Hi,
I'm having big problems with the FireFly render in Poser6. Since I made the new SR3 update, no Render gets finished. No matter what settings I use. The render starts normal but after a while it just stops. I don't get an error message or anything. The render just don't finish. I used the new Art Materials from RDNA for a few days and also used the preset settings Olivier did, but no way. I had some problems with firefly before, but since the update I can't do any Firefly render...I reinstalled my Poser6 before the update like I should and did it 3 times now, because I thought I did something wrong maybe....I have a Pentium4, with 1GB RAM, 80 GB Harddrive with Windows XP installed. I don't think my PC is the reason. I'm also using Shade, Carrara, and Vue and I never had any problem with the other programs.I heard other people did have this problem before the SR2 update but this should be fixed now?

 Any help is very appreciate!
Nicola

I recommend you to:

1- reinstall Windows XP

2- install your latest graphic card drivers

3- install P6 then the content updater

4- install sr3

Do not install anything else before testing that P6 sr3 actually renders in firefly.

I know, it's boring but this will probably work.

Oh, for your test: do not use any scene you already created..

Create a new one with your P6 content.

Do not use any light set but the P6 original ones or create them from scratch.

For the Dry Shaders, do not use more than 1 light: it would be useless and ressource consuming.

Thank you Olivier,

these are hard words...:scared: to reinstall windows would mean maybe 1 week to reinstall my whole PC...I think I will better render without Firefly before I do that...:unsure: and I will not have a guarantee that it will work after...:sad:

Did you try installing Poser to a different location or did you just install it over the existing installation?

I haven't installed SR3 yet (and I'm not in a great hurry to do so), but, I had a problem like yours when I first installed Poser 6, when it had just been launched.   I still had Poser 5 installed and I could render a scene in P5 Firefly, even though I couldn't render it in P6.   I had followed the instructions and looked for driver updates, but I hadn't found any.   Finally, however, I did locate a driver update that fixed the problem.   Re-installing Windows does sound a bit drastic.

Quote - Did you try installing Poser to a different location or did you just install it over the existing installation?

Yes, my hardrive is splitted in 4 partitions and I installed it to a new one now.

Thank you Morgano, I'm not in a hurry to do that, too...

I  had the same problem. I uninstalled Poser 6, then reinstalled Poser 6 and applied SR3 immediately after. I rebooted my system and then started Poser. I haven't had the problem since.

Quote - I  had the same problem. I uninstalled Poser 6, then reinstalled Poser 6 and applied SR3 immediately after. I rebooted my system and then started Poser. I haven't had the problem since.

That's also what I had to do and now Poser 6 with SR3 works perfectly.
Haven't had a crash or anything weird going on since.  It seems more
stable now with the reinstall and SR3.
E-Frontier really ought to tell people that this is what they should do,

Unfortunately, Laska already seems to have done all of that, but still has the problem.

Laska, after re-installing P6, are you able to re-install SR2, to get your system back to its previous level?   That ought to get you back to a functioning version.   Once you have that, open a problem report with E-frontier about SR3.

Quote - Unfortunately, Laska already seems to have done all of that, but still has the problem.

Yes, I did all that. I will try to reinstall again and only do the SR2 update. See what happens then...

Laska , did you actually uninstall Poser using Add/Remove programs or did you just re-install Poser over the existing program? If you did not actually uninstall it first, then you should try that. You will not lose your runtime. Also after the uninstall, delete any files in the root folder where Poser.exe was. You can leave the folders there. The only reason I ask is because you stated several times you re-installed Poser, but re-install to some doesn't mean uninstalling first. If you have completely uninstalled then re-installed Poser, then I don't have any other suggestions.

I am yet to be sold on Firefly rendering. Yes, it has great advantages over the P4 render engine in many respects, but the problems I have encountered makes P6 Firefly a poor cousin to the quick and easy P4 render. Not wishing to offend anybody, IMO I see little advantsge in 6+ hours of Firefly rendering over a 5-10 minuite P4 render. AO lighting is excellent in small scenes, but once you start adding several figures and many props, the advantages are outweighed by system hangs and inordinant render times. If the option is a full Windows re-install, I say fuckit, is it really worth it?

Is it really worth it?

It depends on what you can do with it. It also depends on what you wish to acomplish. Some effects cannot be obtained with the P4 renderer.

There's no absolute answer.

As for reinstalling the OS, I'm affraid that in some cases that the only solution. Indeed most of the Poser users are not especially versed in their system security or stability. Many people install little things without even knowing what they're doing. Some nasty background softwares, such as tool bars, funny cursors, XP tweaksers can install themselves silently. Some great company packages can even interfere with the stability of Poser, such as QuickTime or wrong drivers.

In the end, it is easy to get a machine that can't run a thing even with a strong hardware configuration, the windows registry being full of craps.

In such case, the best way is to restart from a fresh OS install. You'd be amazed how fast your computer can be then. ;)

Totally agree Olivier. Got a nasty trojan on my PC and I am thinking of a OS re-install, but wouldn't do it just for a poser problem. Would really think about a work-around. first.. Your last line is very, very tempting, there's nothing like a freshly installed OS. But the pain, oh the pain. (Dr Smith).

Yes, I am aware how painful it can be to have to reinstall everything.

At leeast, it requires a week to retreive all the cool apps working together.

But in the end, you get a clean system. And that makes a big difference between "it's working" and "it's not working at all".

Since one year and half that I help people solving their issues in P6 at DNA, I have found that  80 percents of the problems encountered were miuse related. 15 percents were due to bad install or insane environment (corrupted OS). Only 5 percent of the case I encountered were really suffering from Poser bugs.

