Yes, I did check those (IK and limits) as I thought the same thing..  Odd thing is that when I try to move the parameter dials, nothing happens.. the numbers stay locked at 0, and if I try to input the numbers, it won't take them, almost as if that one dial is locked out.. so odd. Hadn't seen that one before and it only happened on that one character build. 

No worries, I'll have to start over again.

Thanks for the suggestion..

Thanks for the link, much appreciated.. I noticed it was written in 2009.. three years ago.. you would think much has changed in the SSD technology to remedy or eleviate many of the issues brought up by now? I'll give the article a read..

Thanks again!

Never tried an SSD, i wasn't aware of the last free page deletion thing.. what's a free page? I'm not familiar with that one..

However I did try the Ram Drive and after some tweaking, its quite good but the one I tried only had a max of 4gigs useage. Before I changed my "undo" amounts, the folder file size grew to such a point that it would cause Poser to shut down.. once I figured what the problem was, super fast!

Looking at your specs list, I could comment that the video card does indeed make a difference when it comes to poser 2012 (and other versions?)..

I recently swapped out my AMD 6950 for an MSI GTX 560 Ti 2GB card and it made a huge difference, mostly because of nVidias drivers when it comes to OpenGL. I found the AMD version of it too glitchy (tried a 4800 series and the 6950 cards..) A 2gb memory video card will allow you to run a higher screen resolution without any lag. I ran a speed monitor on my video card while using Poser 2012 and found that barely 1% is used while rendering and lucky to reach 20% of the GPU's available resources while working in the preview screen with complicated scenes.. so there's a lot of head room there. 

I have my temp files directory pointed to a 10,000 rpm drive which makes loading and changing stuff a lot quicker than having it reside on my 7200 rpm boot drive. I also reduced my 'undoes' to 20 vice 100 which helps too..

What you have to remember as far as hardware and memory is that your CPU is what makes your renderings go faster, not the video card. But as JohnDoe said, the GPU handles the OpenGL in the preview screen and the bigger, faster and better card will make a huge difference in there. 

Your system memory comes into play (in 64bit version OS) when you wish to run several programs at the same time. I often have photoshop, yahoo voice chat, dreamweaver and a browser open at the same time while working in concert with  a buddy who lives across the country. The more memory you have, the better. 

So in short: Go with nVidia video cards, the bigger the better.., max out your system memory, and have fun.

i7 940 12 gigs memory, 4 x 1TB drives, 160G Cheetah, GTX 560 Ti 2GB video card on Vista64 Ultimate. 

I hope some of this helps, its what works for me though your milage may differ.

"Winning a flame war is like winning gold at the special olympics.." 

Personally, I see nothing wrong with someone asking for $$ if their product is going to be used by someone else in a commercial venture. Its only fair. After all, if you're going to be using it in a commecial venture, you should be able to afford it? It would be akin to you creating some renders, putting up for others to see, then someone adds those images to their pay site.. You created it, put it up for free but somoene else makes money from it.. ?

If someone is able to create something I am not able to myself, and it benifits me in the long run, why should they not be rewarded for their time and effort.. and skills that I do not possess? 

its like everything else.. if you don't want to pay licensesing fees then don't use it.. 

but that's just me..

Quote - I want one...Checked and it runs for approx 300.00???  Have two comps sooooooo

600.00??  WOW!   Gonna wait for my tax return and save for the next few years.

Check with newegg.com and tigerdirect.com as one or the other has a $30 rebate and free shipping, and the base price for the unit is $269-ish or so..

I've been pushing it hard today with a complex story line and still kicking strong. (with PS CS4, yahoo chat and browsers open..)  What a sheer delight compared to before.

I resolved the problem with a new video card. Though all your suggestions do work when nothing else will, I found my previous AMD Sapphire 6950 (or it's drivers) being at the root cause of the problem. I replaced it with an MSI GTX 560 Ti 2GB Twin frozr II card and haven't had that problem since.. and it eliminated a lot of my other screen issues as well.. better card or better drivers? All I know is that the new card is soooo much better with Poser 2012.. and less expensive that the previous card..

Thanks to all who offered great advice.

If you do find yourself in need of a new PSU (power supply unit), look for what is called a modular unit. These don't have cables attached to them but instead you plug into it just the cables you need to avoid having that huge cable bundle with unused dangling all over the place restricting airflow etc.

The nVidia cards also tend to give you a crisper screen look where the fonts aren't overly soft edged and easier on the eyes.

Cheers

Quote - If you do a Reload Textures from the Render menu, all the textures will re-appear

This seems to happen sometimes after hiding a figure, making it invisible or going to another display mode such as wireframe or smoothd.

Hadn't thought of that one! I'll give it a try should it happen again.. I will be installing a new vid card today (GTX 560Ti 2G) with hopes that all my OpenGL issues go away.. or most of them.. sigh.

Thanks for the info.. much appreciated..

Ok, that makes sense.. I'm not up to that level to be using measurements as you described, yet..  Thanks for the explanation..

cheers

Quote - Agreeing with HBorre. First thing I do when I install a new version of Poser is delete the figure, delete the lights and set my own, disable pmds (I'll still be doing this because of the scripts I run) and set Preference to inches and launch to preferred scene. Then do Set Preferred Scene.

