Because I think it's complete pants. I'm having renders quit on me all over the show and renders that should take a reasonable time are painfully slow. If it's improved anything, I'm not aware of it.

I'd like to get rid of it, too. It's sped up Poser for me, but I, too, find that renders that used to be a piece of cake now quit on me. Dynamic hair seems to be a particular problem. And the shadow map problem is a real pain. I know, they're working on it, but in the mean time, what are we supposed to do? I tried editing the light names, but I guess my path names are still too long, because it didn't work. I can't believe they removed the previous SRs from their web site...

Once you click downloads..go down click on Poser 5 SR4 update & it takes you to another page...scroll down and it's there. In fact they recommend you download both.

That's the figures updater. Wasn't there another one? I remember you had to install two, the SR and the figures updater.

Now I feel really good. ;0) I downloaded SR4, but let it sit and waited for the onslaught of 'reviews'. And, boy, was it worth the wait. I haven't installed it yet, and won't until they make the SR for the SR (again). Makes one wonder how many testers are actually verifying the efficacy of their SRs before they go out the door...

And here I am, still happy as a lark, no slow downs on renders, overall speedup on everything. Given the resources available to them, kuroyume0161, I'd say they have about as many as they can handle. Which isn't enough to cover the incredibly broad range of system and software combinations available. but then again, there's only two or three dozen software companies in the world that have the resources to do that. I'm also paranoid about my system -- I have a burned copy of all the SR's for Poser 3 to the present. and it was ready in case SR4 tanked on me. Quite lucky, I guess...

:-P Nobody likes a gloater, y'know. ;-) I was really happy at first. It really did speed Poser 5 up amazingly. Then I noticed @#$% shadows. Or lack thereof. They can't have tested this very well. And they had a lot of nerve, telling us that the shadow map thing would only show up in certain unusual situations. I have Poser installed in the default directory - which I allowed it to do even though it's more of a pain for me, because I thought it would result in fewer problems - and I'm having the problem. Grrrr. I bet they never tested it with anything other than the default lighting.

sorry, hon -- really, wasn't trying to gloat... Of the five different systems I have P5 installed on at present, I don't have the shadow issue at all. And try as I might, I cannot duplicate it. IT's really bugging the hell out of me. The only thing I can guess is that a lot of the shadows trouble systems have newer graphics cards than any of my systems do (newest one in house right now is an older model Quadro in the renderbox, and after that it's strictly a Geforce2 level set. 'Cept the daughter's, who has a 4 fx, but I can't touch that box anymore unless it's to do an upgrade she's screwed up). I've got the parts for nearly everything else except the video and DDR RAM specs for the people I have gotten the info from. And on none of them have I been able to duplicate it.

Why would the video card make a difference? I thought the video card didn't matter to Poser. That's even weirder. From what the tech guy said, I thought anyone with a path name longer than X was having the problem. FWIW, I do have a semi-decent video card. I got what was the top of the line when I bought the computer in Nov. 2002. Radeon 9700 Pro with 128 Mb RAM. I have visions of playing DOOM 3 on this machine, never imagining the release was going to pushed past 2003. I'll probably have to buy a new video card to play it, the way it's been going...

does anyone have a link to any threads explaining this 'shadow map' issue? im a little, in the dark on this one. sr4 has been fine for i guess... though the cloth room was a little strange the first time i played with it after the update, overall its been alot more stable. oh well...

path length! hadn't thought of that! Sheesh... Twisted -- do a search on SR4 Shadow here in the poser forum and go back over the last month. You'll find a few posts about it. off to change some paths....

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The problem is there are no depth map shadows. Ray trace shadows are fine, but there are no depth map shadows. You do have depth map shadows with the default lighting, but if you add a light, or use a new light set, the new lights won't have depth map shadows. CL says the problem happens if the path name (to where you installed Poser) is too long. They are working on a patch.

weird

"CL says the problem happens if the path name (to where you installed Poser) is too long. They are working on a patch." speaking of weird...whats weird is how they figured out the long path name causes that. i mean....who would think that thats the problem? some programer discovered it by accident maybe? weird...

yeah i caught that.. i wonder how many people 'really' change the default path... assuming cl is hinting at those whose paths are/could be way off course... i know ive installed enough crap and have had path issues to not want to do that a second time lol

The thing is, a lot of people who are having trouble have Poser installed to the default path. Which, you have to admit, is pretty long. C:Program FilesMetacreations or Curious LabsPoser 5. (People who cut the company name out of the path don't seem to be having trouble.) So how can they have missed this?

