I have been using Poser new release and was working fine, but I discovered a issue.. When I'm using Firefly render and I enter in the material room it crashes when loading textures. I'm not sure why but the material room only crashes when I am using Firefly render, when I use superfly the material room works fine.

Has anyone else had this problem?

I usually use superfly, but I did some tests with firefly and didn't have any problems.

Cannot reproduce either, with a fairly large scene. How big are your texture maps and what is your computer setup?

I never got any crashes in the Material Room with previous update (using SuperFly materials) but this new release has caused several. Also the preview is slow to load, I figure I may just be moving too fast so I have slowed down but still got a couple crashes yesterday. However; using Windows 7 they probably are not interested....

I'm crashing now, too. I do SF renders. However, it's slow to refresh mat previews in the material room (I use Edit), and I think if I don't wait until every mat refreshes before clicking something, I crash. Also crashed after I added a cr2 to the library and then selected File New.

Using the Assign tab is helpful in not waiting for material previews to refresh. I'll have to use that more often.

May I suggest you to check these parameters?

If I load an old scene with those parameters not as is, in particular the two zones in the green rectangles, Poser is slower indeed.

Now, for the crashes part: because of the Python involved, if I click on something at a moment when Poser hasn't finished with its current task, indeed it crashes

I had everything in your preview screenshot except:

1. I didn't have the AO settings checked
2. my preview resolution is 512, not 1024

I'll try these changes.

VedaDalsette posted at 4:31PM Sun, 08 August 2021 - #4424801

I'm crashing now, too. I do SF renders. However, it's slow to refresh mat previews in the material room (I use Edit), and I think if I don't wait until every mat refreshes before clicking something, I crash. Also crashed after I added a cr2 to the library and then selected File New.

That is the same I think that I have experienced with the current update. Yesterday I seemed to find that if I do not have the 'preview' section of the node selected then it went faster as I build the node (Poser Physical and/or Cycles) and then once built open the preview portion...also did not experience a crash. However I did get a crash when loading one of Afrodite-Ohki's cloth materials; the prop had a material assigned and I just double click the new material and as the nodes replaced - BOOM it crashed. I only had one figure, three clothing items and two props in the scene (this is a really small setup compared to what I usually work with).

I will look at the settings Y-Phil posted....

I haven't had any crashes, but I do notice the CPU activity jumps quite a bit in the material room, and then -- more importantly -- never comes back down until I restart Poser. It stays around 15% even when Poser is sitting idle for long periods of time. You can hear the fan spin up, makes it hard to tell when renders are done (normally the fan slowing back down is my cue).

I don't use "enable hardware shading" because those previews aren't useful. All the cycles shaders just turn uselessly white. With hardware shading off, if there is also a firefly texture, the preview shows that instead so I actually have something to work with. As discussed here.

Crashes all day in Material room. Sorta driving me nuts at the moment. Usually happens when I mess around with character texture.

I suggest you check the parameters Y-Phil posted above. I experienced slowdown, textures flashing to black, but no crashes and the issues went away after I changed the AO parameters specifically. Now how long it stays that way, not sure. Persistent crashes should probably be repeated on tbe posersoftware site for the record. Forumposts are unfortunately not considered reporting.

Rhia474 posted at 2:19PM Tue, 10 August 2021 - #4424972

I suggest you check the parameters Y-Phil posted above. I experienced slowdown, textures flashing to black, but no crashes and the issues went away after I changed the AO parameters specifically. Now how long it stays that way, not sure. Persistent crashes should probably be repeated on tbe posersoftware site for the record. Forumposts are unfortunately not considered reporting.

These AO settings are saved within the Poser file, and it's the same for the default one that we can choose by clicking "Set preferred scene"

I had them deselected completely for some arcane reason.

did what Phil said. Crashes in material room. Eh I guess I'll hope they fix it.

GGari posted at 6:56PM Wed, 11 August 2021 - #4425003

did what Phil said. Crashes in material room. Eh I guess I'll hope they fix it.

Try this:

1. SLOW DOWN....that is a hard one for me but it truly helps. Do Not make a move until the node(s) fully refresh after making a change.
2. Close the Preview pane of the nodes - it does not seem to crash nor hang if the Preview is not open. After making your change then click and preview, close it again if you are going to make more changes.

A bit of a pain, slows the workflow down, but I have NOT had a single crash since making these two changes (and I am a FAST clicker and key tapper....)

