Ok folks... hopefully someone here can help because I seriously can't render anything.  It's not a good situation and smith-micro is basically unable to help.  I'm in an older version, was planning to upgrade on the 1st and it's not looking good.  Apparently they've got 1 person that does support for poser 6 (or so said the tech I got on the line) so I got transferred and left a voicemail.... yesterday.... and another today and still Nothing.

I've tried doing a 350x350 face render with different settings and that doesn't improve the time any.  I have plenty of space open and my temp folder was cleared out just in case.  Not sure what is going on.  Default v4 and several other chars (in case it was my shaders) have been tried and even with them it barely ticks along.  A simple face render shouldn't take over an hour!

It's not the lights since I use them all the time.. and I honestly didn't think it was my render settings either since I use them constantly also but I just can't figure out what is going wrong.

Computer has been shut down more then a few times and still there's nothing else I can think of.  Any help would really be saving me... or my thumbnail renders for that matter!

You might want to mention your system specs and your render settings...

Yep, I had a really slow render just recently and couldn't figure out what it was because I hadn't changed my render settings. But after I thought about it...DUH!...I had increased the shadow blur radius on two of my lights ;o).

Laurie

If everything is the same as before, including the render settings then, it's possible that something is eating up your RAM.  If this is the case then it may not be a Poser issue.  I only say this because I remember Renders taking longer than normal.  I went into my task manager and found that FireFox was running in the background sucking up an incredible about of RAM.  I'm not saying that it's FireFox but you may have a program that is taking up RAM and slowing up the rendering process.

Open your Task Manager to see what processes are running and taking up too much RAM.  It could be a program you just installed, or an update setting that is running in the background. You won't know until you look.  Did you recently install a new program?

Frederick
Poser By Design

 Hey folks.  Nothing new installed and I have even tried starting clean (everything disabled in config) and nothing is helping.  Prior to the issue happening I was able to render and run photoshop at the same time so I can be testing and working at the same time and now... it doesn't matter if anything is up or if Poser is the only thing going.  I've closed out volume panel and literally everything else you can without crashing the system in task manager and it's not making a difference.

I'm using Vex lights which honestly are some of the fastest I know of and even with that it's barely crawling.  Literally until you see it tick in the render status you'd swear poser has crashed.  

My render settings (right now) on firefly has Cast Shadows and Raytracing on.  2 bounces for raytrace.  Min shading is 0. Pixel samples is set to 10.  Max texture 1024.  Bucket size is 32.

Even if I drop the raytrace bounces to 0 there's no difference. 

My pose files are also getting corrupted (as in my model(s) is/are coming up with multi-colored mesh bits where she should be textured and no figure showing in the tab) so I think something is seriously wrong with poser. Smith micro not being much of a help and that's great since my upgrade was a d/l not a disk last time.  

Running out of things to try =/  

ladyduece

Can you do a simple test? restart your pc, st art poser and pick a character for instance posette( low polygon) and then render it with poser main light and press ctrl+r to see if it still renders slow( in this case you havent altered the render settings) if it still runs slow, maybe you changed some video settings? 

Quote -
if it still runs slow, maybe you changed some video settings? 

You mean video card settings? If that's what you mean, the video card contributes absolutely nothing - zero, zip, zilch, nada - to the render. It's all in the CPU for rendering, and somewhat in the RAM.

The fact ladydeuce mentions Poser files becoming corrupted as well as display doesn't sound good at all. Could be just a faulty Poser installation, configuration files gone bad, or it could be the first signs of failing RAM or a disk with corrupted data or bad sectors. Or overheating CPU, RAM, or disk.

I would first uninstall Poser then run defrag, then reinstall Poser and see if the problem is still there.
Might want to uninstall/reinstall the video drivers too, just in case that's part of the display problem.

If the problems are still there I would then run disk check, and probably the freeware MemTest if I were you. If this was all working fine before but not now, it doesn't sound good at all.
I would also have a good look at the temperatures that are being created by the RAM and CPU during a render, to see if that's a problem. A CPU will cycle itself back when it starts overheating. At a certain point it will actually simply shut down your computer (in theory) before it gets damaged.
An overheating GPU could be the source of the display issue, too.

Freeware temperature monitoring software:
www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Assuming no problems with that, but problems still with Poser, I'd probably reinstall Windows and then reinstall everything else.

MemTest:
www.memtest.org/

You didn't mention how much RAM you have. If Poser is using your swap file for RAM, and your disk is going bad, that could be a reason for suddenly slower renders. Same deal with RAM going bad or overheating. But the file corruption is a bad sign, especially when it's suddenly happening at the same time your renders are slowing down.

Of course since everything else is running OK, that's a good sign it may simply be a Poser install gone bad, but you never know, and it's worth it to take a little time to check out your whole system.

Well I'm all out of ideas on what may be slowing things up for you. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

You can always buy a new computer. Just kidding. But seriously I hope you'll be able to find out what's going on. I know it frustrating to have things working correctly and then the next day, have things go berserk.

Frederick
Poser By Design

 Thanks Mike.  Going to try and see if a reinstall helps monday... if... smith micro will help me.  Heard something if you didn't buy insurance or some-such that you're out of luck.  No insurance was offered back when I upgraded via download that I can remember.  Everything else is running fine though.

Going to have the resident tech support take a look at the over-heating (never thought of that) and the other quirks my system could be having without me knowing it.  At least when he gets back in town.  If not for school monday I'd be on my way out of town tomorrow for his gram who doesn't have much time left.

Will update with whatever fixes it just in case anyone else has the same bad luck as I have.  My system could use an upgrade lol just need to try to scrape together the savings since I've got some lofty wishes.  

Really do appreciate all the help folks.  Might be stuck until I upgrade again (sept hopefully) and have a clean install of poser at my hands.  Could be worse, just disappointed I couldn't release my new gal this month like I wanted.  Family first as ever so if I have to wait longer, I wait.

To clarify.. The Graphics Tech Support by Phone is limited. Sales Support will take calls, but often the Staff Member will only get details and then the issues are passed off to one of the members of the Graphics Tech Support team to follow up on by email. I suspect that is the one person they were talking about. I rarely take incoming calls for Graphics Tech Support, if I do, they are always transferred to me.

If you send me a Site Mail of your Incident (if you emailed Support or they responded back) I will take a look. If you have not emailed them, I recommend you do and then send me the Incident and I will look it up.

With regards to reinstalling.. if it was working and stopped, I doubt you need to reinstall (Always create Back Up Archives in case you ever need to)

With out specifics.. I would make sure your OS and Poser 6 is up to date (it will not hurt to reinstall the last Service Release) I then would make sure you have the latest Drivers. Then delete Preferences.

Did I understand correctly that your minimum shading rate is 0? That's really low. Try increasing it to say 0.2 or 0.15.  Also lower pixel samples to 5 and then increase it later.

Quote - Did I understand correctly that your minimum shading rate is 0? That's really low. Try increasing it to say 0.2 or 0.15.  Also lower pixel samples to 5 and then increase it later.

I always keep my shading rate at .05 but that WILL substantially increase render time. If you think that may be your problem, increase that to the default as was mentioned earlier (which is .20 IIRC). Just be warned that it will also lessen the detail somewhat.

Laurie