This is only for people who still like using P4 Pro-Pack and ALSO have the latest P-5 updates. I have only tried this on XP and Win2K, and don't know how this affects Poser "Artist" (or original Poser 4) and how this might work on a MAC, since I don't own one. While migrating my huge Poser collection to faster SATA drives on a newer XP machine (Athlon 64) from my Win2K (P-III) machine using ATA drives, I discovered a few quick ways to greatly SPEED-UP my beloved Poser Pro-Pack. The upgrade consists of basically copying three P5 "dll's" over into Pro-Pack- asi32_13.dll imageIOEngineWin.dll imageIOUtilities.dll You should see about a 50% speed-up in Pro-Pack loading time and probably about the same in Rendering speed. This Speed-Up is of course HUGELY noticable on an Athlon 64 where my primary problem however was that the older Poser Pro-Pack dll's seemed to have a problem with my SATA drive. Basically this was where PP would say something like "Not enough Disk Space to render" when I was trying to render a 2048x2048 image and had 200 Gigabytes of FREE SPACE! So- the dll upgrades fixed that and another problem PP was having with virtual memory (I have 1.5 Gig of fast RAM)... So especially if you are using a new XP machine with fast drives and RAM, these dll's seem to fix the problems and bring good-old Pro-Pack really up to speed. My PP loading time on my XP machine (with 32 Gigs of Libraries) is only a few seconds. Rendering a 2048x2048 with all boxes checked (shadows, etc.) is around 10-12 seconds!

If you like tinkering further- there are P5 ImageIOPlugins and other files that can be put into Pro-Pack to further improve overall PP performance, but the dll's seem to be the best quick fix... DON'T do any of these things without Back-Ups! Or the ability to "roll-back" if something might cause a problem on your specific machine. These things may also NOT work on an older OS like Win98- so be fore-warned.

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Veritas,

The imageIOEngineWin.dll is a carbon-copy of the one found in Poser4 (so won't make a different).
The imageIOUtilities.dll is the same except for calls to things found in Poser5,but not Poser4 (so wouldn't make a different).
The asi32_13.dll is where you see the speed up...because it is the same .dll that is replaced with the memory patch for Poser4.

Better to just use the memory patch as it updates the SavePoserLocInIni.dll also (not found in Poser5).

SWAMP

Message edited on: 09/09/2004 19:09

Hi Swamp- Well I experimented on both Win2K and XPPro machines. I tried COMPLETELY reloading everything on ATA and SATA drives over a two day period, even re-formating the drives, etc. The dll effect was VERY NOTICABLE in every instance. I did it several times just to be sure it wasn't something else-. BTW- the dll's ARE different in size and dates in all three cases, and I saw the speed-up BEFORE I put the asi32_13.dll in as a final experiment. However, throwing it into the mix seemed to also be nothing but positive in its effect. One other trick that I found for Pro-Pack is with multiple Libraries within the runtime. I had broken my libraries out as: libraries A#Libraries B#Libraries H#Libraries M#Libraries N#Libraries V#Libraries W#Libraries The other libraries are for Mike, Vicky, Nature, etc. The letter is to ID them and the # is to make sure PP didn't read them so it would load FASTER. Heh- HOWEVER I discovered that if I named the libaries as zA#Libraries zB#Libraries zH#Libraries zM#Libraries zN#Libraries zV#Libraries zW#Libraries With a "z" to force them to the BOTTOM of the runtime directory, this made PP load HUGELY faster. It seems that even though a "#" should tell PP to IGNORE the other libraries, PP will in FACT rummage through those that come AHEAD of "libraries" in the loading process. By forcing all the other libraries to the BOTTOM with the "z", I found that PP zipped through the "finding" process, finding "libraries" first and then snapping open. Something in Poser's code uses alphabetical searching, but nothing apparently tells it to NOT look in "#" folders, even though it will in fact NOT use those folders anyway! BTW- this MIGHT have an effect on P5 loading- or users of Hogsoft's PBooost. I haven't tried it yet, but if it would seem that once PP with PBooost, or P5 find the first "libaries", it should be a Happy Camper and snap open. (Rather than rummaging through them before opening.)

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NOTE: No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large
number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

BTW, in my runtime scheme, all libraries share the same Geometries and Textures folders. This makes new product installations very SIMPLE as long as you are in the right libraries folder when you do it. It ALSO means that you can always open a Pz3 or Pzz from anywhere, with any library open, and never have Poser searching for something. (I am switching totally over to Pzz too as there is a HUGE savings in space and this may likely ultimately help in the "finding" and "loading" process as well.) This, along with periodic cleanings by Correct Reference Pro, will have your Poser Pro-Pack running little a frisky little rabbit!

Poser P4, PP, P5 reads every library folder when launching (in the current runtime only in the case of P5). Every file, every sub-directory. And yes, it does read in alphabetic order. Whenever Poser can't find a texture in the location specified in the items .cr2/.pp2/.pz2/ect file, then it again searches every folder in alpha order in Runtime. And yes, I did mean to say "every". It searches .dll's, the entire Python folder, etc, so it'll be reading for quite a while before it even gets to the Textures folder! This is why using CRPro to correct texture - and other - links can make such a huge improvement to Poser operation. Oh, and BTW Poser doesn't close any of the folders it opens to search for textures!!! Except for the final one iff it finds the texture somewhere. In Win9x this sloppiness is ignored by the OS, but the Win2k/XP Windows records and holds open - ie. locked - each of those folders until Poser.exe is closed. (I understand why this bug wasn't addressed in Poser 4 and PP, but P5 and certainly the P5SR's were released well after Win2K became prevalent.) I certainly agree with Veritas777's method of 1 geometry folder and separate libraries for the reasons that he gives, and PBooost let's you do this easily. Check out PoserPros P5 Tips and Tricks forum for a compendium of ways to speed up Poser. Some apply to P4 and PP too.