I have a scene with one V3, one V4 and a set of props.   It won't render, even at the most basic settings.   If I hide the props, the Victoriae render.   If I lose the ladies, the props still won't come out to play.   The Poser 6 Firefly engine just capitulates.   I tried the P4 engine, too, and that gave me the big whine about texture sizes. 

I assumed from that that the problem must be to do with texture sizes, so I compared the props to ones by Stonemason which render quickly and excellently in Poser.   What I was expecting was that the props set with the problem would be using enormous texture sizes, which I could try to reduce.  In fact, the textures in, e.g. Stonemason's "The Tin Can" set, which has never given me any render problem, weigh in at a megabyte-plus, whereas the problem props' textures never seem to top 200Kb, although there are quite a few different textures required.

The difference that surprised me was in the relative size of the files in the Props library itself.   This time, the roles were reversed.   Stonemason's creations are tiny, but the ones which I am trying to use in my scene reach 12 megabytes and more.   I have to assume that  that is the source of the problem.   Is there any way to reduce props files to their bare essentials?

I've deliberately not identified the set involved in the problem, because I want to help fix this, not point any fingers.   The same set renders in no time in Carrara (and looks great).

Maybe they have built in morphs you can remove?

Many thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think that they have.

Do they have embedded geometry?  This can really bloat the prop files.

sounds like the (usual) combination of unnecessarily high polycount and split vertices. as far as i know stonemasons work - actually the temple ruins only - he is doing not much better...although a talented artist! - sigh... if you think this particular particular project is worth the effort, you can try to split it. render props seperately and character seperately and put them together in your 2d app. with the shadow catcher/shadow only options in p6 this process is quite easy. A. ps - i don't think it is a good idea to keep this product covered. helps the merchant, but not your peers;)

if ya decimate the props in carrara, they may lose their mapping. I dunno if P7 has a "decimate" command (probably not). but in poser, it's possible the props have a bunch of material zones all using the same texmap, and poser loads the same texmap as many times as there are material zones. see if ya can consolidate those zones into one zone.

Morgano, have your tried rendering with the Poser engine, not Firefly engine ? How does that work out ? 

You can also try reducing the texture sizes in the Render Options menu in for the Firefly engine, but sometimes that gives a pretty cruddy result. 

Have you also checked in the Material Room to see whether there are any un-connected shader settings which you can remove using the menu options.  Clean up all the dis-connected shader items for each material zone of each prop.  Sometimes, too much un-linked rubbish accumulates and causes Poser wit get a headache.

Are the props a commercial poser item , or something you picked up ?

very high polygon counts impact poser but the figure is pretty high .

I would remove the textures in the material room  and check that the prop geometry renders ok .

Another thing to consider, as someone mentioned earlier, is the embedded geometry thing. As far as I can recall (being at my parent's computer and away from my copy of Poser for TWO WEEKS!!!), Stonemason's prop files (meaning the pp2's) tend to refer to an outside .obj file which is stored in the geometry. This is why the pp2 file is so small. Other artist's props, on the other hand, contain all the geometry instructions within them instead, which leads to a much larger filesize tucked in the library. which method works better for Poser, and which method creates the larger total filesize (pp2 and obj combined, in the case of stonemasons work) I have no way of knowing. But that is probably the reason why one set of props looks much bigger than another's.

hope this helps,

jonthecelt

When I do props texturing for sale, I never use embedded props.  Stonemason's pp2 files are the same - they call external props and that makes the pp2 files smaller.  When people embed geometries in the files one can only hope the props are theirs and that they don't know any differently, otherwise it could lead to copyright infringement.

Thanks for the ideas.   I'll give the Materials Room ideas a go.   It's a commercial Poser item.   I did try the Poser 4 renderer and I got an error message pretty well instantly.   I did also try to do the shadows and the rest separately, but that didn't render, either.

Quote - sounds like the (usual) combination of unnecessarily high polycount and split vertices. as far as i know stonemasons work - actually the temple ruins only - he is doing not much better...although a talented artist! - sigh... if you think this particular particular project is worth the effort, you can try to split it. render props seperately and character seperately and put them together in your 2d app. with the shadow catcher/shadow only options in p6 this process is quite easy. A. ps - i don't think it is a good idea to keep this product covered. helps the merchant, but not your peers;)

if only I had a penny for everytime I was credited for making the Temple ruins :...they are made by The Hankster,not me
he's made some beautiful models...although those Temple ruins are insanely large in polycount for my liking..still a great looking model though.

something else to consider is the surface settings in what your rendering..does it use real reflection?,displacement?..,these things will also slow it down..
if the textures are too large you can also set the maximum texture size to something smaller

quick polygon/geometry check= view in wireframe or lit wireframe...I hate to say it, but it happened to me:System RAM. I had a retail webbox PC that choked rendering anything in P6 firefly other than the draft setting. $119 and 1Gb later, it will render any scene I have the patience to create, while I surf the web...

@ stonemason :blink: dang! and i would have bet my right testicle that it would be your product. don't ask me why... actually i like this temple thing, but with those split vertices it renders awfully flat (+ no displacement), and with those needlessly triangulated facets it renders awfully slow - if at all. plus a range of other flaws.....i haven't used it even once...sigh! anyway...i've covered your reputation with dirt where you did not diserve it - i'm sorry for that. if you want me to edit that post i will - no problem. i owe you a drink...

no worries
...the drink will be fine  :-)