I've seen a lot of people suggesting changing prefs to 'inches' but still unclear how this benifits the overall process? 

Quote - Has anyone had any issues with the poser pro 2012 lights after updating to SR1? Before i updated, most of my lights defaulted at around 50% intensity and could be bumped up to 100% to brighten the picture. However, after updating to SR1, the lights all default off at 100% intensity,  which leaves a very dark picture (brown figures are pretty much black)

If i try increase the intensity above 100% on the parameter dials, it doesn't look right. It seems the update did something weird to the default lighting and everything is pretty much too dark. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I didn't run poser before doing the SR1 install (I had read somewhere that this was preferable to do).. I didn't like the default lighting so I created my own 3 and 1 lighting (3 main / fill lights and 1 rim light) that I load up each time I start a new project.  

Cheers

Quote - I use a very powerful machine with plenty of space and memory. Sadly Poser 7 runs terribly slow on it mostly after I load up a scene even if the scene is small I experience a lag so bad I can barely move things around. The lag doesn't happen when I first start Poser up. So I was wondering if maybe it has something to do with me having Windows 7 since Poser 7 requires Vista, XP, 2000, and so on and so fourth. I have an HP Pavilion Elite six core processor with 8GB and it loads websites up faster than a lighting striking a tree. Fact is, Poser 7 isn't operating the way it should. I never had this issue with Maya, then again I've never bought any scenes for Maya either but I can't even animate anything in my scenes because of this. If anybody has a solution or just can give it to me straight and come right out and say that my machine isn't capatiable with Poser 7 and I may need to upgrade to Poser 9  or 2012 since Poser 9 supports Windows 7, thanks a lot for the help once again. The lagging is irritating. Plus I'm not sure but, my Renders also take quite a long time to get done too.

I'm a newbie at Poser in general but have been on a steep learning curve so hopefully some of my observations, though possibly using the wrong terms, might help shed some light on your issues)

I have an i7 940 Vista64 system with 16G memory and currently an AMD 6950 2G video card, so its also a heavy duty system that runs super fast. And reasonably fast with the Poser 2012 I just recently started using.. Not sure if any of this equates with your version of Poser7 but might shed some light on your lagging issues.

The system memory doesn't do much for poser except allowing it to run while other programs are running. I'm able to run Poser 2012, dreamweaver and photoshop CS4 while voice chatting with a colleague at the same time.. (While poser is rendering a heavy scene, none of the other progs show slowing down or lagging.. due to the 16 gigs of system memory and the i7 8 core processor)..

On a heavy duty system, what I found that DOES affect poser a lot is the video card.. though the card does little towards the rendering speed, it has a lot to do with poser's ability to show a highly detailed preview screen or not. The video card's memory is what affects how well your preview is showing (and ultimately, how good the OpenGL drivers are affect it too)

You didn't state what kind of video card you had in your rig. A GTX 260 for example won't allow you to run preview at high quality like a GTX 560 or AMD 6900 series card would.. 

As for render speeds, this is more about your processing power, poser's settings, and version of Poser. My colleague has Poser 7and while he has a similar rig as I do, his render speeds are slower, probably only because of the older version of Poser. Also, Ray Tracing 'on' will slow things down a lot. So unless you have a lot of reflective materials in your scenes, you can select this off in the render settings and you may not even notice much of a difference in the final image, but you will in render speeds. Most times, I have found that turning Ray Tracing 'off' for the hair won't noticeably  alter the image quality but certainly will speed render times.

I hope some of this might come to some help to you..

Best of luck..

Well I'm happy to report that after 4 full days or working with poser 2012 (i7 940, 12G mem and AMD 4950 2G) that the delays between the render and preview screens seem to have been resolved.. (knock on wood).. 

I think the trick behind it is to load poser first before anything else (browsers, PS, Dreamweaver etc) and everything seems to be fine..  With hardware shaders enabled, I am able to go from the rendered screen back to the preview screen and resume posing without any delays what so ever.. now THAT's what I was looking for.. nice! Able to pose to pose the models and see right away before rendering what the lighting is going to look like on their bodies and allows me to make adjustments before sending it to render.. 

Even if I only plan to use Poser later in the day (I boot up every morning), I minimize the poser screen and do my other work, then later I max the poser environment and everything works fine.. with the system I have, having poser sitting in the background doesn't affect any of the other work I'm doing (except beckoning me to do some more poser work ;)

I still get the occassional picture in picture glitch when going back to preview screen and that can take 10 seconds to clear but if I keep a full screen browser window or image view window minimized, all I have to do is maximize it to cover the poser screen and then minimize it again, it clears the issue right away..  not the fanciest fix but it works with just two clicks... 

If you have that delay glitch, give this a try and see if it works for you as well.. hopefully it does..

I think the funniest one I saw was one of those DE-motivational posters with the title "FAIL" and the context showed an eHarmony denial response..

Just do a Google Image search for "eHarmony fail" and you'll see what I mean hehe =)