This has likely been discussed before, but, since I am a newbie, please be so kind as to let me benefit from your experience. What is considered a normal loading time for Poser 5? It takes fully 2 minutes to load on my P4 2.5 GHz machine.
And what about render times? I realize that this will change depending upon the complexity of the scene, but what would be a range one could reasonably expect? I guess the question is how much memory do you really need in your computer and how long do you ususally have to wait. I am trying to decide whether I need to upgrade my processor or not.
Thanks to all in advance.

Hi cjw,

Just for comparison ...

My P5 takes 35 seconds to load on my 1.9GHz Dell with 1GB RAM.
(1 figure in the studio)

Do you have a large number of figures and/or props (in the studio) when you load P5?

The more items you have, the longer it will take.

If you don't have at least 1 GB of RAM, consider expanding it.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

P.S. What other programs do you have running when you load P5? dg ;=]

P.P.S. Render times may vary widely depending on the complexity of the scene and the render options that are selected. cheers, (again) dr geep ;=]

I have a 1.1 Ghz computer and 128 megabytes of ram and it only takes 35 seconds for poser 5 to load for me, too.

Dr geep`s render times are similar to mine, too ( though probably slightly faster ).
If you set up poser 5 to start without the don character, it will help to speed up the loading time, too.

Message edited on: 08/01/2004 23:10

AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM.

~20 seconds to launch P5, ~10 seconds to relaunch.

Attached Link: http://www.poserpros.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16569

Athlon XP 2400 and a gig of DDR RAM gives me 29 seconds to open without a figure on stage. Consider using separate runtimes - I have a blank runtime folder on my hard drive just called "P5 Null" and if I link open this as the active runtime before closing Poser, it helps the launch time a lot. Removing Content Parasite also helps, check the thread at PoserPros for info on how to do that.

You know... I don't know what it is about that render, Geep, but I think Judy looks really cute in it. Go figure, I'd like a render used as an example more than the ones people spend hours on! Hee hee...

;=]

Hi 600meg Pentium 3, 256 meg memory, win98 Poser load with no character about 3 minutes. render 640 x 480 with one character and dynamic hair render about 30 minutes to never using firefly and slightly faster using P4 renderer. Render with production settings - never waited long enough. [the amazing thing is that it runs at all - not how well it runs]

Dynamic hair does slow down rendering a lot.

Thank you all! I am very impressed by the quality and speed of your responses. As I indicated, I have a 2.5 GHz computer and 1 GB of RAM. The render times you provided are similar to mine, but your Poser 5 loading times are all much faster. From what you have said, it appears the problem is the size of my single RUNTIME folder which is 3.8GB. (Yeah, I know it's pretty big, but I can't seem to help myself with all the cool stuff on Renderosity. So the answer appears to divide things up into separate RUNTIMES. I didn't realize that would make a difference. So what is the downside of having separate runtimes? Does this break anything? Thanks again.

You can put anything into a seperate runtime except for the daz injection morph files, they shouldn`t be moved. The injection morphs are only in the newer daz figures i.e. victoria 3 mike 3 the freak etc so most other things can be put in other runtimes.

Using the 'Null runtime' trick is the easiest way to speed up P5 startup. Poser reads the runtime folder at startup, to have all the library thumbnails ready. By using the null runtime, and not installing -anything- into it, Poser reads empty folders and moves on (you don't even need to create the folder structure in runtime; Poser will do that for you. Just create the null runtime folder, and link it in). You get a cold startup time of between 15 and 30 seconds then, depending on your hardware and available memory. Once it's going, you switch to your chosen runtime, and Poser will only read a library when you select it. You still have to suffer that time, but doing it this way means you aren't trying to initialize the program at the same time. The other trick is to install nothing into the actual P5 runtime. The only thing you need in there are the folders involving morph injection; they have to be in the native runtime where the executable is. Open your runtime folder, and at the top of the tree may be folders like !DAZ, !DNA, !AEON, etc. This is the naming convention for the morph injection folders. Just copy them into the P5 runtime, and get into the habit of recopying them when there's an update to any of the related figures. You also don't need to have P5 specific content placed in the P5 runtime. Dynamic cloth and hair work just fine in an external runtime, so you could copy the content out of P5 into P4's runtime, if you have both, and have the P5 characters to use in P4 (no dynamics, though). And your runtime is 3.8 gigs? Trust me, that's no more than an adolescent compared to many. Mine is pushing 25 gigs, and I know don't have the largest by far. =Now= is the time to work out your management system, trust me on this. Or one day you will find yourself trying to tame Leviathan. Well, you will anyway, but at least you would have made the effort.... ;P

Thank you all for the information. It is much appreciated. And thanks, Dale B for helping me feel less guilty about all the stuff I have managed to jam into my runtime folder. I am sure I will eventually catch up to the rest of you. There are just too many nice additions that I still want for my Poser library. ;-)

Another thing that might help you out with Poser, is if your machine uses hyperthreading, turn it off in the BIOS when you boot your computer. Poser does does thread itself out, and can only use 50% of the CPU if hyperthreading is turned on.