Anyone?

According to bagginsbill and others, the main improvements are to the Library system and the FireFly renderer... it looks like a lot of the problems with the latter have been fixed.

The artifacts issue has got to be one of them. :)

Some of the known crashing causes are being fixed.

bagginsbill has also indicated that they have added some more features to the library.

I do hope that they've also sorted the "unable to load  texture" problem tha's been inherent since "5" ???

Wow. It's good to see they are on top of addressing the issues.  It's always good to see that.  I hope they are able to fix the texture issue too.  None of my textures would apply to Daz's dogs. and I had to apply them manually.

Frederick
Poser By Design

Just the dogs? Lucky you, I can't apply textures to anything at all using the Matt poses...'have to do everything via the material room, trying to find textures by hand is a pain!

I tried to get Smith Micro to include my fully rigged cyborg ninja nazi garden gnome figure in the SR but they they wouldn't take it.

Doh! 'could just do with one o' those!!

The sad part is . I want to see what that would look like.  I'll have to get my digital pen and work out some sketches. LOL

Frederick
Poser By Design

 The comma/decimal denominator thing is being fixed from what I can tell. I sent in a bug report on that and it's listed as "resolved"
As is the problem with the Poser Temp path adding new "8.0" folders on each load.

I havne't had big problems with the artifacts, so those hasn't been bothering me.

But I found an error/bug/whatever today. For the first time ever I decided to try the search option in the library.. and it didn't find anything. Even when I searched for things I'd just opened. Nothing.

I assume that is being fixed as well, because a search button that doesn't work is worse than NO search button :)

Oddly enough the search works fine for me.
Ok ok, using it more then 3 times during any one poser session will cause it to crash, might need to send a ticket to Sm about that.

I'm crossing my fingers for a memory leak plug!

If search doesn't work for you, report it.

There are not enough beta testers in the world to find every conceivable combination of factors that reveals every possible bug. Some bugs have 7 or 8 different unique causes.

I assure you there were many beta testers and none had search problems with the first release. There were search problems, and all were solved for that set of users at the time.

Even after every single person now using P8 has every single problem resolved, I guarantee you that the next 5000 purchasers will find more. It is impossible to test every case within the beta group, even if they had 1000 people.

Report it.

*There are not enough beta testers in the world to find every conceivable combination of factors that reveals every possible bug. Some bugs have 7 or 8 different unique causes.

*Just to illustrate that : a combination of only 20 factors can cause a result of 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 possibilities.

It's just a miracle that software can produced with only a few bugs.

best regards,

Bopper.

I have been yacking with a Smith Micro Rep for several days now.. in all our conversation there is no mention of a SR-1 just down the road.

My problems are many.. 

Delay in the loading of textures..  the image comes in and 15-20 seconds later the textures load.
**After rendering, Poser will declaire a texture it just rendered flawlessly is not a bad file.
**Complex renders with more than 2 DAZ series 4 characters will render a single time and then P-8 says it has run **out of memory.
**
The Smith Micro people have stated they have tried to match a complex PZ-3 scene in pre render mode totaling some 416MB by using some cinema CD images a high poly vehicle and three casual Alyson and Ryans totalling 1.5 MB in size  to my **3 Fully colothed DAZ meshes ** with all the ++ morphs and skin textures totaling some **218 MB.
**
They say they have no memory issue suing a Pentium dual core CPU with Xp pro and 1 GB ram..

From what I am getting out of all this is that Smith Micro expects us to just use the G-2 figures in our renders..  I mean Jessie was OK , Sydney with a few morphs from other vendors was OK,   but **Alyson just plain out sucks

I really belive that Smith Micro Never even tested High poly Meshes Like M-4 and V-4 and mulitples there of in any test rendering they did.. 
**
I mean  what would it cost them to invest in a few DAZ meshes, their morph packages, a few textures, + a couple hair props and some casual clothing and really put P-8 through it's paces and see how many V-4 and M-4 it takes to make Poser 8 crash or run out of memory.

The techs had me perform an MSCONFIG and turn off several MS files and others to run P-8 as cleanly as I could. Guess what? I still ran out of memory..

