My Poser renders only silhouettes, help!

Proxima Shining

Hi, I am a Daz Studio user and the other day I had the opportunity to get Poser 9 cheaply in a bundle with other software I wanted, so I grabbed it. Now I wanted to try it out but I cannot seem to find a way how to render in it. Or rather how to render using the FireFly engine option. When I render in Preview or Sketch, it works OK. But in Firefly I get only pitch black silhouettes (see the picture below).

Can anyone tell me what to do? When I hit "render", it appears to work, in the status bar it says that it is loading textures etc., rendering, no warnings or troubleshootings appear, but in the end everytime I get only a silhouette.

I suspect it may be because I have an old computer and the CPU is not very strong. But Daz Studio 4 works on my PC, so why wouldnt Poser?

Thanks in advance for any help.

frank0314

Can you post a screen shot of your render settings

Proxima Shining

Thanks for reply. I left the render settings the way they were when I opened Poser for the first time, so it should be standard settings. I have to go away for a while now, I will post screenshots as soon as I get back home.

Proxima Shining

Hi, there are the render settings.

WendyLuvsCatz

looks to me like the lights all pointing from behind the figure

frank0314

Here are my test render settings. There are a couple things you need checked off. Not saying that is your problem but its a good place to start. Your pixal samples are pretty low and your Min shading rate is way to high. should be around .2. best results .1

Proxima Shining

I havent done anything with the lights in the sample picture, this is the standard set that loads with Poser. And I havent turned the character around either, so it should be okay, unless the lights normally load pointing the wrong way.

I have actually already tried to experiment with the lights a bit. I even deleted all the lights and loaded a different light set but no help.

Here is a sample with a different light set. In this sample you can see that the shadow is behind the characters back, so the lights cannot be pointing from behind him.

Proxima Shining

Thanks for the tip, Frank0314. But sadly still no difference, with your settings it only took much longer time to render.

Here is a comparison of renders I was able to make in my Poser 9 with three different renderers: Preview, Sketch and Firefly.

WendyLuvsCatz

must be a setting on the figure
is visible in raytracing enabled?

frank0314

hmm, I'm at a loss now. I really thought it was a render or light setting. What are your system specs?

Proxima Shining

wendy♥catz: Yes, it is enabled. Also, this happens to all figures, not just this one.

Frank0314: My PC is AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20 GHz, 1,96 GB RAM. Like I already said, an old PC but Daz Studio works on it so I thought Poser would too. Maybe Poser is more demanding than Daz Studio and needs better CPU?

WandW

Your system specs seem reasonable. It appears that it is not loading the textures, although they are loading in preview.

Do you have the latest version of Poser 9? The current version is 9.0.3. 26132 (Help>About Poser) If not, the update can be gotten here:

http://poser.smithmicro.com/poser9-updates.html

Also, where did you install the content? Since you are a new user, you probably installed it in the correct location, which is outside of the C:/Program Files hierarchy; those who upgrade often install it in the Poser program directory, which can cause problems in modern versions of Windows...

PS there is a content update on that page, too....

Proxima Shining

Hi, my installations are:

Poser is installed in: "C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 9".
Content is installed in: "C:\Documents and Settings\Míla\Dokumenty\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library".

I installed content there when I first installed DAZ Studio, so now I simply added the runtime path to Poser and it worked okay. I have no problem with using my content in Poser. I can load figures, clothe them, pose, add lights etc. It is just the FireFly rendering that is the problem. Curiously, while rendering, in the status bar it says "loading texture xxx" etc. But if it does not load textures although it says otherwise, then Poser is actually a measly liar... :-S I did not think software was already intelligent enough to lie... :)

I have still good old Windows XP, so there shouldnt be a problem with too much modern Windows version. My Poser version is 9.0.0.16510. I will try to update to see if it helps but I dont set my hopes too high.

WandW

Good install paths. :)

One of the bugs fixed:

"Fixed a problem with loading a CR2 that resulted in black textures on figure:"

Proxima Shining

WOW! WandW, you are my saviour! I updated and now it works! Look at Chip, how happy he is... :-)

Thanks everyone for their advices!

WandW

HUZZAH! :coolgrin: