I know this problem can't be completely eliminated, but in Poser 6 is there a way to optimize so you can load MORE textures before crapping out? I have 2GB of new RAM on this machine, I should be able to load more than 2 characters in full clothing.

try cutting your windows swapfile to 500mb and fixing it there.... I have a suspicion that should work..

maybe it is the polycount that is too high? just guessing....

how do i change the swap file? and polycount too high? for only 2 instances of V3 in outfits? i should hope not lol. but then again Poser has never been as tightly programmed as say Max, Maya, or even Bryce. hopefully there is away for me to increase it a LITTLE bit anyway, im not asking for it to be infinite; i'd just like to get a little more productivity out of poser without having to have every chair, lamp, and character in its own seperate render.

So, how much RAM do all the textures need uncompressed? (Tripple the amount when you checked texture filtering.)

i am recalling on one of your products ive bought at daz long ago. forgot the name but it was sth with cuirass, wings and swords for v3-m3. poser5 ***** up every render or broke down completely, no matter what settings. i could render the scene only with all textures removed. in the end i found out that i had (excl. hair, backdrop and whatever props - only v3,m3 and your outfits) about 1.5 million polys loaded - so, hey, maybe it is the polycount that is too high?

guardian angels thats what that was. thing is i can render that set just fine. yet i can't render 2 figures on no background with clothes. also, were you using firefly? im not even using that, i always use P4 renderer, still can't load very many textures. PC is a dual core AMD 4600 X2, 2GB ram, geforce 7800 GTX. so yeah, it isn't the polygons, or at least not in my case. im sure there's a way to increase bucket size or something, i guess i should do some more research.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2560019&Form.sess_id=3427762&Form.sess_key=

2.) Putting Poser's actual Memory Bugs aside, I'd second guess ever making your Virtual Memory Swap file smaller, especially for a memory issue. In fact I advise the opposite! 4GBs is the maximum Windows will allow you per partition/disk. Virtual Memory is where your computer goes when it runs out of RAM. You can change this setting by going to your Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Advanced.

3.) I have two V3.PZ3s. One is 225MB, because that is where I archive ALL of my MTs. I only use this scene for sculpting. I've gone ahead and recreated the big scene, but then have never Injected all those Morph Targets. After I've used the big scene I export a Morph Target of the work I've done that day, and then import only the newest MT into the smaller 10MB V3.PZ3. The two scenes look exactly alike, but then smaller scene is what I use for rendering, and testing MATs on. The link above is to a python script that is brewing to convert/strip the larger scene into the smaller scene without ever needing to export/import. You should pop your head in and cheer SVDL on, he's bitten off ALOT!

4.) Remember you only need as big a texture as you're planning for your final render. That is if you only plan to render a 1024x768(An average computer monitor resolution) pixel image, then you would never need to use a Hi Resolution 3000 x 3000 pixel image map. So, you should check all your textures in Photoshop, and then reduce where needed.

= )

Yeah, I have been using P6 for about 6 months now and it really needs some work done on it badly in the coding dept. I have a X2 4800 with 2 gig XMS and an ATI 850XTPE 256 and I still have issues with a couple of figures at times, no excuse for it. 3DSMax runs perfectly with high poly models and renders fast. I have so many creative ideas that just get shot down due to the inability to render.

"2.) Putting Poser's actual Memory Bugs aside, I'd second guess ever making your Virtual Memory Swap file smaller, especially for a memory issue. In fact I advise the opposite! 4GBs is the maximum Windows will allow you per partition/disk. Virtual Memory is where your computer goes when it runs out of RAM. You can change this setting by going to your Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Advanced. " sigh and Xp 32bit can only assign 2GB per program. sorry, your advice is actually incorrect and the reverse of what you should do. this is a known problem with poser and a known limitation of XP. to go larger than 2GB you need to upgrade to Server or XP 64Bit. Search the forums and the M$ technet.

I know about the 2GB limit per application, but have been under the impression that only applies to Physical memory(RAM,) and not Virtual memory?

What is Server?

Does XP64 reven run on 32bit architecture?

Message edited on: 01/29/2006 22:09

Ram under windows = Physical ram + virtual Ram.. so if ya got 1.5gb like me, a swap file of 500Mb takes you upto 2Gb total under windows.. Server is the Server edition of XP.. it allows you to goto 3GB per app on apps that are 'aware' as to running 64 on 32bit CPU's.. I've got a feeling it's a no go.. plus I've heard (not comfirmed - not got a 64bit system, (Donations to....), that 32bit programs run under 32bit emulation under 64, with, you've guessed it, the 2Gb limit....

