Using Draft quality and low settings on virtually everything, the frames render at a decent speed (2 or 3 / second). Add rendering and this slows down to 1 frame / 5 seconds or 1/10 the speed. In an attempt to see what was taking all the time, I made a static frame with no changes over the entire length. To my suprise, it took just as long to render. I can't believe the program would re-render areas that don't change. I figure I must have a setting wrong some place. Any ideas?

poser renders everything from frame to frame. this is true with most 3d packages with animation capability. poser pro pack to 3ds max (or lightwave, i'm assuming) and a good, pro-quality 3d video board (with texture memory) will speed things up significantly.

If Poser had to decide how much of the next frame (in rendered form) is identical to the last frame, it would have to render the next frame to see what it looks like, and then make the decision about which pixels to change, and -then- figure out which objects need to be calculated this time. The latter determination would not be trivial, because anything can cast a shadow or a reflection into any part of the scene. So you would actually lose time that way! Some time could be saved if 100% identical frames are repeated, because that could be determined easily from the parameters. But a long 100% still sequence is rare in an animation, almost by definition. (Why animate in that case?)

Could you please give me some suggestions as far as a "pro-quality 3d video board (with texture memory)"? This may indeed be my problem since I am currently using a "Nvidia GeForce 2 MX400". Can't afford to spend a lot, so anything significantly better than what I have will do.