And now Im doing a System restore to a date before the MSCONFIG  cuz my machine acts up from time to time 

I am not a happy P-8 camper as of this moment and so far the only thing I can see an improvement on is a slight faster rendering time.

I do hope the SRI comes PDQ cuz I'm behind on some of my rendering deadlines deadlines
**
dml2000**

Here, I tested it for you. 10 M4s, rendered with GI. I rendered it 8 times just to be sure nothing blew up. I did this during Beta test, but I just did it again to be sure. During Beta I did it with 16 figures.

Now what? Suppose we got the other 100 beta testers to do this and they have no problem as well. What would you suggest then for future testing effort? Would you still say there was not enough testing? Do you think that SM should give Poser 8 to 1,000 people for a beta test? 10,000 people? 100,000 people?

Peoples expectations about product development are unrealistic. No matter how much testing you do, short of giving the entire world a free copy as a beta test, it's impossible to find every possible scenario with every possible hardware and software and OS configuration.

Obviously there's something different about your computer than mine. I'm on a quite ordinary 3 year old Dell laptop with 2 GB RAM and a lame-ass dual core CPU. Why don't you give your computer to SM for a few weeks. I'm sure they'd be happy to add it to their testing lab, along with the dozens of other machines they already are testing with. Clearly there's something unique about yours.

You seriously don't think most of the beta testers had figures like M4 and V4? I find that unfathomable.

Quote - **I really belive that Smith Micro Never even tested High poly Meshes Like M-4 and V-4 and mulitples there of in any test rendering they did.. 
**

The G2 Figures have more polys than V4 or M4.... as does Miki and Miki 2..

(I think at one point,  Miki's eyeballs had more on their own than either V4 or M4.)

Ryan and Alyson are not too far behind.

Quote - Complex renders with more than 2 DAZ series 4 characters will render a single time and then P-8 says it has run **out of memory.
**
The Smith Micro people have stated they have tried to match a complex PZ-3 scene in pre render mode totaling some 416MB by using some cinema CD images a high poly vehicle and three casual Alyson and Ryans totalling 1.5 MB in size  to my **3 Fully colothed DAZ meshes ** with all the ++ morphs and skin textures totaling some **218 MB.
**
They say they have no memory issue suing a Pentium dual core CPU with Xp pro and 1 GB ram..

Well, gee, I surely hope they fix the memory leak (but if they don't see one, that's a bit worrisome). Some scenes I can render a few times before I get the out of memory error and a crash. But others, particularly ones in which I'm using an Aery Soul hair (which are extremely high poly as stated on the product pages), then I get the memory error and a crash after every render. Which really sucks and becomes quite time consuming when doing a dozen test renders.

So I do hope they are doing something to fix all these memory errors that many people are getting.

I kind of liked what DAZ did with Carrara 7, though.  They let a lot of people (can't remember if it was everyone or just Platinum) beta test it. From what I remember, the beta version expired after 30 days.  It was both good for testing and to whet everyone's appetite for the actual application.  That might be a good idea for SM in the future. 

I'm not saying SM didn't test enough according to industry standards, but having a "timed beta test" might be a nice way to get more testing done as well as momentum for the product.  I definitely would like to see this happen for Poser Pro 2010.  Just my two cents.

Believable3d

Quote - You seriously don't think most of the beta testers had figures like M4 and V4? I find that unfathomable.

Since Bagginsbill was a beta tester, I think you may have misread what he was trying to say.
edit: err, assuming you were actually talking to Bagginsbill...
edit again: naw I don't think you were, never mind.

I just added 10 V4's to the 10 M4's, fully loaded with Morphs ++, as well as wearing 10 pairs of shorts, also with Morphs ++ in them. So 30 figures total. Oh, and they had gigantic 4K by 4K textures on them. Looking at Task Manager, I had 20 MB of memory left out of the 2 GB. Poser then crashed when I tried to render.

So, yes, it crashes when you run out of memory. 

As for memory leaks, there are certain kinds that are avoidable, and other kinds that are not. They aren't really leaks. It has to do with how memory gets carved up. Over time, big chunks get cut up to little chunks to use for smaller things. Then when these are returned, but not all can be returned because some objects are still in use, you end up with no more big chunks. Textures have to be loaded in big chunks. So Poser has to allocate a new big chunk. After a few iterations of this, there's no more room to allocate a big chunk, even though there are lots of little chunks available.

