Well at last I've HAD IT with Poser6!!! Before you all jump on me, let me just say that I am VERY pro Poser as an application, I had poser5 since it's release and put up with the bug's without complaint but at least the programme WAS useable. I bought TWO versions of P6, the downloadable one AND the disc, Convinced that CL MUST have sorted it by now, but NO! I can forgive missing cloth files etc and get by without them but to NOT be able to render even the smallest scene without being hit by these bloody silly 'memory out' messages and now after 4 week's of biting my bottom lip I've just encountered the SAME damn problem when saving a scene! only to have the whole lot wiped when I go to re-open it. Now I know that this is old new's to most of you but it's the first time in 4 week's that i've encountered it and IT IS the final straw....No more P6 for me! I'm now going back to P5 until this is sorted, I CAN'T work like this. Do CL not know that there are CUSTOMERS out there using their software as an aid to making a living? When DO they intend to sort this!!! DO they intend to sort this?

Not sure if you should hold your breath to be honest.

When I bought Poser5, I bought it for mainly two reasons;

1 Dynamic-Hair
2 Dynamic-Cloth

None of those features worked correctly when it was released, and now, four SR's later they STILL don't work correctly.

These features are unusable for me, and just like you, it's extra annoying because I'd love to be a merchant of Poser products, but I gave up trying because of the problems :-(

At this very moment in time, I'm considering Poser6, but after reading this, I think maybe I'll wait until it actually does what it's supposed to do.

I know exactly how you feel - life's a bitch sometimes :-/

I haven't run into the memory bug yet in a month of using P6, but I haven't tried any real big scenes yet. I can tell you that based on my experience it handles small scenes well. Every saved P4 and P5 scene I have (both purchased ones and ones I made) all work well in P6 too.

They only release a content updater. They never announced a patch. You paid for two versions? Just return one. I haven't run into any problems yet but know some peole are with hardware issues. I did a post awhile back about "fragmented" obj files causing "out of memory" messages on simple stuff. Did you see that post? Just search for "fragmented". I don't think they come in here much. Did you try contacting them? What is in your scene?

I purposely bought two version's! I was so keen to get P6 that after ordering the boxed version I decided to also buy the download as that was available two week's early, what a fool ah! I havn't read your post but I am now going to, 'don't think it'll help though. My scene is made up of; M3, Syyd Raven's 'Adrian' texture, Daz's 'Treadz' boots and a cross that I made from P6 'Primitives' (two box's) + three default light's

Anton, the download version AFAIK is non-returnable once it's been successfully downloaded, and the box version is non-returnable once the seal on the CD sleeve is broken.

Message edited on: 05/01/2005 16:29

Hey you never know. Doesn't hurt to ask. butter just look at that thread. I am not telling you not to be upset. Just it helped me and I haven't gotten an "out of memory" message since. I told CL and they are aware of it and other issues none of their beta people experienced. I know it is the worst, but I just have this gut feeling it is something simple making an existing issue brutal. Hang in there. It really is awesome. I was getting frustrated too, more from not knowing what made some obj's different than others. I do sympathize. best of luck with it.

I have to admit that im using P6 and P5, P6 for the easy stuff cause it's a bit dim and P5 for the hefty stuff with less polish for the brute force... oneday i can put P5 in a retirement home, and visit only on weekends but for now i have to put up with both...ho hum

A P6 patch is supposedly in the works. A CL rep admitted that a few days after it was released. The content has been updated, for both P6 and then the missing P5 items, over at content paradise. The problem with getting a P6 patch is that a lot of people are having a variety of issues so narrowing down the cause is probably difficult...

CL will refund your purchase if the seal on the CD is broken. Least they did for me on P6 Mac.

On the memory bug, do we know if it's CLs programming, or firefly? Didn't CL license firefly from someone else? Might they have to wait for them to fix it?

Until this thing gets fixed for once and all -- it's going to be an on-going sore issue.

Too bad P6's memory management isn't on a par with the program's other features. If it were, then we'd have an unbeatable total package.

Missing P5 content? Bahhhhh.

The memory bug has the potential for making the whole thing unusable for some people.

And it's highly annoying for others of us.

