I have just been sitting here wondering what sort of machine I would need to make poser5 be as quick as poser4 was and have the same ability to have sat.....15 figures in the same scene without messing about doing background renders. I mean what is the fastest chip available to date? How much RAM would it require? 6 gig...10 gig..? Just wondering...if any of you techno heads out there had looked into this...I was looking at some Voodoo gaming pc's the other night, a snip at 16,000.00 but they're designed for gaming. Is there a machine out there designed with the power necessary for poser5 or is N.A.S.A still using it :o) MaRv

Here you are: Don x 15. Wanna buy my iBook?

There's a HUGE-ASS (yes, that's a technical term) memory leak in the FireFLAW renderer, which CL has yet to address. IF and WHEN they do, it will help out quite a bit. I just avoid Fireflaw like the plague, and only render with it when I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. The P4 renderer is much quicker and provides the same or better quality, and it even does most procedural textures. -Tim PS> Stewer ... try turning on shadows and rendering a 5 second animation with FireFLAW. Poser will choke hard-core.

Attached Link: http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/%7Esw19/files/dron_firefly_hi.AVI

Like this? I rendered this one with Poser 5/SR1, using displacements, ray tracing, depth of field, motion blur and yes, it has shadows too.

SR1?? How in the heck ... P5 didn't even work right at SR1? (Cool animation by the way, I saw it a while back.) -Tim

OOOPSIE! Nevermind, you're using the Mac version, eh? APPLES and ORANGES. You see, CL corrected such issues in the Mac version, but I suppose didn't see fit to fix what was broken in the F&*KING PC version first! Even though we freaking beta'd it for them for three months at our cost. (Not yelling at you Stewer, yelling at CL.) -Tim

PS> Just noticed that was only at 15 fps, meaning you only rendered 90 frames. For me 90 frames is only 3 seconds (which I render all-day long with all options turned on .. usually), as I ALWAYS render at 30fps. Depending on how much memory you have, it will take more than 90 frames typically. It's not consistent, but typically it will fail after 125 to 160 frames of animation. Once I got it to go as far as 270 frames. Depends on a lot of factors that influence how much memory is being used on each frame. -Tim

Hey up , sparked a bit of a debate here :o) I must say I wasn't having a dig at C/L I wouldn't waste my time LOL. I was genuinely interested as to whether there is a point that Poser5 cannot utilize anymore ram (is there an upper limit) and what the best chipset available for poser would be. As regards the 15 figure posting, that would be fine if you wanted 15 identical figures all in a row with average lighting, no clothing ( the std p5 clothed man doesn't count, thats cheating :o) I'm talking about a scene like the one enclosed which has 10 figures, lots of hair, lights, shadows and complex textures, reflection, displacement etc etc maps applied to just about every item in it. I generally like to render at 1024 x 768 pixels at a resolution of 288 but even on firefly render "draft" to use the phrase, my PC chokes. I would like to buy/biuld a suitable and sufficient computer so I am not messing about and can achieve the quality of pics I'm capable of not what my machine is capable of :o)

Excuses, excuses. If Stewer made a 300 frame animation for you, you'd complain that it didn't have a V3 marionette playing the piccolo to synchronized band music. ;^) ... and if he then added the piccolo player, you'd complain that he didn't include all 76 trombones with perfect reflections, and it simply wasn't brassy enough. ... and if he installed the whole band and threw in the glockenspiel, you'd complain that it wasn't modeled correctly with each bar vibrating. ... and if he offered you some good vibrations, you'd complain, complain, and complain some more. Carolly

marvlin: whether there is a point that Poser5 cannot utilize anymore ram (is there an upper limit) and what the best chipset available for poser would be. Windows will give not more than 2GB RAM to a single application (I think with the exception of Windows Advanced Server). Windows XP itself and the current x86 chipsets do not handle more than 4GB RAM, unless you buy one of those new and expensive 64bit computers. Even in this case, being a 32 bit app, Poser will not get more than 2GB RAM. timoteo1 OOOPSIE! Nevermind, you're using the Mac version, eh? APPLES and ORANGES. The 15 Dons were rendered on my Mac, but the Tron animation was rendered on my Windows computer. At that time, there was no Mac version of Poser 5. As for rendering intensive scenes, do what the big studios do: render in layers. When you have a dancing figure in front of a static background, render the background separate from the figure as a still image and put them together in an image editor or a compositing program. This has the advantage that in case you make some tweaks to the figure, you don't have to re-render the background.

