Problem is that you cannot download Poser4 or Pro pack. In the US Poser4 costs $219, but in the Netherlands I have to pay $319!!! For that price, do they fly it to the Netherlands with Concorde ? Pro Pack costs $199 in the US but $250 for the Netherlands...

Thanks to all of you. Indeed I didn't get the reference to ERC. I thought it would be some kind of tool in the utilities section. Just took a glimpse at that tutorial. Seems I have a lot of reading to do :-) Marc

I got exactly the same message trying out how to make morhps for the first time yesterday(also with AMAPI). The problem in my case was that I modified a nurb, but the object had other nurbs that I did not modify. I exported the whole object again as OBJ, and when I imported it in Poser I got that same error message. When I made sure I deleted all nurbs that I didn't change it worked fine. I just tried the head and it worked fine too. Did you maybe also export the eyes? In that case you would have to deleted the eyes in AMAPI so that when you load the morph only the modified vertices for the head are imported. It makes sense afterwards, but it did take a while for me yesterday to figure that out :-) Marc

Dell does not use any AMD processors. So they can't have been at the top of the list because those were Athlon XP 1800+ machines :-))) As I said I before I prefer homebuilt for my own computers too, but if I was going to buy or advice a brand PC, then I'd choose Dell over Compaq, IBM, HP and such. Or the alternative I suggested, if you have a good computer shop nearby.

Not quite. I'd like a Athlon XP instead of a P4 :-))) But indeed Dell gives you quite a lot of room to make your own choices.

Buying your own computer is great, but it only works when you are able to do your own support. But most people are not. Those people had better buy a Dell or something like that. A compromise is to choose all components of your machine, but to let the local computer store build it for you. Marc

Amazing, removing that silly dancing guy sure made a difference. My rendertime changed from 43 seconds to 37 seconds. (finally the same score as Johnnydnh :-))))

Just installed XP pro on that same 10GB partition. Only other thing installed: Wacom tablet drivers. Not even the ATI Radeon drivers. Rendering result again 43 seconds. (just shows again that the 3D card is not used by Poser) I don't have XP home edition, so I can't test that. Anybody have any bright ideas what could be causing the difference with johnnydnh's machine? (Apart from XP home edition being that much different from XP Pro?) Marc

My machine finally finished defragmentation. Rendering again took 44 seconds. Exactly the same as before LOL! Tried on my Win98 installation. (without proper display drivers, just in 64048016 because it somehow refuses other resolutions) Rendertime was 45 seconds. Did a fresh install of Win2000 advanced server on that first 10GB partition with FAT32 filesystem. Only installed DirectX8.1, Radeon8500 drivers and Wacom tablet drivers. Rendering now took 43 seconds. Wow! 1 second faster :-)))) So, it's not the filesystem, it's not the place on the harddisk. It's not the harddisk itself. So why is Johnnydnh's system faster? I can't believe it is because he is running XP, but I might try an install of that later this week. Marc

Johnnydnh: I didn't only try it with Task manager open. (Of course not, I wanted the fastest time ;-)))) But it didn't make any difference. I'm suprised that you have a 5400rpm disk. So apparantly it's not just the harddisk speed. Filesystem, defragmentation and place on the harddisk could still make a difference. I installed norton speedisk but it is still defragmenting (already two hours...) I can't really think of other things that could cause the difference. Marc

Johnnydnh: I don't think it is the motherboard. I have an Epox 8KHA+ with that same KT266A chipset. In most benchmarks these mobo's perform exactly the same. Did you also have harddisk activity? I know my harddisk is still one of the fastest available. I've seen some Maxtors that are just a tad faster when only one program is accessing them. A D740 model if I remember correctly. Is that the one you have? FAT32 is usually also a little faster then NTFS. Marc

Hmm 73 seconds quite a large difference from 44. A dual board will have some overhead, but not that much. Did you see the same change in CPU utilization I saw? Did you hear harddisk activity? What is your harddisk type and config?

44 seconds. AMD XP 1800+, 1GB DDR RAM, 60GB IBM 60GXP. I noticed some interesting things. Creatings the shadow maps takes about 6 seconds. 100% CPU usage. The rest is then 38 seconds where CPU usage is not 100% anymore. It fluctuated between 80 and 50% with an average around 70%. During that time I hear the harddisk. It seems Poser is not only showing the rendered image on screen but also writing it on the harddisk. Jim, since you have exactly the same rendering time, I am very interested in the rest of your configuration. (HD type, partitions, FAT32 or NTFS etc) I'm suspecting the harddisk to be the bottleneck. My harddisk configuration is not the fastest possible because I have 10GB FAT32 partition (win9x) and then a 50GB NTFS partition on which I run Poser. Maybe it would be a little faster if located on that 10GB partition. (I've been thinking about installing w2k adv server on that partition so I might have some info on that later) I'll also look at defragmenting the drive. (first have to install a better defragger since the default one with w2k is pretty hopeless) Marc

I agree with PJF. Poser CANNOT make use of the second processor. I tested that on my dual cpu system before I decided to buy a new single cpu system. Also this scene doesn't take much memory so that won't make much difference either. I've seen before that poser works faster on WinXP/Win2000 than on Win9x. Rendering in Poser doesn't make any use of the video card. BTW the dual Xeon guy didn't say if he enabled bump maps, texture maps and cast shadows. If you don't do all that I can get 10 seconds too. I highly doubt the 6s claim too. I have lots of experience with Xeon workstations and servers and a Xeon is NOT much faster than a normal processor. (about 12% in a best case scenario) My score is 39 seconds. AMD XP 1800+ 1 GB DDR Ram Windows2000 Prof. I did notice that the processor wasn't at 100% power during rendering. Also I have plenty of memory, but I still heard it do a few small things on the harddisk. I also think it would be a good idea to post the scene so that we all use exactly the same setup. Also noticed that rendering time was about the same with 144 dpi (forgot to check the resolution first time) You might want to post a more complex scene to the freebies section to get a better idea of what faster processors and more memory do in complex scenes that you normally use. Marc

Let's try to get this thread back on-topic, and correct some statements made in the thread. I can't comment on MAC vs PC because I've never owned a Mac (Macs are quite rare in the Netherlands) If you use a PC then either use a Windows2000 or WindowsXP flavour. Their memory management is much more robust then Win9x. Don't be tricked into buying an expensive videocard like a GF4 for Poser. They are only usefull if you play games. (And sometimes in 3DS Max but that is not what you asked about). Poser does not make use of any 3D acceleration features in those cards. Do not buy a dual processor system for Poser. Poser is a single threaded application and cannot make any use of the second processor. Rendertimes in Poser are only dependent on CPU speed and amount of RAM. Harddisk speed is not important, as long as you have enough ram so that you do not have to swap. (I bought 1GB DDR Ram for this reason) Your CPU speed can never be too much for Poser. Both a P4 and AMD XP will give you excellent performance, but if you want the fastest model the Intel processor will cost you much more than the fastest AMD XP model. I saw some comments about the heat the AMD XPs produce. If you have a good computer casing that won't give you any problems at all. Especially not with an XP which is already cooler then the older Athlon. I use a FK320 case (www.fkusa.com) with a simple/cheap coolermaster EP5-6I11 and the temperature of the CPU has never exceeded 40 degrees C.