Quote - - I've used POVRay a few times and it's interesting to use.  But, I do agree there are some drawbacks to implementation.  The learning curve to get good quality results intuitively is pretty steep.  I don't mind certain command line "like" functions but POVRay has too much going on there for my personal tastes.  The GUI for rendering is fairly straightforward but, it takes a lot of work to get used to using it.  As you said, there is very little in the way of visual feedback previewing and that is really needed.  I haven't updated my version in a long time.

Yessss, the problem isn't command line code as such --- in some case I do really miss it in the new visual IT world, DOS was a pain but struggling with lots of filenames was definit a task for batches and commandline and that's ways worse on desktop and icons --- but the real problem is to imagine something visual on your mind have to be translated into rough numbers and values.
Some guys are great with such kind of doing, e.g. chess masters or bagginsbill :biggrin:, but I have to see it, need it somewhat haptic ...

I did the updates but didn't use it for long time. There is a bridge between poser and POVray, it's somewhere on my disks as a zipfile. Wanted to try it but didn't ... once upon a time ... :closedeyes:

Quote - - I do like Hex's overall interface and it is very, very intuitive.  There's not much need to spend hours searching among nested menus and obscure commands.  It's all laid out for you fairly easily.  You can be modelling with Hex and using complex functions within a few minutes.  Trying to do that with something like 3DS, admittedly a much more robust and commercialized engine, and you'd be lucky to get primitives modelled the way you wanted in the same amount of time.

Thats the same to Cinema4D and it's the most stable prgramm I have ever seen. Only had 2 crashes lately on a new XP, never one on W2K for years. It clear and easy ... ok, from modelling to UV mapping it'S a bit complicated. But mostly in my mind cause the help tutorials are divided, one for modelling and one for 3D Bodypaint and the gap between is a bit wide ... at least for me.
One time with a separate tut I managed that well but have to search the tut again for the next try ... :sad:

But what I like most, even if you have a open function and/or a line/polygon or such hanging at your mouse, you can go easily to somewhere outside the viewport and do something like rotating/panning the view or key in some values and the actual function/element will stay in the viewport not running across the complete desktop.

Quote - - Hex's overriding problem, IMO, is intercepting errors when the program is waiting for a particular procedure to be "Validated" by the user.  Choosing other functions that may depend on the validation of a previous procedue will result in an error.  The new function doesn't have anything to appy itself to because the object is still "in use" by a function that is still "open" and not Validated (closed/finished).  Since it wasn't set up to be intercepted with a reminder to the user to "Validate" whatever process they had begun beforehand and are now finished with, Hexagon crashes.

Indeed, thats the point with the weak user interface. Often it's ambigous if a function is open or not or you touch a wrong place while trying to activate only a number field or such. Then Hex isn't very error tolerant and can't handle that user faults in a exceptable manner ... and crash is the worst case, a real developer bug. But anyway there must be a reason for a difference between 100 $ and 800 to 1500 $ ... :huh:

Quote - - I agree.  But, a previous crash could compound the problem, couldn't it?  If unassigned instruction sets are running around in ram or still in Poser's old cache and Poser restarts and loads those instead of ignoring or flushing them, would that cause continued problems?

Yes and No ... normally after a program crash it's the main task of the operating system to make a garbage collection. But cause fiddling with flying windows and other of these useless gimmicks for year, MS has forgotten to improve these really essential tasks of their OS.
So there are gaps in memory, less on disk, after a crash. Normally with bigger programs I restart windows after a crash, especially with all graphical programs like poser, photoshop or such AND everytime if something out of MS-Office has gone without asking and allowance.
On other hand I found that poser is cleaning up very carfully it's rudiments lost in drive cache.
So I see the major problem with crashes in the OS capabilities handling such exceptions.

So paramount's starting problem looks more like a disability of the OS with one or more driver having an impact to poser. And surely virus scanner and firewall might be of big, big influence.
Especially Norton/Symantec tools are really memory wasting and ressource consuming.
I don't have that problem cause I have one (the oldest) pc with W98SE running as internet pc. Only having browser and such internettools on it besides virus scanner and firewall, but no real applications. So all coming and going to doubtful places is secured and checked. And the other pc's doing real work with real applications ae not able or allowed to have access to something outside the room. This in my opinion is one of the safest configurations and it spares the ressources on the working pc's to the real tasks. Ok, I have to download tutorial and transfer them in front of using. But on other hand working with poser while having a open internet connection in the back might not even been the best idea with view to the ressources.