is in Bryce, so transfer your set up figures etc into a Bryce environement and render it there.

BTW that is me talking as a Bryce Addict,  not an official comment.

Poser’s default lights are better than Daz Studio’s lack of default lighting, but I wouldn’t recommend stopping with the defaults anyway! Even very rough and quick renders in Poser look decent because it starts with three lights. But to really get something spiffy you need to devote a bit of time to lighting and materials in all renderers.

And chohole’s comment confirms what I said earlier. Whatever you use most will be your preferred choice. I tried Bryce and disliked its renders for humans! But I know people make great things come out of it.

I tried downloading bryce before and kept getting a corrupted file when extracting the zip folder, plus does bryce handle animations?

And I would be the first to agree with you there. For close up renders etc it can be challenging to set things up in Bryce, but isn’t that ture of every app or render engine. This topical render is actually one of my better ones, and did take a long time playing to get it to look right.

http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?&ACT=50&fid=41&aid=30274_R1rq53PUGtaTYALOy8ff&board_id=1

2getit - 05 November 2012 01:32 PM

I tried downloading bryce before and kept getting a corrupted file when extracting the zip folder, plus does bryce handle animations?

Some people get some quite good animations from it.

The best way to download Bryce is actually to purchase it through the store. http://www.daz3d.com/shop/software/bryce/bryce-7-pro

If you do get a failed download, remember to clear your browser cache before you attempt to doonwload again, as otherwise your browser will pick up the previous attempt form the cache and fail at the same point.

I use both.  Here’s my take:

DAZ - Pros: Intuitive user interface, native Genesis support, shorter (in my opinion) learning curve.  Cons:  native 3Delight (render engine) is much slower than Poser’s Firefly engine.  Standalone 3Delight may be faster, depending on your machine, since the free version only allows 2 cores.  Requires a plugin to animate. Difficult to add ambient occlusion nodes to surfaces, making UberEnvironment the choice method to get AO effects, which are global and sometimes grainy.  No IDL without Lux.

Poser - Pros: Firefly is much faster than Daz’s 3Delight, includes native IDL, more documentation for advanced material settings (node-based) including SSS and AO. Includes native support for volumetric atmosheres (haze). Cons: Interface is… challenging, at least at first. Some components are fairly useless—Face room, hair room, etc.  Poser “people” (Alyson, etc.) lack the support and quality of DAZ figures.

There is a significant amount of overlap, where both products provide excellent performance. For example, both have great lighting options, the ability to run 3rd party scripts, render DOF, control render settings, etc.

And before I get jumped on for my statements about render times, I have actually rendered benchmark scenes on my machine and have consistently found a 30-50% difference in render times between DS and Poser, always in Poser’s favor—using DS4.5 Pro and Poser Pro 2012.

I like them both.  If DS had quicker renders, I’d use it much more than I do.  I’m lukewarm about Lux.  IDL in Poser gives me results that approach Lux renders.  And I’m less than enthusiastic about non-native render engines, because one usually has to alter material and light settings for the 3rd party engine.

Since you said you don’t have Poser yet I guess you may have some time to tinker with Daz. There are a lot of things to improve your render mostly lighting and materials. A bad set of cloths can look a lot better with a different texture or even with just an improved shader added to it and some setting tweaks.

When I first started with Daz I wondered why all my renders were all plasticy. Then I started learning about how to improve the lighting. Then the skin. I still learn and experiment to this day.

Be careful with materials designed for a different software because they can hold a render back. For example a lot of props you find may be for poser and have poser material settings that don’t work as nicely as they should in Daz. Some products have materials for both, some don’t.

And just to shake things up don’t forget about Carrara and with the 8.5 beta you can now use Genesis in it as well as well

KaribousBoutique - 05 November 2012 01:56 PM

And I’m less than enthusiastic about non-native render engines, because one usually has to alter material and light settings for the 3rd party engine.

I would suggest you alter material and light settings even with native renderers. If in this case if alter meant “start from scratch” then yes you nearly start anew with a 3rd party engine but that works fine if you have a workflow and know you are using a different engine anyway.

