I started rendering an image yesterday.  Now, 20+ hours later, I don't know if it's frozen, finished or still rendering.  :(

Because I'm rendering at a larger size, I can only see the top left hand corner, which fills my workspace.  And while an image is rendering I'm pretty much locked out of doing anything...I can't use the cursor to move the view/image, to see how far it's gotten.

The rendering bar is completely filled in (and has been for hours), but I've found that doesn't necessarily mean it's finished.  I've had this problem before and when I finally decided to hit cancel (thinking it was done but maybe just stuck/frozen) it turned out that only 3/4 of the image had rendered and so I had to start all over again.

I've checked the Windows Task Manager and it says that Poser is still running (usually when this happens it says Not Responding), so I don't know what to do!  I'm afraid that if I cancel it now, I'll find out that it was almost done, and then I'll have to start all over again and have wasted 20+ hours. 

Is there any way at all to check the image to see if it's actually finished, or at least see how close it is to finishing??  Like I said, as long as that rendering bar is still up I can't do anything, or click on anything.  I have no cursor...just the hourglass.  :(

Is it frozen, finished, or still rendering?

Poser 7?

1. maybe
2. possibly
3. maybe yes, maybe no

As the progress bar is absolutly worthless in Poser 7, flip a coin. I have renders that take 6 ~ 24+ hours to complete but people say I'm crazy or say I need a stronger computer, some say if it takes more then 20 minutes your an idot and don't know what your doing....I guess these people have never used Bryce before and no idea what FireFly is or can do..

Without a properly working Progress Bar you might as well flip a coin or kill it and try rendering in Poser 6 which WILL give you a proper indication of progress.

Poser 7 - The Great Mystery of Poser, will it work this time or will it not; place your bets, say your prayers, Do You Feel Lucky Today? hu? Do ya?

LOL!  Yes, I'm using P7.  sigh  :(

I was hoping there might be some way (other than the progress bar) to 'see' how far along it was, or if it was indeed finished...but I guess not.  Damn it.  :(

I'll give it a couple more hours and see what happens...but I'll probably end up just canceling the damn thing.  Normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem...I'd just render at a smaller size (no more than 1000 pix on the longest side).  But this particular piece HAS to be at least 1650 x 2550.

Grrr!!!!!  :(

Thanks igohigh.  :)

The Crazy Bar... sigh me too... so I'm still using P6 instead P7, both installed but waiting for a P7 SR2...

Well, I just checked the status again and it was flickering back and forth between Running and Not Responding, so I canceled it.  The image was only half rendered.  I guess I won't be doing any commercial work with P7...what a piece of junk.  :(

I hear you, even putting the rendering to a separate process doesn't free up Poser to scroll around the image, or go back to the preview and work in the scene for tweaks or play with future ideas while the render goes on in the background. But it does make a freeze less likely, and makes it easier to tell if it's going to hang indefinitely.

Afraid I'm 100% with Casette!!

Quote - Well, I just checked the status again and it was flickering back and forth between Running and Not Responding, so I canceled it.  The image was only half rendered.  I guess I won't be doing any commercial work with P7...what a piece of junk.  :(

Please keep in mind that if your status bar(Windows, that is, not Poser) is flickering between Running and Not Responding, that means that Poser has NOT crashed and is actively rendering. When Windows says an application is Not Responding, it doesn't necessarily mean that it has crashed, merely that it is not responding to Windows events. This might be because the application is very busy and is not being interrupted to refresh its window. Poser will often go into never-never land and say Not Responding until it has rendered another bucket, at which point the screen refreshes and it no longer says "Not Responding".

Also, the solution to the Mystery of the Poser7 Status Bar is render your single frame as an animation. Not only does the P7 status bar appear to work correctly for animations, it also allows you to move around the in-progress render window to see what Poser is doing.

Hope this helps.

I agree with Lifeman.  It's not so much Poser being a piece of junk, it WINDOWS being a piece of junk!  I have my problems with Poser as well but I have found that if it were to be installed on a totally clean, non-networked, empty system, Poser works just fine.  So as long as Windows is not choked with all the crud we have to run on it to make it useful, Poser will run just fine.

Now, that being said, I know we all have to load the crud to make Windows useful and it would be a perfect world if Poser could work within those guidelines.  But I have to say that I think it tends to be more of the crappy OS than the App.  I know there are other Apps out there that would just find with the OS.  But if you recall, those Apps cost in the thousands of dollars.  They BETTER work right.  Poser is a MUCH more cost effective app for those of us not making 6 figures a year.

 So I say, give Poser a break.  It's the latest version (and as with any new version of any app, bug prone), and it's cheap.  For the most part, it works well.  I can't afford all the latest hardware updates and parts.  The stuff changes almost daily.  And even the best systems will have their problems cause they all still run the same crappy OS, Microsoft.

  Just my opinion.  Not looking to start a rao.

i vote for software reacts differently under different machines.

i have poser 7, windows xp and have no problems whatsoever (other than regular poserism's = hours for render). but, i have not installed the sr1.

it amazes me how over different machines the same software can vary so much (and that isn't a slight at "operator error" participants) it just goes to show that each machine is fickle. i can have the same video card as you but what catalyst works for me might not work for you.

The surest way to tell is to look in the Processes tab, and see if memory size is less than 3GB.  If it's at or around 3GB of Mem Usage, then it's probably dead or about to die (Windows has a 3GB RAM process limit).  I've had renders also die because they claimed too much Virtual memory ... to make that show, while in the Processes tab, click View -> Select Columns and check Virtual Memory Size.  If that gets much over 3GB the process will also blow up, even if there is lots of available RAM.

P7 SR1 is very well behaved in that department so far though.

This isn't a Windows trouble, because it might appear also under P6. But my P6 has a perfect bar with perfect times, while in the same computer, P7 bar has its own life