Hello.
I'm a long time Poser user but recently something started happening that has never happened before.

In Poser 7 and Poser 8 pro when I attempt to create a preview movie of an animation (using the preview render option) my memory usage begins to skyrocket until it reaches the limit of my machine's ram and Poser crashes before the video is completed. This happens in a matter of a few seconds and does not seem to be effected by the content of the scene or what Poser file I have open.

The weird thing is, if I open the same poser file (or any other poser file) in Poser 6 and create a preview movie, it works just fine with little or no increase in memory usage.

I have never seen this happen before and I have not recently changed any settings in Poser 6, 7 or 8 Pro.
I have tried re-installing Poser 7 and Poser 8 pro with all service packs and even tried clearing out my computer back to factory state but the problem still occurs in P7 and P8 pro only.

This is a problem I very much need to fix as making preview movies is integral to the animation process in Poser.

Anyone have any idea why this is happening?

thank you,
stimuli

something else I just noticed....

If I cancel the movie making process before Poser crashes, my memory usage stays at the inflated level it had risen to at the moment I hit the cancel button.

Same thing if Poser is able to finish the preview movie before it crashes, the hugely elevated memory usage remains at that level until I close Poser.

this is weird.

help! =(

Poser 8 Pro? Are you refering to Poser Pro 2010? Or Poser 8?

ah yes.
2010

its just so much like P8 I started calling it that. sorry.

can you help? Im tearing my hair out here

I do have Poser 8 but can't afford Poser Pro (any flavour), sorry. Plus, I feel challenged enough to just do static images without trying to get my characters to move around.

I'm sure a PoserPro expert will happen along very soon to help you deal with this... sorry I'm not much help...

Im not so concerned with Pro as I am with the fact that it started happening in both Pro and P7 at the same time but not in P6. Its very strange.

I use P7 more than Pro anyway.

I've done many preview animations in P7 (to check motion sequence fluidity and timing) on four different machines and have never seen this problem.  I'd have to do a test for Poser Pro and Poser Pro 2010, but Galadriel is busy rendering at the moment, so it will be a while.

I've done some more tests and it seems to only do this when a complex figure is in the scene (ie. V4, Aiko, Ty2, millenium dragon etc.).

if its just a prop or primitive in the scene then there is no memory usage increase.

Attached Link: Pixieguts, riding Dalmatian, arrives at elven castle

I used a scene which had an Aiko 3 (Dixie hair, dynamic dress) riding a galloping Mil Unicorn.  571 frames.  Aiko's Dixie hair morphs were animated to fly in the wind, as were the unicorn's mane and tail.  Both Poser Pro and Poser Pro 2010 rendered a preview AVI easily.  I kept an eye on memory usage on a meter on a second monitor - it hovered up and down from 3370-3530 Mb during the render, for both programs.

Hotlink plays the FireFly full rendered version

Quote - I used a scene which had an Aiko 3 (Dixie hair, dynamic dress) riding a galloping Mil Unicorn.  571 frames.  Aiko's Dixie hair morphs were animated to fly in the wind, as were the unicorn's mane and tail.  Both Poser Pro and Poser Pro 2010 rendered a preview AVI easily.  I kept an eye on memory usage on a meter on a second monitor - it hovered up and down from 3370-3530 Mb during the render, for both programs.

Hotlink plays the FireFly full rendered version

Wow......    I just wish on doing scenes like that..  Way too impatient I guess.

 One question (and I do not have Poser Pro 2010, "only" plain P8 so perhaps it does so by default, but...) 

Are you rendering in a separate process or not?

if yer asking me, TG Im not rendering at all....its a preview movie.......just using the preview setting. When I am rendering I have never used the "render in seperate process" option.

The memory usage should not go up at all with this setting. Even if there are no Key frames , no movement, nothing but a figure in the scene the memory just shoots up in  the space of a few seconds till I reach my memory limit and Poser crashes.

since it suddenly started doing this in P7 and P pro at the same time it has to be something that those two versions have in common.

What they have in common is OpenGL. You're using the preview renderer, and probably using hardware accelerated preview. As the features and abilities of OpenGL are increasing with each release, so too does Poser's reliance on those features. It's not unusual that P6 isn't revealing a problem while P7 and PPro 2010 are.

You are rendering by the way, in the sense that the scene data is being made into a series of images. Those images don't exist if you don't render. Any data hanging around between one image and  the next (in the renderer) can cause memory to be used up. When it isn't released, that's called a memory leak.

It is possible that Poser is leaking, but more likely it's the graphics driver. Since you say it suddenly started doing this in two versions of Poser, it's likely that you suddenly updated to a buggy video driver. Windows is notorious for doing this in the background as part of Windows Update. Sometimes it will actually mistakenly send you back to an earlier version.

If you're going to use hardware preview rendering, you really need to pay attention to your video software version, since it has become an intergral part of preview rendering.

You might also try SreeD preview mode (all software) to help verify that it isn't actually Poser that is leaking, but the hardware driver.

Quote - What they have in common is OpenGL. You're using the preview renderer, and probably using hardware accelerated preview. As the features and abilities of OpenGL are increasing with each release, so too does Poser's reliance on those features. It's not unusual that P6 isn't revealing a problem while P7 and PPro 2010 are.
quote]

AHAH!!!
That was it!

last month my Geforce card died and I replaced it with a Radeon card (with catalyst drivers of course) . The new card with different drivers must have been causing the issues using openGL.

I just went into the preview render options and adjusted some things and the memory usage during preview movie compiling went back to its normal "flatline".

Thank you very much!
yay! I can get back to work now!!

Yay