Dear all,
that's my first post ever here,...and it is already a problem with DAZ studio 3.
hope you don't mind : )
Usually I don't have much issues with my copy of DS (its the free base version, without any add-on installed)....
but since today, my toy don't want to render anymore.
instead of that I only see this picture (and that is now on for an hour or so):

I was playing with some dynamic clothes before and had a crash with a scene.
But I completely build up that scene new from scratch (as I couldn't re-open it anyway after that crash).

What I did so far: I cancelled the render. Opened the scene again. Deleted temps and cash in the DS root-folder. Pushed the render button...
with the same "Optimizing Images" again,...and nothings happening.

Do you have any idea, what I can do and what the root cause for this might be?

(and...if I explained something wrong, just ask, please, as English is not my native language, I sometimes need two or three times to get something right :) )

and thanks in advance!

Optimizing Images-that can be the textures of whatever is in your scene, the larger the texture map, the long it takes to optimize if I'm right.

Which I can be wrong, and has been proven! :)

I've gotten this a few times-usually I set up a piece to render, start it and leave.  I noticed, too, when I use dynamic clothing or fabrics in DS3 Advanced, it does take FOREVER to optimize and then to render.   I've tried a few times, and honestly haven't used them since.  For me, it's not worth the time in the rendering process when I have other options of props and morphs to get what I want and paint over for the rest.

I hope someone can help you more than I have-I really don't have an answer, but have run into the same thing myself.

 DarwinsMishap is correct.  When DS (or really any rendering program) gets stuck optimizing images, chances are that your computer is running out of memory (real or virtual) trying to read and compress them into the image.  You can either make the image maps smaller using Photoshop, PSP, Gimp, or other 2D software, or try just running lower res textures.  Otherwise...just let DS do its' thing and try to optimize the images.  Just give it some time to do its' thing ;)

thank you very much for your fast response!
I think that'll help me further.

Although I made already renders with dynamic clothes (why do the textures coming with them have to be that giant???) without that issue, I guess this time I probably just had too much textures in that single scene for my poor computer :) 

PS.: Cause DS just didn't anything at all at the end, not saving, not opening not anything...I reinstalled it in the meantime :) ... I now try again with fewer stuff combined with my dynamics and see how it works.

PPS.: 
.... it renders :) 

and now I'm going to edit all that wallpaper textures,.... :) 

Thanks again for your help!

 They don't have to be....it's just that, to get better detail and better realism, some texture artists will make larger textures.  shrug

Also, because of the way the clothes are built out of panels (one for each piece of cloth) the dynamic clothes tend to use a lot of maps. I have noticed the two most recent items seem to be rather more efficient - or at least, they have fewer installers. As far as I know each optimisation thread loads only one texture, which it then converts into a tdl file and stores in the temp folder - so don't empty that after loading your files - but DS will run multiple copies of tdlmake at once on a multi-core system, so if each was processing a large file you could run out of memory.

yeah sure,... but,... those textures have 4000x4000 pixel or so. The biggest pictures I do are maybe 1900 x 1100 and the figure in the scene is making maybe 50% of that pictures size,...and that texture is only for a dress, that again is maybe 50% of that figures size...
might be a complete wrong calculation, but I'd guess, that a 1500x1500 px texture would make the same job as the large one.

but anyway....that has nothing to do with the original question here...guess I have to live with reworking the textures... :) 

You could open the texture map, reduce it in size saving as a new name.  Then using that to texture your item.

When DS is optimising it is making lower resolution versions of your textures, and the ones that are passed to the actual render engine are the lower resolution maps required (by whatever method the system uses to calculate requirements) to render at the given resolution. Which doesn't mean that you shouldn't make lower resolution maps, but in theory the system should be able to cope with high resolution maps - so if it apparently isn't, please bug report it.

thank you Xerxes
that's how I'm changing the textures,....just without a new name. I prefer to save the original textures in a separate folder (I'm just to lazy to apply the small textures which have a "wrong" name  by hand :) )

& thank you RHaseltine,...
I do report every bug, when it's possible. But this time I got no failure message or log-file that I could report. DS just did nothing (well...nothing except silently working hard in the background without telling me, as I learned now g).
I guess I just overloaded my system with too much work (it's just a lazy office laptop, that isn't supposed to work as a render-machine, I think)
But thanks for the explanation of what is happening during that "optimization" !!
I never realized that step before...

& thanks again to all for your help & information!