Excuses? complain? what are you talking about carolly, all the things I have mentioned increase the amount of resources req'd to achieve a render. They are valid, statements, not excuses, not complaints and not an attack on stewer! All I originally asked was for some technical advise on hardware suitable for the task of rendering poser images with a lot less hassle than I am having to now. In response I got a post, basically saying your talking rubbish, then when I try to make my point I get a sarcastic post from you and quite frankly I think your post is ill informed and downright uncalled for, so unless you have anything constructive to say, don't bother!!!!!!!!!

Thanks stewer, that is all I was after, I appreciate you taking the time to advice me on this issue. I take on board the rendering using layers technique but moet of my stories end up being a few hundred images long and the time involved due to different camera angles etc would be increased dramatically, hence me asking this question :o) thanks again m8 MaRv

Marvlin:

Don't sweat it ... you've been "Hauked" ... happens all the time. For that matter, it might've been me who has been "Hauked". Get used to it when Carrolly's around, and don't take it personally. It's just her twisted view that if something isn't working in Poser, there is no way in hell it can be Poser (and therfore CL's) fault ... it is always USER ERROR. Like when I was complaining about the initial release of Poser 5 ... it was all MY fault that P5 was a complete and total stinking pile of crappy and buggy programming. (Which, thankfully, they later fixed (sort of) after three service releases.) But I digress, this is all ancient and very well-documented history. But I must say, with her "debilitating" carpal tunnel, I'm surprised she has the stamina/will-power to attack people. Although, since she has government-supported income (isn;t that sick) as a result of her "affliction," I guess she has PLENTY of time on her hands. And this is after all, coming from the same person who attacks people for their spelling or grammar errors.

Stewer: But as I said, it was a 15fps animation, and therefore only 90 frames. AGAIN ... MY problems occur typically after 125 - 160 frames. Which is why I ALWYS render to TIF sequences whenever using the FireFLAW renderer, so I can resume a render. AGAIN, it's not a WINDOWS MEMORY ISSUE ... it's a "Poser-5 leaks memory out it's ass" issue. Sorry to be so "graphic", but it's getting old exlpaining this to people. My system can handle the large scenes (as can others'), it's the fact that P5 is retaining some of the memory of each frame after each is rendered. Especially if you use Shadow Maps, for example.

Curious Labs is WELL AWARE of this problem in the Windows version, and I've been working with tech support on the issue. They hope to squash the MEMORY LEAK with the next Service Release for the PC. When that's coming out though, is anybody's guess.

If you can do 150+ frame animations using the FireFlaw renderer on Windows-based version of P5, hey, God Bless you! You're one of the few lucky ones and it is truly an anamoly.

-Tim

FireFLAW ?!?!!! Bwahaahahaahaa.... Excuse me, (Wipes half-chewed food off monitor). This has definitely made my day... thanks Tim. Just to add to the debacle: I use a well maintained dual-Xeon (2.4 GHz X 2) with a couple gigs ddrRAM and an nVidea Quadro4 XGL card, ... all of which means squat to Poser. It packs up on me constantly even with the default P4 renderer and won't handle more than a couple characters. Sorry I don't have better news - rendering in layers re:Stewer's suggestion is the way to go. Throwing a lot of money at the computer is probably not going to help - Poser does not use multiple processors and has no support for 3D accelerated video cards. I'm going to look at BodyStudio as an alternative and pass the render off to a different app. Oops, gotta go - Poser just choked on another render. Can everyone say "CTRL-ALT-DELETE"? I knew you could :-) Ian.

PS ...

"As for rendering intensive scenes, do what the big studios do: render in layers."

