internal conversation : "If I save now it'll take at least 3.5 minutes, but if I don't I might lose this". "Hmm...couple more minutes". (Now you get excited because the new tex you just applied looks great)...( you mess with the POV a bit & get that looking good). POP-UP MESSAGE: "Hello over zealous artist, begin slamming your forehead onto keyboard until the dents spell out STUPID" LOL, 2 hours down the toity SAVE,SAVE,SAVE!!

Oh man...been there..done that!! Don't we ever learn?? :(

And ICM looks so sensible in his picture......

Welcome to the club. :-( BTW, 3.5 minutes? The dragon pic took forever to save, but I thought it was because I had freaked out Windows with some stupid moves and had to repair the installation. Yeah, the file is something like 180 MB, but I worked with >100 MB files before and never experienced anything like this.

Yeah I have been there. Can I get an "Amen" brothers and sisters? I used to do this alot because my computer would take 30 minutes to save a scene. Thank God my new 2.0 ghz computer saves those thirty minute scenes in about 40 seconds.

AMEN!

I'm up to file014.br5 on my latest pic, and I'm still only at the layout planning stage of the pic. I save regularly and often (and very often at times too).

Aye, I finally figured out how to open Bryce's temp files, and have recovered a few times now from would-be crashes...! Saving different versions is where it's at, too, Flak, good stuff!

I'm with you on that, ICM. I modelled about 2 hours worth or rails and stairs on my rig. I figured, let me bang out these pipes real quck like and all, then i'll save it. Well, after pushing my boy the way I did for 2 hours and then trying to dupe a huge section of pipe, he said "bite me" and crashed. The dents in my head went far past saying "stupid" and I can't repeat was imprinted there for a day. Note self: Take a few minutes if need be and SAVE THE DAMN THING!

Hmm, well, I've never really done an image in more than one sitting. And I never save. I make the image, save it, render it. Howver, this damn dorm has a shoddy power setup and the rather frequent breaks in power have forced me to start saving more often. I have to admit though, I am rather impatient. If I can't do a project in one sitting (or two) I generally stop. I wish I had the patience to spend a week or so on an image, but I just can't. My WIP's usually end up being my final images... as you can see in my gallery lol. Some of the older images are event branded 'WIP' and never got finished.

By the way, as long as you aren't doing anything goofy, extra ram seemed to solve a lot of my crashing problems.