This is why enterprise servers are periodically rebooted, so that memory can be released.

If you're hitting this situation, it may help to render in a separate process. That way, the renderer gets its own memory, and when the render is finished, all of it is released as one big chunk. Rendering in a separate process is the way to avoid memory fragmentation. That's why rendering in a separate process was introduced.

Quote - I kind of liked what DAZ did with Carrara 7, though.  They let a lot of people (can't remember if it was everyone or just Platinum) beta test it. From what I remember, the beta version expired after 30 days.  It was both good for testing and to whet everyone's appetite for the actual application.  That might be a good idea for SM in the future. 

I'm not saying SM didn't test enough according to industry standards, but having a "timed beta test" might be a nice way to get more testing done as well as momentum for the product.  I definitely would like to see this happen for Poser Pro 2010.  Just my two cents.

They are doing that for Poser Pro 2010. Everybody who owns Poser 8 and also owns Poser Pro will be invited to participate in the Pro 2010 Beta. I'm really surprised that they offered to do that, since it is going to cost them BIG time to support the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who will take them up on that offer. They have to create accounts for each person, manage all the beta serial numbers, etc. The Pro 2010 Beta will be a huge expense.

But I'm sure that a few people will still find issues with how SM conducts product development.

Quote - Believable3d

Quote - You seriously don't think most of the beta testers had figures like M4 and V4? I find that unfathomable.

Since Bagginsbill was a beta tester, I think you may have misread what he was trying to say.
edit: err, assuming you were actually talking to Bagginsbill...
edit again: naw I don't think you were, never mind.

Yah, I was responding to the post before Bill's. Guess I should have quoted, but BB's post wasn't showing as I'd had the thread open a while before replying.

Happens to me too ;)

I called up casual Alyson and P-8 gives you her size in memory.

Alyson comes in at @53.5 kb   Casual Ryan is 56.5 KB

V-4 naked with all her morphs++ installaled and a hair prop  55.5 MB 
M-4 Naked and all is Morph ++ installed plus hair prop            57.5 MB

Add some of the clothing packages and hair out there and the average Series 4 DAZ mesh comes in about 75-85 MB each

Big difference **56 KB vrs 85 MB
**
I had a Daz Back alley prop  A fully clothed V-4  2 Fully Clothed M-4 one with the Aery Soul hair prop mentioned above. The other M-4 used the M-4 beck texture..  A low poly VAN but I opted for a High ray traced paint coat.
One M-4 was wearing a body harness with holster and pistol

Added props included a Briefcase, A nice coffin that could be ray traced. thats in the van but seen through the open doors

The render board is painted black to simulate night and I use a single "4" light package to provide ample light for the alley

Total size of the PZ3 comes out to 418 MB

Smith micro tries to simulate the scene using 1 Alyson and 2 Ryans1.5 mb
no comparison to my M-4's and single Vicky at 256 MB

All IM saying and a bunch of other folks as well is that P-8  will do a single complex render and then just run out of memory.  It tells you to save your work and quit, but you can't cuz Poser soon crashes after that and requires a reboot.

Smaller renders using a M-4 and V-4 and some mood lighting will allow me to  render maybe 2 or 3 times if Im"m lucky, then it crashes

I use Poser for Illustrtaed stories.  I have lots of action in my stories and it's important to me to render an images and then adjust the POV , change the poses and expressions and get ready to render the next scene. I can't do that with any productivity if I have to reboot and reload P-8 after every render.

THIS CPU is used for CGI work and minor postwork.  Other than Winzip, ACDsee, Virus protection software, and a LE version of Photoshop 5, all I have on this computer is P-7 and P-8.
Execpt for the Series 4 and 3 DAZ meshes that DAZ recommends be loaded on the Default Poser runtime, All my other libraries are on a seagate Ext drive using USB 2.0
My C drive is I TB and I have almost 800 MB of free spavce for additional Virtual memory, I have a decent Nvidia card with 512 MB on board ram, and 4 gig RAM on my main board. using a 32 bit XP pro OS

I can produce work using P-7 but P-8 does render 40% faster and I am at a loss as to what could be conflicting here especially after doing a MSCONFIG and running P-8 and still having Memory problems.