Yes, but the limit is per application. Windows is one application, then Poser is another, etc. I'm not aware of any limit to the number of applications you can have open under Windows, but am sure the number of Cores a machine has comes into play somehow...

Is XP Pro A.K.A. Server?

Is Poser 'aware'?

= )

Message edited on: 01/29/2006 23:31

yup but th way it goes is, poser hits 2gb limit poser falls over. that limit is P-Ram + V-Ram = total Ram. yes it can Allocate 2gb per app. but them's the apples. (cores make no difference.) no Pro is not Server. there is Home, Pro and Server. no poser is not aware.

I've noticed that this only happens with certain MAT files; ie with certain huge textures. I'm sure a lot of you are aware many products come with 4000 x 4000 textures! I'm currently using Win XP Pro, 2GB starting size, 4GB max on virtual memory. I do have Poser 6 SP2. Is there any quick way or utility to cut down texture dimensions en masse? The largest renders I do are 1024 x 1365

If you've got Photoshop, you can make an "action" that halves the texture sizes for each file in a folder. This is what I have done to get workable texture sizes: - made a subfolder in the texture folder, renamed it to LoRes; - ran the action as a batch on the texture folder, specifying the LoRes folder as the output folder and adding _LO to the filenames; - copied the MAT pose folder, renamed it to [product name]_LO; - ran all .pz2 files in the _LO MAT pose folder through a text editor with decent search/replace over multiple files (I use Textpad, but there are many editors that'll do the job), replacing the filename by [filename]_LO; - and ran CorrectReferencePro to fix up the folder references. Could probably be done in the text editor too, but I was too lazy to work out the required regular expression... Not a one-click solution, but much better than resizing every texture by hand. And it has the advantage of keeping the original hires textures, and those are useful for closeups.

Oh, and about RAM and virtual memory. 2 GB per app is a Win32 limit, that's right. It can be tricked to 3 GB per app, using a startup switch, but that's only useful if the application has been written to take advantage of that extra GB. Actually, there are two ways to write a program for Win32 using more than 2 GB of address space. 1) use the LARGE_MEMORY_AWARE compile switch; 2) write the .exe as a very simple loader and write the actual program as a .DLL. DLLs get loaded in the 2GB-3GB address space, leaving almost a full 2 GB address space for data. Poser is NOT large memory aware. I wish it were. I will only upgrade to Poser 7 if it is 64 bit. Which will require a (long overdue) overhaul of the core code. Slightly OT: the next version of Vue will be 64 bit. One of the e-on people said so.

thanks for the tips. 64 bit Vue! i love it. since getting addicted to Vue i haven't touched Bryce.

Quote - I have so many creative ideas that just get shot down due to the inability to render.

FSMCDesigns...BINGO! that is my problem and I am sure a whole boatload of other people's problem as well...I want to render LARGER than screen resolution...I am intending to do MORE with my Poser renders than simply post here in the gallery...I am wanting to print them poster size and display them in the local community (I am the VP of the local Art League)...we have a large format printer and have the capability of printing large... my Husband can render his Terragen images HUUUUUGE, and Terragen isn't near as advanced a software as Poser6...why can't I render my Poser images huge too? we users paid good money for the program, but it almost comes with the limitation of being unable to render large images... can someone who is more "tech talk" savvy perhaps write up a letter and make it available to any Poser user who wishes to use it to email or snailmail e-on Software about this problem, asking them to either provide a patch for Poser 6 to deal with this issue, or make it one of the MAIN new feature of Poser 7? pretty please, would someone undertake the task to write such a letter up? I for one will IMMEDIATELY shoot it off to them...if they get enough people letting them know that this issue is unacceptable, maybe they'll focus on addressing it...I'll help in any way I can with the letter...thankyou!! Karen

e-on likely wouldn't have any impact on tht, but e-frontier would. The largest images I've ever rendered out of poser were 4096 by 4096 square. They contained between 3 and 7 figures each, and included several dozen props and articulated props with morphs. They also usually took four days to render, but that was becuase I did so at 240 dpi and used some rather intensive rendertime settings. All of this on a system with only 768MB of ram.

hi ynsaen, now thats what i call patience! id like to see them, did you post them somewhere?