I appecite the advice (truly), but yeah, sorry, that's a given. I do that all the time. My winning DAZ entry "Deep Sea Daftness" was all layers. Some scenes contained as many as seven layers, and that is what I consider a fairly straightforward animation. Using AE I can map shadows, have layers effecting layers, etc.

But you're missing the problem. It doesn't HAVE to be a complicated scene (i.e. multiple characters, props, etc.) ... it is the fact that using the FireFlaw render leaks memory. So it can be a single person, with raytraced reflection and shadows, still do the same thing. If I cut the resolution in half (say to a 428 x 240) instead of a DV widescreen 856 x 480, I can probably do twice the number of frames before FireFlaw kills the P5 runtime.

Hope that helps to clarify where we're coming from on this issue.

Take care,
Tim

Well! i've got the information I was after :o) I'm outta here :o)

I pulled a trick with this video, but I rendered everything in one go, without having to composite separate animations in post:

Unicorn Run (MPEG format, 2.6MB)

That's one custom figure (the blue guy in front) and a dragon's dozen of the DAZ Charger (with dynamic-hair mane), raytraced shadows enabled, and the Cyclorama as a backdrop.

The trick? The Charger wasn't actually loaded in the scene. I had a dozen transmapped square props with the Movie node applied to each. Animated cardboard cutouts.

Timoteo1, Get off your soapbox and look around. Over a year ago I came to YOUR support when you were under attack. You'd been bad-mouthing stuff right and left and people were complaining that you had no gallery and therefore no right to speak. I mentioned that you had every right, but since you made holographs as a professional you couldn't easily post them here. I even linked to a thread with your dinosaur as evidence of your professionalism and ability. Yet, time and time and time since then you have attacked me and bad-mouthed me, simply because I support the company which gives us the basic tool we use. I also support DAZ. I support the model makers (at least those who follow the rules). Who do you support? You can keep your falsehoods and your snide allegations to yourself! If you so much enjoy tearing things apart and criticizing what you cannot do, I strongly suggest that you go into demolitions where your enthusiasm for such matters might pay. I take it all back. You are not professional. Carolly

Timoteo1, And, yes, I am handicapped. So are a lot of other people here. That doesn't stop us from trying to BUILD this community up. It doesn't stop us from trying to create art. It doesn't stop us from making an effort to be social. We are adding something back into the system. Maybe it is time you tried doing something positive for a change? Or will we have to wait for the magnetic poles to reverse themselves again? Carolly

Carolly: I must have missed your "defense post", and I do thank you for it if that is indeed true. However, forgive me if I seem not overwhelming grateful, as once someone attacks me without provocation and without any subtstane/merit, I tend to take it a little personally and find it hard to forget.

You were fervant and bitter in your attack when I complained about Poser 5 upon it's initial release. In summary, you told to me shut up and learn the software, because I obviously didn't know how to use it and that I was the problem. What's more, YOU didn't even own the software yourself at the time. Time has proven me correct, thankfully, but I haven't forgotten those who chastized me for something they literally new nothing about and were COMPLETELY wrong about. Yours was one of, if not THE, most vicious.

But more importantly, it is your attitude on this board that strikes me as most offensive. Yeah, sure, I may do a fair amount of criticism. ABOUT PRODUCTS! And those that deserve it. Why? I want to see them improve, and sometimes (as I AM human) I get frustrated. Especially with P5 as I felt cheated and practically robbed initially.

How hypocritical of you. I don't criticize people, unless attacked first, unlike you. This thread is a prime example ... you just pop your head in to cause trouble. What possible good could come out of attacking me or Marvlin?? It's totally uncalled for, unhelpful, and COMMUNITY DESTRUCTIVE. This isn't an isolated case either, Carolly. You have a constant pattern of abuse towards people. Is it every single post? No, but it's often enough to become annoying. I'm surprised no one has sat you on your ass before. Maybe they have and I just missed it ... darn.

What demonic oathe did you make with Curious Labs? What makes you feel like such a self-righteous defender of the software, that it blinds you to its possible failings. In your world software would never get fixed. Why do you feel that any negative comment about SOFTWARE is a personal afront to you?

