I was using Poser 6 earlier on and began to be driven frantic by the hopeless performance.   The dials would be reluctant to move at all.   When they did move, they turned far too far.   It was quite a lot like what I get when a background virus scan starts up while Poser is running.   I made sure that everything that could be turned off in the background was turned off and that there was no virus scan running.   That didn't help, so I minimised Poser and checked the Taskmanager.   For practical purposes, nothing else was using any CPU to speak of.   Poser wasn't rendering, or saving, or doing anything, actually, but it was still spiking to about 55% CPU at frequent intervals.   The lousy performance in Poser was entirely down to Poser itself.   There was no memory problem.    The maximum memory use was well short of what was available.

Since Poser wasn't doing anything, what WAS it doing?    I saved the file and re-started and things improved, but this isn't the first time I have seen this.

"What's Poser doing, when it's not doing anything?"
Counting its money, or rather e-frontier is.
You should have gotten Poser Artist instead; the simpler the program, the less bugs its got.
DPH

Quote - "What's Poser doing, when it's not doing anything?"
Counting its money, or rather e-frontier is.
You should have gotten Poser Artist instead; the simpler the program, the less bugs its got.
DPH

Depends on what you want to do with it.  You could get DAZ studio for free and it
basically does the same thing as Poser Artist.
Me, I couldn't survive without the cloth room, plus I like using the shader nodes
and the lighting effects I get with P6, which aren't offered in older versions
of Poser. 

Are you sure you don't have a virus?  At this very moment on my laptop I am running 2 IE's, Notepad, Poser, and Photoshop.  Now granted, I'm done rendering in Poser, and just haven't gotten around to closing it or Photoshop, but my PC is running at about 3% with 798MB.

Luna Faye

No, it was definitely Poser.   Thanks.

Did you have any Dynamic Hair loaded? This sometimes causes lagging issues when the hair count is too much for my system.

If there was any disk activity it could be reloading parts of the library. Otherwise it could be checking your network for other copies of Poser.

> Quote - > Quote - "What's Poser doing, when it's not doing anything?" > > Counting its money, or rather e-frontier is. > > You should have gotten Poser Artist instead; the simpler the program, the less bugs its got. > > DPH > > > > Depends on what you want to do with it.  You could get DAZ studio for free and it > basically does the same thing as Poser Artist. > Me, I couldn't survive without the cloth room, plus I like using the shader nodes > and the lighting effects I get with P6, which aren't offered in older versions of Poser. 

For now, Pro-Prop works for me.
DPH

"I was using Poser 6 earlier on and began to be driven frantic by the hopeless performance.   The dials would be reluctant to move at all.   When they did move, they turned far too far.   It was quite a lot like what I get when a background virus scan starts up while Poser is running.   I made sure that everything that could be turned off in the background was turned off and that there was no virus scan running.   That didn't help, so I minimised Poser and checked the Taskmanager.   For practical purposes, nothing else was using any CPU to speak of.   Poser wasn't rendering, or saving, or doing anything, actually, but it was still spiking to about 55% CPU at frequent intervals.   The lousy performance in Poser was entirely down to Poser itself.   There was no memory problem.    The maximum memory use was well short of what was available.

Since Poser wasn't doing anything, what WAS it doing?    I saved the file and re-started and things improved, but this isn't the first time I have seen this."

This is total guesswork, but...
Probably what it was doing was running a timer-triggered function that checks to see if anything needs to be updated (in the preview screen or any of the open dialogues).

In a complex scene, this could take a while, depending on the number of (mainly) figures in the scene.

I, too have seen this (no pun intended), and my usual respose is to:
a) Save the scene (under a new name, just in case).
b) Hide any figures that I'm not going to be playing with immediately (that includes conforming hair/clothes).
c) Make any props that aren't neccesary for the next few changes invisible.
d) Save the scene again (under yet another new name).

If Poser response still tardy, I switch to a lower level of preview. If that fails then I do as you did and exit/restart Poser. Especially if I'd changed textures and/or figures during the session.

Also: IIRC, Poser can't use more than 2 gig of RAM. So if you have more than that, then 55% will be 55% of total RAM, but Poser has run out anyway...(and is starting to disk-swap).

Hope that helps (and hope I've got my facts right)...

Cheers,
Diolma

I think Phantast may have got it.   There was quite a bit of disk activity, as I recall.   Thanks for all the suggestions.

Sorry, diolma.  I didn't see your comments before posting my last reply.   I have certainly resorted to hiding figures in some scenes and I know that does help, but this scene was actually pretty basic, so there didn't seem to be any internal justification for the poor performance.

The 55% was actually a percentage of the processor .   Admittedly, Poser will take 99%, when it's actually doing anything, but it was using a lot of the processing power, even when not apparently active.

Aaahhh.. OK..
55% of processor usage...

Yup, that's probaly (errm- make that possibly) due to disk swapping.
Poser trying to make itself  "look good" by using "Virtual Memory" rather than actual RAM.
I often get the same effect if I use Poser (P5/6) for more than 1/2 an hour.

Poser doesn't release memory for changed textures, deleted figures etc. properly. (especially the textures).
Saving, exiting Poser and restarting the reloading often solves this ('cos then the unused textures don't get re-loaded), and some of them are HUGE (far more than is neccesary for most renders).

One way I've found to get round this (which sometimes works):

Load everything you need into a scene. (Props, figures, etc.)
Delete all textures  (Via the Mat room.).
Save, exit, restart.
Set up the scene, pose the figures, move the props into position.
Re-apply the textures....(slowly, manually)

All, of course, with incremental saves all along the process..
For B/G figures/props, consider the option of reducing the testure size (in a 2d app), and using that instead (If the texture is 3000x3000 you could probably get away with using 512x512, or the equivalent ratio, depending on the original ratio).. Even for mid-ground figures, a 3000x4000 (or whatever) texture is totally OTT. Those should only be used for extreme close-ups...
Poser is a memory hog (and stubbornly refuses to remove unwanted textures)...

I don't think I'm making cohesive sense here. I hope you get the gist. I need to go beddy-bye...

Cheers,
Diolma

(burble, burble, mumble - I know there's a solution to this, just wish I hadn't drunk so much beer tonight...)

Thanks..   I'll experiment next time it happens.   (It will.  It does.)

I'm now in the process of cutting down all the textures I use to a maximum dimension of 2000 pixels. The one area this doesn't work so well, though, is with some second skins, where you really do need the extra resolution for the clothing detail to work - even if not in close-up.