Well I got slammed down to a blue screen last night and just now got everything straightened out and up and running again. This happened last service release, and I think it has something to do with how it's affecting my ram. Got the same type of messages this time that I got last time about not being able to access certain memory blocks, which was cleared up in the last crash by changing the memory pages. Thinking about giving up on poser 5, not worth it to me to lose work like I did this morning. Marque

this morning i was deep into p5 grouping when POP!... reboot... i dont know what happened but when i typed in my pw to logon, i found my keyboard was fried... what makes you so sure poser is at fault and not just faulty ram chips or some other config problem? a blue sceen can mean several things. was it a ram related error? post it here then, so others can see. what os are you using? maybe you should just get new ram chips if is indeed a ram issue. my guess is its probably a combination of not enough memory and fauly (insert technical name here) for you to get a blue screen. which, again, can mean a few things so if is a ram error, get new ram and see if it helps. there is such a things as crappy ram no matter how expensive it was when you bought it. hope things work out. we need p5'ers to keep working at it. its hard to find/fix the issues THAT are program issues while filtering out the general computer stability/capability/compatibility of all the different specs out there when people with problems dont share them aliong with their issue.

Was working fine until the new release, was working fine until I went into p5 and used it the first time, then blue screen. Was working fine before until I installed it and when I checked my memory it had been changed. Is working fine now, no p5 installed yet. Seems a bit suspicious to me and I'm done with it for a while. My system is fine until I install p5...so no more until I get my work done. Marque

uhmm, what os are you using? if xp - you can check memory real easy - on win98SSE ctl+alt+del to see what programs are being loaded. When doing remote control from my laptop to my desktop (pool time ;-)) - loads 3 run[something].dll [or whatever that file is named] and screws up my memory (bluescreen city) but from xp running remote control on one of my other xp machines - doesn't have that problem. New release is only on my laptop (since cl allows this and desktop) and because of limited memory (19xMeg) cant do production firefly but can do p4 renders. Everything else seems to be fine. got 20g free harddrive fully scanned and defragged, latest updates to win98se - poser files I am working with have a min of 12meg in size. Your hardware info and programs running would greatly increase the chance of being able to get help.

a blue screen usually (not always) denotes a hardware problem. ram, hard drive, video cards if it just doesnt pop on you. imo, i think youd be better off trying top pinpoint your exact system problem. oh i get it, you were just here to bash and complain. notice the only person who replied was trying to help you track the problem and didnt go off half-cocked without the facts? no specs? no error message to pass along? musta been poser then. its the only option.

darn 40 seconds behind cruzan! lol

I've been using p5 since it was released, bought it pre-sale like other folks here and have been using it with each release. I haven't been bashing it, but if you want to call this bashing go ahead. I build my own systems and test them as well. I have only had this particular problem twice, and both times was with a new service release. Both times I've had to re-install everything on my system, both times the only program open was poser5. If you look on their site you will see that they have a program that is supposed to deal with the problem of not using all of your ram if you have over 1 meg. That is the program that crashed it the first time, took CL's and installed it to make use of my gig of ram. I'm using win2k with p4 2.5 1 gig ram geforce ti4600. I'm just tired of it working on and off, some days are great then suddenly it will do something totally squirrely. I don't know why there are some here who defend CL to the death on this thing when we all know it has been wracked with problems from the start. So get off me. Thanks, Marque

I've been pretty quiet on the Poser 5 debate until now. I have been using (and loving) Poser since version 1 ... and as much as I hate to admit it, Poser 5 is a big disappointment. I am trying to like it, I've even worked extensively with Judy and gotten her to look somewhat human ;-). And here I am trying to do a render of my latest Judy creation, and I can't count how many times Poser stops responding while rendering or multitasking. The only way out is to ctrl-alt-delete. I've got the latest video drivers, latest patches and figures, and I have defragged and cleaned up my hard drive. None of my other programs have these kinds of problems (and I have some hefty hardware requirements with some of them). So ... I don't think those who are still having problems with Poser 5 are bashing it and CL. There ARE still some problems. So sad ... I had such hopes for P5. 8-(

Okay, I might as well be the unpopular one (which I usually am anyway). I've a wimpy Windows ME, three year old machine, and Poser 5 is showing an improvement in speed with the SR3 update. It's still early yet, but so far I'm pleased with how its going. One thing I've noticed is that sometimes Poser stops and it seems to have stalled but, if I leave it alone for a few minutes, it continues on. I'm not sure what causes that (possibly my lack of power in my machine) but at least it seems to not be freezing completely, and the process is going more smoothly than it did previously. So I'm working with Poser 5 on my creaky little machine and being relatively happy about the situation. The only thing I can't do which you all can is that I can't do mega sized renders. But then, fortunately, I don't need to. Sorry you're having such a bad time. I know how frustrating that is. I've had my share of crashes and freezes, believe me.

Thanks Deecey. I have also had poser since ver 1, still have the CD it was one of my first programs on CD...lol I just get frustrated when I try to do some work and it suddenly goes belly up on me. Some days it works and it's awesome, some days just sucks. Most programs you buy are pretty consistant, they either work well or they don't, poser 5 is the first I've used that is so unpredictable. At least I'm not threatening to sue the company the way some users here have. Course since it was in the p5 beta forum they weren't accused of bashing, just stating their frustrations...lol Marque

im truely sorry for the both of you. i just dont agree poser is at 100% fault here. it runs just like any other application for me and others. you are in the growing minority i beleive, because somewhere in your system resides a conflict with the way poser is interacting with it. its simply a problem that can be corrected. i do call it bashing when your initial post holds zero information. if you came here for help, you didnt give us much to go on, hence the replies for more information. you came here to bash (which i think you did, out of anger.. totaly reactionary ((which is somewhat justified)) so thats that about that... if your using 2k, make sure you at sr3 for that. i beleive there were some p4 intel updates and on that topic, hit tehre site and check for updates.. did you get new drives with your new computer or were you frankensteining em? depending how old they are, you might want to check up on them too... good luck...

its my understanding poser 5 is new code... i thought i read that they wanted to build it from the ground up... maybe im wrong. i didnt write the program, i just use it.

