Hello,

after I started using more features of Poser I'm getting into more and more trouble. Already right from the start when I opened a scene, rendered or deleted objects the Poser window turns white and stays unresponsive for a while. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes it works.

The material room is almost unusable, because the switch to it freezes Poser unpredictable. Sometimes when I reload the textures, select the ground and/or run a draft render I can switch to the material room. I even stopped using other rooms.

Rendering with AO and DOF doesn't work at all. Firefly just get into a endless loop, Poser get unresponsive and finally after waiting with patient I've got to kill Posers process. I even can't render the simplest scenes with two primitives and depth of field.

Well now you could think I'm running Poser on some weird legacy PC - No, I'm not.

It's an Intel i3, 64-bit with 4 cores and 6 GB RAM, running Windows 7. So I guess even the 1.4 GHz for each logical core and the little HD3000 GPU with OpenGL 3.1 should be enough and when it's not it doesn't explain the instability.

Perhaps you can help me.

The bottom line is - it's Poser 8, which I got on sale. It's with all latest updates available (SR3 > 8.0.3), although it's 32 on 64 Bit system. Is it worth to upgrade to Poser 9 or even side-upgrade to Poser Pro 2012, only to get 64-bit application and renderer with the Pro 2012? I hope you can recommend me a solution in the long run. The trial version of Poser 9 I could try but nevertheless I wanted to ask you and your experience. Thanks in advance.

1; Upgrade your video driver

1. Download , install, and run Advanced system care free from iobit in deepclean mode at least 3 times in a row.
   Version 5.4 now, and it does wonderfull things to clean and speed WIndows.
   3: What anti virus are you running?
   4; Certainly, try the Poser 9/PP2012 trial version.

For the long run? Full 64 bit, I would go for PP2012. It is worth it.

But first and most important?
Upgrade video driver and run ASCF from iobit.

Have you upgraded your graphic card driver to latest version ? Might solve some of the problems you are having.

Do those problems always happen - even when you use default Andy (render, material room and unresponsiveness)? And if you turn off OpenGL?
Or does it only happen when scenes are getting large?

In the first case it is most likely a videocard driver issue and upgrading probably does not help.

In the latter case you may have run out of memory. Using separate proces for the renderengine may help you here for rendering issue. Upgrading to P9 will not solve the other problems you have. Hoever sidegrading to PP2012 will solve that problem for you when you use the 64bit version

Here's you're problem..... you've got a HD3000 GPU. Even though it may have OpenGL 3.1, it's not really the graphics card you want to use for Poser at all. First of all try to update your drivers for the card, if there are any updates. Upgrading to Poser 9 or Poser Pro 2012, will not make the problems go away, on the contrary, the will make it worse. Poser 9 and Pro 2012 do demand more of your GPU. While Intel CPU's are great, their GPU's suck. The HD series is just a very low entry graphics card. In theory they sound great, but in reality their not. I've got a double GPU in my laptop, HD3000 and an ATI 7450M. The HD3000 is causing so much problems for all of my 3D applications that I've permanently disabled it. Poser runs awesomly smooth on the ATI and it always hangs when the HD3000 is used.

If you cannot find updated drivers (good chance you may not find newer ones), then here's what to do, in Poser (I'm assuming you've got the OpenGL settings enabled) go to the render settings and select the preview tab. There you can choose between sReed and OpenGL. I'm assuming OpenGL is selected. There you have 2 options PBuffer and Scene window and some other options for OpenGL, not sure since I switched to P2012. Select Scene window and if there are any other options available, deselect them all. Restart Poser and see if it works any better. If Scene window is already the selected item and all other options are off, then select PBuffer (make sure no other options are selected). Restart Poser and see if it now works better. If it works now, have fun. If not.......

If that doesn't help, then switch to sReed instead, that's the software mode, bypassing the GPU 3D features. If Poser now works fine, you're problem is solved and you know that the problem is your graphics card.

i'm finding PP12 more stable than P8. worth the upgrade.

in P8, my renders would just stop, uncompleted. no explanation message.

And FYI

I did testruns of PP2012 on a 10" ASUS netbook.
This one to be precise:

Intel Atom CPU N270 @1.6Ghz with 1GB RAM, and a Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family.

Slow, but no crashes.

Thank you all for your replies.

So far as I follow you not only the realtime view in Poser uses the GPU+OpenGL but also other functions inside the application rely to some degree on it. I wasn't certain about the connection between switching rooms, rendering and GPU capabilities. 

I'll checked some weeks ago Intels website for drivers, I'm going to recheck today. I doubt there's one but I hope it is.

@wimvdb: Do those problems always happen - even when you use default Andy (render, material room and unresponsiveness)? And if you turn off OpenGL? Or does it only happen when scenes are getting large?

They are unpredictable, only some of the crashes I can reproduce. With Andy and simple, plain shaders I can switch to the material room. With more advanced shaders and JamesG2, Alyson I get into trouble. I just retried now with SreeD to switch to the material room with a scene with which I got recently trouble - it worked, but know it also works suddenly with OpenGL. 

Usually I make small scenes with at most 200k polygons (1 Model and/or some props), but I'm using a lot of shader capabilities, like fast scattering, fresnel and ambient occlusion (when it works).

@aeilkema: I thought so that an HD3000 GPU will get me into trouble. With other 3D applications I don't have such problems. DAZ Studio 3 and 4, Carrara, Shade 12, Vue are running without trouble.

@vilters: [...] Download , install, and run Advanced system care [...] What anti virus are you running?

I'll try this advanced system care, though I never heared of it. Curious about it. I running russian anti virus application. Kaspersky Anti Virus 2012, no security suite only the scanner. I'll try to run Poser without KAV sitting in the background.

Hell, you ran Poser on a netbook? That leaves me with hope to solve my issues.

Addendum: I checked now. There is a new driver for hd 3000@i3.

But after checking the Changelog it's not worth installing, they fixed something for Vista - nothing about OpenGL, stability or something in that direction.

Well... :-(

Intel does not list all fixes in the driver documentation. It might be worth trying the newest version. Or possible trying older ones as well.

The HD GPU on the CPU was a good idea, but drivers have turned out to be a complete nightmere.

The other option is to buy a video card and disable the HD-GPU part of the CPU.

Hmm, thanks shvrdavid for that hint. Guess I'll give that a shot soon...

Changing the GPU would be great, but in a laptop it's not an option. I checked already the hacky solution using vidock, but without an expresscard slot it's either no option.

Just curious, does anyone of you used ever this vidock to hook up an external GPU to a notebook? (Links to ViDocks and the Upgrade procedure...)