I just spent an hour setting up a rather elaborate scene (character, props dynamic cloth simulation & IBL avec AO) then started a test render of a wide shot showing the entirety of it.  Half way through the test render (quality was set pretty good to give accurate lighting and shadows) I decided it looked pretty good and would be darned good head & shoulders portrait.  Thus satisfied I decided to cancel the render, save the scene, zoom the camera in to the face and hit render and go to bed.  I hit cancel, clicked preview, waited for preview window to reappear then hit file to save..... 

Poser went bye bye....  I didn't save...  at all...  I totally take responsibility for that but DANG!! 

Poser 7 is wounding my soul!!!!  And it hurt my feeling...   ( I only have one left) (It's disdain if you're wondering!)

Sniff.....  going to bed....

Gerard

Ouch, bad luck.  I've gotten in the habit of saving before any render (ctrl + s).

Thanks pjz99...  you have a great habit there that I'm gonna try to copy henceforth!!!! 

Now off to bed!!!

To dream of never rendered poly's!! 

G

I haven't noticed a lot of things to be much faster on my new intel mac, however saving a poser scene is - literally seconds! Love esther PS that doesn't mean I always do it though.

Has anyone figured out WHY it does that though? Having P7 simply decide to go Bye-Bye is now my biggest Poser pet peeve. Whats worse is that SP1 seems to have exacerbated the problem, rather than fixing it as I had hoped.

I like P7's ability to render scenes that would have frozen P6.....

But I am not sure that the program just randomly disappearing is any better a solution! (LoL!)

Yeah, ghelmer I've been there.  It really, really, really bites.  I have long since gotten into the little save-before-render habit that pjz99 suggested.  It has saved me a lot of tears, unfortunately, it is too late for my hair!

One crash I've had while rendering in P7 - when Smooth Polygons was on, one particular prop made Poser crash quietly (no error) 100% of the time.  Smooth Polygons off, rendered OK.

If it's any consolation (?), Cinema 4D R10 has been on a 'randomly disappearing' spree as well.  One must wonder if all of this new support (x64, Vista, Universal Binary Xcode, dual-core cpus) might have something to do with the sudden rash of instablities.

In a bitter sense, I feel that the blame belongs to either the OS or the hardware.  I've never seen an application just poof vanish on Windows without an error dialog - until recently!  Conditions like this should (and I'll emphasize slightly) NEVER occur.  My gut feeling is that the current OSs are forsaking stability for features, so-called 'security', and so on.  I can't imagine that the product developers are being lazy or irresponsible - just baffled (as I am in this regard).  If the underlying systems are instable, how can one expect the overlaying systems to be any more?

In this, Mr. Gates and Jobs (i.e.: Microscrap and Appal) should be taken to task for creating this abysmal situation.  We often reminisce about the rock-solid behavior of previous Cinema 4D and Poser (4/PP) versions.  Now we must do the same for the current OSs - unfortunately this seems to extend to the older (but constantly being patched) OSs.

I can't knowledgeably speak on the reasons why there is a sudden flurry of vanishing apps.  Let's hope that these 'controllers of destiny' get their acts together and resolve this before it deteriorates further.

Shouldn't there be some sort of backup temporary file which Poser dumps somewhere ?  I forget which, but there can sometimes be the scene or the partial render in a file with a strange extension.

Cancels in P6 work about 97% of the time.
P7? Good luck canceling without Poser quitting.

As far I can see, prerender separate saves are always the best solutions.

Quote - I can't knowledgeably speak on the reasons why there is a sudden flurry of vanishing apps. 

I'd expect simply a failure to use try blocks and other basic error handling techniques on the app developer's part, but that's just me.  I was taught that an application should never, ever simply exit without showing an error, and in Poser 7's case, at least one major crash bug was certainly EF's lack of error handling (the external binary morph target problems).

Quote - My gut feeling is that the current OSs are forsaking stability for features, so-called 'security', and so on.

Not all of them.... ;) /P

I save every time I make a change to the scene I'm working on. So far I have not had many problems with P7 (knocks on wood which is my head).

if you are running win xp have you checked the system event logs for errors ?

if you are running win xp have you checked the system event logs for errors ?

Yah. Not a thing there except application hang: Poser7 etc.....
My  blank screen pretty much told me that though :-)

Programs going "poof!" and their gone, is always a memory issue.

At work we have switched to 64 bit and like magic the BS has disappeared. We have been lied to during the whole 32 bit era about stability.

This is not a new problem.  These kinds of not responding issues or dissapearing (and, i'm telling you not saving what you saved) are par for the course in every version.

A P7 SR1 created scene I'm working on will not render past halfway before it goes bye bye to the desk top. Loaded the scene into P6.... no problem. This sucks.
This is a very solid plateform that easily handles Sony Vegas video rendering, AutoCad, Protools DAW, with never a crash and certainly never a disappearing act.
P4, XP32, Intel HT, Asus, ATI, old school and very stable....**EXCEPT FOR P7 SR1
**Tempted to try 64 bit WIN XP.... going cheap at your local computer store while you can still get it....

Thanks for all the replies!!  Gonna try to replicate the scene tonight after work, also noticed I had just added the Poser 6 folder and not the P6/Runtime folder so that may account for oddness as it wouldn't allow the index rebuild thing to work...  hope it works!!  AND I'm gonna start saving periodically whilst working AND before rendering!!!

Gerard

Windows XP 64-bit has been exceptionally clean and stable for me (but that's me).

ghelmer, judging how you listed your events, I'm gonna add one of my rules to the "save before render" rule. And that would be, "Slow Down". Rooted in experience and watered with superstition I have witnessed many crashes come when I am in a hurry. So far, P7 hasn't crashed when I cancelled a render but I'm also in the habit of waiting for it to dump its memory. It's not completely scientific and yet many hangs and crashes come when I have tried to press too many buttons too quickly. There are many kooky things going on in P7.

Hi deci6el...  Oh I know what ya mean...  I always wait until whatever I'm doing has finished and all that...  I learned long ago with P4 not to click anything until Poser has finished doing what you asked it to!!  I merely listed things off in the manner I speak and didn't take into account wait times etc as I just don't take them into account as as far as I"m concerned it's a given to wait & wait & wait!!!  LOL!  Seems lots of folks have experienced P7 just vanishing in a poof at the worst time so I may just chalk it up to that!!

Gerard

You guys missed a pearl of wisdome a few posts back.
There's a good chance that Poser created a temp save of this scene.
Do a search of your drive for anything with .pz3 in it and look for a "tenp" in the file name.
(or something similar)
I have recovered "lost" scenes this way many times.

DANG!!!  Thanks ashley!!  I'll check that when I get home!!!  That'll be nice if it's there!!!

Gerard

Quote - > Quote - My gut feeling is that the current OSs are forsaking stability for features, so-called 'security', and so on.

Not all of them.... ;)

With all I'm hearing about Vista, when this PC needs replacing I shall be seriously looking at Apple. Or some other non-Windows option. If e-frontier were to put some effort into getting Poser working with WINE (and I do hear it's already pretty good), I'd be very tempted.

Actually, EF has the source code... they could do a direct port to Linux in addition to OSX. /P