A word of advice to CL -- fix it ASAP!!!!!!!

And if it's going to be awhile before you are able to correct the memory bug -- then at least tell us: so that we can plan accordingly.

Being forced to run my brand-new vehicle on a 40-mph limit spare tire all of the time isn't my idea of fun.

I don't think anybody at CL will kill me if I say that they've been working steadily to fix errors and there has been a series of patches to test. The best thing to do when Poser crashes or throws up an error message or does something weird is to note it, see if you can repeat it and then write CL with your system specs and what happened. The more information they have the easier it is to eliminate suspects and get down to the real cause! Even if you think someone else wrote them, the information helps!!! Example: Fred on a PC with a triple-wow card and 4 gigs of RAM has a memory problem.... and is pissed because his high-end ultra-speced gaming system can't render a scene with 2 Vickys and an umbrella stand. Ted with only 1 gig is happily rendering 11 fully-dressed Mike3s in a football huddle... and doesn't even have the latest driver for his medium-range card. Unless they also get feedback from Ned, Red, and Zed, it is going to be difficult to determine if it is too much memory, too hot a machine, the OS, the brand of card, or what Poser is doing with its left hand while waving down pixels with the right. If it only crashes when rendering, that is information. If it only crashes if you leave the render in the background and do something else is also information. If it only crashes when it is rendering in the background and you are downloading a mega-file in the meantime and Windows is mixing up packets in the tempfiles somewhere is also information. Telling everyone to buy a Mac because it never crashes on a Mac isn't the ideal solution. Repeatable problems are the easiest to isolate. I finally got P6 to crash, for the first time ever, a couple of days ago... but it was while testing a figure. I need to know if it is the figure or the program... but Poser absolutely refuses to crash again. Argh! I can't just hand them a corpse; I have to hand them a toe-tag saying why it died, or at least what it was doing when it fell off a particular cliff. My recommendation? Some people have a memory problem, others do not. If you do, tell CL as much as possible, and don't do anything risky until the patch comes out. Don't keep knocking your head against the wall, when there are other more productive things to do. Carolly

Very well stated. Bravo!

Posting system specs would also be helpful.

Thanks Carolly, point taken! I WILL get on to CL today but to be honest I havn't up to now because in the past when i've mailed them I've never had a reply, still, i'll give it a go. My machine is PC (Windows XP Home) 2.6 Athlon, 1.5 meg Kingston Ram,2x 80gig ATA HD's, NVIDIA FX5800 graphics card (with up to date drivers)I have tried setting my virtual memory in windows at 1500mb, 2000mb, 2500mb, 3000mb,3500mb,4000mb. Thanks to All.

Butter,

Just to let you know I have already been onto CL and they say the SR1 is currently being tested before its release to resolve all our issues.

I have had similar problems to what you have described and CL are already been informed of it (you can read my other posts here).

However the problems seem to vary from user to user. I would recommend that anyone who has a problem reports back to them and that should help them to understand the problem and resolve it.

I am running both P5 and P6 on my system and not touched P6 for 2 weeks now.

Message edited on: 05/02/2005 03:11

Dimension X I've now given CL all the info that I can but there seem's to be no rhyme or reason to what actually causes this memory problem, I've worked on quite large scenes and had no problem at all only to then do a very small scene and have the whole thing fall over! Don't get me wrong anyone, I DO understand the complexity of the problem faced by CL to do something about this and would be only too happy to sit and wait patiently for the solution. What I can't put up with is CL's apparent reluctence to let their loyal customers know what the hell is going on, and let's face it...you've got to be damn loyal to still be using such a techy piece of software for so long!

What I can't put up with is CL's apparent reluctence to let their loyal customers know what the hell is going on... Given the way people around here "vent", CL's reluctense to say anything comes as no supprise to me. even an e-mail to "loyal" customers would likely be posted within 24hrs of being sent.

Given the way people around here "vent", CL's reluctense to say anything comes as no supprise to me.

I agree with you on this point.

However, a news release or an e-mail notification would be nice.

I know that they are working on this.

That's what I keep telling myself every time that a render locks up.