I have all the respect  for a beta tester as I was once one myself..  But If smith Micro is going to emulate my problems then they do it with 3 fully morphed M-4 or V-4 meshes fully clothed, fully loaded with MATT textures and hair props and not use  Casual Ryan and Alyson.

Dml2000

lol. Do you seriously think that ANY figure is 50 kb??? Still less a figure with the poly count and built-in morphs of the P8 figures?

And did you even look at Bagginsbill's posts above? He had way more weight than you do.

dml2000, which OS do you use?
Is it 32 or 64 bit?
If it's windows 32bit, did you use the bigmem switch?
Do you render using the external renderer or the internal one?

 LOL dml2000 You should try checking out the PMD and add THAT size to the Poser people. They have their morphs not IN their cr2s but outside. 

And I'd like to know where you have that size from. If I look at my folder in Explorer, Alyson.crz (which is a compressed format like zip just in case you didn't know - is 127kb - and her MORPHS, which are in a separate file, is 53,3MB

So I don't see her as much smaller than your precious V4 - just made more efficient.

BTW I think you're the first ever to claim that Jessi was anything near "ok" - she's the ugliest thing to ever come out of Poser IMO, while Alyson is so far the most versatile character.

The slight delay from loadig the scene and to the textures are loaded.. Yeah I see that in large scenes. Y'know, I'll rather have the actual geometry load fast and the textures a second later than wait 30 seconds more for the whole lot. That IS the time difference between Poser 8 and Poser 8 btw. 

But I guess you have a previous version. Why don't you just use that so your deadlines will be met? No need to get an ulcer over P8 then.

Bantha

I use a XP pro 32 Bits system

On Smith Micros's advice I did check off a singular window option and reduced my threads from 3 to 2.   I know nothing of a Bigmen switch

Believable

When I go to the P-8 library and I click on Alyson Casual,  Poser shows me the size of the mesh in the blue window and it says 53.2 KB

Yet if I bring her up on the render board,  add a hair prop and save her to another library spot and then check her size, Alyson Casual comes in at a wopping 49.3 MB  big difference and I must assume not all the diference is her hair prop (LOL)

If one takes Alyson in her nude state and adds P-8 clothing (same as what she wears in the Casual setting, ) adds a texture map found in Materials and the same hair prop, Alyson rings in at  139.0 MB 

I did not try Ryan but I'll assume his figires are fairly close to Alyson give or take a MB

Still tho,,  V-4 fully loaded with ++ morphs a decent Skin texture and depending on the outfit and shoes blows them away at 189-215 MB  I have one M-4 Male figure that comes in at 256MB

I use 2-3 charcters in almost every render  for my Illustrated stories so right off the bat almost every pre render PZ3 is 200-300 MNb in size and I have yet to add a backdrop,  or light package to the image..  then click add shadows or a couple ray trace bounces and I have the afore mentioned 418 MB Pz3

Now with P-7 I could render a scene in 7-12 minutes  maybe 20 if I have complex lights
With P-8 the time is almost cut in half ..  but it does not help if P-8 runs out of memory

and after a reboot, I start P-8 load my saved pz3 scene and it pops in a moment later with no textures..  depending on the siz of the PZ3  the textures pop back into the scene 30 to 60 second later

So I will admit I may have been wrong about the size of Alyson and Ryan but I find it out that when you click on Alyson in the P-8 library it displays her size in KB  but put her on your desktop and saver the same image elsewhere and she is now 49.3 MB

Regards  dml2000

Unfortunately, I continue to get the out of memory errors and crashes after rendering, even though I am rendering to a separate process. 

I'm using a less than year old Dell XPS which should be able to handle Poser 8 with no problems.  I reported the crashing to Smith Micro, they collected some info from me, essentially told me my specs/drivers were fine, and that they had added my report to the outstanding ticket for similar crashes.  Hopefully, SR1 will resolve this memory problem/crashing.  In the meantime, I am enjoying Poser 8; I just make sure to save any changes before test rendering.  If it's a change I'm not sure I will keep, I save to a new version.

