Hello Poser Pros. ... I recently picked up Apple's new MacPro 8-core machine and loaded it up with 9 gigs of RAM. I'm running 3D Max (64-bit) on XP-64 and couldn't be happier with how its working out. 

My question is how to leverage the 8-cores best with Poser. I actually have the computer set up as a quad-boot system using Apple's bootcamp. I can boot into either OSX, XP-32, XP-64 or Vista. Right now I've just been using Poser under XP-32 but have read here that people are successfully running it under XP-64 so I'll plan on installing it under that partition as well. I have Poser on the Mac partition but have mostly been using the PC version simply because most of my content right now is in the PC runtime directories and I'm not certain how much trouble it would be or whether it would even be possible to convert it all to the Mac.

Right now using the multi-threaded render option definitely improves the performance of Poser 7. I figured I would be able to simply install a second copy of Poser so I could run two renderers at the same time and, thus, use the extra processing power. Unfortunately, it appears this is not possible as the second copy doesn't boot as an independent app.

My questions are:

1. On the PC side is there a method to truly use all 8 processor cores at the same time for rendering with Poser? 

2. Is it possible to run two instances of the application at once? I suppose I can reinstall my old Poser 6 and run it at the same time as 7 but I really hoped to take advantage of the rendering speed update of 7.

3. Given this system, is there any advantage to moving over to OSX? I haven't tried to run multiple copies of Poser there. Anybody know about this?

Thanks as always.

Mark

My experience is that Poser (Firefly) will only utilize 4 cores.

And the Firefly renderer performs rather poorly - it never maxes out the cpu usage,

Poser will use 4 cores maximum.

There is a way to utilize all 8 cores: VMWare Server (free download from www.vmware.com) Runs under XP 32, maybe there's also a Vista or XP 64 version (haven't checked lately)

VMware allows you to run several virtual computers, each with their own OS, on a single hardware box. You can run one instance of Poser per virtual machine, and you can assign processor cores to virtual machines.

The virtual machines are connected over a (virtual) network, so you can easily share runtimes using network shares.

When using VMware for multiple Poser instances, I'd recommend running one Poser instance on the physical hardware, using that instance for scene setup etc, because the "virtual" graphics of VMware virtual machines have a much lower performance that the real physical graphics hardware.

the leopard beta used by jobs at his last conference is out now. but i would advise against using it. I can run various versions of poser on the same OS X machine, but there's no point, as all the ones prior to P7 are obsolete. AFAIK one of the features of sr1 was to re-introduce network checking, which would obviate trying to run multiple copies of the same version of Poser in OS X.

Quote - VMware allows you to run several virtual computers, each with their own OS, on a single hardware box. You can run one instance of Poser per virtual machine, and you can assign processor cores to virtual machines.

Would this be legal though ?

Each concurrently running instance of Poser needs its own license, AFAIK. Since the virtual machines (and the host) are connected over a virtual network, Poser will detect if another instance with the same serial is running.
Operating system: same story. Each virtual machine needs its own OS license.

Since VMware creates "virtual hardware", you have to install an operating system on each virtual machine. 
Or you can use one of the free preconfigured virtual machines that you can download from vmware.com. There are several Linux configurations available on their site, at least one including Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, fully configured.

As for Windows, I'd have to read the license agreements. MS also has a VMware-like tool (Virtual PC), and I know for sure they have changed the Windows licenses to incorporate situations where Virtual PC/VMware is used. Don't know by heart what the license conditions are, though.

IMO if you're looking at the cost of an 8 core machine, it may be worthwhile to look into a more powerful rendering engine anyway that isn't limited to 4.

I agree.. if you are already running MAX on your system, no need to worry about rendering in poser. Just use MAX.

hi, i have an intel mac with runtimes and poser 7 on it, but i have poser 6 on my pc which is networked to the mac. they can both access and use the runtimes on the mac, the pc does this via the network. ie if u ever want to run you poser on the mac the runtimes /content works the same love esther

Hey thanks for all the very good information!

