1. can someone post good render settings that are set to trouble free? like bucker size and so on.... 2.Lets get to the bottom of waht the heck Nodes are and what nodes are for what? And what is node overload? 3.Lets see how to make glass and make transparencys work. 4.Best way for importing mike and vicky with all thier textures intact into poser 5 from 4? 5.Getting the fire fly renderer to do vulmetric lighting and render sharp edges without screwing up.

I don't have a lot of ram - 256MB - so on large renders I make sure all my shadows are set to Raytrace shadows, and i make the bucket size 25. I havent had a render hang yet with those settings.

wdupre has a killertutorial over at PoserPros on how to bring in textures properly. Look on the Poser 5 Forum. It's right at the top. He uses Judy with Vicky skins, but it works for everybody. My renders got a lot smoother with raytracing on and bucket sizes of 70. Nothing is going to make the freeze on certain lights and texture not found go away. But when you find the troublesome lights, ditch em, and textures not found mostly seems to work with newly installed stuff. Emily

I've been able to solve the lights problem by using the "reset lights" utility available in the free section. It's an extra step, but if you use it every time you you change lights you should not have any "hangs" due to lights. With the textures, what I've discovered is that if you walk away and let Poser search and think about it, eventually it will give up and let you select a different texture. Depends on how much patience you have :)

I gots lots of patience-- but 2 hours to overnight is a freeze. Like I say, a reboot usually clears Poser's head. But not always. This is on a render during gathering textures. also sometimes occurs on loading objects. Emily

Yup...the "gathering textures" can be a pain :) Not sure why, but it use to be more of a problem than it has been in the past couple of months. Maybe I'm finally getting Poser 5 "potty trained"!! :) I use to have the "loading objects" issue as well, but it disappeared when I started using the "reset lights" utility. Unfortunately with Poser 5, there does not seem to be a rhyme or reason to any of it. I sort of cross my fingers whenever I open the dang thing....you just never know!

Exactly, last evening P5 let me do two renders in a row-- fast and sweet, no hang-ups Of course I was using the same characters I'd used weeks before-- the last time I rendered, one new outfit, just one. For once I remembered to save religiously and no problems at all. For the record, I've only had trouble with lights once. There is no rhyme or reason-- well, maybe, I had been off the web a long time, maybe enough to dump my browsers use of memory. But then I've had probs with Poser being the first app of the day. I swear though, it is getting to know where I keep things better. Emily