Ok, I know the learning curve from Poser 5 to 8 is huge but Poser 8 is acting up. I have Windows XP and a good computer, it works flawlessly with Bryce, Painter, Photoshop etc. Poser 8 runs great with the Smith Micro content but with DAZ Michael 4 or Vicky 3 andf 4 it locks up. Anything that is related to these products struggle. I tried conforming clothing or set parent and inmediately the task manager shows Poser not responding, I tried to manually to import textures into the material room for Vicky 3 and 4, it worked for a bit then it froze. In the other hand the stock content that came with P8 works perfectly! I tried looking at the forums and they blame everything including the antivirius. I have AVG with no problems. Any suggestions? I read to keep the content in another folder than the C drive then someone else said that that was the problem that it should be in the same drive. I see all this wonderful and complex artwork; I know it can not be THIS difficult.

Andres

First thing to try is uncheck "Use External Binary Morph Targets", in Edit -> General Preferences -> Misc.

I have similar problems, the plain old fact is that Victoria, Michael, stephanie, etc are just plain HUGE compared to the default content. The bigger the library of content, the slower it processes everything. Check and adjust the following things:

render cache
texture size for preview (it's in the render settings, preview tab)
turn the undo levels down
I set the file search to shallow instead of deep. (I'm almost ready to turn it OFF)

when you installed the DAZ content, you did initialize and update them RIGHT? If you forget those two steps, you'll be in a world of hurt. It puts the update shortcut on your desktop btw.

Hope this helps, I use an older machine running XP myself so I know you pain. Poser 8 runs just fine with nearly 15 gigs of extra content, it just runs SLOW.

So, I have Poser 5.  is the upgrade to 8 worth it?

I am tight on money right now; however, I want to get serious with some new renders.

Thanks,

Thank you so much for your help! I did uncheck "Use External Binary Morph Targets", in Edit -> General Preferences -> Misc. I t helped but some clothes do not conform, I lowered the render cache and the preview window but I have no idea how to cahnge the file search or turn the undo levels down. Michael 4 loaded up faster and did not locked the computer. It is very late now tomorrow I will do more testing. I think I iniatialized everything they told me to do.

Ok, this is absolutely ridicolous!! I have been all morning dealing with Michael 4 it it is a pain in the butt. Poser 5 never locked up on me like this!! I saved the file and tried to export to Bryce and it would not let me do this. I treid the millenium horse and it frozed at rendering, the Render progress window just stays there. I have tried everything that I was told. I will writte to Smith Micro. Any other suggestions?

If are looking at old saved scenes or figures that were done with External Binary Morph targets enabled, and they referenced data saved in PMD format  (Poser's binary format) then they may not be recoverable.  Can you try with a new blank scene, newly loaded ORIGINAL M4 (the one the DAZ installer wrote), and newly loaded ORIGINAL conforming item?

Have you installed SR2 or SR3?

Exactly when does it hang, only when rendering?  What are your render settings?  Does it always hang on all forms of content, even an empty scene?

Yes this is a completely new scene, it hangs doing anyhting with a particular characters ( Thorn, little monster)  This morning Victoria was working ok but as soon as you tried to do something with them it freezes. I eeven managed to save a scene but and it opens fine but when I tried to conform or parent the props if freezes. I did a couple of renders and then I tried to do a bigger render at 150 dpi it froze. I loade the millenium horse, new scene,pose it then did a regular render it froze. Now when I tried to load the props into M4 it asks me to manually load the OBJ where before it did automatically. This is in  a new scene. Should I restart my computer? I have done everything, lowering my undos to 20, my cache to 3, my preview to 252 I think, my file search to shallow.

Okay it sounds like you have content installed in multiple runtimes.  When Poser asks you to locate any files on loading something it is a big red flag.  Save yourself a ton of pain and re-install the flagship V4/M4 type stuff in your main runtime.  Only load it from there.  I know the DAZ installer will allow you to install it wherever but this kind of thing shows up pretty often when you install the DAZ flagship characters in a runtime location other than the default.

Also please just see if you can render an empty scene with NO CONTENT loaded, see if it crashes.  It'd be good to narrow down whether the problem is with the content or Poser itself.

Now Victoria 3 is rendering and working fine, I need to paly with her morphs to see, Poser 8 renders fine with the original character or its content, it struggles wirth some of the DAZ Items. Big horn sheep, dinosaousr and so forth work perfectly, I know that Michael is in the main runtime folder, so its Thorn, the only one where I duplicated the texture was in little monster. Could I just reinstalled the characters both M4 and Thorn, would it install on top of the possible bad one?

I know a lot of people will tell you to install poser and/or your runtimes outside of C:Program Files or even on a separate drive but with XP this is unecessary and can cause weird problems. I put everything straight into the default locations. Took me 4 days to organize but it works. ( I just re-installed everything after a crash)

How much power does your system have? Memory & processor power that is.