Estherau, I didn't realize that you could simply share runtimes on a cross-platform network. That's an amazingly awesome bit of info I was completely unaware of.

Ghonma, I have a couple of powerful renderers and use both Max and Maya in my work. However, I've often used Poser to quickly set up character animation. I understand you can use a plug such as GestureMax to move Poser assets into Max but it is my understanding there's no good way to move a Poser scene with animation to another renderer. Am I wrong about this? Jeez, I hope so because the Firefly renderer is a DOG. Please enlighten me peeple!

Since I have licensed copies of Poser 6 and 7, I assume I can run both concurrently and not trigger the AFAIK check?

Quote -
Ghonma, I have a couple of powerful renderers and use both Max and Maya in my work. However, I've often used Poser to quickly set up character animation. I understand you can use a plug such as GestureMax to move Poser assets into Max but it is my understanding there's no good way to move a Poser scene with animation to another renderer. Am I wrong about this? Jeez, I hope so because the Firefly renderer is a DOG. Please enlighten me peeple!

Bodystudio is a plugin software that connects to Max, and can bridge a connection between Poser and Max that is virtually seamless, except you will need adjust the materials in Max.  It hosts the .pz3 file within Max's native environment, including everything in the .pz3 (almost) as it appeared in Poser itself.  So that includes dynamic cloth, strand-based hair, and any animation you may have keyframed.  It's not perfect, but it's a good solution if you want to use Max's powerful rendering capabilities.

Here's the link:
www.reiss-studio.com/

maxxxmodelz - hotdamn, that sounds perfect. I'll check it out!

yep u can share your runtimes, so i was wondering if your windows disk on your puter can see your mac partitions and vice versa with your bootcamp setup, or if u have to first set up some sort of internal network. otherwise just clone your runtimes and store them on both partitions i guess but that's a waste of space and not even a backup because if your puter gets zapped you lose all partitions anyway unless you have them on separate drives and only one drive fails. love esther

Quote - Bodystudio is a plugin software that connects to Max, ...

Enormous caveat:  Does not work under 64-bit.

You can also run two copies of Poser on two different user accounts. "Fast user switching" is your friend here.

Vue 6 Infinite will import Poser animations, inlcuding cloth and hair simulations. It'll make use of all 8 cores. The Vue render engine is much faster than Firefly. And it runs in 64 bit Windows. I'm not sure if it runs under 64 bit MacOSX though.

Microsoft's policy on VM's (Virtual Machines) is that as long as the host machine has a licensed copy of the Operating System, you are licensed to use it on as many VM's as you like on that host as long as they are the same OS that you have licensed on the host. You can't for example run Windows XP on the host and Windows Server 2003 on the VM's with only the host Windows XP license. These VM's can also communicate with each other via a private (closed) virtual network or can be configured to be visible to other physical PC's on the same network that the host machine is connected to. This is all covered by the MS VM usage licensing.

As far as Poser is concerned, I highly recommend that you make sure you are covered by legal licenses. It is possible to run more than one copy of the software on the same network however. If you deny Poser access to the network when the Windows firewall popup occurs then the various copies will not be able to see each other. I'm not suggesting this as a method to circumvent the licensing structure! I just don't know whether Poser 6 and Poser 7 will run together or whether an upgrade license entitles you to use both simultaneously. Again, use this information responsibly because you will be violating the E-Frontier licensing structure if you use multiple copies of Poser simultaneously with only a single license.

The way I see it though is that if you have say 2 copies of Poser 7 installed and open at the same time, one to change something in a scene and the second to render it once you have made the change and saved it then this is a bit of a grey area as far as the licensing is concerned. If however you ran both copies rendering 2 separate scenes simultaneously then you would most definately be in violation of your license.

I wish they would just make firefly do the multi-threading on a per bucket level lke most other renderers do. That way you could use as many cores as you have and be more efficient in the render besides.

The whole 'divide scene into parts' thing is really very silly IMO.

Quote - > Quote - Bodystudio is a plugin software that connects to Max, ...

 

Enormous caveat:  Does not work under 64-bit.