Therefore, when the hardware is strong and when the app is know to work, it has to be the system itself. People tend to forget that their applications run under an environment. And when the environment gets corrupted, you can be sure you'll experiment weird things and unstability.

An example of possible issues is the DLLs. When XP loads a DLL for an app, it keeps it in memory a bit. If you use another app that uses a DLL that shares the same name, XP will use the last one in memory to speed up the process. Resulting in some big mess sometimes.

The tool bars installed for IE are also a great avenue for trojan, spywares, malwares, adwares and other f***wares. They can harm your browser. They can harm your apps, your system, your confidential datas if you buy online.

To preserve your system must be a high priority. SpyBot is a freeware that really helps in that regard.

A strong AV, such as Kaspersky (avoid Norton, it's too weak now) and a FIREWALL! Don't use the XP one: it's full of security holes. I would even say that MS products are the major aim of pirates when they build their nasty things. So, get a good firewall. Even if your router has a hardware one. 2 is better than one. Of course, you'll have to configure bothh of them but in thend, you'll gain in knowledge. And knowledge is power. :)

Very wise words Olivier. My problem is a "Java trojan downloader " one.  Wridows explorer freezes (sometimes)  when I'm copying/draging files between open windows, and I need to reboot. But I'm not sure if it's related to the trojan. AVG free says it can't fix it., although it has found it. My security settings are high. Zone Alarm fire wall. Might be time for a fresh re-install.

Have you checked the services in Msconfig? or the list of tasks that open with Windows?

Do you see anything suspect there?

Maybe if you reboot in SAFE mode, could you get rid of the infected files?

Sorry, for the late answer. I was trying out some tips the last time ..

.

Quote - Laska , did you actually uninstall Poser using Add/Remove programs or did you just re-install Poser over the existing program? quote] I reinstalled the old poser first and I also delated everything except my runtime folder. Also I installed to a different partition of my harddrive.I copied  the old runtime to the new Poser6...

Now I installed only the SR2 update to see what happens then. Actually I tried to render the old James like he comes when I open the program. Only with Auto settings. I tried to render 2000x1800 pi. But it stoped again. I have an ATI Radeon graphic card with 256MB...this shouldn't be a problem...I'm afraid I will really have to reinstall my whole PC...

Don't forget to backup some files, such as your emails, addresses, favorites, My Documents, etc.

Ok, I did it...I reinstalled my windows..It will take me the next days to reinstall everything again...Of course I installed Poser6 again first. No way, the render stopped again. I did the SR3 update again and it was the same like before. I scanned my harddrive now to see if there is something wrong, but nothing to find...I don't have any idea what to do now. ...

I'm speechless. Does it occur even with the lowest render settings?

If one re-installs the operating system, will that overwrite any hardware driver updates previously installed?  

Quote - I'm speechless. Does it occur even with the lowest render settings?

Yes, I rendered poor James rightaway with default lights and settings...nothing else.

Could you post a pic of what you get when the render stops, please?

Sure, here is what I get after the complete new install.

I used the standard lights and auto settings:

 

sorry, I got to get some sleep and will be offline now.

Thank you for your patience and help!

Sleep well, Nicola. I wish I could have been more efficient. :S

Okay. This scene will be a good test scene.

Here's what I propose you: delete all lights. Then render. Does it work completely?

If yes, then create a new light, an infinite for example. Render. Dooes it render completely?

Once again, if yes, add a second light and so on.

What are the results?

Also, while doing these tests, could you open the task manager and use its graph mode. Look at the cpu and kernel levels (you can activate it via the option of display -> kernel time, I think). When the render fails, do you see a huge increasement in the kernel use? Also, what is the amount of memory used by the Poser.exe process when it fails?

I tried what you said Olivier. The kernel use doesn't show any irregularity, no huge increasement.  Also all the other displays doesn't show something special. Everything just stopps...I also recognize that the results are different from time to time with the same settings. I tried James without any light and the render stopped. The next time I tried with light and the render finished, but the same stopped in the next try...

I made some screenshots from the taskmanager...

renderstart:

Do you have screen saver running in background? What are the parameters regarding energy use and finally, what's the temperature of you Motherboard and cpu? Also, have you defragmented you hdd recently?

Ok, I wanted to this other screenshot yesterday, but I can't log in for a while...No I don't use any screensavers...I defragmented before I reinstalled everything...I don't know the temperature of motherboard and cpu. I don't think that's the problem here. Remember, I'm using different programs like carrara, bryce, vue, shade, PoserPro and I don't have any problem with one of these programs...I really think this is only a Poser6 problem. Maybe there are not a lot of people having the same but there are some I heard of... Mostly the problem goes away if they do the updates. I don't know what's wrong with mine. But at least I'm a user and not a programmer and the only thing I want is that the program I paid for will work. I have a good PC and a new graphic card and a lot of memory etc and I think I did everything I could the last few days. I'm also not installing  a lot of useless stuff on my PC and wondering why nothing works anymore....It's bad because I bought a lot of stuff that only works in Poser6 and I will not be able to use it.

Sorry, if I sound a bit angry, but I really am. I didn't do anything else the last days than trying to get this stupid Poser to work...

Did you contact efrontier yet?

Your frustration is understandable, Nicola.

But don't give up, please!

What intrigues me is the fact that the render can stop randomly even with no light and that it stops without any warning as if it considered it had finished its job...

What kind of things can change from one render to another when the scene is not changed? What could explain that sometimes it works and another time it doesn't? Something related to P6 (necessarily) that changes while the rest is unchanged... I'm dry. I need to think more.

Definitely, contact EF.

Ok, I think I will contact EF. Again I thank you very much for tying to help me!

Keep us informed, please! :)