I've run into this with some free character MATs I've downloaded; it seems to be something with the MAT that is messed up; as soon as I applied a different MAT, it went away. Putting the first MAT back in made the eye mess up again.

Athlon 64 (K8) does have a couple of big advantages over the K7 chips; the integrated memory controller and SSE2 support are pretty important improvements, not even counting the 64 bit support. My desktop system is an Athlon XP 1800 (Nforce2 MB) w/ 1 Gig of RAM and my laptop is an Athlon 64 3200 w/ 1 Gig of RAM. In side by side renders, the XP will take on average 3x longer than the 64. Since you already have a pretty high end XP, I don't know if the improvement would be that dramatic, and I don't know how much of a boost OpenGL really gives Poser (the desktop has a 64mb GeForce4, the laptop has a 128MB Radeon 9700), but the Athlon 64 should still give you a big performance boost just owing to the better architecture. In every benchmark I've ever seen, the lowest end Athlon 64 destroys the highest end Athlon XP (and the Pentium 4).

Do you have any anti-spyware or security program running? Sometimes these programs can prevent your browser from using cookies.

Macs have their own share of holes and bugs, I think it's just MS get more press because they have a much larger installed base and aren't exactly everyone's favorite company. nickedshield is right; WinXP's biggest problem is the integrated Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. I'd recommend Mozilla Firefox (as I'm sure many people here are) - it's free, and doesn't have nearly the security problems IE does. Using common sense on the Internet (like just turning it off when you're not using it), installing Anti-spyware and Anti-virus software are your best defense - Mac or PC.

I actually use a laptop I bought a couple of months ago as my main computer, and it's been great. I got it from Vicious PC (they specialize in "gaming" PCs and let you choose the components). What you'll find if you poke around the vendors on the web is that there is really only about 5 or 6 actual companies that make laptops; most companies just slap their name on it and give it some cosmetic changes (for example, most Dell laptops are made by Quanta of Taiwan), so you're likely to keep seeing basically the same machines over and over. Knowing this, I wouldn't be afraid to check out some of the smaller, "boutique" vendors on the web. This website is a pretty good resource for researching vendors - they take feedback from users. http://www.resellerratings.com/ I would look for a laptop with a Athlon 64 or higher end Pentium M processor, at least 1 GB of memory and a dedicated video card with it's own memory (like a ATI Radeon 9700). Pay close attention to the rotational speed of the hard drive; in many laptops they are only 4200RPM (versus 7200RPM in a typical desktop system). If the manufacter offers an upgraded HD (a faster one - higher rotational speed) this is a worthwhile upgrade. I've had high end laptops with slow HDs and it kills the overall performance of the machine. The screen size is a matter of personal taste; mine has the 15.4" widescreen (this is very common) and I think it's fine, but there are many (like the mentioned Acer) that go as high as 17". I actually travel with my laptop, so I don't like the bulk and weight the large screen laptops have. As a ballpark figure for a good laptop, I would say you're looking at about $1500. I don't really use Macs that much, and while they have their strong points, I've always considered them quite expensive versus a comparible PC. As far as image editors go; I like Corel Photopaint a lot; I've used it and Photoshop interchangably over the years, but Photopaint (now part of the Corel Draw package) is a heck of a lot cheaper. Hope that helps.

The email I got from CL lead me to believe that the SR should be out this week or next. I think everyone gets the bug sooner or later; in my experience, it seems like anytime you start dealing with large textures, you run into the problem (stands to reason: large textures = more memory).

The Compaq looks very good, I think Athlon 64 is the way to go with stuff like Poser (integrated memory controller and very powerful floating point processor). The only thing I would warn you about with it is the hard drive is probably going to be it's biggest bottleneck - looks like it's only 4200 RPM. Most laptop HDD are S L O W .... they are built for low power consumption and heat, not performance. You'll notice this when reading/writing huge files (like the kind Poser can make), or when Windows really starts thrashing the swap file. You can always upgrade it though.

