I'm having a problem with poser coming to a complete stop when doing a render, the render progress popup appears but nothing happens forcing me to shut down poser. I very occaisonaly had this problem on my old PC (P3 500mhz, 128Mb, Win98) but is now more common on my brand new machine (Athlon 1.4ghz, 512Mb). I'm using Poser version 4.03.127 (that is the latest version right?). Thanks for any help.

I think that this is a glitch in the program. I've been having the same problem and I've heard of others also having this problem. It could be the video card. I had to change some settings to get mine to work right, resulting in not being able to utilize the cards full power ;o(. I think the programmers of poser need to look at the compatibility of the program with some of the newer video cards. What kind of video card have you got in your system? I'll have a scene just not want to render and get stuck as you have described, but when I ctrl/alt/delete out and open up that same scene again it'll, most of the time, render just fine. Is this similar to what you've experienced?

Yep, that sounds like the same problem. It's as if there is a random chance it just won't work, regardless of whats in the scene. I am using a Geforce3, so it's a brand spanking new card. Thanks for your reply!

Yeah, I'm using,.......er, I forgot, it's a brand new fast video card just out there on the market recently also. I think Poser4 just can't handle the new power. My hus...er manager is actually the one who does the adjusting to make everything work. He's a computer tech, does that sort of thing all day. He's 97% sure it's the video card and Poser just can't handle it. He's fiddled around with it a number of ways, but Poser just doesn't work well with the newer cards. Hopefully they make a patch to fix that soon. We're getting ready to send out findings to the owners and see what they say.

Your probably right, if it's a common problem it's only a matter of time before they patch it.

I had the same when I started using large texture maps in Win98. It seems the memory management in Win98/Poser 4.??? isn't the best. I switched to Win2000, and the same textures load and render fine. I hope this casts some light.

If it's a VIA chipset on the Athlon motherboard, try loading the latest VIA 4 in 1 Driver package. This seems to stabilize 90% of crashing Athlon systems than I encounter. The video card has virtually nothing to do with Poser. Poser does all of its 3D work internally, through a software renderer. It uses the video card simply as a 2D display, to show a bitmapped image when the render is done. So it shouldn't care at all about the video card. So statements like "Poser4 just can't handle the new power" are just plain wrong. On the other hand, Poser does a lot of floating point math, and wide ranging memory accesses, so it does really stress test a somputer system, revealing instabilities that a lighter workload won't find. And some hardware combinations are notoriously unstable in such use, including certain combinations of VIA chipsets, nVidia cards, and Athlon processors. Especially video cards that take over the processor bus when they shouldn't, corrupting data transfer from CPU to RAM. usually, upgrading to the latest chipset drivers and video card drivers clears these things up.

My Motherboard is the ASUS A7A266, and I'm using 512MB DDR RAM. All drivers are the latest versions. I'm using very Hi Res Textures, and multiple figures seem to make it more likely to hang. Things ran fine on my old machine, a P3500, 128Mb Geforce 1. It's somewhat dissappointing, I was looking forward to doing some more complex stuff when I upgraded!

ive had the same prob before and this is how i dealt with it,first make everything line display or something really low rez,second try saving then restarting then rendering,third you may be using too much ram for your textures try taking them down a notch in a paint program then try all of the above and render.......

I kind of came to the same conclusions myself. The texture I'm using are the DAZ3D Hi-Res Maps (Head 3000x3000, Body 4000x4000). These might be a tad excessive, but with my CPU & RAM I didn't think this would be a problem (DAZ3D suggests a 700mhz processor and 256MB+) Thanks!

I've done a few experimental rendering and it seems that it's one large texture causing the problems. I rendered several characters with clothing, props etc. all textured several times with no problems. It seems to be not the number of textures, figures etc that causes the problems but if one texture is over a certain size then it becomes unstable.

Unfortunately, Poser 4 has always been flakey about multi-model scenes, or characters with hi-res textures. It doesn't seem very well written from a technical perspective, and like the PC's memnory architecture itself, Curious has gone too far down their current route to do an about turn now. The mere fact that the program doesn't support OpenGL/DirectX despite the fact that the rest of the 3D industry depends upon them for acceptable 3D performance, tells me all I need to know about Curious' software development team (well, Metacreations team but, you get the point!). Since Poser 4 came out, I've used it with probably 8 different motherboards, 20 graphics cards, four types of memory, numerous software configurations, but always Win 98. It locks up with every single configuration, so we can definitely rule out the motherboard, graphics card, driver possibilities, unless it fails to work with EVERY card and mobo on the market... I love the program dearly, but I get sick and tired of pressing the CNTRL -R keys never knowing if this will be the render that requires a restart. The problem, if there is any doubt whatsoever, is that the program does not return RAM back to the OS after each render, or after models are deleted. After a few renders, your memory has been completely munched and the only choice is a reload. The mere fact that you can reload and continue without restarting windows, seems to me to demonstrate very clearly, that it's Poser's interaction with Windows memory, rather than Windows' memory handling, that is the fault. If you require further proof of the program's instability, (as though any were needed!), loaded a couple of other program and leave them loaded in the background, then see how much quicker Poser locks up!!! Pro Pack was great, but I'd have settled for stability, 3D card optimisation and a real-world co-ordinate system in place of all the other stuff!

I think your right. Since decreasing the size of my largest texture, I have had no more lock ups so far. My old machine with it's 128MB use to lock up quite often, but not as much as my new machine when using the large teture. I now use Photoshop at the same time as Poser and, so far, no problems. Thanks, Mark

Mark, We're having this same conversation in another thread and I have good news - go read my latest comments at http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=385439 Where you'll read a solution that doesn't involve sacrificing texture quality. Good luck Mat

Thanks, and I would agree the move to Win2000 would probably cure all my Poser woes, but it's a bit of drastic step at the moment.