The ones created in Posers root directory during a render and deleted (hopefully) at its completion.

i.e. poserTemp.-1131500913

As one is created for each light, Ive always assumed they contain the lights shadow map info, and, if so, it would be really handy to actually be able to visualize these, to figure out whats going on sometimes.

Any of you file-hacking smart guys ever open one up to see if you could decode an image?

More than likely, if its a light file, its probably the rendered lightmap from the light view in some simple, raw file format.

Can these tempfiles be safely deleted?

I've pitched poser tempfiles after the thing flaked out on me a couple times without any problems

The temp files will often get left behind when a render locks up. Yes, they can, and should be deleted.

Mason, by "simple format" were you speculating that it might easily be converted to an image format, or by simple, did you mean with no apparent order?

(really outta my element - but very curious)

I kept stumbling over the term "light map" when re-reading Mason's post and it finally hit me: I guess that it would be more logical that these are not just the shadow maps, but a total "Light Map" pattern, combining all the current settings and effects for each individual light.

If so, I suspect it would prove even more useful to get a peak at them -- if anyone could ever figure them out.

Okay, this may sound stupid...but what/where does one locate temp Poser files? In all the time I have used the pgm I never saw or heard of them... of course I use Poser 4 so if this applies to P5 it doesn't matter.

During a render in P4, they are created in Poser's root directory (the one above /Runtime), one poserTemp. file for each light, and they are automatically deleted at the successful completion of the render. Sometimes they wont get deleted if Poser hangs during a render.

Nance: Simple meaning that its some simple format easily read back in by their renderer. If its saved out as a jpg for example that can be slow to process since it takes time to decompress. Depending on what they use the file for its either RLE or flat meaning its a gray scale 1:1 saved format. More than liekly its flat meaning it has no compression and is just wxh bytes. I'd be willing to be photoshop's RAW file format would read it in. Or it could also be a bmp format simple renamed.

A little more: This view doesn't correspond to any of the cameras, and it's obviously not just an artifact of skipping bytes in PaintShop's attempt to read the file. The legs couldn't get in front of the wheel by any sort of skipping. So, somewhere in Poser's innards is a completely different, and oddly rearranged, view of the scene.... a view that we don't see through any of the cameras!

Heh, too cool, ockham. And brave too, yanking the plug on your computer. Mine would turn round and bite me if I tried to deprive it of it's life-force! Well, I know less than zero about this stuff. I just dump the dratted things whenever I see them. But it's good to know what's in them. mac

Re your 2nd post ockham. Could it be some sort of composite view? mac

'This view doesn't correspond to any of the cameras' Does that include the shadowcams? Oh, for an edit function! mac

Yes, that includes the shadowcams. Maybe I'll try a simpler scene later....

We are impressed! Thanks for taking the plunge ockham -- although now perhaps its just "curiouser & curiouser". Don't think you have to actually "pull the plug" though. See ** below. However, first, a MISTAKE on my part: There is NOT 1 file per light as I had stated above. Just did a render with the 3 standard lights (as spots) and only got one poserTemp. file created. (oopsie!) Also, I'd never noticed before, but it continued to increase in size, even after the shadowcam calculations, throughout the entire scanline by scanline render process, until it reached its final size only when the render was also completed. ** When the render had only a few scan lines left to go, I hit Ctl-C on the poserTemp file, - did not paste - and at the completion of the render the file remained, (I presume, waiting to be pasted somewhere?). Very strange image you've got there. The camera angle on the feet and wheel appear about the same as the render, however their position relative to each other and the framing is clearly changed. HUH? Many thanks to the wizards ockham and Mason for ID'ing the mystery .RAW format, once again enlarging the community knowledge base and enabling the rest of us mere mortals to play about with them!

The angle is really strange. It's like some little gremlin inside Poser said "Hey, I like those legs, but I don't like the way you composed the picture. She should be standing next to the wheel, not in front of the car." There's another oddity in the file, at least on my computer. I looked at it with a binary viewer and found that it's separated into 'paragraphs', with some text in the header of each paragraph that relates more to Vue d'Esprit than to Poser. I know that "file junk" sometimes appears in binary files, and I did try to use a demo version of Vue exactly once. But the pattern looks more calculated than file junk. Did you see that Vue stuff in your files?

Would you post a little of the binary (hopefully, actually hexadecimal) pieces?

Take this image and view it at exactly
half-size in Photoshop or whatever, and
you'll get a better idea of what's going
on, I think.

The effect is nearly holographic. Poser
draws a centered picture of each object
in the scene by itself, and then interlaces
their representations. Reducing by half
makes a different interlace visible.

What version of Poser are you talking about? FireFly's shadow map temp files are in the same format as those of Pixels:3D, you can even re-use shadow maps that Poser created when rendering in Pixels:3D. The interlacing effect you see comes most likely from the fact that shadow depth maps usually are rendered in 32 bits/pixel where I assume that Photoshop opens raw files only with 8 or 16 bit per pixel - effectively stretching one pixel in the shadow map over 2 or 4 pixels in Photoshop.