We've been asked by a few people about the rendering settings we use so here they are!

NOTE: to achieve a great 3D render, regardless of the tool you use there are a few elements to take into consideration:
- lights
- shaders (skin in particular)
- rendering settings
they all contribute to a great 3D pic, well, of course great models and composition are must-haves too but the above 3 concern the quality of the rendering output not its artistic quality (which is MUCH harder to put into guidelines ).

Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012 settings are on top below them are Poser 8 and Poser Pro 2010 settings, the only difference being the new subsurface scattering feature.

EXPLANATION
With the release of Poser 8 Smith Micro introduced a new feature for rendering in Poser: IDL, that is Indirect Lighting.

This feature can very highly increase the quality of the final render output so we suggest everyone to use it for their final renders.
Please, note these are final render quality settings, they're not meant for wip/test renders but for the final, high quality, render!
For WIPs of test renders you can either avoid IDL entirely (for example, we don't use when working on the very products, to check textures and so on, sometimes we turn it on to fine-tune materials though) or just lower some of the IDL settings (for example when you are testing your lights and you need IDL to be anabled as lights have a very different outcome with IDL on).

1- The Poser main render settings panel, it's actually similar to the one available even in previous version (but the Poser 4 engine is no longer available), still, you have to use the manual settings for the Firefly rendering engine since the Auto ones are poor (they don't include displacement, smooth polygons etc.) and certainly are not recommended for final renders; unless you only need a rough one to be heavily postworked in some 2D editing program.

If you don't need to use IDL this already includes all you need (just uncheck the IDL little box).
The DOF may also not always be necessary (even though it can always help to add depth and a certainl 3D feel to your renders, even close-ups):
- you can avoid it for characters-only shots while if you're rendering them in an environment it will really help to add depth and the feeling that they are in the scenery
- you can add/fake it at a later time (especially if your machine isn't very powerful since using DOF can heavily increase rendering times, especially on less powerful machines and especially in combination with IDL). On simplere shots (for example character- only or close ups), you can successfully use the brlur blush or functio in photoshop or similar programs. For more complex shots you can use separate renders and masks, semidieu's scripts can come really in handy in such cases (you can find them at RuntimeDNA.com or you can also use tools such as DOF pro etc.

2- If you decide to use IDL you can simply set it up on the previous screen, HOWEVER it's much better that you use the advanced IDL settings available through the script by Dimension3D (included in Poser) (Scripts -> Partners -> Dimension3D -> Render Firefly

3- On the IDL render settings window that will open up put the shown settings for an high quality, image outcome.


NOTES:

- Add as many cores as you have since the rendering speed is incremental, of course this means your computer will not be able to do much more than rendering OR, don't use all your cores if you want to do other things while Poser redners (like watching a video, modeling, texturing etc.), obviously this means it will take much longer for the render to be completed.

- samples and irradiance cache: of course the higher these settings the better, however rendering time can really increase if you boost them too much. For more complex scenes you may want to keep these values a little lower, you can also run some tests with area rendering to see if the outcome difference is worth the additional rendering time.

- pixel samples: if you're using DOF they should be as high as possible. If you've set a "light" DOF 12 may be enough, if it's stronger choose and even higher value for the pixel samples. Your best bet is to check with a smalle area render on the most distant object how the brlur of the DOF renders out, when you're satisfied with the outcome you can render the whole image.

We hope this may come in handy !