I was merely helping him out and letting him know that there is a serious issue with FireFlaw (I can call it what I want can't I? And it is seriously flawed). But you're so blinded with hatred for anyone who dares speak about some of the negative aspects of Poser (even those of us who truly love it, but you can't see that), that you spit your venom all over the board and disrupt posts such as these. It's a shame. Maybe it's the migraines you claim disabilty for that has warped your personality, and if so I am truly sorry.

-Tim

PS> I'm handicapped too, but I sure as hell don't take the easy route, let the goverment pay for my meals, than brag about it on Renderosity. All the while thumbing my nose at the rest of the tax-payers ... as your handicap obviosuly only occurs when your needed to work. You have no problems posting your hateful little snipes in threads all the time. Oh, and I'm sorry it was "migraines" wasn't it?

Also, let's set a few things straight:

1)"Yet, time and time and time since then you have attacked me and bad-mouthed me, simply because I support the company which gives us the basic tool we use."

WRONG. Your getting me confused with the converse of yourself. I've NEVER attacked you outright, and when I have spoken negatively about you it was in response to an attack on me OR someone else. Like the guy who had mental issues (i.e., a REAL handicap) and you totally "Hauked" him because his grammar was poor. You basically told him if he could not write correctly, not to bother posting because it annoyed you. Should I embarass you with a link to the thread??

1. I also support DAZ. I support the model makers (at least those who follow the rules). Who do you support?

I don't know what kind of question that is, sorry. I support all of those. I've never had an unkind word for DAZ and constantly compliment their staff, products, and ethics. I use lots of software, and praise the ones that work, and critize and ask questions about improvements for the ones that don't. After Effects works without a glitch, so I have nothing but good things to say about it. The same can be said for 3DSMax, Photoshop, Bryce (mostly), Cool3D, Storm2, Particle Illusion, Sound Forge, and the list goes on.

Sorry but Poser 5, and more importantly CL, was a serious act of betrayal, dishonesty, and disregard for the community. Those who have not seen that are blinded by some devotion to a company that has not earned it. With that said, I use Poser 5 (and won't go back to 4 unless I have to) on a nearly daily basis, and enjoy 85% of it. And I commend the tech support people, as well as some of the skeleton crew that are trying to pick up the pieces after the debacle.

1. "You can keep your falsehoods and your snide allegations to yourself!"

Wow, ever heard "that's the pot calling the kettle black!" LMAO!! Let's look at POST #9 ... the very definition of snide, with not one constructive comment relating to the original post.

4)"If you so much enjoy tearing things apart and criticizing what you cannot do ..."

Totally false. When have I ever criticized something for what I cannot do. I post to help people when I can, especially when I see posts about animation as that is my area of concentration. And I ask my fair share of questions too. I make comments when I see work I like, and gracious freebies as well. I hold my tongue when I see something I don't like. You have no basis for this comment whatsoever.

Regards,
Tim

Guys, I think it's time for a hug!

LittleD: That's a great idea. I do a slight variation of that in post. I animate a figure (or two, or three, etc.) and then use an effect called Card Wipe in After Effects to create a dozen, or dozens of copies that seem to animate independtly. Great for hordes, armies, and any mass of figures you want to create. _Tim

Tim, I'm trying to reproduce the leak. My Windows computer is right now busy rendering a 300 frame animation, 640x480, with shadow maps and 3d motion blur. So far, no sign of any leak, memory usage is between 80MB and 130MB since frame 1 - I am at frame 115 now. What figures are you using in your animation? I am using P5's Don.

Stew:

Stewwww-er ... Stewww-er ... go ... go ... go. I'll be interested to see if you make it into the 200's (frames.)

The last time I attempted to do a long sequence using Fireflaw, was Vicky 2, with nice (but not super-high polycount) hair -- sorry, don't remember which, and my comp that project is on is doing a Vue render as I type this.

She was on the Poser stage (one with curtains) wearing a dress with some nice transmapping.

What are your Windows computer specs?

Thanks for testing!!

