I'm about to take on reorganizing my libraries (a mess, and I haven't even had Poser that long!) ... what exactly should I be looking for to change in the various files if I start moving things to new folders so that I don't break any file references? A second worry ... once I've moved stuff to where I like it, what do I need to do with any new items I've downloaded/purchased (such as new clothing, figures, poses, etc.) to make sure it works properly with the files I've already moved? Thanks!

Speaking of multitasking ... I've found that the rest of the system (NOT Poser's interface!) works much better if I use the Windows Task Manager to lower Poser's priority just one notch while it's rendering. That enables me to surf the web, check e-mail, etc. with relatively good performance while the render is taking place - and on the flip side, because web browsing and reading e-mail aren't compute-intensive (some CPU while you're clicking the interface, then back to idle), the render time on Poser isn't adversely affected either. Of course, this only works if you're not running some other CPU-burner ... obviously running video editing or another renderer with the priorities skewed like this is going to stop Poser in its tracks. So will an overly-agressive screen saver ... A "reduce priority while rendering" option might be a nice feature for Poser.

Problem SOLVED: I changed the color depth on my video card from 16 bit to 32 bit, tried a test render, and it works just peachy. I'm not sure why this works - I'd have thought that the AVI render was a straight computation process, independent of the video subsystem (it certainly doesn't display anything while it's rendering), but I'm certainly willing to accept an unexplainable fix as long as it works! Thanks to all those who read & replied here or via e-mail, everything must've finally clicked into place tonight.

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AVI render problem solved! Thanks for the push, guys (esp. Little_Dragon), something finally connected in this little brain of mine. I reset the color depth on my video card from 16bit to 32bit, now the AVI renders just fine. No clue why this would matter (shouldn't the render be a straight computation process, no video involved?) ... but it clearly does and now that the problem's fixed I can go screw up something else. :-)

Perfect, PhilC, thanks ... looking forward to giving the tutorials a try!

3ncryptabl3_lick, Thanks for responding ... I'm glad to hear it's working for you, that rules out a lot of potential problem areas. Could you possibly post back or e-mail me your hardware+software config (i.e. opsys, cpu, mhz, RAM, and starting to look important, video card?) Biggerthom & Zenman, could you do the same? Thanks!

Thanks, Little_Dragon (we've e-mailed) and 3ncryptabl3_lick (for responding here and in the other thread). I guess that last post of mine did sound a little paranoid ... or at least ill-thought ("Hey, everyone who's not here, raise your hands!") At least now that I know it works for some folks, I can concentrate on what's wrong with my system and the other folks who are having problems and stop hunting for conspiracies. I'll keep it over on the other thread for sanity's sake. ;-)

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Ceba, (others may also be interested too!) In your first message, you mention (in amongst other things) that you render in Poser with Firefly. Are you rendering still images, or animations? If you check the thread I've linked, you'll see that I and at least a few other folks are having no luck whatsoever with rendering animations with Firefly (the Poser 4 renderer in P5 works fine, as do all other rendering modes including still images with Firefly). I've tested on my "normal" system (i.e. lots of stuff on it) and on a completely vanilla, nothing-but-opsys with current patches system. Same result on both. And as yet, I've been unable to find A SINGLE PERSON who reports success with animation rendering using Firefly. If I could find a few people for whom it works, I'd be happy to try to work out what the problem is (config, bad installs, whatever) and share that with the community and CL. Could easily be a problem on my end (and the other authors in the other thread), but I can't root it out if I can't find someone who has it working to compare notes with.

Daniel, very cool picture! Is anyone (Riess, Caligari or CL) working on a similar tool for TrueSpace? I'd seen a press release earlier in the year (might've even been last December) stating that Caligari and CL were working in partnership ... but it didn't say what they were working ON in partnership ...

Is there a good tutorial (or prior thread) on clothifying parts (or all) of conforming clothing? I've seen a few clothing items that this could be fun to try this on.

If there's anyone here who IS ABLE to render an AVI with Firefly, it would be a great help if you could share your configuration with me. No need to clutter the board - just e-mail me directly with "the usual" (CPU, MHZ, RAM, Video, Opsys, Poser 5 version). If you can include a copy of the uninstal.log file from your Poser dirctory it might help provide a clue, maybe something got missed in my install (three times, and in biggerthom's, and in Zenman's ... ;-)

Installed again on a totally vanilla Win2K box (nothing but opsys) and getting the same failure there - Firefly render with default settings and an animation with just the default figure moving a bit generates an AVI with nothing but background. At least it's not limited to my WinXP box.

Well, I'm stumped ... I performed a complete uninstall/reinstall per Zenman's suggestion, making sure that absolutely nothing was running on the machine while I did so, and I'm still getting the blank AVI renders. BUT ... I was able to narrow down the problem a little bit further: if I choose the Poser 4 renderer, IT WORKS. It's only the Firefly renderer that's failing.

OK, just tried rendering with "Current Display Settings" and that also works fine. It's just when I render to "Current Render Settings" that I wind up with a blank movie. I've posted my render settings here, anything look out of order?

The only object in the movie is the figure ... no background, no change to the default lighting, etc. Very peculiar.

That's how it's set (Current Render Settings). Interestingly, I got a working AVI when I rendered using "Current Sketch Settings", so the AVI building process works - just not when I use the current render settings! Off to do a quick test, if it fails I'll post back those settings in case something jumps off the screen at anyone.