Do you have it patched to at least SR2 (SR3 is available and includes the earlier ones)? Reason I ask was that this was a known problem prior to P5 SR2 on certain machines (exact spec never determined) in which the P5 Renderer would fail, and the Interlok copy protection would force a reboot. I'll spare you the details on how/why. From SR2 the Interlock code is unlinked from P5, so if P5 fails it's not likely to trigger a reboot.

LawnDart, I can't personally attest to the MacOS versions of Poser 4/PP (and even P5 ;-) - they may well be better than "crap code." But the Windows "interface" code that ports it from Mac to Windoze clearly is sadly lacking. It was marginal in it's day - which granted was fairly common, even Adobe had problems with their proprietary memory manager back then. But it's woefully poor now and makes the whole product appear to be "craply" coded, but it hasn't even been touched since, in any release or SR. This means a) existing bugs remain through at least the last 3 major releases even though some appear to be fairly localized if not relatively simple, b) it's not remained current as Windows has moved through many, many versions - some significant ones like NT, and c) new latent bugs have come to the surface due to b). Not addressing these in order to put in new features, is just asking for your customers to rebel IMHO. What is it about this Windows interface code - which new features in Poser 5 clearly avoid using? Is it really too hard to fix? Or did, as seems more probable, CL lose the legal right to fixes/updates to it somewhere along the line? Just wondering...

Jaager, Sorry to hear that. I tried the edits again myself, and they were OK, but it did take me 2 tries at the entire process :-( It's very easy to, say, pick up a stray less-than character (from the hidden trailing HTML BR command I presume) during the cut-n-paste operation. So I'll go ahead and repost over at PoserPros in your Poser 5 forum, as I'll be able to turn off HTML interpretation there. On my way...

Agree with everything whoopdat wrote - even including the being an Athlon owner bit. A 2.6 P4 might be pushing it, depends on the age of the chip (newer prodcution run the better), but a 2.4 800 fsb can sometimes be overclocked to a 1G fsb and an effective 3.0 CPU if you're lucky - and the DDR400 is really good. If you can push a 2.6 to 1G fsb that would be 3.25 and an amazingly fast system as the faster fsb speeds up just about the whole system. Of course you'd have to replace/upgrade all the memory, and read up on overclocking (www.tomshardware.com, www.hardocp.com, www.overclockers.com). And be lucky ;-)

Easiest way to add more buttons is thru nesting. Copy mainbuttons.py to a new name, e.g. mybuttons1.py, and use one button in mainbuttons.py to call mybuttons1.py, which in turn can call up to 9 new .py scripts in buttons 1 thru 9. For button 10 put in a call back to mainbuttons.py. Placing nested calls in each of the original 10 buttons will give you 90 scripts within just 1 level of nesting.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1403770

And then the follow up thread http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1418149.

From our analysis, it really makes little difference how you speed up your system - other than as others have said the video card plays little part, and the memory has a minimum (large!) threshold for a given scene below which it'll thrash.

Faster system = faster Poser execution.

This makes sense that there's no silver bullet - after you get over the initial disappointment - 'cos Poser 4/5 are just more features layered on the same basic "engine" from way, way back, when PC's were much simpler systems. Ergo it can't take advantage of any specific PC - or OS - developements in the last couple of decades!

Depends what sort. www.3dpmr.com have some to go with the free Santa Clause currently in freestuff.

Ockham, Thanks so much for the detailed - and useful - reply. I'm using Execfile expressly to call a python script which has the spawn command in it. (spawn appears to be in new in 1.6.) Reason for this is that with NT-based Windoze (2K, XP) the python script calling the external program becomes "In use" per Windoze until the external program goes to EOJ. I.e. you can't edit the python script in the meantime. So I don't want to risk tying up poserStartup.py for potentially the whole session. Problem is when you try to access an "In use" py script from within Poser Python it appears fine, until you go to execute it. Then the ugly dialog box appears! Looks as if I may have found a route to a way around it though... Attempting to delete an "in use" script will fail in Poser python. 'Course it's a tad like the old method of testing suspected witches by burning - by the time you find out that the file isn't locked, it's gone! Fortunately virtual things like files are somewhat easier to recreate :-) Thanks for the insight on close down detection - both could work for this situation.