-Tim

Stefan, It sounds like you're watching the "Mem Usage" column of the task manager. This can be deceptive as it really only reflects the RAM usage and leaked memory tends to migrate to the disk pages through disuse. I haven't looked at this in SR3 (as opposed to SR2.1) before today, but it does look like the leak still exists. Here's a method of reproducing it: 1. Bring up the task manager, select "View::Select Columns::VM Size". 2. Launch Poser 5 SR3 into factory default state (i.e. 3 default lights and casual Don with hair). 3. Select Light 1 and set the shadow map size to 1024* 4. Select render settings and set to "Production Mode* 5. Note the value of the "VM Size" for the Poser process in the task manager. 6. Render a movie using "Current Render Settings" across the default 30 frame range of the static scene (i.e with no animation). About 10 minutes. 7. After the end of the rendering note the "VM Size" of the Poser process. It will have risen by about 120-150 MB. Minimising the Poser window will free up RAM ("Mem Usage") but won't effect the leaked memory in VM. *The best I can tell is that the memory leak is associated with shadow mapping, hence the setting of production mode which enables this. The actual setting have been somewhat difficult to pin down, it could be that there are in fact several sources of leaks. Bill

I too believe it to be associated with Shadow Mapping, or at the very least, severely effected by SM. -Tim

Ah, OK. Now I can see it, but only after setting the shadow map size to 1024. The 300 frame animation before rendered just fine, no memory problems at all. Why do you need such large shadow maps? Do you render at 2k cinemascope resolution?

Attached Link: ftp://ftp.web-runners.com/shadowspazz.avi

No, not at all. If not, you get "shadow-spazz" which looks incredibly unprofessional and is very distracting.

Here is an example. It is a 2MEG Indeo 5.1 AVI. Shadow maps were set at 1024 and there are NO animating lights.

In fact, it STILL might happen with 1024 on some renders (yeah Poser sucks in this regard). Then your forced to use raytraced shadows, which are difficult to make soft -- but I believe there are some tricks. I also read something somehwere abotu using Shadowcams, but I'm not sure if it applies to this situation.

I also get lock-up using 768 maps, so it's not just 1024 ... it just probably happens sooner with 1024.

-Tim

• Why do you need such large shadow maps? Do you render at 2k cinemascope resolution? * The vast majority of experienced Poser users would find that to be an astonishing assertion. It could be viewed as being a indication of a surprising lack of experience on your part in the medium (and a worrying one coming from an ex-Cl employee). Rather, I suspect, it was just a an ill considered reaction. A 1024 resolution could only be described as "modest" for most non-newbies. The importance of shadowmap resolution has long been noted in this forums and that resolution is, for most people, the minimum considered useful. Mindful of resources I do use lower resolution maps when I can get away with it, but common wisdom (since P4), puts ideal shadowmap resolution for high quality work at values of 4096 or more, values that are commonly used in final production by the best artists. If you ran a poll in this forum I think you would find a very, very small percentage of users make use of lower resolutions than that, and if you take a good look through any of the light sets you may have acquired you'll find the same. As someone who demonstrated some experience in rendering technologies, you should be fully aware that as a "rule of thumb" sampling algorithms achieve the best quality when the sampled input (in this case the shadowmap) has at least twice the resolution of the output. And this is the minimum. If you need to illuminate some extensive area (say a wall in perspective at an large angle to the camera plane) the shadowmap requirements will necessarily have to be increased to achieve foreground resolution. And, of course, any animators who are satisfied with constraining their works solely to what can be seen within a narrow spotlight beam really aren't making good use of the medium. As soon as any camera dolly panning or zooming are introduced, the resolution requirements can become much greater than that required for any single frame. As a fellow student of REYES and Renderman technologies I expect you to be aware of the perceived advantages of shadow mapping over ray-tracing, not least of which is the improved performance that has endeared the technology to the likes of Pixar. Despite this theoretical advantage, many P5 users early on migrated to raytraced shadows precisely because of the perception of poor performance of the shadow mapping in Firefly. This is leading me to wonder whether the memory leak has, right from the start, been responsible for nullifying the speed advantage of shadow mapping. Ultimately, however, this is nothing but a serious bug. Expecting people who upgrade to change their working production techniques or the quality of their work simply to accomodate a failure to address bug reports is a recipe precisely for the kind of product dissatisfaction (and community strife) that we have widely encountered. Making apologies, or even outright denials, and wasting effort concocting scenarios to disprove a widely reported problem, rather than spending the five minutes that I spent this morning confirming it (plus another 30 minutes or so revising the technique so that anyone could reproduce it) is a disservice to, not a favour for, CL (as well as being extremely poor engineering practice). Sometime ago I gave up spending my time investigating bugs in the program because of the general hostility (including knee-jerk denials) amongst some sections of this community to anyone reporting bugs. That and the continuous lack of response from CL. I suspect that others feel the same, and everyone, of course has suffered for this, not least CL. Bill

