Hi, all. I'm on Windows 98SE (yes, I know, but I don't consider any of Microsoft's alternatives acceptable right now so I'm not upgrading), and I've got a scene with 4 characters and the Gypsy Hair that hangs whenever I try to render it. You know, where it sits there with the render progress window just opened, nothing in the caption, and pretends its doing something forever. I know there's tips on how to prevent that, but they're spread out all over. I'm hoping to gather them here? So, what are the tricks to keep Poser from hanging and/or stop it if it does without hitting ctrl+alt+del? Thanks!

The best thing I have found helped is having at least 1.5 gigs of free Hard drive space. (I have 256 Ram). I can't say it will work for you, but its the only thing that helps me.

I'm using WIN98SE on a P3 w/384meg ram
I'm able to render scenes with up to 3 or 4 figures depending on their clothing and other props loaded; after that...forget it.

1st: make sure you turn Everything else OFF, including virus progs and any 'cutesie background apps'

2nd: A work around is to render multiple 'partial' scenes and then bring it all together in Photoshop, Paintshop, whatever.

I've tried some of those Rambooster apps but never saw any help with Poser but I think I saw some improvements when working with Bryce...?

I spent 1200 on a brand new machine just so I could use poser properly, I'm a real poser addict (-: My old machine was P200 running Win98SE with 64Mb Ram so poser should not have run on it but I "persuaded" it, I had to turn everything off like igohigh said and still there were times when poser would hang the whole darn system. Rob

Im now on XP and have no more probs.But before what really helps ,if there where things using bumpmaps, not to load the bumpmaps.

Take away its belt and shoelaces.

I found that WinXP was the answer to that problem. I had nothing but trouble before that. Not that I'm all that crazy about WinXP.

I'm still afraid of XP. Don't like Microsoft snooping around my machine. Win2Kpro rocks.

LOL @ Mosca. I found that if I save a scene before I render it usually keeps it from hanging. Dunno if that'll help you but it seems to work for me. :) Sasha

I usually reboot and after that Poser will render the file. What about splitting the image into two characters per render and combine in Photoshop.

Incremental saves. Yeah, it burns up drive space, but every time I save I give it a new version number. I've had poser not save a scene properly many times. Just burn the provect to a CD when you get done. If your goal is not a large render, don't "render to a new window" That thing has always been cranky. Win 2K is probably the best platform for Poser. It has the NT stability and memory management with out all the XP ginger bread and security holes.

...and security hooks, from the friendly folks in Redmond.

FyreSpiryt, Poser 4 works great on Windows 98se. I am using Windows 98se and I have no problems with it.(And I agree with you about Microsoft's so-called alternatives) Windows 2000 does have a better memory management than Win 98se. But, Win2000 itself consumes more memory which if you are not on a top of the line machine, you will lose memory. Big thing is to follow igohigh's first point about turning off background applicaitions. Also, if you have wallpaper for your windows background, turn that off. That takes way too much resources. Best advice is to get as much RAM as possible. (Windows 98se has a limit of 1 GB of RAM.) This should be helpful.

I use both Win98SE and Win2k Pro. [Dual boot system] P3 600, 512mb Ram at present, and 1gb of swapfile space... I find that 98SE works fine with Poser, except with multiple millenium figures and conforming clothing/props... when a pz3 file starts to get to the 100 to 150meg point, I have to save it and reboot before 98 will render it without hanging. Rebooting into win 2k will usually render it, but I have hung win2000 on occassion with a huge file, lots of bump maps, and lots of reflect mapping and lights. One tip that helps: unless you're doing extreme closeups, reduce the size and res of your textures and bump maps. 3000x3000 or 4000x4000 is great for closeup detail, but you don't lose enough to matter in normal scene shots and camera focal points by reducing them to 2000x2000 or 1800x1800 and then running them through ACDC at 70% compression, and you cut the texture size and the memory they eat up considerably. DO do your resizing and compression on a copy of the textures so you don't overwrite the origionals. ;]

Attached Link: http://users.iafrica.com/d/da/dalen/tclockex.htm

Works well on 98se

As in many past posts I will repeat

After highlighting Render wait 2 seconds
before clicking.

This will not stop smearing but I can lock up
a render nearly every tine by being to quick
to click the render button.

The attached image shows a typicle poser stuffup
Highlighting the p4 women will result in
100% cpu usage (blue bar) for ever
I have never seen any other program do that.

