I posted a comment about the slow performance of Poser 5 a short time ago and some of you commented that it is slower than Poser 4. I have been having some strange problems and wondered if in fact there might be a memory leak in the program? The longer I use it, the slower it gets and only a cold reboot improves matters. Also it freezes frequently and the Task Manager shows the processor to be working flat-out when in fact it is doing nothing. I left the machine in this state for twelve hours to see if it would come back but it didn't and the processor was still working at 99%. I have a reasonably fast machine :P4 with 1GB ram and can't understand why this is happening. It can freeze like this when: stopping a render, applying a texture, during a render or when deleting a model. I just wanted to know if anyone else is having the same trouble? By the way I do have the latest service pack installed. Many thanks for reading. Tony

Same exact troubles with a similar machine. I was also wondering if it was a memory leak. Which would explain some but not all of the problems.

Which OS are you running? I know that memeory problems are frequent on machines using Win 95/98/ME, since the memory handling in these operating systems are not really up the Poser challenge.

I'm using Win XP Pro. Tony

OK, I'm using XP too (but XP Home, which should not matter in this case) and I have no problem of this nature.

Thanks Kelderek, so maybe it's not the software but part of the system it doesn't like - how about graphics card ? I'm using a GForce FX. Does anyone else have any ideas? Clearly I'm not the only person experiencing some kind of extreme slow-down.

Memory leaks have been reported with Poser before. Sure XP helps, but I too have had the 99% cpu use from time to time. Sometimes Poser seems to go into an endless loop when you try to add a texture that aren't where Poser expects it to be. Using CorrectReference frequently helps in that matter. Also in general Poser likes defragged drives a lot.

Yeah - you've hit the nail on the head - going into an endless loop is exactly what it does. My drive is unfragmented and I did rum CorrectReference - but it has made no difference. Lets hope the next service pack will fix it :)

Poser does not use the graphics card for anything, so you can rule out that as a possible problem.

I was wondering if the amount of models/textures/poses etc installed (not actually in use on the screen) impacted performance. I know that the early versions of 3D Studio Max ran slower, the more plugins you had installed - could this be the same?

That shouldn't effect it, but you never know with Poser. Poser has had memory handling problems since at least version 4; it just got worse with version 5.

Word has it that it's the Firefly renderer that has the leak. Try using the P4 renderer in P5, with the option to use the P5 materials, and see if that helps prevent the slowdowns.

High resoloution textures will do it too. If you're using a couple of figures with 3000x3000 textures you might want to back them up and reduce the size of the resoloution in a photo editing program. I frequently use Poser 5 and Photoshop 7 at the same time and edit textures on the fly. I've had some slowdown when I open up like MusicMatch but not much. I try to use textures that are no larger than 1000x1000 or smaller (hair, props).

I have the same problems. Changing the lights seems to cause a freeze sometimes too. :(

While I was developing my latest item I had P5 open continuously for over a week. I wish I had been keeping track of exactly how long it ran. It had produced over 600 renders loaded and deleted countless figures, textures and props. Since I was working with dynamic cloth I had it run dozens of cloth simulations and rendered two 240 frame animations. What finally croaked it was when I tried to import a poser scene that had a cloth sim with the same name as the one in the current document.... Just can't complain about 5P stability any more. I seldom use the face room, dyn hair, or the content room. This may be a clue. Win 2K, P4/1.8, 512 RDRAM. and I run tons of stuff aong with poser. Nerd

my poser 5 runs really slow, but I thought it was bc of how much stuff I have compacted into it, meaning characeters textures etc... --Essie

with regards to the hard drive thing, also try keeping your c: drive as much under half full as possible. 2 friends of mine who have taken MCSE classes (& in "the biz" so to speak) have told me that with regards to any win os, the system seems to work better and faster w/ a hard drive less than half full - that is, the drive that the os is installed on. has something to do w/ access times and the swap file that all os's use. if interested in what a swap file is, send me a mail.

I think Morph targets also kill P5 firefly. It could be memory or simply calculating the geom to send off to the renderer. I have also found certain combos of displacement and smoothsahding flags cause locks. For example, turn on smooth shading in the render options then set displacement on an object and turn off smooth shading for that object. Seems to cause hiccups for me. It could also be they used STL when they coded P5 or in firefly. The stock STL in MSVC has a habit of doubling mem usage when a vector, set, map etc reach their allocated sizes. So even if an object needs say 64 megs, when stl hits the limit it wants to realloc 128 megs. That's just a wild guess and it could be countless numbers of things wrong. Its just odd since I have had these locks across different machines. For example I can render a scnee fine in firefly on one of my machines but can't on another machine.

Based on my experience (as well as having read various threads of a similar nature), I'd be inclined to say that Poser 5 is actually the first AI telepathic software ever!!, i.e., if you are thinking just the right kind of thoughts, it works fine; if not, you're cooked. [WARNING -- Somewhat male chauvinist remark follows (with all apologies to anyone offended:] Further, Poser 5 may be female, because it refuses to tell you just exactly what are 'the right kind of thoughts.' >;->

"Further, Poser 5 may be female, because it refuses to tell you just exactly what are 'the right kind of thoughts.' " LOL@rdf

i think it's male bc it only works when it wants to. a woman on the other hand she just needs to be warmed up before she's ready to go. ;o) --Essie