One problem I'm encountered that I've yet to see anyone else mention is that certain textures using the Alternate_Diffuse node display as a glaring white, yet render perfectly.

Quote - If you're hitting this situation, it may help to render in a separate process. That way, the renderer gets its own memory, and when the render is finished, all of it is released as one big chunk. Rendering in a separate process is the way to avoid memory fragmentation. That's why rendering in a separate process was introduced.

The size of files reported in the library are of the file you're looking at. In the case of Alyson this is a crz file (compressed cr2). That is not Alyson's mesh or morphs - that's the file that causes those things to be loaded by describing all the other files that make her. Also, Poser files on disk are in text format or compressed text format, which has little to do with how much binary memory will be consumed by loading that object and all its ancilliary stuff.

If you have a scene that P7 can render and P8 cannot, then there is something wrong with P8. I have seen many posts about problems loading textures, so I have no reason to doubt that you've hit a snag. SM is working on SR1 that will hopefully correct this problem. (And many others)

Satira

I had the same problem with a few textures

here is the solution

Open the Poser work space area, 
Then touch CNTR+Y to Open the Firefly Prevue panel
Locate the ENABLE HARDWARE SHADING option and **turn it off.
**Then Save the setting with whatever file name you want..

Hope this helps

I am seeing lots of memory complaints from other forums and I am following as many suggestions from Smith Micro or at least giving them a try.. Delayed textured loading came about after P-7 SR-3 and I went back to SR-2 , 

All I can say is when P-9 is released I may wait till the first SR-1 is released like some folks are doing with P-8..

Regards Dml2000

I never realized this started after I enabled hardware shading while trying to resolve the render crashing problem.

Thanks.  That's exactly the setting that results in certain textures not displaying.

Quote - Open the Poser work space area, 
Then touch CNTR+Y to Open the Firefly Prevue panel
Locate the ENABLE HARDWARE SHADING option and **turn it off.
**Then Save the setting with whatever file name you want..

Hope this helps

For me, there is a problem with the library displaying correctly on my mac.  Apparently it don't like Snow Leopard.  Other folks have commented on this too.  Whenever you refresh, you get a different number by the folder.  Refresh long enough and Poser 8 will crash.  I think this is just mac specific.

EDIT:  Could this be related to a memory leak problem or is this strictly a flash problem do you think?

It's not a Flash problem. There is a bug in the C++ code that deals with the Mac file system. Flash isn't allowed to even see your file system. The Flex GUI relies on the Poser application server for all information about files.

It's not a memory leak either.

It's a straight up bug. I know what the problem is exactly and who had to fix it, but it isn't relevant.

Whats a bigmem switch?  Maybe thats my problem .... ! How do you set it

I Have a Quad Core  with 4 Gig Memory W32 and my P8  gets memory errors crashes with  2 V4 each with  3 piece outfits. The same file loaded into P7 pro works fine and  no errors or texture problems.

Quote -

EDIT:  Could this be related to a memory leak problem or is this strictly a flash problem do you think?

Open your console log after a crash and it is a bad memory allocation error in P8, not in flash. It was there under 10.5. 10.6 has a new way of handling allocations and magnifies the problem.

Quote - Whats a bigmem switch?  Maybe thats my problem .... ! How do you set it

It's a setting that should be compiled into the application.  Pretty sure this is now built into Poser 8, it was built into Poser 7.  I doubt this is what's making you crash.  One thing you might try is making bucket size larger (odd as that sounds).  Just to test, see if you can render the same scene with a large bucket size and very small resolution (100x100) - obviously you won't want to do your renders at 100x100 resolution, but see if your problem still happens with smaller resolution, if it does then maybe you can find some combination between bucket size and render resolution that works.

They crash before I have a chance to render....It seems random
The crashes happen randomly and usually in the Pose Room  while posing and loading figures and poses.
I usually see it after working in on a file for a long period of time. I am getting paranoid about
saving often  because a few  times the files were  screwed up when I loaded them again.
What the hell is eating all the resources.. These files work fine I n P7....I get these messages
about either a memory error sometimes when I load a file I just saved????In the very same program.....Gosh I hope the next SR fixes these problems there are too many good things to
like about P8  that I really like, but if you can't trust it then your better off going back to P7. I am tired of starting over

After thought::::
Is their some sort of cache somewhere  that need to be cleared?? 