I was only asking because Mr. Jeremy Birn gives as a "rule oft humb" that at shadow map sizes of >= 1024 you should seriously consider ray traced shadows instead - and I think Mr. Birn has more experience than all of us together.

Making apologies, or even outright denials, and wasting effort concocting scenarios to disprove a widely reported problem, Please don't do that, OK? This is getting dangerously close to personal accusations. rather than spending the five minutes that I spent this morning confirming it (plus another 30 minutes or so revising the technique so that anyone could reproduce it) You do realize that I let both of my computers render for hours trying to reproduce that? Just like I spent hours answering questions and solving other people's problems on this boards? is a disservice to, not a favour for, CL (as well as being extremely poor engineering practice). I do not represent CL. Associating my personal opinions with CL is the quickest way to get me out of this board - this is how some members here made Nosfiratuu and DefaultGuy leave.

• Mr. Jeremy Birn gives as a "rule oft humb" that at shadow map sizes of >= 1024 you should seriously consider ray traced shadows instead - and I think Mr. Birn has more experience than all of us together. * Technically, the resolution required in shadow mapping is directly proportional to the output resolution. Likewise for a scene of any given complexity the number of ray tracing intersection calculations is also directly proportional to output resolution. The only point where a switch should be considered is where one implementation begins to fail technically, specifically, in this case, if the shadow mapping size on disc or in memory forces a resource crisis, which typically manifests itself in the intervention of OS resource management services. However, this apparently isn't the case for Poser shadow-mapping, as all of the reports have been consistent with memory leak problems, i.e. performance is acceptable at the outset, but begins to deteriorate with progress. Now I'm not sure of Mr Birn's qualifactions, or the amount of experience he's had with Poser and Firefly's implentations (I'd guess none), but I expect he was referring to specific implementations, and if he was generalising, frankly he talking crap. And I'm sure some people at Pixar, who almost exclusively use shadow mapping techniques, and for whom render times equate directly to production costs would disagree with that as a general assertion. But I digress, as this has nothing to do with the subject. Poser 4 users had no choice but to use shadow mapping. It was all that was provided. Likewise Poser 5 users have little choice but to use ray tracing, not because its the only alternative, but because the shadow mapping is broken and apparently nobody at CL has managed to find 5 minutes to verify that the myriad complaints and problem reports were in fact based on observation, rather than being of mischevious purpose. Hence cue dissatisfied customers and poor company reputation. If the best defense, after the fact, that can be made is that "Some bloke who never used Poser but wrote a book said that you shouldn't be doing it that way anyway", then frankly nobody should be surprised that users like Tim sometimes get a bit hot under the collar. Bill

Very well put, Bill ... very well indeed. I find everything you said to be so very true (although the tech support person I've been working with at CL is very open-minded and helpful, but he is NOT an engineer ... he can only make suggestions to them.) And I can't comment nor do I have an opinion on the implications made about Stewer ... I just agree about the general apathy of CL and the viciousness of some members ... ahem. The other frustrating segment of community members are the obstinate STILL-ONLY renderers (not all still renderers of course)who haven't a clue to some of these problems because they don't know a keyframe from a mainframe. They have no idea the problems introduced and debilitating bugs present in P5 (and P4 for that matter) that animators run into. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. -Tim PS> Also, thanks for the mini-lesson on map size. Sounds like I need to be using even higher res maps. (Arrgh)

Now I'm not sure of Mr Birn's qualifactions, He works at Pixar. or the amount of experience he's had with Poser and Firefly's His book is showing a Poser image on page 85. I expect he was referring to specific implementations, and if he was generalising, frankly he talking crap. His book is explicitly not referring to specific implementations.

