I get this message trying to render a scene that has one character (M3+morphs), some furniture and quite a few lights. I'm using P6 and I've got 2GB of RAM. The picture is just a background I imported. The message says I should allocate more memory to Poser, how do I do this? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Suffering from loss of memory, eh?  Must be getting long in the tooth. ;=)
Try allocating more virtual memory in your system settings (I think): Control Panal, System, etc.
DPH

Thanks David.

2 GB of RAM? Doesn't sound like you're short on memory. Poser 6 can't use more than 2 GB anyway.

You might change some render settings. Turning down the maximum texture size to 1024 will probably help, as will turning off texture filtering.

The lights might also be the cause. One IBL light can easily replace dozens of spotlights - in P6, you no longer need arrays of spots to simulate global lighting.

This is the Poser 4 render engine, though, so there aren't that many options to play with.   Does Firefly render the scene?

As I mentioned in another thread in Poser Technical, virtual memory will not magically give your application more memory beyond the 2GB limit.

If you have 2GB of physical memory and want to have as much of available as possible, a starting point is to free up as much of it as possible.  Ways to do this are (Windows only):

Close other applications when not in use but when you are using Poser.

Turn off Windows bells & whistles - Control Panel:System:Advanced:Performance->Adjust for best performance.

Remove any 'junk' from your Program -> Startup Menu.

Remove any 'junk' from your SysTray.  For things that I can't seem to find in the Registry to stop loading or might need on occasion (like wcescomm), I just open Task Manager, go to the Process tab, select the process, and hit Delete.  If you have iTunes and are not using it, you can safely delete the iPod and iTunesHelper processes.

In Control Panel:Administrative Tools:Services, set unwanted services to disable or manual.  Be cautious here - there are websites that describe the basic services and whether you may or may not want to disable them.  These are good candidates for disable:
    - Messenger
    - NetMeeting Remote Desktop
    - Remote * (good for security as well!)
    - Telnet
    - Terminal Services
Anything that isn't critical and involves 'remote' users doing something on your system are pretty good game for disabling - unless you do lots of that type of thing.

Use Task Manager's Performance tab - Physical Memory:Available as a good indicator of how well you are doing in freeing memory.  With 3GB, I read 2.6GB available (with FireFox and NAV running!).

Sweet, sweet memories. :)

ETA: If you are really serious about having optimal memory, disable your internet connection and then turn off AV while using Poser as well.

Quote - As I mentioned in another thread in Poser Technical, virtual memory will not magically give your application more memory beyond the 2GB limit.

If you have 2GB of physical memory and want to have as much of available as possible, a starting point is to free up as much of it as possible.  Ways to do this are (Windows only):

Close other applications when not in use but when you are using Poser.

Turn off Windows bells & whistles - Control Panel:System:Advanced:Performance->Adjust for best performance.

Remove any 'junk' from your Program -> Startup Menu.

Remove any 'junk' from your SysTray.  For things that I can't seem to find in the Registry to stop loading or might need on occasion (like wcescomm), I just open Task Manager, go to the Process tab, select the process, and hit Delete.  If you have iTunes and are not using it, you can safely delete the iPod and iTunesHelper processes.

In Control Panel:Administrative Tools:Services, set unwanted services to disable or manual.  Be cautious here - there are websites that describe the basic services and whether you may or may not want to disable them.  These are good candidates for disable:
    - Messenger
    - NetMeeting Remote Desktop
    - Remote * (good for security as well!)
    - Telnet
    - Terminal Services
Anything that isn't critical and involves 'remote' users doing something on your system are pretty good game for disabling - unless you do lots of that type of thing.

Use Task Manager's Performance tab - Physical Memory:Available as a good indicator of how well you are doing in freeing memory.  With 3GB, I read 2.6GB available (with FireFox and NAV running!).

Sweet, sweet memories. :)

ETA: If you are really serious about having optimal memory, disable your internet connection and then turn off AV while using Poser as well.

