Hi!
I've got a problem with rendering complex scenes that involve multiple figures (3 or more) and muliple props eg a room with windows chairs lights and of clothing. Poser seems to hang at loading the textures. I've gone away for 12 hours and it hasn't loaded or got any further. My system has an Athlon 3000+, x800 pro graphics card with 256 mg, 2gig memory and 175 gig spare hd space.

chris

Attached Link: http://www.curiouslabs.com/article/articleview/1230/1/428/

You may be able to fix it by adjusting your render settings. Try turning texture filtering on, and setting the maximum texture size to 1024 or smaller. (See article.)

If that doesn't work, try some of the suggestions in Stew's Firefly FAQ:

http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html

Cheers! off to try this. Its been really frustating

Another thing to try is split the scene into smaller sections and build up the image from a composite of multiple renders. I've had to resort to this method a few times.

are you animating? if not, as SamTherapy says split things up, take a render of the background part of the scene and import it into new file as a background jpg. If you are animating and need shifting perspective and angles on your background, you may need to call Industrial Light and Magic or Pixar. [renderman] ::::: Opera :::::

also, check out using Mover to go over to VuePro and render there. There are pros and cons to that approach. ::::: Opera :::::

I don't recommend using a background JPG because that can cause problems all on its own. I prefer to save the sections as PNGs then stick 'em all together in Photoshop.

Another option is to create low res versions of the textures of your prop/character yourself, depending on how close to the camera the prop/character is. I did render 5 V3s+1 M3 with 1000x1000 head and body textures that way. Also remove bump maps where they don't make any difference.

Oh Ya, Bump maps, they will kill your render real fast. I do all the above. I render in layers, I resize all my textures, don't use bump maps if I can get away with it. I use low rez figures when I can. I render 2X's the finished image, better for postwork. I save eveything as a tiff. Don't make me count how many layers I do, there are more than I have fingers and toes. You can render all your figures without clothes and props to get the proper shadows, then render each figure with clothes. There are so many work arounds.

You could also try importing the scene into DAZ|Studio and rendering it there(some minor tweeking and relighting will be in order). Its what I usually end up doing when P5 refuses to render for me. Kudos to the community comming up with so many work arounds for this issue. Its sad that P5 is such a trainwreck of software it cant handle some hi rez textures and bump maps. You should all be angry with Curious Labs for releasing a broken app (I know I sure am).In reality on planet earth this SHOULD NOT be an issue!

It can handle high rez textures and bump maps. You just have to adjust the render settings.

If you want to render the entire Dallas Cowboys football team, with their uniforms and cheerleaders, well, yeah, you're going to have a problem. You'd have a problem in P4 and PP as well. And D|S, too, I have no doubt.

In reality on planet earth this SHOULD NOT be an issue! << Yes, it should. This is a good but finite application, Poser, that costs $249.00 and works remarkably great, all facts considered, on these puny destop PCs. Reality check: Renderman costs $5,000 per seat, I believe, and for Final Fantasy the team rendered on a farm consisting of 1000 cpus. I don't know what bulk license they got. Not to mention Maya, per seat. Accepting what is realistic is the reality on this earth of a mature person. Projecting expectation that the universe 'should' conform to what you 'want it to do' regarless of facts, is childish. The correct tool for the size of the job.... ::::: Opera :::::

i guess you can get a plugin for Maya pretty reasonably... From the Pixar site: Coming Soon! RenderMan for Maya, for Macintosh OS X and Windows XP, will be available for purchase, for $995, via our Web site in early 2005. :::::: Opera ::::::

SamTherapy if you read this....

can you say a few things about the downside of rendering out the backdrop and importing as a background jpeg? You could save me/us some wasted time in the future. Where and why does this idea go bad?

Thanks

::::: Opera :::::

Message edited on: 12/15/2004 11:49

The resolution will be terrible if you import a background image. Better to add it in postwork. Or use the high-res square as a backdrop, and apply your background image as a texture.

I've had good fortune with background images. Here's an example.

The problem with this render is that the
background jpg is TOO realistic and sharp (photograph)
and it clashes somewhat with the figure.

I am not saying you are wrong in your opinion, only that I have had some success.

::::: Opera :::::

I think the key is to not let the backdrop get resized, let alone stretched, by Poser. Make the image the same exact pixel size your final render will be, and make your posing window that same size. That way, it will render in Poser exactly the same way you saw it in PS or whatever you use. I agree that adding a backdrop in post is a fine idea, but if you are animating, a perfect backdrop works pretty nicely. ::::: Opera :::::

You're probably right, but most of us don't do animation. If you render stills, especially for printing, you cannot make your posing window the same size as your final render. Unless you have a 4000x4000 pixel screen. ;-)

OReillyTX wrote, "You could also try importing the scene into DAZ|Studio and rendering it there(some minor tweeking and relighting will be in order)." Not a very stable option is it. Reality check, Isle 3. Going from one software to another buggy software is not what people need. The Background. I use the flat square too. There is another way also. Geep wrote a tutorial on how to make a backdrop to use your background image with. Helps with file size and shadow placement. I'm still learning animation. Sooo. Why can't you set everything up then save the PZ3/PZZ. Delete the forground stuff and render. Open Poser with the PZ3/PZZ and delete the background stuff and render as an Image and save as a tiff. or PSD. combine the two in favorite paint program. I thought most of the paint programs do batch rendering now. All the camera and light setting would be the same.