ynsaen...grrrrr that's what I meant! Efrontier..sheesh I have been doing that TOO often lately, replacing one name with another...I'll go crawl back under my rock now...hehe but before I do, HOW did you get an image that size to render??? GlowWorm is definitely helping and I managed to get a 3000 pixel image rendered, but what about people who dont have GlowWorm? I'd appreciate if you have found a work around if you could share it...the render time would be find with me, we're used to that...hubby did an image in Bryce that took 20 DAYS and 10 hours to render a few weeks ago! =:0 Karen

"The largest images I've ever rendered out of poser were 4096 by 4096 square. They contained between 3 and 7 figures each, and included several dozen props and articulated props with morphs." in poser 6?! HOW on earth did you not get the "can not load textures" message to pop up?

Reducing resolution on the textures helps. You can enhance them again by using procedurals - they have an "infinite" resolution because they're mathematic formulas that get evaluated at render time. It's the kind of material I'd love to see more - low resolution texture maps for the rough overall effects, enhanced by procedural materials for the fine detail in closeups. Then it would be possible to render at very high resolutions and still have large scenes with crisp detail. Right now the only way to get such a material is making it yourself.

svdl...if I want to render a scene 4000x4000 or 5000x5000 with say M3 and V3, A) how should I determine what size my texture map should be for the characters or their clothing, and B) how should I then determine what size my "Max Texture Size" should be set at... gosh, I dont if I'm phrasing my questions right...I dont know if there is a way I should be calculating what size my textures should be in relation to my scene size, and also how to determine what I should set the max texture size at in the render settings...for example, if I have M3 and V3 and they each take up 1/3 of the scene, do I calculate my texture sizes based on 1/3 of my scene size, or do I still base it on the total scene size? I use HyperReal and ambient occlusion a lot to get as much realism as possible (I know material based AO is easier to work with than light based, so I try to go that way)... anyway, any pearls of wisdome would be welcomed...I know I beat these questions to death frequently, but I sure wish Poser didn't have these issues to have to try to work around...thanks in advance for your comments! Karen

Max texture size should be no larger than the largest dimension of the largest texture map. Including the background image, if you're using one. The best way to calculate the right texture size? Well, the body height (feet up to neck in zero pose) is probably the best guide. If that length is 1/2 of your scene size, the texture map should be about 1/2 of your scene size too. If you render to 5000x5000 px, the texture map sizes calculated this way could be pretty large. And in that case the chances of a successful render at decent quality settings are rather slim. It could be a good idea to make a series of maps. Say the largest map you have is a 4000x4000 map (not unusual for V3 or M3). You could try making a series of maps from those like 2000x2000 and 1000x1000. I'm fairly certain a V3/M3 scene with their full size texture maps will not render in P6 at 5000x5000. Especially not if you're also using clothes and/or background props/figures. Try the 1000x1000 maps with HyperReal and AO. I'm fairly sure the skin will still look crisp and detailed due to the granite and spots nodes. And the chances that it'll render to completion are hugely increased. Background props and figures are also prime candidates for texture resolution reduction and adding procedurals. And don't forget the hair - most hair has high res textures requiring a low shading rate (0.2-0.5) to render decently. If you're using 1000x1000 texture maps, I'd recommend setting max texture resolution at 1024 (usually Poser likes a power of 2 better than any other number). And if those 1000x1000 maps don't look good enough, you could try for the 2000x2000 maps. But the chance that Poser will run out of memory will increase...

I'll give those suggestions a shot and see if I can come up with a workable formula...it just really kinda irks me that I cant easily render to the size I need and as previously stated, have to give up on a lot of projects I had undertaken...and it's not because my system wont handle it, my system specs are: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 2.17 GHz, 1.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X700 video card, Windows XP Home SP2...so not like I have a machine that's not capable L if efrontier can't make P6 capable of a larger render, they really should state this plainly, like saying there is a limitation in render size and that Poser doesn't handle renders upwards of 2500 well, for example...it's almost the equivalent of dying of thirst in a desert and seeing an oasis, but never being able to reach it ;p hehe...Karen

Good stuff. For me, I never need to use firefly as I'm doing storyboard work for the most part; but I do need the P4 renderer to work. Is there a difference between the two render engines? I always assumed that since the P4 renderer finishes much faster that it could handle more than firefly before it craps out. is that a myth?

The P4 renderer cannot handle larger scenes than Firefly. In fact, it is the other way around.