The redbar is physicle memory usage

I have 98SE too, it has it's problems, certainly. But due to my video editing HW/SW needing absolute stability, and I have that now, I can't afford to try upgrading, the consequences can be weeks of rebuilding my PC. Tht's right out. However, I intend to rebuild over the summer. New system HD, and Win2K. I have Intel PIII 1 GHz, 896MB RAM, about 3 Gigs of swap space. Lots of RAM definitely helps, I get no disk swapping at all in Poser, or for that matter in Photoshop. (!) If I put 2 heavy Mil figures in a scene, add hair and clothes, texs and bumps, I'm buggered. I get your problem. Solutions: 1. If you've been modelling, or turning cameras, or saving the file, doing anything at all in Poser - then before you hit 'Render', wait 10 seconds. That gives Poser and Win a chance to settle their memory issues together. Invariably, if I forget to wait, I'll get a hang, sometimes even with one fig, especially if I use the DAZ Updo hair or other other large hair. 2. Bump maps occupy huge memeory space. Cut them down in resolution or cut them out altogether. 3. I use very large texs, I prefer 4000x4000, but that's a killer. If I have a scene that hangs consistently, I bring the texs down to say 2200x2200 (That's about a quarter of the 'volume') and the render will work fine. 4, Don't put stuff in the scene that doesn't have to be there. 5. If anything is 'off camera' for a particular shot, first save, then throw out that stuff for the render. 6. Make sure you don't use lots of different texs for different parts of the same figure. Combine all the best bits to one tex. That way Poser doesn't have to load so many texs. 7. Once you've had a hang, leave Poser :o] and reboot. Do not 'cheat' and just restart Poser. The same applies if you get invisible body parts on loading, like missing parts of a catsuit. Then you should save and reboot. 8. If starting a new scene and throwing out the one you've been working on, don't just 'open' the new scene. Do this: First 'Close' the old scene, then create a 'New' empty scene, then 'Open' your next Pz3. It makes a difference! :o] FishNose

Oh, yeah - I forgot one thing. Remember that tex size is only about resolution - pixels x pixels. The file size in kB / MB is irrelevant. When you save a tex to jpg, bringing down the quality level doesn't help Poser at all - it's still the same size for Poser, as Poser 'translates' the texs back to full size internally - non-lossy tif/pict/bmp or whatever it uses. So save at a slightly lower resolution instead (choose 3000x3000 instead of 4000x4000, for instance) but save your jpg at the highest quality level. If HD space is a major issue, this might be a problem, otherwise always do it this way. In Photoshop I always save at 11 or 12 (12 is max). That's why it's really quite uninteresting to know the resolution of texs in the Marketplace, the quality level at save is almost more important as tex detail goes. Of course, ideally the tex is both high qual and high res, but then the files get huge. Oh, I also forgot -Mosca's solution is really the best one all round :o] And a padded cell. Actually, I suspect we all need padded cells here. :] FishNose

those who got XP can turn the obvious snooping off with XPspy if you can find it, or try 1 of those tweaking programs, I'm sure there's still some snooping going on without us knowing that they haven't revealed yet. Rob

Hi, If you don't like XP spying on you, there's a prog called XPantispy, (IM me your email address and I'll mail it to you) though the answer to your question is: "buy more memory!" Win 98 was only really designed to use 256Mb, it gets a little wierd above that with lots of apps running. I had frequent lockups with Me and 128Mb... I'd recommend W2K or XP, (provided you leave it in "dipshit" mode :) as they have decent memory management built into the kernel. Though for XP you'll need a decent sized boot partition (4Gb min) to avoid running out of space, the OS is over 1Gb for a full install, and it seems to expand at a prodigious rate. I have a 2Gb boot partition and it frequently tells me it's out of space, even though all my apps/data are in my data partition... I beleive tweak XP has a paranoia setting :) and if you're still twitchy you can install zone-alarm and netscape, (or any other non-IE browser) block microsoft at the firewall level, and surf that way. Personally I surf at work (98) and take it home on CD, it's virus checked every step of the way and as well as zone-alarm we have multiple firewalls on all exits. The way I figure it, connecting my own machine to the 'net is just far too dangerous :) later jb

that's what it was called, thanks praxis, I couldn't remember the name XPantispy, I've got it somewhere on a cd but I've got so many now it's getting silly, so far 10 have poser stuff only, that includes a backup of the library folder for poser just in case (-: Rob