Preservere long enough and you will wish all software behaved like this. A lot of it is keyboard-shortcut based. Learn those, and the incredible power of this program will be unleashed. It is user-friendly, but you have to spend a bit of time playing with it.
Google Blender basics tutorial and I get:
blenderunderground.com/
www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~jli023/opengl/blender3dtutorial.htm
blenderunderground.com/2007/07/18/blender-basics-part-1-video-tutorial-completed/#more-19

and heaps more. You can get the basics here:
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

The biggest frustration I have is that most tutorials were done in a (slightly) older version of Blender, so you can't expect things to be exactly at the same place. However, that's not a problem limited to Blender - I also use Silo 2... which has its own learning curve, believe me, and guess what? all the tutorials out there are for Silo 1.4. In any event, the shortcut keys remain (pretty much) the same so go for it - you'll be glad you did. One hand on the keyboard, one on the mouse.

Good, that eliminates those issues.

Now, we might be barking up an entirely wrong tree, but it's worth looking at anyway. Even though you have two gig of virtual memory, it might still be worth setting rendering up to run as a separate process:
Edit-> Preferences-> Render tab-> tick the separate process box.

Also, another issue I've encountered which PhilC's helped me with (and which might well be the case with a freebie) is that the mesh of that conforming item may not be entirely intact. Here is a thread that goes into the problem at some depth:
www.philc.net/forum/viewtopic.php
Difference here to your dilemma was: Poser didn't freeze, but there were some non-polygon verts out there causing dramas in OBJ2CR2. I brought up the offending garment's .obj file in Programmer's File Editor, a free program I'd be happy to get you you if you email me. Nice for looking at huge text files, which those cr2 and obj files seem to be, for the most part.

BTW, you say your virtual memory is 2 gig... how much is your actual RAM?

Quote - All Clothing and characters, windows XP Pro, Thanks for your time...

I know this sounds like a stupid question but have you recently cleaned out temp files? As in, done a search for *.tmp -- and when you did the search, made sure you checked hidden files and folders?
Do you use MSN Messenger?

Is your computer slowing down noticeably in other apps?

When was the last time you cleaned out your registry?

How much software is on your pc that you never use?

Defragged any time recently?

I know, lot's of questions, but often times the issues with programs freezing lie there.

Quote - The makers of Camtasia are giving away old versions free:

SnagIt screen capture tool:
http://www.labnol.org/software/download/free-download-snagit-with-serial-number/1841/

Camtasia screen recorder:
http://www.labnol.org/software/download/download-camtasia-studio-free/1829/

I think they're both windows only...but they're free!  Maybe the rest of you can get them to work in an emulator like wine?

Um, looks like the offer expired on Jan 7... or did I read the update note wrong? Would have been a great tool, too...

Quote - the multiple undo feature is enough for me to love p7 :)  there are so many things i love about p7 , it much more stable to me.  the firefly render engire is faster and works better...

I agree, it's like a more mature product - this time, they've got the kinks worked out of it before they published it. I'm quite pleased with Poser 7. Now, if only they would develop a Linux version...

Quote - In the MP there is also a "surfer wave" already made:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=59557

Ah, that's the beauty of Blender - had me a play, and am making this group of wave objects that will show waves at different stages and also different types of waves. Beach-break doesn't look like reef-break, and a Malibu wave feels nothing like what I used to paddle out to at Kaimu beach at Kalapana -- now long gone, Madame Pele decided it was a prime real estate area and made some more.
Like Dave's model, my models will only work for still shots - they are not animated (at this point, however, Blender does support animation and there's a lot of playing around going on with respect to water behaviour in Blender). Anyway, so far the biggest challenge is getting the textures believeable and so the rooster-tail spray from the bottom turn will have to queue up behind that accomplishment-in-the-making. Not there yet, but we're definitely getting closer.

I must say I do like the idea of just sitting down and seeing if I can create some of these objects myself. Working in Blender has become quite natural, and as one gets to know some of the fine artists in the community who use Blender and they share tips and tricks, one is loathe to try anything else.

Thanks Ockham and Acadia... I've been studying those SeaWater material room settings... head is spinning. No clue how to make this work for me, but having fun tweaking values and rendering to see what it gives... most of the time, the wall of water still looks like a textured concrete surface... I'll keep trying and let you know how I get on.