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and yep. That's it. Finally duped it. Sheesh. Well, if this is so, then it's definitely not going to be a quick one. As randym77 pointed out, the fix to that damnable temp file issue is likely at fault, and that's likely tied into the fixed file location bug, so whatever they did has to be changed so that neither of the good parts are changed. Of course, they could always just have the darn thing default to C:Poser and move all yer files for ya... (j/k!!!)

I've been seriously wondering if I can just move my entire Poser folder up in the directory tree without breaking anything. Reinstalling would be such a pain. I'd have to remove Content Parasite again. I'd have to set all my preferences again. Not to mention I'd have to dig up my old serial numbers, since I started with P4...

As for how they figured out what the problem was...it's not quite as random as it seems. They know what they "fixed," so they have a pretty good idea what they broke. :-) [rant mode engaged] Which is precisely why they need to do SERIOUS QA testing before releasing these SRs. I would bet they are not regression testing it at all. That is to say they don't test the entire codebase once making a fairly impacting change (as with the shadows). If they had regression tested they would have noticed the new bug before it was ever released. As a software developer myself I cannot believe the number of bugs and problems they let go out the door. And we're talking about SRs here that are supposed to FIX things, not break 'em... [rant mode disengaged] ah, I feel better. Code I write goes through extensive testing at least :-) -gz-

I find it hard to believe that they missed this one myself. If you install to the default directory, you have the problem. So how could they not have noticed? They must not have used anything except the default lighting. Or they just never noticed there weren't any shadows?

Like as not, they did. The problem does not exist in a CuriousLabs default install (or at least, not as I have duplicated it), only in a metacreations default install (which, oddly enough, is not the default unless upgrading).

It seem to depend not only on the Poser install path, but also on the location of the PZ3 file.

The problem is a little bit more complicated as the install path. The bug occurs when the "current working directory" has a long pathname. The reason not everyone has the problem is that the pathname of the "current working directory" depends on other programs currently running, previous programs started or maybe some other factor. As CL has mentioned before the problem has been identified and corrected and is now being tested to ensure that no other bugs are being introduced. That is what I have understood from what Curious Labs has said in previous messages

My default install path is to Curious Labs, not Metacreations, and I have the problem. My PZ3s are saved the root directory of the C drive, so that's not the problem. It's got to be the install path to Poser, which is C:Program FilesCurious LabsPoser 5. I'd have preferred just C:Poser, actually, but used the suggested path because I thought there would be less problems. Oh, the irony... I wonder if the use of multiple runtimes has something to do with it? That does add an extra layer, since it's another level down.

Well, I installed SR4 on my old system and my new system. An animation that would only render to 19 or so frames only rendered to 7 frames on both systems. The new system is a Pentium 4 3.2Ghz hyperthreading CPU w/ 2GB of memory. Different application installs on both computers. I never did render the animation w/ SR3 on my new system, 'cause SR4 came out when I was setting up my new one. I'm ready to roll back to SR3. IMO, SR4 was another step backwards.

As the subject line says...there should be a painless way to get rid of SR4. If they can't fix it, they should at least have an uninstall option. If they can't do that, at least put SR3 back up on their web site. Is that too much to ask? Hmmm. I just looked on their website, and it now lists SR 4.1. But the file looks like it's the same one. Are they about to update?

..that wouldn't surprise me quite honestly. Sad to say it has become the norm in the software industry as a whole. Rush release a product to market to recoup some of the investment and to pay the developers, then fix all the bugs after the fact. In this case we are getting patches to fix patches....which blows, big time.

The CL site does say SR 4.1 has been released, and one person said it fixed the shadow map problem for them. Didn't fix it for me last night, but possibly I jumped the gun and downloaded too soon. Will try again tonight.

please keep us posted... a little gun shy to go download it myself ;-)

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