Why does the hair room have a fit whenever the head isn't upright? If I do a pose or an animation where the head looks down or up, Poser locks up on me and crashes. And nevermind if the model is laying down. I am using Poser 8 on a Core 2 duo with 4 GB of RAM, so what can the problem be? I tried this with Sydney's stock skullcap and hair that came with the program, not something I made myself...

I know I should probably just upgrade to Poser 9, but I'd kind of like to find a solution to the problem in Poser 8 while I am still having to use it.

That's the million dollar question. "Why does poser crash?" I have a lot of trouble in the hair room too. On my laptop, just entering the room can make it crash. (it's a vista, my xp is much better) The things I might suggest trying is checking to see if the hair has show populated checked. Try turning it off, I know it can bog down the computer. Also make sure the hair density isn't too high. See this thread http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2839086 for dieas on how dense to make the hair. P8 is only a 32 bit program so it won't use all your memory. Otherwise you might want to talk with SM about it.

Yeah, "show populated" is unchecked, and it's the hair that comes with Poser 8 for Sydney. I have used it a thousand times without any problems. The only time I really have an issue is if the head isn't upright. If she bends over, looks up or down, or is laying down; boom, Poser crashes. I just may have to send SM a note and ask what is going on and if it can be remedied. Otherwise, I am saving nickles and dimes for Poser 9.

File a report to SM.
Best they look at it.
Document your report well.

Exactly when is Poser crashing? When running a dynamic sim? When rendering? Or just when applying a pose?

There really isn't enough information here to make any kind of suggestions.

There are all kinds of factors that could cause Poser to completely crash from the desktop, or 'hang' at render time.

Recently there was a thread at RDNA where an issue 'seemed' to be causing Poser to 'freeze' when using DH at rendertime, but in fact there was a material setting on the hair node ('opaque in shadows' needed to be ticked) that was just slowing down the render to a snails pace.

You need to be sure before you post a bug report to SM that you think it really is a bug. For that (and even if you post a bug report) you need to be clearer about what you're doing - From a new scene, what exactly is the process that results in the 'crash'. everything that you do that leads up to that point.

Well, ok. Here is my work flow, and how the problem developes:

I load Sydney into the scene. From there I give myself anywhere from 150 to 300 frames to build the animation. I don't have anything else in the scene at this point, including the hair prop.

I don't do pose to pose because there is too much tweaking involved after the fact, so I just move her body around attempting to create realistic movement. Sometimes it involves bending her head and neck to achieve the look and effect I want.

Once that is completed, I load the hair. It is her strand based hair prop that comes with Poser 8. I don't make any changes in the material room at this point. I do however, select the skull cap and click on collision detection for that, her head, neck, shoulders and collar.

Her hair is in five parts, left and right bangs, left and right side, and back. I run each part separately with 'do collisions' checked.

It's about the time that the dynamic simulation reaches the point where her head is tilted either up or down, or she may be lying on her back that Poser hangs for an infinite amount of time. If I touch the mouse or disturb it in any way, I get the Windows 7 message that Poser has stopped working and needs to be closed. I sat there and let the program run for 3 hours one day only to have it stop working and have to be shut down. I restarted my computer and ran into the same problem at the same point. I have even tried to work the animation so that her head bending is gradual, but it's always the same. Seems to go out when her head gets beyond a 30 degree angle in either direction. It doesn't happen with her head side to side as much.

And Sydney isn't the only model I have had problems with. It seems that all figures with strand based hair will do the same thing.

The only time I have an issue in the hair room is if I am attempting to calculate dynamics on the hair if her head is anything but upright. I didn't do a pose or animation that didn't have her head upright for the better part of 6 months because if that. I recently attempted it again, and the same problem exists.

Is this specific enough?

Ok, thanks for the extra info.

I've only been playing with the dynamic side of DH for a few weeks now, but it's clear to me that this feature has been long neglected, probably since so few people ever used it much (or were able to use it). Although I did use DH hair in P8 I never used to run sims as I usually experienced similar to what you're describing (although my sytem never actually crashed).

I just followed your process, and started to run the sim on Syney's hair. I'm using PP2012 64 bit on a pretty fast system with Win7, and although it is running and not actually causing Poser to crash, it is painfully slow - and I mean painfully slow. I'm only on the first of multiple hair groups but I'd expect it to take several hours at least to get through all the groups and who knows what I'll end up with.

Sydney's hair is grown from fairly high res skullcaps - so there are lots of guide hairs (it doesn't matter what your density settings are at this stage as this isn't taken into account in the sim - only the guide hairs). This is usually ok in the upright because the hairs arn't colliding with much, but when it gets to a point in the sim when they are, that's when things slow down. Lots of guide hairs to calculate collisions for. Add to this 20 verts per hair per group (all adding to cost of collisions) and at least 150 frames to calculate for, it's no surprise an earlier 32bit version of Poser running on even a decent system might struggle.

This may not be a bug per-se (not saying that for sure in your case). Just a sadly neglected and slow hair room.

