My copy of P7 7 locks up at the end of every full scene render, even vey small(!2MB) scenes?

I'm curious to see if rendering to a separate window would help any, but I ca'nt find the control? 

I looked in the Render Settings, Movie Settings,  and Render Dimensions, but can't really remember where it was in P5/6?

There is no render to a separate window in P6/P7, but you can open a floating window by clicking on the button to the right of the area render button.

Be aware that if you use the "render in a separate process" option, the P7 memory management imrpovements do not apply (meaning you are likely to have more problems that way).

One thing you can do is lower bucket size (lately I use 2mb).  Someone else suggested that to me and I don't recall who it was, they were into Twi'leks though.

Another trick is to periodically minimize/maximize Poser, which forces it to shed a lot of needless memory that it has claimed.  Watch Poser.exe in task manager and minimize it when it gets over maybe 1.5mb.

Quote - There is no render to a separate window in P6/P7, but you can open a floating window by clicking on the button to the right of the area render button.

What he said. P6 and P7 render the image to the document window only. You have to wait until the rendering process is finished before you can open the floating window.

*"Be aware that if you use the "render in a separate process" option, the P7 memory management imrpovements do not apply (meaning you are likely to have more problems that way)."

*why so? as a seperate process it gets its own 2GB allocation from the Windows kernel as per a seperate  program. this is seperate from the allocation Poser has itself or the allocation to the Windows Kernel. so infact, things are improved on the memory front. now, if your refering to how it's passed to this process, thats a different matter ;)

one interesting idea is, since the render engine can now be called as a seperate process... could it be called outside Poser.....?

The render engine will run outside of Poser, but I don't think it
would help to run it that way.  I played around with it for a minute
while trying to determine why P7 quit rendering entirely.

Poser seems to hand off the necessary information in an XML file,
which probably contains the same data as the PZ3, and then the
render engine gives back a file called FFrender.exr, which
seems to be binary.  Probably contains the image in some form.

nruddock - Thanks, and thanks again, but I'd actually need to complete a render in oder to float the image.
**
pjz99 -** Thanks!  Well, this is a 700Mhz Celeron, so my Render Process is set at 1.

What exactly do you have in your Adaption Threshold, and Memory Limit Buffer fields.  I have 0.375000 and 256, but do'nt see how you would interpret 2MBs?

Puntomaus - Thanks!

ockham - Hey, Man!  Nice to see you, here, again!  When P7 quites rendering, is it at right at. the end, or sometime else?

Quote - why so? as a seperate process it gets its own 2GB allocation from the Windows kernel as per a seperate  program. this is seperate from the allocation Poser has itself or the allocation to the Windows Kernel. so infact, things are improved on the memory front. now, if your refering to how it's passed to this process, thats a different matter ;)

It's noted in the readme for Poser 7.  The various memory management improvements that were added to P7 - the program bits that help reduce memory consumption on the fly - are not implented in the external Firefly renderer that gets invoked when you "render in a separate process".  This means that when rendering the same image at the same settings, it can happen that "render in a separate process" will fail due to Out of Memory problems, while the internal Firefly render can still complete successfully.  Note that the internal renderer can still run out of memory, which is sad, but it's much better than it used to be (and much better than the external renderer).

Angel I just picked 2mb out of a bag from the Render Settings screen, I'm aware there are different settings in Preferences but I haven't looked at them since I installed P7 (I think I only changed thread count and nothing else).  There is likely some efficient breakpoint in terms of bucket size, e.g. if it is set to 1 byte that is probably VERY inefficient and may not even work at all, but 2mb works fairly reliably for the type of stuff I do.  I can safely render at much higher resolution and quality than I ever could under P6.

Attached Link: http://www.openexr.com/

The image is an OpenEXR file, it's an industry standard file format. There's a Photoshop plugin for it, and more and more programs are able to read it natively (e.g. Mac OS X ships with built-in support for it).

I found a small freeware prog called Free Ram XP Pro on the net. www.yourwaresolutions.com/ It basically defragments your RAM

If I'm doing a long session in Poser, I frequently click on this to reduce memory bleed. It does seem to reduce the number of times Poser hangs up.