Firefly isn't specifically the problem, the main issue is Poser itself and the manner in which it sets up data for whichever renderer to use. I haven't specifically measured the relative memory overheads between P4 and Firefly, but I would expect that it's relatively trivial.

This isn't a new issue I and others have been posting and writing to CL/EF about the declining capabilities for at least the last 5 or 6 years; since ProPack was out. At that time it only affected a minority of ambitious users but, throughout the intervening content and code releases, the decline in capacity has been predicatble. The only difference with P6 is that the problem now affects a larger proportion of users.

Over the last year I've had some correspondence with the developers at EF and I am aware that at least now the problem is being recognised. It's unfortunate that I got the impression that prior to this (in the coding of P6) they didn't have any awareness of the issue despite the fact that it had been often raised in these forums.

On the subject of the large memory aware/64 bit compilation idea (svdl and Khai) this is a bad line to be taking and one that fails to directly address the issue.

The problem is still a bad 32 bit design, not a limitation in memory. Allowing the users to throw more memory into the pot (at their own expense) to support the existing excessive resource usage is going to only provide for a gradual improvement tempered by any increases in the complexity of the content that they expecto to use.

For me I'd rather see EF expend their resources in producing a 32 bit version which can handle a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand figures in a year or two rather than get a 64 bit recompilation that may be able to handle a couple of dozen figures sometime in the next decade.

My main problem with this idea is that EF may take the recompilation idea as quick and dirty way to extend the life of the code without fixing it.

Bill

I totally agree, Bill. The core code needs a BIG overhaul, not just a little patch here and there so that it'll compile to 64bit. Probably a full rewrite. A full rewrite will take time. Months, if not more. But I'd rather wait for a stable, capable 64bit Poser 7 with a decent core than have a quick and dirty recompiled Poser 6.

psst I did'nt suggest anything other than reducing swapfile size ... I just pointed out the situation about the differing windows versions ;)

williamsheil...well, hopefully then if they've been made aware of the problem by users for quite some time now, they should be looking into how they can address the issue and solve these problems...if not and the next version comes out and is STILL not able to handle renders of AT LEAST the sizes I mentioned above, I'm sure that may be reflected in sales and then maybe give them some motivation to address is...maybe ;P lol

Amarcord -- They have been published in three magazines, and two of them were used in on house publications for a greeting card company. It's not patience. It's money. I'll spend three to four weeks prepping a production render with at least 20 to 30 individual test runs that the customer has to ok or not. It's also a work for hire, so I can't post them. I don't own the rights.

As far as "How" I do such things: First off, I never use a texture over 1024 square, for anything, unless the area of the texture is going to ocupy a greater portion of the scene. Secondly, I never have anything in a scene that isn't going to be rendered. Body parts, surface area, morphs, textures, whatever -- if I'm not going to see it through the lens, I don't load it. My main system is set up with a swap file of 3GB, which is housed on a secondary drive -- separate both from my actual runtime and from windows itself. In some cases, I have nothing but poser running -- particularly int he larger renders. I also pay attention to how poser works, and how my particular system runs in the process. I've done large renders in Poser 4, as well (though not as cool imho) -- I just set them up that way. Without fail the things that affect my ability to render large, complex scenes in poser 5 or 6 are that anything I used to do in Poser 4 will basically make things worse. Larger textures for clearer impact? nope -- sucks. Smaller textures and spending literally hours reading the math heads talk about nodes and then pouring over maya forums and other engines to cull data about shader set ups they use. Basically, it comes down to knowing my tool. And my tool is a complete computer, not just a program, and one thing I learned when I had my system company was build the system to the task its for -- and I built this nasty (and, at this moment, dead) system specifically to poser.

ynsean - Would you give us an example of how you would stop a body part, outside of your camera, from loading?

Select the body part, go to properties, click "not visible".

That's it? Just that stops it's geometries, textures, etc. from ever slowing the render? Wow, thanks! = )

yep. Really, and honestly most of it isn't anythign hard to do, but man, in some of these complex scenes I get assignments for (got one for a scene with a crouwd of 30 I think I'll be using the P2 peeps for, lol) it can be a PITA to remember all of it. It's all little things. Simple stuff. But man, it can wear you down. But that's why I'll do lots of quickie renders at really low resolutions and without any special effects. I'm terrible -- truly horrible -- at postwork. So I have to put the amount of time that someone really gifted at this stuff would put into fixing little things like bends at elbows and stuff into actually making it look better in the end. If I could get a good grasp on postwork, why, I think my productivity would treble...