Marque, the memory updater is supposed to be applied to Poser 4 only. I don't think you should apply it to Poser 5. Why do you need to re-install everything when a blue screen strikes you? I'd expect a reboot should suffice? What dou you mean by "Was working fine before until I installed it and when I checked my memory it had been changed" - can you clarify what you mean by that?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1231338

Poser has to have some sort of memory leak, its memory management is horrible. Why would a file render perfectly using Poser 4 renderer in Poser 5 and lock up Poser in Firefly. Can somebody explain me that one? I was able to get Firefly to render the image a couple of times but every time I lock up I have to restart Windows to clean the memory and load Poser without anything else running and I might have a chance of my scene to render. I'm dealing with hefty scenes with multiple figures 10 figures tops, no Vickys 3. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See my previous post here http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1231338 Firefly will still lock up when rendering complicated scenes that Poser 4 has no trouble with. These scene is a little over 100 MB. Renders fine in Poser 4. With the latest SR 3 still locks up, still cannot cancel. As soon as memory use goes to 100% Poser 5 locks up, I posted this way back in the beta forum. I cannot believe stability wasn't addressed in this release. I should have know it when I didn't read anything about addressing rendering lock ups in the service release fixes. Windows 2000 SP 3 1GB 1066 Rambus memory 80 gig hard drive Pentium 4 2.53 GHZ Poser 5 SR 3 Still one frustrated user ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And please Ulik, don't think I'm screaming at you or anybody from Curious Labs that has the courage to come and try to help us but the reality is there is some really messed up code in Poser 5 that nobody has been able to straighten up yet.

I don't know if this is going to help us narrow down some of these render issues ... but the scene that I was having problems with when I posted response #8 had a mixture of ray traced and shadow mapped lights. The problem went away when I used all ray traced lights. So, the problem seems to be with when Firefly renders shadow maps. What I see is that Firefly gets hung up when it is loading objects and materials, and I see no action from the CPU. When I start the task manager there is no CPU activity at all, and it also shows that Poser 5 is still running (in other words, it doesn't say "Not responding". The only way I can get out of it is to end the task. There have also been times that the render stops after a partial render, without any warning. Could these also be memory issues? I have 1 Gig of RAM, a 1.8 GHz CPU, and two 80-gig hard drives.

In my case I'm not using radiosity, not even shadows!!!! If Poser 4 renderer can handle it why not Poser 5 Firefly????!!!!

":<)

Here are my rendering settings:

Have you tried reducing the bucket size? This will reduce the amount of memory Poser 5 tries to hog during rendering.

I believe that's the standard bucket size Poser 5 uses as a default. I have used smaller, in this big scenes its worth a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

No prob- hope it works. Try starting at 4 and if that works, keep adding 4 till you hit the problem and know the limit. I don't think bucket size affects the quality of the final image.

I have to try that too. I have no idea what bucket size means. I have to admit, I usually render using the Poser 4 renderer until I am ready to do what I hope is a final picture. Then I start the render in Firefly, turn the monitor off, and go to bed. I know that's not really a practical strategy, but Poser usually does finish rendering the picture at some time during the night without my help, and seems to do better if I'm not trying to do other things on the computer at the same time (this has always been a problem for me with Firefly; it's not new with the patch).

dialyn, the P5 manual elaborates on bucket size on page 347 (SR3).

I'm sure it does. I just have to dig it out. Thanks. :)

Changing the bucket size seems to have made a difference. Wonder why nobody from Curious Labs suggested this when I was reporting my rendering crashes and posting screenshots when the Beta Forum was up. I'm not sure if all the Firefly hangups can be controlled by changing the bucket size but I was able to even render the scene with shadows enabled for all the lights, use raytracing for the scene that I never even dreamed of for such a big scene before afraid to have a crash. Still the version of the scene I'm using I had already deleated some figures trying to cure the problem that I might need to add again but this results are very hopeful. I used 2 for bucket size which was painfully slow and then moved to 8 which is still slow but I can work with it.

Yippee! I love a happy ending.

Thank you, smiller!! For some reason I din't care to try lowering the bucket size. I was thinking that value I was using was small enough. It would be nice if there was a way to know when are some of the renderer parameters the culprit for Firefly crashes. Maybe somebody could devise a table or tutorial. Dr. Geep are you listening?

Dr. Geep hasn't been using Poser 5. In fact, he's been among the missing lately....and it's a great loss not to have his funny and helpful tutorials on the forum.

"Increasing the bucket size increases the area being rendered at once but requires greater system resources. Use caution when enlarging the bucket beyond its default size, and monitor your system resources." i thought it was pretty plain in the manual about how the bucket size can influence your system at render time. maybe they should mention that even the default bucket size can have advers reactions when rendering at high resolution and/or are rendering particularily dense scenes with lots a polys/transmaps/gels(light) and the like. now the manual. now theres a problem.

Tell me about it... Page 346 Shutter Open & Shutter Close. Not only is Shutter Close a copy'n'paste job of Shutter Open with the word Open replaced by close, but I can't work out what it means. I think you have to know about cameras.

I think Geep was approached by DAZ already. Does anybody knows if he ever bought Poser 5. We are in dire need of some idiot proof tutorials for Firefly, Hair, Cloth the Face Room and all the other new features of Poser 5.