Uh? How can this possibly be BAD for Poser? It may or may not be good, but it is a future path - and there's not a lot bad that E-Frontier can actually still do to Poser that CL hadn't already achieved! CL were down to 1 programmer, reportedly a Mac one. So even if the reported 50% development in Egisys were true that's still only 2 programmers, 1 per platform at best :-) And the german one looks to be gone as of last week. SR4 is overdue, and was not scheduled to fix much. Poser 6 was not even to be started until AFTER SR4 was released, and even then - per the CEO - was only to be Poser 5 "fixes" for which CL proposed charging us all over again. And based on their skill level as demonstrated inh their recent releasing of Poser Artist (it's Poser 4.0, NOT Poser 4.03 even though .03 came out in the last century!!!), SR4 looked like a gonner already. No, Poser under CL was terminal if not already rigor mortis. E-Frontier can only go up. The only way down from this point would be to stop selling it entirely, and it appears they wouldn't have needed to spend a penny to do that as "EgiSys closed doors Nov 30", so that eventuality seems unlikely at least for now. So let's give them a chance to at least announce their intentions before we start the ritualistic R'osity Poser Forum roasting, plu-ease!!!!!!!!!!!

sandoppe, just for clarification, there are 2 separate mechanisms at play here. The security code was all Interlok (PACE's), and is removed with SR2-1 - strictly it isn't removed from your system, just disconnected from Poser 5 so P5 is no longer a "watched" app. The Poser "habit" of accessing the 'Net is actually present in all versiosn from P4 on, although it is changed slightly with P5 it's functionality os much the same. It's not really trying to connect to the Internet, as much as trying to connect to any other Poser app on the network (to check that it's not another copy of itself), but the way it's implemented is rather broad, so it will try to connect to the Internet too - at least once. As far as we can tell - there was a thread on this some time back - it's not trying to "call home" per se. The ability to do that was part of the Interlok code, but whether it was actually ever used beyond the initial registration we have no way of knowing - most likely not given all the other issues CL had at that time. Personally - and I was very active in the "Pay Beta" of Poser 5 2.x - I could see no real change pre/post installing SR3. Certainly didn't destabilize anything, and didn't seem to change anything much, other than the re-load time. Initial load time was as bad or very slightly worse.

Er, SR2-1 (after all the "Betas") was the one with the Interlok removal (Dec '02). SR3 was post-Kupa in May '03. SR2 was crucial, SR3 had only minor fixes and faster load on a reload (a la P4).

You're welcome, but thanks for the feedback. I'd prefer to get rid of the circles stacking up the center but didn't find a way. It should be possible to use a solid background (vs. a transparent one) to prevent this, but it would have to be the same color for each library - and Poser 5 has a darkening color, library by library, so that would be equally ugly. I'd like to switch that varying background color off, as the Camera library background is way too dark, but I've not found the widget to turn for that one yet... BTW, see the centering error in the item display? The text for an item is correctly centered in the area to the left of the slider. But if you look carefully, you'll see the image is centered on the entire column - as if the slider wasn't there.

Alt-click the actual controls in P5, rather than the header (as you would in P4). Anyone figured how to get rid of the background image in P5? You could in P4/PP, but in P5 it comes back again on next seesion.

Been there, done that. Happens - to me anyway - each month so far. Different cause both times, so... call or email Daz, and wait. And yes it's bugs - but it doesn't seem right to discuss software problems which involve credit cards in a quasi-public forum, even if Daz should have fixed them - and their login problems - by now. And no, you can't report this to the PC section of the Daz forum 'cos you lose access to that too when you PC membership is cut!

Hmmm, getting back on track... akura, Re #10, there are 2 download icons on the right side of website, upper one is character, lower one is the hair.