Just wanted to add I too am having countless crashes per day since the update in the Material Room while using Superfly cycles. I get crashes when sliding the animation slider between frames when I'm doing dynamic cloth or something like that. It also hangs and freezes at other times too though I don't notice what I'm doing until it's too late. I'll try to be more mindful for sake of troubleshooting. I just know I've been swearing at my computer and P12 a LOT lately.

igohigh posted at 5:46AM Thu, 12 August 2021 - #4425067

GGari posted at 6:56PM Wed, 11 August 2021 - #4425003

did what Phil said. Crashes in material room. Eh I guess I'll hope they fix it.

Try this:

1. SLOW DOWN....that is a hard one for me but it truly helps. Do Not make a move until the node(s) fully refresh after making a change.
2. Close the Preview pane of the nodes - it does not seem to crash nor hang if the Preview is not open. After making your change then click and preview, close it again if you are going to make more changes.

A bit of a pain, slows the workflow down, but I have NOT had a single crash since making these two changes (and I am a FAST clicker and key tapper....)

In French, we're used to say: "Calm down your happiness with the mouse and the keyboard" and indeed: if I'm faster then Poser, but only use "internal actions", such as changing the object selection (by the upper-right buttons or using the hierarchy window): no crash. Yesterday, I've even launched a render before the PoserSurface's preview could refresh itself, no problems.

But if I launch an external script... crash-boom

Which means that I keep my previews dispalyed, so that I know when I can continue without "danger"... ?

Same, the crashes in the Material room happen primarily when I am assigning transparency graphics.

While I hate that this is happening, I am quite happy that I am not the only one experiencing this problem.

I'm not on 12 but I use the Poser preview renderer quite a bit in 11... I disable hardware AO entirely as I find the results in preview not very good, I crank up my preview texture display to 4096 so I can preview my textures, as I modify and work on them in Mudbox and photoshop, accurately without so much more time costly rendering. I'd dump the scene preview AO as I think it's inferior to actual GI occlusion... tends to be splotchy and is just a frill for scene preview, could save you some processing power.

Wow. Poser 12 sounds lovely.

I hope all those who report crashes here file bug reports, because otherwise the root cause may never be able to tracked down.

If Poser 12 is being redistributed as Trial with such issues and crashes it sure might cause that newbies will remove this application short after install encountering heavy crashes! Same like the android apps if it crashes or makes issues it is getting uninstalled and never Installed again. Sure not a very good way to promote Poser as long as it is unstable!

In my experience with 12 I did not experience crashes related to the MATERIAL ROOM, but consider that I'm not using dynamics / animation / cycles root so maybe not forcing it too much. One thing, I usually work with the "wireframe" mode in the POSE ROOM, it makes everything faster and maybe helps the system overall.

evargas posted at 5:12AM Wed, 18 August 2021 - #4425490

In my experience with 12 I did not experience crashes related to the MATERIAL ROOM, but consider that I'm not using dynamics / animation / cycles root so maybe not forcing it too much. One thing, I usually work with the "wireframe" mode in the POSE ROOM, it makes everything faster and maybe helps the system overall.

I am not seeing any crashes either but then I am working with Superfly and there are some saying this is related to firefly but I am not sure it that covers all reports.

This is very annoying, I hope they fix it soon.

I am using the latest release of Poser 12 and when I go into Material Room Poser crashes most of the time.

To test it first go to the render options and select the Firefly render mode, then save and go to the Material Room and try to change a texture manually... (at this point poser usually crash).

I have not had this problem in previous versions of Poser, so I hope they fix it soon.

I'm using Poser 12 on Windows 10. My PC set up intel i7, 32GB RAM, nvidia GTX 1070.

maur_2005 posted at 3:49PM Wed, 18 August 2021 - #4425581

This is very annoying, I hope they fix it soon.

I am using the latest release of Poser 12 and when I go into Material Room Poser crashes most of the time.

To test it first go to the render options and select the Firefly render mode, then save and go to the Material Room and try to change a texture manually... (at this point poser usually crash).

I have not had this problem in previous versions of Poser, so I hope they fix it soon.

I'm using Poser 12 on Windows 10. My PC set up intel i7, 32GB RAM, nvidia GTX 1070.

I am not saying that it's linked to your problem, but I tried what you described and no crashed, but I remarked this: the preview of the cylinder changes with the hardware shading:

No crash here either, with Firefly render engine selected and changing texture files. I used the preview settings you recommended above, YPhil.

Rhia474 posted at 5:40PM Wed, 18 August 2021 - #4425596

No crash here either, with Firefly render engine selected and changing texture files. I used the preview settings you recommended above, YPhil.

The one I'm using is the first one. I unchecked everything till the second one, no crashes... But still, the difference of the preview astonishes me

That shows that hardware shading supports scaling of texture maps, whereas without hardware shading the preview shows the texture map at 100% size regardless of the settings in the shader. Presumably that's for a PoserSurface or PhysicalSurface though, if it was a Cycles surface it would just be white which is also pretty different.