;-)

But their efforts are appreciated

I am going to throw this in on the Memory Issue. (I think if things continue, CL might want Specs from those that do not have the issue to help narrow the field as someone suggested.) As a BETA tester in the past for software and from personal experience I have noticed that some of these issues are not System related, but more often related to other Software. McAfee and its Guard Dog caused a lot of issues a couple of years ago, due to the way Guard Dog reacted from time to time (Using 100% of Processor for no apparent reason). I also had an issue that turned out to be related to a game on my system. Since that time, I do not install games on my work box or Laptop. I have had no issues related to system crashes and "software bugs" since that time. Sometimes the culprit is that little program that checks the speed of the game server even when the game is not running. I would suggest that if you really want this fixed, make sure what is causing the problem. It is not hard to unplug from the net even if you have to so you can safely disable your Firewall and AV for a time to check to see if this has any bearing. (MS Works use to have an issue of not dumping Memory it had allocated causing Memory Issues with other programs and itself. It was fixed in the next version, but no patch was offered for the older version.)

Hmmm, That's interesting! About the software conflict i mean! All day today i've been trying to find some sort of an answer to my above post, so what i've been doing is trying to replicate the situation of yesterday. Ive now got to the stage where as long as I DON'T exceed a 75dpi render I don't get any problems with 'out of memory' errors BUT I am now getting another strange problem, hitherto un-encountered. I've just been getting problem's with my camera setting's. I tried to alter the 'perspective' setting on my 'Main' camera and noticed that it did NOT have an effect on the scene at all ALSO every time I 'tweaked' the dial all the other camera settings changed as well, another strange thing i noticed was that when I tweaked, the little box at the bottem of my monitor to show that 'Photoshop' was also running would ALSO move left and right with the dial movement at the bottem of my screen??? SO I closed down photoshop, No change. I uninstalled Photoshop from my system and guess what??? Yep NO more problem! Now I posted a while ago in answer to some other poor souls question about a problem and as I said then.. I have had problem's with Poser and Photoshop installed on the SAME system before with Poser3. I had no problems with P5 but it look's like IT'S BACK!!! which is a REAL pain in the ass!!!! Anyway, maybe that help's someone? I've answered myself 2 question's today, 'still can't do high res render's though!

A lot of these issues have to do with software that checks for updates. These Auto Checks, often use resources unwisely, and do not take into account other applications running. I disabled most software Auto Checks, except for Windows Updater and my AV (I use AVG). I am not familiar with PS, but you might want to look at things like Image Finders, and updaters. Those tend to screw with other programs more often that an out of date driver!

PhotoShop is a notorious memory hog, too. I've never had so much memory on a system that I could have both Poser and PhotoShop open at the same time. However, they do reside on the same machine. If you have a Windows box, you may need to restart to free up memory which was already allocated, not just close down one program to start the other.

Ratscloset is right about games, especially the games which take place in real time.

Another thing to look out for is any program which automatically updates, whether it is a windows applet searching the 'net, or a virus definition updater, or a utilities file indexer. Norton, for example, if it thinks your system is idle, will happily start scanning the drives. Even a silly little clock which resets itself to the Nationally correct microsecond each day might feel that it has higher priority than some other bit of data. Computers are crammed full of widgets to make life easier, and I try to disable as many as possible... but most users like them. crossposted!

Carolly

Message edited on: 05/02/2005 10:28

sigh First, to Carroly: EXCELLENT description! Where were you when I was trying to explain things on a project a few years ago? You'd make a great Systems's Rep. Second, waiting: Everything I've seen shows that the P6 release is going a LOT better than the P5 fiasco. However, I ain't putting my money down until they fix the memory bug and someone, somewhere, sells body morphs for James. From a programming viewpoint, it takes at least a month to even test a major service release, let alone do the actual investigation and coding. I wouldn't expect a service release for at least a few more weeks. Of course, the way my life goes, it'll be released and perfect the day after I leave for Indiana for two weeks. That's at the end of the month.

Khai claims that the people who have trouble with P6 are the ones who have too much memory. Over 2 Gb, system and swap file. Windows has long had a problem with more than 2 Gb memory, and since this is basically old code tweaked, well, it could be Win98-era code running into XP problems.