What I would suggest is this, just to test:

• reduce the number of frames in your animation to 30-60

• delete some of the hair groups completely from the skullcap

• reduce the verts per hair of each remaining group to 5 - this is low but it might help identify if your system is just struggling with the sheer weight of calculations.

See if you at least can run a sim.

It may also be that the sheer number of keyframes in your animation is also adding to the problem. Not being an animator I can't really say.

Just to add at this stage, I want DH to see some care and attention from the Poser dev team. I'm planning a report on what I've encountered in PP2012 so far over Christmas, including the fact that it renders so much faster now in this version. The sims are still very slow and encounter all kinds of problems.

I've been very impressed with what I have managed to achieve on the render front with DH - I never really got on well with prop hair. I want it to achieve its potential in Poser.

I really think the new versions of Poser are worse when it comes to the Hair Room.

I just tried using Sydney and her strand hair in Poser 8, and it ran quite well.  Her hair really isn't meant to be used in extreme poses - that is, the settings make it so stiff that it doesn't flow naturally - but it runs quickly and doesn't crash in my version of Poser 8.

Upgrading to Poser 9 probably won't fix the problem if the issue is not enough system resources. 

randym77 - did you have a transition of poses with much movement on the animated timeline, or was it fairly static?

It seems to be in the tests I'm running (using changed dynamic settings making it less stiff) that the sim runs nice and smoothly up to a point when the hair is starting to fall over on itself or collide with a bodypart, then it really slows down.

I just set it up and ran it again.  It doesn't look good - like I said, I don't this hair was meant for extreme poses - but it ran very quickly and collisions seem to have worked.

I've been using the hair room since Poser 5, and while rendering is much faster with P9/2012, dynamic sims seem to be much worse. 

I am having the same results as you, so it's probably not a bug. I agree that the hair room needs some attention.

The other thing that I've noticed is that when you run the sim, the hair is constantly moving, almost unnaturally. I guess it's just something that I will have to work around. And I am going to upgrade to v9, I want the 64 bit program so I can utilize my 64 bit system to its full potential.

Thanks for the responses, carodan. I think I am stuck with this until there is a program improvement, and I can work around it. When I start my movie, the only character I will have to take into the hair room will be Sydney, and I will do her animations in short bursts.

randym77, I didn't even get the sim that far along, so even that is an improvement over what I had.

I will figure it out.

randym77 - Sorry, what I meant was is there much movement from one pose to another?

The sim I have on the go starts from a default stand, but rotates the whole body through 180 degrees over 300 frames with lots of other quite jerky motions happening at the same time. I'm thinking that the amount of motion between keyframes, moving the hair to and fro in space, is increasing the collisions and therefore the calculation time.

I'm curious about what the hair groups are actually colliding with too. They don't always seem to collide with each other, or between groups.

Quote - I am having the same results as you, so it's probably not a bug. I agree that the hair room needs some attention...

...Thanks for the responses, carodan. I think I am stuck with this until there is a program improvement, and I can work around it. When I start my movie, the only character I will have to take into the hair room will be Sydney, and I will do her animations in short bursts.

Hey, no problem. I really want to see improvements in DH too. I think it has real potential. From my point of view as a static artist (I rarely move from my PC when Posering) I'd like the dynamics to work better as part of the styling and draping process, to give hair more natural looks for my final renders.

I suspect Sydney's hair is too hi res on the skullcap at present to work with complex animation. I've seen ppl using other DH to great effect, but maybe the dynamics were better in earlier versions, or they were just using lower polu skullcaps with fewer guide hairs.

Quote - The other thing that I've noticed is that when you run the sim, the hair is constantly moving, almost unnaturally.

Yes, I think this is because it's constantly colliding with itself in addition to any other motion and object collisions between frames. Add to this the dark art of setting up the dynamic perameters and you've got a world of 'I don't know what the hell's going on'.

Sim ran fairly quickly.  It does look like her bangs are going through her forehead.  This might be because they are too short; collision doesn't work with the top part of each hair.  Or it might have been too much for Poser.

Quote - Okay, I ran it again. Sydney rotated through 360 degrees, 300 frames, head moving via neck and head bend, twist, and side to side throughout.

Sim ran fairly quickly.  It does look like her bangs are going through her forehead.  This might be because they are too short; collision doesn't work with the top part of each hair.  Or it might have been too much for Poser.

Well, that's pretty cool. Gonna have to re-think what's slowing everything down for me.

Good experiment - The quick, the slow and the doesn't finish.

So, for PP2012 a fresh load of the app and the Sydney test scene does allow the sim to run a lot faster - must be some kind of problem with dynamics not clearing. Also runs better if I run each hair group seperately instead of using the calculate all hair option via the animation drop down.

Quote - So, for PP2012 a fresh load of the app and the Sydney test scene does allow the sim to run a lot faster - must be some kind of problem with dynamics not clearing.

I have definitely noticed that, too.  Things get weird and glitchy in the Hair Room if you've been working in there too long. 

Rokket, you might try saving your file and restarting Poser before running the sim.

I'll see what happens.

Try adding wind dynamics.  I know, sounds odd but it can sometimes give you a more uniform response than the hair room's gravity settings.