What I do achieve a "shadow only" effect is

1.  Select the character

2.  Open  the "Properties" tab for that character (right side menu under your libraries menu)

3.  Uncheck the "Visible in Camera" option.

That makes the selected character invisible in a render, but it's shadow appears.  Useful FX in many works.

I've looked at the utilities offered by Ken 1171_ Designs, and they look very helpful. However, since they appear to apply to Poser 12, and not Poser 11 or Poser 13, and are undoutedly some sort of Python magic, I'm reluctant to spend money on Ken 1171_ Designs' programs.

Modifying the Windows registry is way above my head and I don't want to risk disabling my PC just to try and track down Poser 11  bugs.

This morning with fresh eyes, I waded through all my directories (hidden and non-hidden) for Poser 11 references and content and deleted it all.  I re-installed Poser 11 and IT WORKED!!!!

So, the Poser support people responded to my inability to get Poser 11 to work in spite of clean installs with the following:

"Poser's library window is really just an embedded Chromium web browser. If the library window is crashing it would only take out Chromium and not crash Poser it's self. That situation can cause a blank library window.

If you've removed all the preferences, included base content and reinstalled that leaves us with something in Windows has got messed up and is preventing Poser from running. Sometimes Windows tries to be helpful and changes registry settings for Poser that it really shouldn't. 

If you don't know exactly what you're doing don't mess with the registry. You can easily break Windows. If you're not 100% comfortable in RegEdit use a commercial registry cleaner. Backup everything before you try any of this. You don't need to uninstall poser to try the registry fixes.

Registry entries on Windows that may cause problems:

Background Activity Moderator (BAM). Seems to cause Poser to run as only an idle task. Cause massive performance hit. Search the following key for instances of Poser, FFrender and Queue executable. Delete all references. This will grow back. There's no way to stop Windows from helping.

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\bam\State\UserSettings\S-1-5-21-3029514950-4203302119-1443304429-1001

Fault Tolerant Heap (FTH). Seems to get triggered after a crash. Causes very slow performance. Search for Poser executables in this key:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers

You can stop Windows from ever doing this again (and probably should). FTH can be disabled in this key:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\FTH\Enabled

Set enabled key to 0 (zero)"

Can anyone help me decipher this?  I'm really nervous about messing with the Windows registry.

"Try a clean uninstall of Poser 11. Follow these instructions:

https://support.posersoftware.com/kb/faq.php?id=3"

I've done a clean install a couple of times, but the problem persists. Poser 11 crashes when it opens. It looks like the crash happens when it tries to load the content library. I've removed the libraries so that there is nothing left of the Poser 11 files, but it still crashes. I have an open trouble ticket on this.

These sorts of problems should not exist with Poser. It's an expensive program, but not supporting Python scripts and re-installation that requires a degree in computer science is not what users should experience. I suspect the "buggy" nature of Poser is one of the reasons customers -- the people who pay Rendo -- are migrating to DAZ rather than staying with Poser. grrrr!

I'd like to keep Poser 11 to run the old Python scripts.  I downloaded the current version of Poser 11, but it still crashes and closes when launch it.  Any suggestions?

davo posted at 1:48 PM Wed, 20 October 2021 - #4429161

Did you also get these files deleted?

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Poser Pro\11

I see the ini file is in there on my system

Thanks for responding, 'tho as the tech support at Poser has yet to respond to the trouble ticket I filed.  Guess there's no technical support apart from posting problems on user forums.  That lack of technical support is not gonna keep Poser competitive with DAZ.

I suspect that the problem arises from Poser's compatibility with the DPI/resolution of your screen. Take a look at the solution I found for my somewhat similar problem posted here ...

https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2961699

I found a solution. It requires opening the Properties for Poser 11, then the Compatibility menu, then click the option for changing the high DPI settings, then overriding DPI options to allow the System (Enhanced) to set the DPI. Apparently, with high resolution displays, scaling the program is hard (I don't understand much of the gobbly-gook descriptions of this on the Internet), but this worked for me. It also fixed the problem of teeny-tiny menus and I could change the user interface back to 1 rather than 2.50 to read the menu items.

This is the menu you're looking for ...

jarek2001, changing the Display/Preview Options from OpenGL to SreeD software (whatever SreeD is???) seemed to fix my issue. I suspect that the OpenGL that my new Intel itegrated graphics support will need some adjustment. But, thanks again for the solution!!!

I did the same. We'll see whether version 307 eliminates the glitch.

Thanks!

Thanks. Two follow up questions.

Did you submit a trouble ticket?

I found my renders in the render cache in files with an .EXR extention. Do you know how to open them or, better yet, convert them to a PNG or JPG file?

I'm experiencing the same issue … missing "recent renders" displayed in Poser even though the renders are all saved in the render cache, but with a weird extension .exr that I have no idea how to open. Has this issue been resolved?

I was braced for the worst, but found that the transition to P 11.2 to be flawless. I expected bugs that did not arise. I expected the servers to be overwhelmed by folks downloading the software, but they were not. The Premium content was a very pleasant surprise. Great job and thanks to all involved.