• He works at Pixar * In which case I can only assume that such a simplistic "rule of thumb" has been taken wholly out of context, or was merely poorly thought out. Bill

Then I suppose this is also out of context: "By default, a standard size of 250x250 is used for Map Size. Shadow map size can increase to 1000x1000 if needed, but such extreme usage is rare and not recommended." (Cinema 4D R7 XL Manual) "Select an appropriate shadow map resolution. Its not uncommon to use 2kx2k or even higher-resolution shadow maps for film work." ("Infinity and beyond", Larry Gritz/Pixar).

Stewer, Don't leave. Every voice they manage to still, every person they chase out, only reinforces their claim of "unresponsiveness". If they are so blinded by their own brilliance that they can't click a link or google a name, then no amount of explanation will suffice. That doesn't mean that the rest of us are unappreciative. Carolly

I have an animation that I am unable to render as well. It uses DAZ's Victoria 3, a weight bench, weights, clothing, and hair. V3's loaded CR2 is very light, since it only contains the morphs I spawned for the character. I am using the Firefly render, with reflective nodes on the weights and weight bench. I have rendered it on my home system (Win2K SR3) and it stops somewhere between frame 19-21. It does not matter if I am trying to create an AVI or images during the render. I have defragged, disabled Norton Anti-virus, and made sure only essential processes were running. Same result. I have also rendered it on a well maintained NT 4.0 workstation -- my computer at work. I got the same result. My work computer is going to be upgraded to XP in a couple of weeks, and I will run the animation under XP to see what happens. I will be suprised if it does work, because IMO, there is a memory leak. I think the Firefly render has a very elusive memory leak that only rears it head under certain conditons. The only way to trace something like that is to dump a log of every memory and pointer allocation and deallocation. If the allocations outnumber the deallocations, then you have a memory leak. And I also know it is not as simple as it sounds, especially with a rendering engine. To be honest, I am also going to run the same animation under DAZ|Studio when it is released. If it works, then then I have a new tool, and they have a customer.

Ya know, if CL would put the detailed logging I described into the rendering code and make it available for testing to registered users, we might be able to put this whole memory leak thing to bed pretty quick. That's how me and my peers helped IBM solve a memory leak in one of their products. They created debug versions to dump logs, and we ran the code and collected the data for them. If CL is serious about solving the problem, then I am more than willing to run a debug version to help them find the problem.

Very interesting. I've always heard that if your computer can handle it, larger shadow maps are better. Smoother and whatnot.

