I figured out how to get rid of the error! But I still don't fully understand why I was getting it. I think it was because I had all my Preview Render settings maxed out, and when I reduced them I have not had any further issues. All I can think of is maybe Poser was struggling to display complex shaders made up of many maps in the Preview window, but even then my system resources were far from taxed so I don't see how that was an issue. It worked though which I guess is the important thing.

Thank you everyone!

hborre posted at 10:34AM Tue, 03 October 2017 - #4315250

Don't recall any information published in the user manual, however, if the resolution is significantly high on all your texture maps, you will slow down your system to a crawl. It would be best to analyze your scene and determine if any background figure(s)/object(s) really require hi-res maps, especially if you are using depth of field in your render. Portraits and close-ups would definitely require hi-res, full figure and distant renders not so much.

The specific message I get is: "Texture could not be loaded. Image map file could not be found, or there is not enough memory to load." Since the figures will load individually without issue, I don't think it is an issue with finding the textures. I also get the message: You are out of memory! Please save a copy of your work and quit soon. Saving with low memory may result in a truncated or corrupt file." When this happens I am barely using half my system resources, the computer otherwise runs fine. In fact, if I don't go messing around too much before getting this message my system will even render the image at a fairly normal speed, (even though I am supposedly out of memory). I don't use too many effects, no depth of field, and my render settings are pretty low too. Most of the texture maps I use are actually quite small (on average about 2000x2000 or less, I never use anything above 4000x4000), but I do use about 40 of them per character. This has lead me to believe it is software limitation.

Boni posted at 10:30AM Tue, 03 October 2017 - #4315240

This could be an issue with your GPU or CPU as much as Poser. Keep that in mind. I have not read of any limitation, but they may have that answer at the SM forums.

Thanks for the reply, I will try looking there.

Check and see if you have Internet Explorer 11 on your computer. It may have been in your Windows updates - and it breaks Poser. There's a way around it if you have Pro, but with the vanilla versions you're limited to Flash and you have no options other than uninstalling IE11 altogether I'm fairly certain.

Laurie

Thank you so much! It was internet explorer. Everything is working fine now. Thanks again.

Thanks alot. The object I was working on was tiny (a cookie). I had noticed that making it bigger helped, but a cookie shouldn't really be foot in diameter. lol. Now I at least know what I need to work around. thanks again.

I have tried dabbling in this area as well, but there are few game makers out there that are easy to pick up without knowing a decent amount of coding. I had tried playing around with Adventure Game Studio. It is pretty straight forward, it's free, and there is a guy on youtube that has large number of easy to follow tutorials that basically give you the knowledge to build an entire game.

It is pretty easy to use Poser to make 2d sprites and pre-rendered backgrounds, but it is not good for video cut scenes or animated backgrounds. It is also not action oriented out of box either.

What programs do you all use that are kind of at the same user level that could make games in line with things like Myst /Zork and other old style adventure games?

Quote - Try including a figure off camera

That does work as well, that is probably why I have never noticed this before because it is very rare that I am messing around with just a single prop in a scene at a time. Is this a regular glitch, or is it just me?

Quote - I've pretty much tried everything...nothing I've tried has worked thus far. I don't know why it would be mesh splitting when everything's welded. I just don't know ;).

Laurie

What kind of objects do that for you? I had an issue with mesh splitting, especially with low poly cylinderical objects, and they were welded too. If it is shadows, I couldn't really guess at the problem as that is the reason I started this thread in the first place.

Quote - I dunno how that could fix it when I get it all the time and I NEVER use AO. Not on the lights and not in my shaders. Some meshes just get it...no matter what I do. No matter how much I smooth, subdivide, whatever. I never use canned or bought lights and make 99% of my own shaders.

I'll have to dig something out that I know had a problem and fool around with some settings ;).

Laurie

I don't know, it worked for me. I just upped the AO bias by about 10x and the lines disappeared. Does your issue look the same as mine? Is your's shadows, or is the mesh actually splitting?

Quote - This looks a lot like self-shadowing to me, probably from ambient occlusion. Do you have ambient occlusion or ray traced shadows enabled for some of the lights? Try increasing the shadow bias and AO bias, that should fix it.

I was mistaken. I just tried several renders and it is only doing it with the AO (I didn't realize how much I have ingrained it in all of my light sets). I tried increasing the bias under Scene AO Options and it has solved the problem! Thanks, you have seriously made my day!

Quote - This looks a lot like self-shadowing to me, probably from ambient occlusion. Do you have ambient occlusion or ray traced shadows enabled for some of the lights? Try increasing the shadow bias and AO bias, that should fix it.

I am using the HDR IBL lights that come with Poser 8, which is using AO. I have noticed these results with all lights though. I have tried adjusting these values with no noticeable change. I am curious though as I haven't really played around with it much, what does the shadow bias dial do exactly?

Also, sorry if I am being a broken record here, but does anyone know why scaling an object smaller reduces this effect, and increasing the size of an object makes it worse? I just feel like understanding this will be the solution to getting rid of the edge shadows.

Quote - OHHHHH! You're getting edge shading. I've run into this too many times to count. I've never found a good way to get rid of it (it normally shows up on surfaces that curve inward, but not so much on surfaces that curve outward...weird). If you find a way to get rid of this, please share. LOL.

And no, changing the smoothing angle doesn't help at all.

Laurie

For whatever reason, scaling the entire object / character / scene/ to around 5-10% more or less eliminates this, it is just a major pain because the lighting looks a bit off and you have to adjust the material settings to match the scale. But it works.

What I am saying is that I have found a way to make Poser accept long polys, I just want a better way. Look at the image I have posted (please ignore how awful it is, this model simply illustrates my point best)

At 100% scale it has nasty marks on the neck and legs. This is even worse at 200% scale. But at 10% scale they are virtually gone. I also want to point out that around the neck the polys are relatively square. The issue I have with using 10% scale is that it creates shadow distortions (like under the nose). This concept works in reverse too by increasing the camera scale.

Is there anyway to alter the default sense of scale in Poser to get the quality of 10% scale without the shadow issues? Maybe someone else who knows better about lighting or cameras settings can build on this.

Thanks.

I will have to post the mesh tomorrow, but it is because it uses a lot of long polys. I guess specifically what I want to understand is what scale has to do with the issue, and how I can manipulate it to overcome the issue. I model in Wings3d if that has any bearing at all.

I don't have Poser on this computer, but the meshes use some sections of long 4 sided polygons, which is where the issue lies. It doesn't matter whether I set polygon smoothing at 80, or 180, it still does it. Describing it, I have a character where the neck has elongated polygons up the neck, and at the vertice of each polygon is a long blotchy shadow that makes it look like they have gills. Only it does this everywhere. Down the arms, legs, torso. Even areas that aren't excessively enlongated, if they are low poly, it does it.

The issue is related to scale. I have modelled too many low-polygon objects to redo everything. If I have to keep rendering everything at 5% scale I will, but doing that gives grainy shadow effects and it messes with material settings, which I guess brings up another point - Is there a way to scale material zones with the scale of an object? I didn't notice that Poser does this until I started rendering this way, but if you scale down an object, the material settings don't scale with it. A material with a slightly lumpy surface turns into a spiky concrete texture when it scales down to 5%.

Maybe I am just being stubborn, but there has to be another work around.