Sounds like alot of trouble to go to to do a render. I ran into the same problem with a P6 and P7 render but nothing Poser suggested worked. I've got a 3 GHz hyperthreading processor and 4GB RAM. e-Frontier should rewrite Poser using a different render engine. That render I was trying in P6 and P7 and neither of them could render it..well, I opened it in DAZ Studio and it rendered without any problems. I'm a Poser user (not Studio) and Poser is a memory hog from hell.

True, but these will help consistently - don't have to do most of this more than once.

Yes, Poser is a memory hog - and thus the need to steal back as much of it as possible from other places to feed the memory hog god. :)

One thing that fools people is that they check the amount of available memory after Poser complains and see that they still have, say, 100MB or more available.  But this is deceptive because it isn't just about how much memory, but how much contiguous memory and how large a block Poser is requesting.  Any single memory allocation must fit into memory in an uninterrupted block.  Just because you may see that there is enough total memory available, it doesn't mean that it is enough contiguous memory.

As svdl mentioned, since you really can't reduce geometry, reduce textures.  Well, you can artificially reduce geometry - hide body parts that are not seen under clothing, for instance.

People often recommend memory defragmenter software at about this point - but I haven't found one that was rated as consistently worthwhile.  Best to clear enough memory space so that fragmenation is not so much an issue than to rely on hopefully useful software to defragment a little remaining memory to squeeze that last gasp before another memory error.

if other highly rater programs can do it without going to all this trouble? e-Frontier could take care of that with a rewrite and new render engine.

The original post was about the Poser 4 render engine.  To be fair, Poser has had a new engine since that.   My previous post was questioning whether responses to the original post had taken that on board (my guess would be "No").

Morgano
Firefly is a bitch with larger scenes so that's why I'm using P4 render
kuroyume0161
Thanks
**svdl
**Thanks for the idea about IBL
cherokee69
Can I open a pz3 in Daz Studio intact
kuroyume0161
Hididen non-visable body parts sitll have texture maps applied, so the map will still need to be loaded (though not rendered). The hanging occures when the first shaddow map is being drawn and after the textures are loaded. (Sometimes at "loading textures".)The geometry is there, weather hidden or not. Maybe I'm wrong about some of this.
**Thanks to everybody

**Once the stubborn scene finally renders, the subsequent renders of that scene occur reliably. Like something has clicked and has resolved itself.

I do have a high tech solution I sometimes use - wiggle the mouse violently after you click render and minimise the Poser window. Perhaps any benifit of this is imagined, but it makes me feel like I'm doing something.

*Can I open a pz3 in Daz Studio intact?
*Depends on the pz3. If it does not contain dynamic cloth and hair, the geometry will import fine. If it does not contain advanced shaders - which means if the scene has been restricted to texture maps, bump maps and transparency maps, the materials will import just fine.
But as soon as you use something that goes beyond Poser 4's capabilities, the scene will not fully import.

svdl
Thanks very much. I do have some shaders attached but don't really need them, so I can remove them. No dynamic cloth or hair.
This may be the way to go. Will Daz Studio fund all the obj's, textures etc. in the P6 Runtime?

Hididen non-visable body parts sitll have texture maps applied, so the map will still need to be loaded (though not rendered). The hanging occures when the first shaddow map is being drawn and after the textures are loaded. (Sometimes at "loading textures".)The geometry is there, weather hidden or not. Maybe I'm wrong about some of this.

True on the 'texture maps applied' part possibly.  If the texture map is applied to various material zones and any visible body parts reference one, it shouldn't make a difference then.  Don't know if Poser is bad enough to load the texture map for each reference instead of using a single instance for all references. (?)

False on the geometry part.  I mean, yeah, the geometry is still in memory for sure.  But unchecking "Visible in Raytracking" should make the renderer ignore the geometry - which will save time and memory.

Beyond that I can't speak more on Poser's renderer.  I don't use it (see sig).

Hope you get it working one way or another!