I do like the ability to right-click over a complex mesh and select, say, a forearm as opposed to the left middle finger hidden behind it. That makes the process a lot more intuitive. I find it's quite a bit more stable too, and as far as memory management, rendering in a separate process makes those issues disappear.

Another option you might try is this brilliant group of Blender Newbie tutorials by a wonderful clued-up Blender expert, and she uses version 2.45, which is current as of today (Monday, Jan 14th, 2008)... her stuff can be found here. I've found her approach very encouraging and well-written. There are more tutorials being developed as we speak...

Hi oldskoolPunk

Thanks for taking the time to explain centering ... I've put together a page based on your explanation, hoping I got it right:

http://www.tightbytes.com/entryView.php?tbstory_id=20086

I'm going to have a go this arvie at using the proportional edit tool... thanks for that heads-up.

Cheers,
Robyn

Hi,

I've taken fredsmith's advice and am having a play with lattices. For those who have experienced frustration with even just associating a lattice with an object:

http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php

may enlighten you. Perhaps. The disclaimer stands that these pages are not a tutorial, but rather a blow-by-blow, "here's what I'm doing" sort of thing. Anyone reading it and has a better way, please let me know.

I've noticed that when in object mode, there seems to be an object centre - I'm assuming that it is where the object components are measured from? When I work on this mesh (the dress), the object centre appears to be different from Victoria 3's centre - is that going to present a problem? Anticipating that it might be, I've tried to align the centres so that they are in the same place, just in case.

Also, these lattices. I only want to deform the skirt part of the dress - do I really need to make the lattice completely enclose the mesh of the whole dress?

Cheers,
Robyn

Okay - those pages are kinda roughed out:

http://www.tightbytes.com/poseIndex.php

They are open for comment, criticism, addendums, even a few "hey, that's the hard way to do that!" type comments - I'm still learning this, and it looks very much like I will be for some time to come. At work (I'm a nurse in an operating theatre) I see some of my colleagues struggle with Word and Excel, doing things the hard way because they've limited themselves to only using what they know instead of exploring the rest of the program. I find myself in a similar situation with Blender. :unsure: So, if you see me doing something schtoopid because I've failed to enlighten myself on some tool in Blender, pleeeeeze let me know...

Cheers,
Robyn

Hi LiquidAnime,
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I guess I'd have to explain how I export the model from Poser first, and then import into Blender. I'll put together a quickie little tutorial on that if you want.
Cheers,
Robyn

Thanks for that - got me barking up the right tree... this one is amazing!:

http://blenderartists.org/cms/index.php?id=31#Getting%20Started

Not sure if I'm doing this right, but it looks and feels right. I have the model I'm working on (the dress) in layer 1, and Victoria (all the groups that make up that character) in layer 11. I start, say, with the hip area... move just the hip into layer 12 and make it and layer 1 active. With the dress selected, TAB and with the mouse cursor over the button panel F7... in the Draw section, select Wire for Drawtype and in the Objects and Links section I see:
"OB: LBDress04"
with and 'F' on the drop-down tab... nothing in the Par: box, and an 'Add To Group' button. After selecting the area I want to group and 'p' to detach, move the detached area to another layer and with it selected click that 'Add to Group' button. In this case, it gets named 'Hip'... and so on.
Selecting with the lasso thingie is pretty quick.... - actually, as I get used to Blender, things doooo seem to be getting a bit quicker and more intuitive. The big challenge, as I see it, will be making sure I do my initial subdivide of polygons (and extrusions) correctly, or the item becomes impossible to shape properly. At this point I do the shaping in Subsurf mode, but I will have a look at lattices and see where they might come into play. I have noticed that a 4-sided polygon and a triangle have completely different deformation behaviours and will affect how that body part or clothing item looks. So whilst I accept your compliment, oldSkoolPunk: "nice touch on the wrinkles in the shoulder" it certainly wasn't deliberate or by design. Guess there's a lot of ground to cover with regards to modeling. If you know of any tutes - I've already checked out the ones on Blender.org - that deal with this aspect of modeling, I'd be deeply indebted to you.

Cheers,
Robyn

ps... Thanks to you all for all your feedback!