P8 is a program that leaks memory constantly. 
2 or 4 gigs and a duo core wont be enough.
You are making a  gamble.

Quote - I was wondering if someone could tell me the difference between DAZ Studio and Poser. I mean, what are the general pros and cons?

The main thing I'm worried about is that I have over 17gigs of Poser stuff in my Runtime, and that I won't be able to import anything. I heard the lighting was better in DS, but I dunno.

Any opinions? I mean, I figure I may as well download it if it's free, but I'd like some outside opinions first.

If I was starting out now, I would go with Daz3d.
Daz3d is a free program that supports the most famous poser figures around.
Poser is a relatively expensive program that comes up with ugly figures and crashes often.

Poser comes with all kinds of junk that is fundamentally unstable, while daz comes with  basic functions that are very stable, and which you can upgrade later.

I've seen many daz renders that are just as professional as poser renders.
I believe personally that Daz3d is the future.

Quote - Hello all,

I bought the Poser update from PPro to P8 after SR1 was available. Two sentences from the SM website:

• "Render PHOTOREALISTIC or stylized art and animations for print, web or video projects"

• "Poser 8 has been PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZED so you can pose your characters and RENDER them FASTER on today's multiple processor systems"

Well the render took more than 4 hours on a workstation with a Xeon 5520 CPU, 12 GB of ram, an ATI 8700 Firepro GPU and a Western Digital VelociRaptor harddisk.

Frankly speaking: All the time trying to understand PoserPro, I thought it's my fault that I don't get renders that are at least a little bit realistic. Now I have Poser8. After all the hype about the it's speed it's superior render quality and so on I thougt it will be better. But the result is still not what I expected. Or more harsh, It's completely useless (remember it's already SR1 of the 8th version of the software and it still can't render a simple room with "Indirect Light").

Is it still me who uses wrong settings all the time? Do you get better results with a reasonable render time?

Those ones of you that use other software (e.g. DAZ studio or Carrera, Lightwave, Max, Cinema etc.): does that software also need more than 4 hours to render something like I got? (and yes I used high settings, yes I know it's CPU intensive stuff, but 4 hours for that result?)

It's a serious question. E.g. Lightwave is available for under 900$ (still a lot of money). Might it be the better software even for a hobbyist? Or should I wait again for SR2? Should I wait for PPro 2010. Will it be better with that one?
I am not sure anymore.

Thanks a lot for your opinions.

Try Vue 7.

 No.

I am rude and offensive on purpose. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for. You read me  absolutely right.

There is nothing greater in life than being loyal to a privately owned corporation and their shoddy products and elitist attitudes.  What are we, if not loyal consumers.? I consume, therefore I am. Cats be damned.

Quote - nothing wrong with MIT, mind ye.
the CalTech of the East, or so they say :lol:

I am sorry but there is something seriously wrong with MIT, if the students come out thinking that they are intellectually superior beings . And that's without even reading a single paragraph of Friedrich Nietzsche.

*Obviously, MIT grads got to where they are because they are intellectually superior and/or had the drive that others didn't. 

*Wow. Thus spoke Zarathustra.

I was using Norton for a long time. I also use Dr Web cure it. But they couldn't detect the virus. 

Thank you for your help.
As it turns out my computer indeed had a virus (a fake msupdate.exe). My usual Antivirus programs couldn't detect it, but SuperAnti Spyware found it. The virus had been in the system for quite some time.  I don't know yet if the problem is over. I think I am going to reinstall psp9 and some other programs, just to be sure.

Thanks for the link!
It seems that other psp users have had the same problem.
I had already increased the size of the virtual memory like they suggested, but it  made no difference.
Some counter strike players seem to get the same error message as well.
Curiouser and curiouser!...

I did a few runs with memmaker, but the program found no problems with the RAM.

I have Sp3.
I'm starting to think that  this is some odd, rare problem with Windows Xp. Maybe a bad installation or something...

*To rule out the obvious, have you installed or uninstalled anything around the time it started?
Windows xp sp1 and 2 have a hotfix for it.

No. Nothing comes to mind. The problem started with paintshop pro 9. I though it was related to psp9 poor handling of memory  and my firewall messing things up, so I thought nothing of it.
This was when I first started installing programs to my then  new PC. I initially thought the error was a result of a bad installation of psp9. I was too lazy and didn't want to reinstall it.
 I thought it didn't matter but now I get that error a bit more often and with other programs as well.

I'll have to run that memmaker during the night, so the program has enough time to check out the memory properly.

On upgrading your computer to a new one. If you can afford it then go with an intel I7 quad core processor. The 920 is the best bang for the buck. Its in the same price range as some other quad cores but it has the benefit of hyper threading. Meaning its close to the same as having eight cores instead of four. It will slice through renders like butter.. :-) This would also put you in a position to not have to upgrade for quite some time.

Thank you very much for the info. I'll have to check out the prices and see  how much the upgrades end up costing.

 Thanks onnetz for the link.
No, I don't think the error message ever  pointed to a specific name or a file.. The error message is more like a general "memory cannot be read".It doesn't pinpoint to a specific  file that's corrupt.

Oh really? That's some excelent info, thanks. I do a plethora of renders per day. I use poser for making  comics, so I do many renders of a single pz3 file.  I have a dual core. I guess I'm going to rethink my upgrades now. Thanks for the info.

That's true, luckily. I was about to upgrade my computer anyway during christmas holidays.

Thanks.
That's what I was afraid off.