I was given advice from a person at e-F to use 64 for the bucket size in the Render Settings. So far, it's worked like a charm.

I also render to its own process, but I have a dual core. I don't know how a Celeron would handle the same setup.

Angelouscuitry, how much RAM do you have? If you're dealing with a small amount, (anything less than 2GB at this point,) then maybe that is part of the problem?

Also, what else are you running simultaneously? I've noticed that AOL Instant Messenger hates Poser and Photoshop. I've also had problems when I run multiple instances of IE7 with multiple tabs open in each.

My best advice is to have as little running in the background when doing hardcore renders as possible. Try to dedicate as much RAM to your Poser instance as possible. Poser does so much work during a render that you want as little being swapped back and forth to hard disk as possible.

Funny, I had the reverse problem and advice :)  For very high quality/high rez renders, 64MB gave me a lot of problems, and the Twi'lek fan suggested turning it way down, which solved my problems :)

Everything am good in Bizarro Pozer!

Quote - I found a small freeware prog called Free Ram XP Pro on the net. www.yourwaresolutions.com/ It basically defragments your RAM

If I'm doing a long session in Poser, I frequently click on this to reduce memory bleed. It does seem to reduce the number of times Poser hangs up.

Defragmenting RAM makes no sense. Hard Drives can benefit from defragmentation because they're mechanical. HDD Head is moving across HDDs surface, and that takes time. If data is defragmented its files are "continous", so head doesn't need to move a lot.
RAM isn't mechanical, there is no seek time, same with flash memory (USB sticks, SD cards, MemorySticks and like).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defragmenting

That company uses some funny terms - "defragment" and "compress" aren't really applicable, you're right.  Here's a segment from their FAQ:

By contrast, in Global Memory Compression FreeRAM XP Pro asks each of your programs how much memory they are currently taking up but don't really need. Then, this "unneeded" memory is released, instantly--there's no allocation process to wait for, no writing of data to the disk or a swap file, and best of all, no slowing down of your system.

Sounds like what it does is the same thing that minimizing your app will do (force it to shed unneeded memory that it's claimed).

Quote - The render engine will run outside of Poser, but I don't think it
would help to run it that way.  I played around with it for a minute
while trying to determine why P7 quit rendering entirely.

Poser seems to hand off the necessary information in an XML file,
which probably contains the same data as the PZ3, and then the
render engine gives back a file called FFrender.exr, which
seems to be binary.  Probably contains the image in some form.

actually.. it would. think network rendering.

So. they have put in 2 copies of the firefly engine? one with mem fixes and one without..
why does that sound wrong...

Probably because it is wrong, and a poor implementation.  That's why the note about such is in the readme while the manual makes no mention of that little problem at all.

While you could probably figure some way to send a command to remote machine to make it start the external renderer, that's going to take significant time and skill to hack it together - at that point it's probably a good option to consider spending the money for some high-powered renderer that alrady has networked rendering built in (3ds Max or Vue or somesuch).

Dunno how it works - yes the terminology is odd in the context in which it is used - what I do know is that I have freed a locked up Poser by clicking on it and watching its claimed 'freed memory' increase. Lock ups have been caused by IE7 also running, and occasionally during renders.

This app kept me sane when Poser 5 was new; I experienced far less memory bleed and crashes than other people.

it's been done on Poser Six (Pose-Net). I run it a lot ;) and no.. while it took skill... only took a few weeks ;)

Quote - The various memory management improvements that were added to P7 - the program bits that help reduce memory consumption on the fly - are not implented in the external Firefly renderer that gets invoked when you "render in a separate process

That's not really correct, as what you mean (the adaptive bucket size) was implemented in Poser 6 and didn't help that one to render large scenes as the real improvement of Poser 7's firefly is that it doesn't need to load all textures in memory first. When you have the right bucket size for your image (bucket size isn't measured in MB by the way) then the external renderer can of course render heavier scenes as it doesn't need to squeeze Poser's program data into the same memory as the textures, geometry, bucket, etc.

Please note your Poser 7 readme.

• Rendering in separate process: This feature currently does not support Adaptive Bucket Size. Please choose your bucket size wisely if you plan to render in a separate process. A value in the range of 16-32 is a good starting point.