I've only had version 5 for about a month, but I'm ready to uninstall if I can't get SOMETHING out of it. I'm not new to Poser, I had Poser 3 and 4, but I have yet to get anything useable out of 5. Please, someone tell me what I'm doing wrong!!

First project:
I had started on a scene in Poser 4, so I opened it in 5 and redid the textures. When I rendered it there were some very strange lines and squares on the back wall of the scene and across parts of the figure, but not all of the figure. I checked everything, lights cameras . . .every part that could be assigned a texture, anything that could cast a shaddow . . .nothing,nothing that could show up like this pattern. I turned off shadows on every light . . . still they showed up. I finally saved the figure and rebuilt the scene. Now the 'shadows' showed up on parts of the figure only. I decided to take the figure into Bryce and see if they still showed up. Even though every part of the figure was checked for export, the prop with a magnet on it did not export with the scene, and the eyes of the Millenium PreSchool girl were posed opposite of what they were in Poser . . . .AAARRRGGGHHHH . . . .ok .. . .put this on the back burner,Cynthia, and start with a fresh scene.

It should be noted here that between the first scene and this next scene, I do a complete 'rebuild' of my computer, formatting the hard drive and reinstalling all the software.,

I begin on the next one. .. . .it's really a rather simple scene with an angel and a baby for a friend who is pregnant with her first child. I've painstakingly posed and lighted, textured and coifed. I've spent maybe 10 to 15 hours on the scene. There are three cloth planes that need to drape, and a belt that needs to be tighted in a simulation. Here's a list of the crazy things that happened with the original scene:

1. The figure and camera go through all kinds of gyrations during the middle of the simulation including flying off to the four corners. Even when I clear and recalculate, delete any intermediate key frames, retime the animation, refigure the animation in any way I can find to do it, the same thing happens. I continue to work with the scene, thinking I'm only going to use the last frame, so the intermediate ones don't really matter, as long as it starts in the right place and ends in the right place, and it does. I start calculating the simuation for the final time, and low an behold, it goes to a zero pose and stays there . . . .through the whole blasted animation! The careful posing is completely lost. Even when the calculating is finished I can't get the figures to 'snap back' into the poses they were in when I first hit the 'calculate simulation' button!!

Fearing a repeat of a situation like the very first poser project, I start COMPLETELY over. About eight hours of work later, I have a comparable scene, which still does crazy things in the middle of the sim, but, I'm not going to spend time since I know it's useless anyhow, and I fear a repeat of what happened the first time I tried to fix the problem. I save it before I start the simulation, see the 'draping' dialog box come up, and since it's 2am, I crash.

This morning the 'draping' dialog box is right where I left it . . .EXACTLY where I left it. I check and Poser is using 99% of my 1GHZ cpu and almost all of my 384 MB of memory. I leave for church, fix lunch, and come back around 2 in the afternoon. It's still just sitting there. I cancel the simulation, close poser and reboot the machine. When I reopen Poser, and reopen my scene it displays . . . . .NO ACTOR!!!!!!!!!! NO LIGHTS, NO NUTHIN!!!!!!!! ... sob, it's alllllllllllll gone . . every stinkin vertice!

Please, someone tell me what on earth is happening? Has any one else gotten a totally unreliable, gremlin posessed copy of Poser? . . . .How can I be messing things up THIS badly?