I'm really losing it here -- I just realized that in addition to missing your point about the 2 GB of RAM, I just gave you basically the same advice in a March 16th post above. God, I need a vacation from my job and four kids. I need to finish this darn animation project. I need it to be summer.

Sorry, PilotHigh, I missed the part about your having 2 gigs of RAM (there have been a few Poser Mac users on the forum who have gotten all flustered when their new machines with only 512mb of RAM won't run Poser well -- you're obviously not one of them). PilotHigh, try going into your Poser 7 Preferences and under the Render tab checking Render as Separate Process, and move the slider to 3 Threads (assuming your iMac has two processes with two cores each). I've discovered that this greatly improves stability. Pushing the slider to 4 is asking for trouble as the machine then seems to have no breathing room for anything esle you have running. 2 GB should be plenty for you to avoid your problems -- in addition to my Macbook Pro with 2 GB(for when I travel) and my Mac Pro (for my office), I have almost exactly the same configuration as you (including 2GB of RAM) have in a 24" iMac at home, and simply don't have those problems. The iMac doesn't run P7 as fast as my Mac Pro (which also has a souped up video card and 4 gigs of RAM), but it's still faster than my MacBook, and in any case neither have any of the problems you cited. I do multi-character animation -- big, fat scenes with lots of morphed-up figures and textures, rendered at relatively high resolutions -- and, at least in that way, push my machines to their limit. Thought it can get slow at HD-type resolutions, it almost never crashes (although "undoing" certain actions in the Keyframes Editor several times risks a rare freeze, though never a crash).

Let me second kaveman that Poser 7 on an Intel Mac is a religious experience compared to P6. Universal code, multi-processor support, lightening fast renders, layered animation, dubbing... Poser 7 has a lot of problems with PCs and Vista, but the Mac version has been comparatively clean. If you have an Intel Mac, you shouldn't even think twice about upgrading to P7 for Mac, just do it and revel in the improvement; Logic Express should be your distant second priority. If, on the other hand, you have a G4 or G5 Mac, then...well, I'd still move up to P7.

Take a look at ES3D, the combat poses and motions. I'll say one thing, their motions are terrific -- the best I've used (though admittedly there are far too few motion packs out there). S

tebop, sorry I glossed over your Garage Band critique. I guess I have used Soundtrack Pro and The Amazing Slowdowner pretty much exclusively over the past couple of years, so I tried the latest Garage Band. You're right -- it's kinda robotic. Amazing Slowdowner is definitely better, unless you wanna go for a bigger toolset in Logic Express.

I use both an Apple 23" display, which handles fonts and just about anything else beautifully, as well an HP 23-inch, which is almost (but not quite) as good. Both work very well for Poser. SS

Basically, you want to change the pitch without changing the speed. I do that all the time to change my voice into that of different characters in my animations. Sorta how "The Incredibles" director Brad Bird became the voice of Edna Mode in the movie. If you have a Mac you probably have Garage Band, which has tools to do that. You can also record your voice there, or drop in a WAV or AIFF file you've recorded elsewhere. Soundtrack Pro's tools (if you have Final Cut Studio) are even better. Using tools in addition to the pitch adjuster can help you tailor the voice even more, though I confess to not using them much. Finally, if you don't have either of those, The Amazing Slowdowner (www.ronimusic.com/slowdown.htm) is an easy-to-use bargain at $45.00. I have it and sometimes use it instead of the Garage Band and Soundtrack tools. Now, there may be some freeware out there, but I don't know about it. SS

I was having the same problem, but bagginsbill's solution did the trick -- turning off the "Cast Shadows" for the prop.

I have the same problem -- I keep losing figures in the midst of a large set (e.g., Urban Blight) and then have a hell of a time getting everything I want onto a certain backstreet location.

I have tried to get the hang of Poser 7 animation layers because I really want to better isolate the animation of individual parts or figures in a scene -- some of my scenes have lots of moving parts, and things get confusing quickly -- but so far nothing has worked the way it should. Yes, I can get a figure to walk and chew gum, but anything else throws my work out of sync. There's supposed to be a new book specifically on Poser 7 animation (I think PhilC is the author) coming out in May. Even sooner would be better for me.

That's REALLY wierd, Little Dragon. But then, it's hard to beat your avatar. Anyone got any examples of full rotoscoping -- i.e., more than outline -- that they've done using Poser? I've gotta try doing one.

Perhaps PilotHigh's problem is not enough RAM. P7 appear especially sensitive to that when it renders an animation, so if he/she is still working with 512MB or even 756MB, there might be problems. Poser 7 will work with 512MB, but "work" is a relative term. I have 4GB of RAM on a Mac Pro 2 x Dual-Core, but also run Poser 7 on a Macbook Pro with 2GB of RAM. No issues unless I try to render out a loaded-up 1,000-frame animation, during which it might burp around the 800th frame. Try rendering in a separate process (go to preferences and check the requisite box).

In my experience, P7 runs better than P5 and P6 on a G5 Mac (and has great features overall compared to P6), so it's worth upgrading, but if you ever upped yourself to a multi-processor Intel Mac, you will be stunned at how much faster the rendering performance is. P7 is universal code and multi-processor prepped. It smokes on a MacIntel.

You should be able to do this in your video editor more easily than in Poser. It might require a video editor with multiple tracks in a timeline. Render out a Poser animation of your moving figure (I assume you're animating) either as a series of stills (making it easier to isolate the figure in your video editor via the alpha channel) or as a movie (you can knock out the background in your video editor using a color key matched to the Poser background). Then resize the Poser movie in your video editor to fit the background movie, which you would presumably have on a lower track in your video editor timeline. If you want the figure to slowly "appear" in your video, just keyframe the transparency of the Poser movie clip to your taste. If you want it to transition slowly from an outline figure to a full, non-transparent figure, you may have the appropriate filter in your video editor if it is good enough (Final Cut Pro or Avid Express). Alternatively, render out your Poser movie twice: once with a toon outline, and once without, then overlap the two movies as separate timeline tracks in your video editor (the background movie on a third, bottow track), and keyframe the transparency of each Poser clip (or you could use a cross-dissolve transition with both clips in the same track) to your need until you get the transition effect you want.

Sounds like Cinema 4D is the Poser renderer of choice (especially for Mac users), at least in terms of simplicity and maintaining virtually all of the Poser specs, lights, textures, etc. That would be my number one criteria -- simple transfer from Poser with no little or no additional tweaking. Import, render and done. You gotta admit, animators want to animate. They don't want to spend hours building their own mesh models, clothes, props, etc. So Poser's incredible content (much of it free) is a godsend, and very hard to give up. But what about Vue? Unlike Cinema 4D, there are cheap entry levels for those who merely want to render Poser animated scenes in it, but how good is it at meeting the K.I.S.S. criteria? On the other hand, I sank nearly $5,000 into upgrading to a Mac Pro quad, extra RAM and a graphics card upgrade in order to handle 3D animation better. Maybe I should have just switched software.