I just don’t encourage 3rd party engines to those who haven’t really taken the time to learn what comes in the software. What comes built in is capable of a lot, has a lot of support are versatile and free. While I really enjoy Octane(which for me has replaced Lux), I still use the built in renderer for a lot of my renders because realism isn’t everything.

And I’ve learned how to keep things rendering quickly.

larsmidnatt - 05 November 2012 02:06 PM

Be careful with materials designed for a different software because they can hold a render back. For example a lot of props you find may be for poser and have poser material settings that don’t work as nicely as they should in Daz. Some products have materials for both, some don’t.

I wholeheartedly agree.  If there aren’t DS mats, going into the material settings is critical to optimizing your render times.  And if one is using DS mats in poser (i.e., Genesis content), the same can be said in reverse.

larsmidnatt - 05 November 2012 02:15 PM

KaribousBoutique - 05 November 2012 01:56 PM

And I’m less than enthusiastic about non-native render engines, because one usually has to alter material and light settings for the 3rd party engine.

I would suggest you alter material and light settings even with native renderers. If in this case if alter meant “start from scratch” then yes you nearly start anew with a 3rd party engine but that works fine if you have a workflow and know you are using a different engine anyway.

I just don’t encourage 3rd party engines to those who haven’t really taken the time to learn what comes in the software. What comes built in is capable of a lot, have a lot of support are versatile and free. While I really enjoy Octane(which for me has replaced Lux), I still use the built in renderer for a lot of my renders because realism isn’t everything.

And I’ve learned how to keep things rendering quickly.

 

I suppose I meant that I have a much better grasp of what alterations to my settings will do in the native render engine.  Learning to truly optimize the render settings is kind of the challenge of ALL 3D programs.  I have a solid grasp of those ideas in DS and Poser because I’ve used both programs extensively.  My aversion to 3rd party engines is that it’s akin to learning a whole new program. I could do that.  I HAVE done that (DS, Poser, Vue, Cararra, Bryce, 3DSMax/mental ray, etc.), but I don’t want to.  I haven’t seen evidence that Lux is any better than Firefly for Poser, at least not without ridiculous render times.  I can already export most Poser scenes into Vue or 3DSMax for rendering—programs I know well—but I usually don’t.  Lighting in almost all instances starts nearly from scratch.  All materials need to be examined.  If I wanted to do all that, I’d just MAKE my scene in Vue or Max, so I wouldn’t have to light and texture twice. Maybe it’s just that I find Lux incredibly non-intuitive.  I’ve used it… But I’m meh on using it instead of Firefly.

I also agree that Octane kicks the pants off Lux—have seen amazing renders from Octane.  I’ll eventually get off my butt and see if I like Octane’s interface better than Lux’s.

KaribousBoutique - 05 November 2012 02:29 PM

I suppose I meant that I have a much better grasp of what alterations to my settings will do in the native render engine.

Yep, understood. And in my experience with Daz render (very limited Firefly experience) the engines are good at more than one thing. They can do realistic, semi-realistic, stylized and cartoon renders. (toon shaders, manga etc)

KaribousBoutique - 05 November 2012 02:29 PM

If I wanted to do all that, I’d just MAKE my scene in Vue or Max, so I wouldn’t have to light and texture twice.

For me, if I think I want a render out of Lux/Octane I never even bother with lights/materials in daz first.  Sometimes I’m on the fence so I do some quick test renders early in development and see if it’s worth going external or not. That way time isn’t wasted. It can go either way, sometimes I find that realism isn’t want I thought I wanted, other times I get wowed and decide that I’m just going to set up the meshes and pose things in DS and export it out elsewhere for the rest.

KaribousBoutique - 05 November 2012 02:29 PM

I’ll eventually get off my butt and see if I like Octane’s interface better than Lux’s.

Octane will have a DazStudio plugin soon (as will Poser), Octane already has one for Max and a bunch of other software. I’m using the standalone software at the moment and I will say it’s pain initially. Does have a demo version but I am still anxious for the plugin. I’ve gotten used to the standalone but a plugin will still save time in a few areas. It’s become my preferred path for realistic renders (when realism is what is called for)