Yeah it sounds to me like you have an installation problem, not your fault.  If you have V4/M4 type content (not materials, just figures in the Figures library) installed in something other than your P8 default runtime, uninstall it and re-install in your default runtime.  Be sure to run the updater when you're done with installing, and that means 3 updaters:  One for V4, two for M4 (one for the character himself and one for the genitals).

edit: alternatively you could (and maybe should) call DAZ support, phone number is on the bottom of their web page.  I wish they'd improve their installers.

you'd need to UN-install first ... those DAZ fourth Gen characters can get tricky.

Ok  Victoria 3 is working fine now, I think the culprit is M4, I forgot did it come with an unisntaller? Should I just reinstall and the run the updates? I am sure I installed everything on the default runtimes folders.

Ok, I loaded M4 and render him several times no problem, I loaded the skin material for Thorn but instead of automatically doing it, Poser now asked me to do it manually, I did a bigger render at 150 dpi and it worked fine. Did the character got corrupted? Before I would double click on the crown and it would load, now it asks me to look for the obj manually, if I tried to conform the crown it freezes Poser. This is new. Myabe I need to reinstall the character.

sounds like thorn is corrupted to me ... glad to hear everything else is working though. Happy rendering! :)

 One question: Are you going to print this? If not, there's absolutely NO reason to render it at anything but the default 72dpi. - all you'll do is use more memory.

Yes I print a lot, most of my work I print. I think that the culprit is the crown. I will talk to the vendor. Thanks!!!

Does the crown have displacement maps associated with it and are you rendering with displacement active?  If yes, I would like to look at your manual render settings in P8.  I had a tremendous problem rendering Spartana's helmet for a scene.  Full of heavy duty displacement mapping which caused the render to fail.  Had to delete it from the scene.  Now, I know where to tweak the settings to avoid that the next time around.

No it is just a jpg file, I have other products by this artist and they are working fine! I wrote to him and I will post his answer.

4 days ago, my desktop PC crapped out on me, so, I migrated everything from the main hard drive (which works fine in an external hard drive case) to my Acer One netbook with 1.6 GHz processor,  1 GB ram, and Windows XP. I just loaded M4 with Wedge Cut Hair, high res textures and displacement maps and 5 lights in Poser Pro 2010. Because of the migration, textures and obj file are in numerous folders on external USB hard drive and not in default locations. Hit render and it rendered just fine and didn't take long at all. Now, that ought to blow your mind and it did mine.

Quote - Okay it sounds like you have content installed in multiple runtimes.  When Poser asks you to locate any files on loading something it is a big red flag.  Save yourself a ton of pain and re-install the flagship V4/M4 type stuff in your main runtime.  Only load it from there.  I know the DAZ installer will allow you to install it wherever but this kind of thing shows up pretty often when you install the DAZ flagship characters in a runtime location other than the default.

Also please just see if you can render an empty scene with NO CONTENT loaded, see if it crashes.  It'd be good to narrow down whether the problem is with the content or Poser itself.

This is not recommended with Vista or Windows 7 and is not needed. You should keep all your Victoria Morphs, Characters, and the Figure in the same Library, but it does not have to be the Main Library and does not have to be the Program Files Folder.

Poser has not required any figure to be in the Main Library since Poser 4.

If you had V4 or M4 in a Library and moved that Library, you will want to run the Fixer File again, or reinstall those figures to the new Library location. There is a KB Article at Smith Micro on installing the DAZ3D Figures with the installers that say you have to install into the Main Program Folder.

If you still have issues, contact support... you can ask for me (John) if you want.

I'm not talking about a problem with Poser, but rather with the DAZ "Update V4/M4" utility - it gets confused when their associated figures are in alternate libraries and doesn't seem to write the correct changes into the PZ2 files that are called by the readScript commands in their CR2s..

I have used V4/M4 since their release and no issues using external Libraries with the Figures... I will add that you do need to reinstall and not move the Libraries, but there should not be an issue.

Well I have installed since the beginning everything on the default folders, I di have several drives both internal and external but the other drives I only use to download the files from the websites, after that I only installed to the default recommended location. This what the vendor wrote to me.

" Have You reccently upgraded to a new version of poser? Like poser8 or poserpro2010? And if so, are you using external Runtimes (runtimes that are not located inside the new version of poser)?  I still think it sounds as if poser can't find the right files. You can try and install again (just overwrite the old install). If you have a new version of poser install into that runtime. Is thorn working in earlier versions of Poser? (If you have any earlier versions). If he don't, your download might be corrupt. It's unlikely but not impossible.
That's all I can think of right now.

Running Poser 2010 on Win7 32bit

The problem doesn't appear to be runtimes or where they're located, the program hangs on ending the render cycle.  I've tried rendering a blank scene ... it renders (the progression bar is at 100%), but then doesn't seem to exit the render cycle.

If I have a V4 character loaded, and render - the render completes but, the render progression bar shows only half done - and it never leaves this state, and ultimately I have to close the program.  Anyone else experiencing this and have some idea how to fix it?  This only started happening in the last week for some inexplicable reason.