Carolly says: *Don't leave. Every voice they manage to still, every person they chase out, only reinforces their claim of "unresponsiveness". * I don't know where you got the that anyone was attacking Stefan from, Carolly. He's a big boy and he's demonstrating that he's quite capable of acts of self-immolation without any external assistance. All that happened (and you should really make an effort to read these threads before you interject) was that Stefan went off on a pointless bug-disproval exercise and, in order to save him wasting any more of his time (and, of course as a matter of civic duty), I gave him a direct and simple test case in which he could witness the bug for himself without further dispute. Where I criticised him for demonstrating poor engineering techniques I was, admittedly, harsh, but nevertheless truthful. I most certainly didn't pour flammable liquid over him and I really don't think that even that criticism amounted to handing him the matches. Of course everyone makes mistakes and the occasional lapse but the guy must have been having a bad day... In an earlier post I did describe bug finding as one of the most thankless tasks in this community and subsequently Stefan managed to prove the point perfectly by, ungraciously, trying to excuse the bug with a criticism of the techniques of myself and the great majority of Poser users, backed by a statement regarding the "length of a piece of string" along with numerous contradictory quotes from the string trade (or something equally meaningless and irrelevant). Also, back on your quote, I don't know who "they" refers to, but I guess it a reference to "everyone who's not us", whoever "us" is. I am aware of "individuals" in this community, such as myself, who have put a great deal of time and effort into improving Poser through bug finding and identifying weaknesses, and if sometime we're critical it's because we need to be. We match it with constructive comment, accurate analysis and decisive opinions and, ultimately we've gained some small comfort in seeing our efforts reflected in both CL's and DAZ's future development plans. I'm also well aware of "individuals" who, as self appointed public relations representatives for CL, have been characterised by the inability to follow threads, knee-jerk reactions, rudeness, ineptitude and shortsightedness - the very sorts of people who try to turn technical and bug reporting threads into flame fests and factional recruiting grounds. By their voluntary association and the self-defeating negativity, these people have done a great deal harm to CL's public image and may have caused substantial harm to CL's business without ever providing any positive benefit for the company. Now it's enormously presumptous on your part to be creating your own minority clique and assuming the mantel of the "community", every bit as much as misguidedly believing that you are the sole "friends of Poser". Communities, of course, naturally tend to factionalise but responsible members should always strive to resist that tendency. However, if you do manage to form such a leper colony, please exclude me from any future member lists, as, I suspect, five minutes in your collective company would find me trying to saw off my own head rather than be exposed to anything more than you have to say between yourselves. I'm really much happier to remain one of "they", thank you very much. If your comment was intended as an invitation to Stefan, I'll let him decide whether to join the ranks of the bitter and ridiculed. I think his reputation (and his credibility in my eyes) has taken a battering, but its not unsalvagable. In fact I'm rather inclined to offer him some real hope to redeem himself. While Stefan has been searching his library for the definitive definition of string length I spent another ten minutes doing something constructive. Here's another exercise, Stefan: 1. Bring up the task manager, select "View::Select Columns::VM Size". 2. Launch Poser 5 SR3 into factory default state (i.e. 3 default lights and casual Don with hair). 3. Select Light 1 and set shadows to ray-tracing. 4. Select Lights 2 & 3 and disable shadows. 5. Select render settings and set to "Production Mode" and enable ray tracing. 6. Note the value of the "VM Size" for the Poser process in the task manager. 6. Render a movie using "Current Render Settings" across the default 30 frame range of the static scene (i.e with no animation). About 10 minutes. 7. After the end of the rendering note the "VM Size" of the Poser process. And, yes, its another memory leak, with not a shadowmap in sight (about 50MB in a 30 frame animation on my setup, maybe it would worth testing whether 3 ray-tracing light would give exactly the same results as the shadowmapping case). Just to save you some time, the answer to the first question that's inevitably going to pop into your mind is: "It's because you weren't looking and I was." Now, so far in this thread I'm the only person who's put any time or effort into really addressing the memory leak issue. As I stated earlier, however, I'm really no longer inclined to do this anymore, except as a diversion, and, if you re-read the previous posts (including your own Stefan), you'll understand why. So I'm not investigating these bugs anymore, and it's up to you whether you want follow Carolly into self-important oblivion or, instead, take up these problems, investigate further and demonstrate that you are capable of providing some real useful work that will actually help CL to improve the product. You don't, of course, have to do anything you don't want to, but the opportunity is there to achieve something positive in this thread and come away feeling good about it. Just don't expect anyone to thank you for it. Bill

trying to excuse the bug with a criticism of the techniques of myself and the great majority of Poser users I was asking a single question. take up these problems, investigate further I will forward them to the respective persons at CL, which is all I can do. I gave him a direct and simple test case in which he could witness the bug for himself without further dispute. Which was very helpful, thank you. Concerning the rest of your post, wether I have a bad day or not is none of your business and is not relevant in this thread or this forum as a whole. I am willing to discuss on a technical level as long as there are no accusations, assumptions, generalizations. I don't see that discussion style in this thread, neither by you nor by Carolly - if you feel the desire to divide the "community" into good and evil, pro and con, ignorance and wisdom,"blinded by their own brilliance" and "elf-important oblivion" - go on without me, I'm out of this thread. "Do not email me when someone replies". Start a new thread called "Narrowing down memory leaks in Poser 5", I'll be happy to join as long as the thread is about Poser and not my reputation.