Sorry I've searched the forum looking for something about this but what does rendering in a separate process do? I am using Poser pro on a 4 core machine with 8 GB of ram and I do not understand what the separate process does.

Thanks!

Looking in the help files, rendering in a separate process means Poser and the render engine are able to use more memory than with this option unchecked. It says if you only run a area render, you should turn it off as it will 'eat' the available memory only for this area render.
I may be wrong though, but it's what i understand from the Poser Reference Manual :)

Hi !

With the separate process when you render an image you have 2 process ( look in the task manager->process) poser and FFrender, memory usage must be more important for the firefly renderer cause the memory usage of poser is ... separated !!!
 
And, most important, for me, poser is most responsive, you can cancel a render without waiting !

May be something have a better explanation, i've a little problem in english ;-)

As I understand it Windows (32 bit) uses a maximum 2 meg of your memory per process.
In the case of a single process if you have 3 meg and your scene takes up 1.5 meg then you have .5 meg available for the renderer. If your scene takes up 2 meg then you can't render at all.
However in the same scenario you would have 2 meg for the renderer if you render as a seperate process, assuming you had enough memory installed.
The figures above are simplified as they do not allow for the fact that other processes, including the thirsty operating system, are also using up valuable memory. Also there is a total limit as to how much memory a 32 bit windows system can address. I think this is 3.5 meg and an extra .5 meg which can be used for shared graphics cards. Any more knowledgeable readers - please correct me if I'm wrong.
Poser constantly crashed on my machine until I rendered as a seperate process.