I have exactly 2 Gb of RAM and have the out of memory problem. Pentium 4, 3.4 ghz, Radeon ATI 9800 XT card. I should add that none of the scenes were very big when I got this message either. I went back to Poser 5 until they sort this out. ::grumble::

I have only 1.5 Gb of system RAM, but I get the out of memory error frequently. Or did, until I went back to P5. It's the system RAM plus the swap file, so if you have 2 Gb system RAM, you're definitely over 2Gb when you add in your swap file.

I did try lowering my swap file to get me under 2 Gb, but it didn't work. Though it did lower the amount of damage done. Maybe I needed to lower it even more.

I also ran into the out of memory the other day when saving. I reinstalled the basic installation over the other one and have had no problems since.

I'm on P4, 3Ghz, 2Gb RAM, Radeon 9600 pro, Win XP pro SP1.
I also have Photoshop Elements 2, which is often running same time as Poser.

This may be somewhat irrelivant, as I don't run P6 yet, but I have had memory issues in the past. There is a little program I use called 'mem turbo' that give the user the ability to recover hogged up ram and to defrag the ram and return the unused portions back to the free pool for program use. I have found that it has saved my bacon on many occasions when two or more programs are competing for resourses. I have successfully run both photoshop cs and poser 5 together with only 316 megs of ram using this. (Just don't try to recover ram when rendering lol. Poser get a little grumpy) Anyway, just a thought.

I've noticed problems mainly occur if you have something (be it a prop or a character) with too large a texture. Just yesterday I struggled with an image that just wouldn't render. Didn't even give me an Out of Memory-error. It got as far as to "Rendering" and then it simply froze. Once I turned down the texture size (Not at my Poser machine and I can't remember the exact wording) to 1024 instead of the 2000-something it was at, it rendered just fine. And the image was consisting of a M3 and a V3, none of them fully injected, and the Palace Entrance from Daz. I suspect the textures on the latter to be the culprit in this case, since it is a HUGE prop.

I know this thread is a couple of months old but I've been out of circulation awhile and have been paging through lots of posts here to see if upgrading to P6 would be wise. I ALMOST clicked -submit- on the site to get the upgrade (impulsive fella that I am!) but paused and decided to come here to here the pros talk. After reading many threads, it seems I should just wait? P6 sounds great from the splashy marketing stuff with opengl and all that but P5 has worked reasonably well for me since it came out.

Since the service release, I don't have any major complaints about P6. There are a few bugs, but there are a few bugs in P5, too. But if you're happy with P5, I'd say wait until you get an offer you can't refuse. CL seems to be offering sales, coupons, etc., pretty regularly.

I bought the boxed version, and downloaded SR1, and the "missing" files...I was also lucky enough to be a beta tester for P6, and in all the incarnations I used including the final release I can honestly say I never have encountered the Out Of Memory "bug" that I keep reading about. I have a lowly AMD 1.2 Ghz machine, with 768 mb of memory and a 256 mb nVidia G Force video card, all running (staggering?) on Windoze XP Pro. Am I just lucky? ~lol~

No, it's because you have a "lowly" computer that you have never suffered the bug. As I said above, it seems to be related to the old Windows 2 Gb memory limit. So older computers that don't have anywhere near 2 Gb of RAM don't have a problem.

If this problem really comes from having too much memory... Words fail me. I'm using P5 still, with half a gig of RAM, and that's not really rnough. But now I'm wondering if the increase is worth it. Maybe it's lucky I was short of cash. Maube I should put the RAM money towards a bigger hard drive instead, or to a different program to do the rendering.

I have one gig on both of my testing machines (PC and MAC), and didn't hit the problem. P6 is a beautiful program, and friendlier than P5. You will want a gig in order to load some of the complex (and truly nifty) props: castles, sailing ships, magical islands are resource intensive, before you even think of adding people! You will be amazed at the difference doubling your ram will make! Carolly

*If this problem really comes from having too much memory...

Words fail me.*

Poser's base code is really old, unfortunately.

But don't be afraid of getting more RAM. SR1 fixed the P6 memory bug. There are still a few issues, but, IMO, no worse than P5.