ChromeStar posted at 1:03AM Thu, 19 August 2021 - #4425611

That shows that hardware shading supports scaling of texture maps, whereas without hardware shading the preview shows the texture map at 100% size regardless of the settings in the shader. Presumably that's for a PoserSurface or PhysicalSurface though, if it was a Cycles surface it would just be white which is also pretty different.

That makes perfect sense. Thank you so much

I tried Y-Phil's preview settings and so far I have had no crashes, but the CPU usage gets too high about 15% exactly as ChromeStar said.

If I remember correctly, the preview is based on opengl, which is normally handled by the video card

maur_2005 posted at 1:19AM Sat, 21 August 2021 - #4425728

I tried Y-Phil's preview settings and so far I have had no crashes, but the CPU usage gets too high about 15% exactly as ChromeStar said.

I found that you can get the CPU usage back down by going on the menu to File/Exit, and then when it asks if you want to save click "Cancel". This somehow stops whatever it is doing, even though you don't actually exit. It's kind of scary, because it only works if you have unsaved changes (otherwise File/Exit will just exit with no chance to cancel), but seems to work reliably as a quirky workaround.

OK, I'm going to express a few thoughts...

I've been a developer since at least september, 1987. A good online friend, who is actually selling G8/G8.1 based characters on Rendo, is trying hard to come back to one of his first loves: Poser. And he told me one day something I had completely forgotten: CuriousLab invented the Material room, and the concept of linking nodes to build up Materials. And it was with... Poser4? Poser5? I don't remember, Bu since them, it has been such a fantastic idea that many other "big" programs copied the idea: 3DS-Max, C4D, Blender, etc...

What I mean is that I've got a real feeling that this part of Poser is really at the point, and crashes are probably the result of some external interference...

Why? Because I know for sure that I can use my Windows for up to 5-6 days in a row, without rebooting, using 1 , 2 sometimes 3 instances of a Java-based, resource hungry program: PyCharm, which I use to develop on an Intel-NUC in my local network.

Most of the time, since one of the last Windows corrections, Poser 12 has stopped being sluggish. Most of the time, but not always. Launch a function/program 1000x with exactly the context will yield the same response. If something changes in the context, it can yield another response, including a crash...

And that's what I experienced last week: 3x on 2 days: a crash, once in the Mat room, and two in the Poses room.

And I know two circumstances in which Poser can crash:

• sometimes, deleting a character/prop, in case of hierarchy, in some old Poser scenes
• being too fast and launch a Python script (from the Python toolbox window) at a moment when Poser hasn't finished its work

And last week, the 3 times Poser crashed, it wasn't the case, but it was more or less sluggish. Specifically in one of the scene that contains a 2k hdri, a pool, and 16 Vic4's. Poser is able to manage and to render all this in one shot, I know it. One of the crashes I experienced was: Poser was terribly sluggish, and I lost patience. Unfortunately, instead of selecting another part using the parts selector in the Mats room (upper-right corner), my moved my mouse too fast, and the hierarchy window understood that it had to move whatever character/prop under something else => crash.

I've filed a ticket about these 3 crashes, and with the dev I'm in contact with, we came to think of a bad external influence. Now, I'm trying to understand what.

Besides this, we could soon have a new update of Poser, in which the OptiX-based renders could be corrected... Yay...

You are amazing. Thanks for your methodical work and documenting it here for us.

I hadn't crashed for a while and did several times today. I think I need to clear my cache (edit/general preferences/document/clear cache now) more often. I'd file a report but the circumstances are still too vague for me. One time today, I think it was clicking too fast in the Material Room, but that might be related to cache, too. Otherwise, loving the SF render speeds with the GPU Adaptive renders. Just wish I had more control over the Intel Denoise. I know I can futz with the orig and denoised images in post, but I'm just playing, not making commercial art.

VedaDalsette posted at 1:29PM Tue, 24 August 2021 - #4425975

I hadn't crashed for a while and did several times today. I think I need to clear my cache (edit/general preferences/document/clear cache now) more often. I'd file a report but the circumstances are still too vague for me. One time today, I think it was clicking too fast in the Material Room, but that might be related to cache, too. Otherwise, loving the SF render speeds with the GPU Adaptive renders. Just wish I had more control over the Intel Denoise. I know I can futz with the orig and denoised images in post, but I'm just playing, not making commercial art.

If I remember correctly, they have planned to give more control over the Intel Denoise process.

If I remember correctly, they have planned to give more control over the Intel Denoise process.

NICE!