Message edited on: 05/09/2005 13:23

One other big thing to note: Poser 6 has a know memory bug, which causes it to give the "out of memory" message even on a high end system with lots of RAM. There is supposed to be a service release soon to fix this. To answer your main question: To put it simply: file fragmentation can occur "naturally" on any system any time you read and write data from a hard drive; the more often you do so, the more likely it is to occur. Poser pushes around a heck of a lot of data when it reads and writes a figure; if it (or any other app) crashes out, it drastically increases the likelyhood of file fragmentation; this will happen on any drive or partition that Windows is working with; putting Poser 6 on it's own partition is not likely to change this, it will most likely just keep most of the fragmentation local. As far as partitions go: You can only change the partition setting by being logged in as an administrator and using the disk manager tool. I would really not recommend messing with the partitions or the swap file unless you really know what you are doing. I'm assuming that you have a name brand PC with the PC maker's restore information on the drive. Changing the partition settings requires reformatting part or all of your HDD and this often will mess up the restore partition or the restore program (affecting your ability to return the system to it's "new" condition). As the previous posters have stated, this is really not a very good setup to use with something like Poser; the best thing you can do for it is to increase the system memory; Windows XP itself hogs almost 200 MB of system memory just to run the operating system, and given that you have an integrated video card with shared memory, this doesn't leave much memory for anything else let alone Poser. The lack of memory causes Windows to hammer the hard drive even more by using the swapfile - again, increasing your rate of fragmentation. Adjusting the size of the swapfile will not make a difference; performace will always take a hit as the system is using the much slower HDD then the much faster RAM. I would recommend upgrading the memory to at least 512 MB, more if possible. The other worthwhile upgrade would be to use a dedicated 3D video card (ATI or Nvidia); even the cheapest dedicated video card will usually outperform an integrated graphics chipset, and won't rob system RAM. Poser 6 has OpenGL support that will give it a boost when running on an OpenGL compliant video card. Finally, if it is possible in your system, I would look at upgrading the processor & motherboard to a Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon. Of course, after all this, it might just be better off to get a new computer for Poser... Hope that helps at all.

I run Poser on my laptop and it's great; more stable and faster in fact then my (older) desktop system. Athlon 64 3200+, 1 Gig DDR 400, 7200RPM HDD, 128 Radeon 9700 Video, 15.4" Widescreen; about 6 pounds. I LOVE IT!!!! If I were to give you some advice, check out some of the so called "boutique" vendors, and know exactly what kind of spects you are looking for. I've noticed that a lot of the "big boys" - Dell, HP et all tend to cut a lot of corners on the components by using slow HDD, integrated video or slow RAM to get to a certain pricepoint or they use older technology.

A good way to get the graphic novel/comic book look in your renders is to use the "Z-Flatten" python script that you can get in the freestuff.

Well...I'm no great technical expert on Poser but from what I understand, the lighting models were changed pretty drastically in Poser 6 from 5 (I went from 4 to 6, so I can't verify this myself). Along with the "no light" effect you mentioned, I've noticed that when doing a render with "ignore shader trees" checked, I'll sometimes also get some weird background and floor shading effects (i.e: shaded when they shouldn't have been).

My .02 about the whole situation: (climbs on soapbox) On one hand, I have some sympathy for CL; to write a program this complex from the ground up for what is basically a niche use has got to be cost prohibitive. Poser is not, and never will be, a mass market program the way a MS Office or even Adobe Photoshop is - and even those programs are only incrementally updated. I don't think it's fair to accuse the folks at CL of being greedy or lazy, I think in the large scheme of things they just don't have the amount of resources needed to make the program perfect. I went from version 4.03 to 6, and I was actually pretty shocked how seemingly little it had changed, until I got to know the program better and came to appreciate the new interface tweaks. I really like the program, and I don't want to even use version 4 anymore, which says something about the good parts of 6. On the other hand... The problems with Poser don't seem to with hardware compatiblity: across the range of system hardware the problems are the same. My three year old, assembled from spare parts Athlon XP 1800 will crap out in the same places my brand new Athlon 64 3200 will working with the same content. The problem seems to be that the rendering engine itself has some pretty large flaws that I find it hard to believe that CL didn't know about, especially since it seems 5 has the same sorts of problems. I think the problem then, is of what they focused on in the development of version 6. I would have rather that they made the "basic" functions of the program bullet-proof (like you know...being able to actually RENDER!) then spend development time and money putting a bunch of features of dubious quality or use in.

Hmmm...then I must be trying to ride on the express elevator to the penthouse everyday... ;-)

FYI: "Hyper Threading" must have programs written for it to take advantage of it just like a dual processor set up - I don't think it would help you at all in Poser. You are still using system resources while you render it you launch another application; in fact, most higher end PCs can run other programs in the background while rendering.

Hey thanks stewer! I think that is my problem! I'll give it a try. And yes...the Win 64 copy I have is a pre-release beta for testing stuff like this.