My Poser 8 stopped crashing when I disabled my System Manager. System Mechanic searches for bad registry references and clutter on my computer. I deactivated it's auto-scan feature and the crashing problem went away... YAY. I have read here on R'osity that screen saver and hibernation functions can result in crashes, which is kind of obvious, but there can be little programs that probably interrupt Poser 8 and cause it to crash. I have never had a problem with System Mechanic until now. Does anyone here have Norton 360 installed on their system? That program, for me at least, was so protective of my computer it wouldn't even let me access files :D jk

I would think that Norton 360 would cause Poser 8 to cough up a lung before allowing it to render anything. Thoughts?

was something fixed about the material room? will it be fast like in poser 7?

:) 

Quote - was something fixed about the material room? will it be fast like in poser 7?

:) 

They know it's slow and are working on it. They also know the vast majority of users do not work with complex shaders. This is one of those tough calls:

1) Release SR1 now because it fixes so much else including crashes, searches, and the tiny thumbnails

or

2) Make everybody wait until the material room editing speed is optimized

Since everybody likes to play "product manager wannabe", what would you do?

If you do #1, then a bunch of people will scream "You have no respect for users, you ship crap too early".

If you do #2, then a bunch of people will scream "You are morons - so slow with critical updates - you suck because P8 crashes on me."

*"If you do #1, then a bunch of people will scream "You have no respect for users, you ship crap too early".

If you do #2, then a bunch of people will scream "You are morons - so slow with critical updates - you suck because P8 crashes on me."*
**
bagginsbill**, your posts remind not a little to Abraham Lincoln's rebuttals of Stephen A. Douglas in his famous prairie debates.
DPH

I am not happy with P8.  I loaded a simple scene with P8 figures and one daz scene prop and it crashed.  And that library set up is horrible.  I think an ETA on a fix would be a good idea. 

Quote - > Quote - was something fixed about the material room? will it be fast like in poser 7?

:) 

They know it's slow and are working on it. They also know the vast majority of users do not work with complex shaders. This is one of those tough calls:

1) Release SR1 now because it fixes so much else including crashes, searches, and the tiny thumbnails

or

2) Make everybody wait until the material room editing speed is optimized

Since everybody likes to play "product manager wannabe", what would you do?

If you do #1, then a bunch of people will scream "You have no respect for users, you ship crap too early".

If you do #2, then a bunch of people will scream "You are morons - so slow with critical updates - you suck because P8 crashes on me."

#1, so you get the majoority of users up and runing again, and release an annoucement saying the Metrial room fix is on it's way.

Quote - For me, there is a problem with the library displaying correctly on my mac.  Apparently it don't like Snow Leopard.  Other folks have commented on this too.  Whenever you refresh, you get a different number by the folder.  Refresh long enough and Poser 8 will crash.  I think this is just mac specific.

EDIT:  Could this be related to a memory leak problem or is this strictly a flash problem do you think?

It's not Mac exclusive. I'm running Win XP and having the same problems.

Quote - > Quote - For me, there is a problem with the library displaying correctly on my mac.  Apparently it don't like Snow Leopard.  Other folks have commented on this too.  Whenever you refresh, you get a different number by the folder.  Refresh long enough and Poser 8 will crash.  I think this is just mac specific.

EDIT:  Could this be related to a memory leak problem or is this strictly a flash problem do you think?

It's not Mac exclusive. I'm running Win XP and having the same problems.

Hopefully there will be a fix coming soon.

Doran
Contact Norton and have them update your 360 to the latest release..
I had some library problems.
There is a issue with 360 and MSIE 8 but their latest version fixed it
I don't blame Norton since 360 it was developed before MSIE8 and they are not the only ones having compatibility issues with MSIE  
They did it for me for free and the library problems went away.
I still have alot unexplained crashes but I don't think Norton is the cause.
Hopefully the next SR will fix the.. crash issue...