Compiler, are you using raytraced shadows, or depth mapped shadows? I ask because the latter takes forever to render. What you need to do is to look at the properties page of each light in your scene and check "Ray Trace shadows". See whether that improves your rendering time.

Thanks for the reference!

Um... what's the face texture on Ajax's pictures, above?

Rather than applying patches piecemeal to fix the keyboard shortcut problem, the P5 coders really ought to tackle the problem at its root and figure out the proper way to make the parameter window a true child of the main UI window. Having the main window lose focus when you click on the parameter window is dumb, dumb, dumb; the fact that this happens, coupled with the way that buttons appear in the taskbar whenever you click on a dial setting to edit it, suggests an unfortunate gap in someone's Win32 GUI programming expertise.

Actually, this happens more often then "more often than not"... it ALWAYS happens.

That's what I originally thought, too--but I have actually seen Ctrl-Z start working with the parameter window active. I don't know how or why, but I was able to repeat its use several times. I'm guessing that the times it stops working or just never starts to work (i.e., most of the time) the window messages are getting lost in space.

Also, I have observed that even when Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-M, Ctrl-;, etc. don't work with the parameter window active, Ctrl-N always seems to work. Bizarre.

I note that clicking on the main Poser window and then typing Ctrl-Z to attempt to do undo a parameter dial setting has never worked for me.

Thanks for letting us know you've submitted the bug report; it saves me the trouble of distilling my frustrated rant down to professional language and sending it to CL for consideration. :-)

"How many computers you've had since P4?"

Just one, but like the cells in the human body, its components periodically slough off and are replaced with young, vigorous ones. :-) My main rig can trace its history back eleven years, but literally everything in it has been replaced at least once, including the case--and some things have been replaced several times. It started life as a 33 MHz 386 with 4MB of RAM and 120MB of hard disk space; now's it's an Athlon XP 1700+ with 1GB of RAM and 100 GB of hard disk space. Ahhh, progress. :-)

The standard inch is defined in terms of the standard metre. 1 in == 2.54 cm (exactly).

Almost as "fun":

Say you want to tweak some facial morphs. So you click on the window with the parameter dials and adjust the value. "Nah-h-h, that's not it." So you press Ctrl-Z to get the old value back.

More often than not, IT DOESN'T WORK. You used to be able to do this in P4. Just like you used to be able to tweak a dial, then immediately type Ctrl-M or Ctrl-; to switch the camera view. Those rarely work anymore, either; at least, they usually don't work for me.

Then you notice goofy things like the main Poser UI window LOSING FOCUS when you click in the parameter window. Or untitled window buttons popping up on the taskbar when you click on parameter values to edit them. What the hell!?

It's almost like the UI programmers who did the changes for P5 have only a rudimentary understanding of Win32 GUI programming. How else to explain glitches like this, and the total disasters that occur if, God help you, you click in the wrong place at the wrong time and end up with windows that won't go away, windows that don't get refreshed, renders that don't appear...

It's a mess. Again, I hope somebody over at CL has a handle on these problems and is fixing them, because having the UI inevitably hijack and subvert just about every one of my P5 sessions does not instill a feeling of confidence in the software. :-(

It's evident that P5 has some real problems with window focus and UI events going astray. I hope they get fixed in the first update. :-/

There was a brightly coloured sticker on the package that indicated that a certain brokerage firm may be collecting taxes on the shipment. Given that P5's declared value is USD 179.00, I'd say you're going to get an invoice for the taxes eventually.

If you live in Ontario, they will get you for GST and PST, 15% total. I do not believe that duty is charged on software anymore.

If you requested the chrome-plated overnight shipping, brokerage fees should already be included in the shipping charges. I think.

My Victoria 2 figure underwent a months-long, multi-step installation process, starting with the original V1 figure, then V1 updates, then the V2 upgrade on top of that. Since V2 uses the V1 geometry, I thought I'd check the DAZ site to see whether I have the latest and greatest V1 update. And do you know what I discovered?

I don't!

To test this out, I reinstalled V1 and the latest V1 update to a separate file tree. I was not surprised to note that blMilWom.obj and .rsr have different sizes and more recent time stamps than the versions I've been using. When I copied these files to my Poser 4 runtime tree (after saving the old files elsewhere), the geometry problems with my V2-based figures in Poser 5 miraculously vanished! :-O

Lady Cherry, you were right. Thank you. And to Curious Labs, I offer my sincere apology for blaming Poser 5 for this particular problem.

Time to do some test renders now... :-)

-- M

"If nothing else reinstall it on the C drive bare bones and test it."

Ugh. Thanks, but no thanks. I install very little on C:, hedging against the inevitable day I'll have to wipe the partition and reinstall Windows to get rid of accumulated registry gunk. I write software for a living; I think it's highly unlikely that the problem has anything to do with the location of the installation directory or library trees.

I will reinstall the Vicky 2 figure to make sure it's OK, though. The more I think about it, the more I agree with Lady Cherry that the figure file may have been corrupted somehow. I also need to ensure that I was in fact using an unmodified version of the figure, and not a tweaked one I added to the library some time back. If that's the case, I may have unwittingly shot myself in the foot--though I should wonder why the figure loads in P4 without any trouble, but not P5.

I will report back with my findings, hopefully later tonight. Thanks for your suggestions, all.

-- M

"X:Poser 5", a partition with 3 GB of free space.

My copy arrived today; I'm installing it now. :-)

Last night, I received an email notification from CL that my order had shipped. Using the Airborne Express tracking number they provided, I see that it cleared customs here in Toronto this morning; however, I don't know whether it has been delivered yet. I'm told that I received a package at home this morning, but I'm expecting two different things and won't know which one I have until I get home tonight.