Appologies if someone has already offered an explanation to this problem, but I can't find anything in the forum that matches this, the closest is a problem with an animation but I'm just rendering a single frame scene. Here's the details: Poser 5 seems to freeze on rendering half way through a scene when rendering a scene containing 2 V3 models, with some additional props adn scenery. Render settings are the default Firefly options and rendering in a New Window (size doesn't seem to make a difference, matching doc size or increasing give the same problem), have tried rendering in the same window and same thing happens. The window size is 800x800 Specs of System: AMD 2400+, 1GB Plus RAM Win XP, ATI 8500 Video Card (if that's relevant) and Poser 5 with SR3 applied. I've got no other active Progs running and have cleaved a lot of unnecessary Windows operations from running as well, any help/suggestions as to how to solve this problem are appreciated as I'm currenlty swearing profusly and tearing my hair out trying to fix this. :oD Cheers Nevermore

Do your models have dynamic hair or hair by Neftis? Dynamic hair is a real resource hog, and apparently there are some issues with Neftis' hair styles with firefly renderer. Have you tried rendering it with the P4 renderer to see what happens?

Both sets of hair are by Kozaburo and that part of the image renders fine, I haven't tried the P4 renderer, so guess what I'm about to try :o) Cheers

P5 firefly chokes for a few reasons which are rather hard to pin down. I have, for example, rendered dozens of scenes (ok like 6) right in a row of one v2 and 6 m2s all in the same scene with props and sets and not have a lock using FF and ray traced shadows. I do the samething with 2 or 3 v2s and it croaks. I've also had the same scene that rendered on my 2.5 AMD barton with 1.5g ram not render on an older 2.4 amd with 1.25 g of ram. Here are a few things I noticed: 1. The more MTs on a figure, the worse firefly works. 2. Magnets may have an effect. 3. Ray tracing of huge, detailed scenes for ray traced shadows can cause locks. 4. Textures can fill ram since Poser does not ditch textures its not using. Now do you lock up on an actual render part way through or do you lock at the "add Objects" stage?

It's funny I've noticed similar thigsn as you note here, but to answer you're question it's during the actual rendering that Fire Fly Locks up. I've just had to re-install XP today and Poser with it, so I'll be interested to see if I get these same problems. I'd love to know why it locks up though :O)

Lowering the bucket size can sometimes fix the problem, but slows down the render time. Try it & let us know.

Bucket Size?

It's one of the firefly render options- honest!

Goes hunting for the Bucket in the Firefly :oD

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/renderer.html

Excellent link, I found the Bucket late last night, dunno how I've failed to notice it thus far but never mind :oD The link though is great, at least I now know what each setting actually does - something that the Poser 5 book is a little vague on. Cheers :o)

One question is this: is Poser5 really frozen or is it taking a very long time to render that section of the image? Have you tried letting the scene render for a while (say, over night)? If you come back the next morning and the scene is rendered, then you know it takes a long time. If it hasn't rendered, then it locked. A side note: add to Poser 6 wishlist: after an image is rendered, display the time it took to render. Lightwaver and Bryce display this information, it's time for Poser to do it. A second question to ask is how large are your texture maps? Are you using 4000x4000 body maps, 4000x4000 head maps, and 4000x4000 bump maps for each of your 2 V3 characters? How many separate maps are you using per character... head? body? eyes? bump? If so, this could be a burden on the render engine. Does anyone know the limit of the Firefly renderer? Can it render mutiple characters with high-res maps?

I've tried leaving Poser rendering over night (about 10 hours in total), and it still freezes half way through the rendering process. AS far as the tex maps go they possibly are 4000x4000 - I wouldn't know nor where to find that out. In terms of how many seperate maps, I'd say it's probably a good bet that there are a lot, head boyd, bump poss eyes too. You're point on rendering time is a good one, Vue d'Esprit also has that feature, as well as the time left, useful to know whether to go for a mug of tea or a good nights sleep :oD

{AS far as the tex maps go they possibly are 4000x4000 - I wouldn't know nor where to find that out. } There are many ways to find out the resolution: 1) Open Windows Explorer, go to the folder with the images, and click on the file. Explorer should display the size (in pixels and k) in the botton status bar. 2) Open the file in any image-editting software. Then, go to to "Image Size" and it will show the size. Unless you are doing a super-close up or a super-large image, I would argue that there is no reason to use a 4000x4000 image map. Try reducing the size of the image maps to 2000x2000 (or smaller) and then try to re-render the scene. (Make sure you back up your original 4000x4000 image maps first.)

Mason said: "...Now do you lock up on an actual render part way through or do you lock at the "add Objects" stage? " I have a sony vaio, 1 gb ram, 3ghz cpu p4, ati radeon 9800 pro graphics (graphics card shouldn't matter to poser though) , LOTS of hd space free, etc. A reasonable machine to run P5 on. Hmm,what else? XP home, new system with minimal software installs. Small Poser5 install. I just installed Freak stuff and Michael3 stuff so I could test with smaller Runtime dir. I can render if I select Poser 4 render but I hang up almost always when I try rendering with Firefly. Michael 3 alone rendered. M3 and bodysuit rendered. M3, bodysuit and hooded cape locks up. Always at "Adding Objects". I lowered bucket size to 20, no change. This is driving me crazy. :) This is my 3rd pc in two weeks. I upgraded my pc a couple weeks ago...loved P5 when it ran but a lot of lockups and strange errors. I eventually switched to a new box, same probs. Yesterday, I exchanged and upgraded to current machine and to my dismay, P5 still hangs but only with Firefly rendering. P5 runs fast everywhere else, loading initially, loading figures and textures and poses, etc. Any thoughts, suggestions? Thanks!

Lower the bucket size to 8 or lower and try the FireFly engine again. That's what I did and I can now render large scenes using FireFly.