The BodyStudio folks are working on it.

It's a copy protection issue not a plugin issue.

If that's a known issue, that doesn't make me feel any better - some warning e.g. "32-bit ONLY" on the damn sale page before they take your $180 would be nice.

Much appreciate the caveat about BodyStudio not running under 64-bit XP or Vista. That's a deal breaker for me but hopefully it will get solved by Reiss soon.

Estherau asked: *"... so i was wondering if your windows disk on your puter can see your mac partitions and vice versa with your bootcamp setup, or if u have to first set up some sort of internal network. otherwise just clone your runtimes and store them on both partitions i guess but that's a waste of space and not even a backup because if your puter gets zapped you lose all partitions anyway unless you have them on separate drives and only one drive fails.
love esther."*I don't see the Mac drives when booting to windows although the Windows drives all mount when I boot OSX. I installed MacOpener and figured it would mount the Mac drives but nada. I do want to avoid having to duplicate any files so I'm going to pursue this further. I can't imagine it will be that hard to solve. If anyone has the answer please post!

One last thing, I've got Poser installed under XP-64-bit but when I open it the main window shows whatever was on the desktop at the time it was opened and you can't see the figures. Everything is there and operating as you CAN see them when you render so this is obviously a display issue. I'm using a Radeon1900XT but haven't found any settings with its Catalyst control panel that helps. I'm suspecting this is an OpenGL issue but I haven't found any OpenGL settings with the Radeon control panel. Given that the Poser specs specifically state "recent NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon preferred" and it works great under XP32-bit my guess is the artifact is related to my Windows install. I ran the Windows Update and have Service Pack 2 installed along with everything else Mr. Bill's updater said I should have. Any ideas here guys?

(edit: Just remembered I could right-click the display and choose SreeD as an alternative for OpenGL and that works ok. I'd prefer running OpenGL, though, so if anyone had any ideas why Poser and Radeon 1900XT aren't playing nice under OpenGL display please chime in!)

That's one of the main reason I ditched ATI. Good drivers for XP 32 and MacOS, but lousy to no support for anything else.
If you want OpenGL under XP 64 bit, you'll need an nVidia graphics card. But since you're using a Mac, you're probably out of luck.

Quote - Much appreciate the caveat about BodyStudio not running under 64-bit XP or Vista. That's a deal breaker for me but hopefully it will get solved by Reiss soon.

Estherau asked: *"... so i was wondering if your windows disk on your puter can see your mac partitions and vice versa with your bootcamp setup, or if u have to first set up some sort of internal network. otherwise just clone your runtimes and store them on both partitions i guess but that's a waste of space and not even a backup because if your puter gets zapped you lose all partitions anyway unless you have them on separate drives and only one drive fails.
love esther."*I don't see the Mac drives when booting to windows although the Windows drives all mount when I boot OSX. I installed MacOpener and figured it would mount the Mac drives but nada. I do want to avoid having to duplicate any files so I'm going to pursue this further. I can't imagine it will be that hard to solve. If anyone has the answer please post!

Might want to look at this. I am days away from ordering an intel Mac to replace my old G4, and this is the way I plan to go, since you can boot both OS's at once. Too many 3rd party apps I would like to use with Poser and C4D content written exclusively for windoze.

parallels 3.0 desktop for Mac (cost retail 79.99)
 http://www.parallels.com

New! Open Windows files with Mac programs and Mac files in Windows programs with Parallels SmartSelect
New! Browse through Windows folders and access files without launching Windows with Parallels Explorer

sounds good. Let me know if you're happy with it when you get it. Love esther

Yes, I looked at Parallels. It's absolutely great if your need is for concurrent operation of different OS's. You can have your Windows in a Window while in OSX. However, you take a speed hit so that you shouldn't count on this solution if processor speed is paramount for the "secondary" OS. 

However, I had not thought of the advantage of using Parallels as a means to access the Mac-based files and that may be reason enough for me to buy it since it's pretty cheap.

You also can find some good discussion regarding the performance issues involving Parallels at the CGTalk.com forum.

Mark