I could not find a thread on this, so here goes. I hope the Poser wizards around here will share their tips for working with several V4 / M4 figures in one scene.

I have a fairly able 3D platform (Mac Pro with 14 GB of RAM). But Poser Pro 2012 starts to bog down after a second figure enters the scene. PP2010 did the same. Each figure is actually a combination of several figures, unless V4 is nekkid, but you know what I mean. The second clothed figure causes Poser's parameter dials to become stiff and jerky, hard to move smoothly. A third figure makes the dials almost impossible to work with, and it's easier to type in values repeatedly until you get what you want. Camera movements and direct manipulation with the cursor, too, become harder to control smoothly as the population of figures increases.

Is it the number of polys in the scene? Is it the number of morphs in the scene? Is it the number and size of the textures in the scene? Are CR2's intrinsically hard on the overhead? All of the above?

Other than posing a figure, rendering, deleting the figure, adding a different figure, rendering without moving the camera, compositing in Photoshop, etc. -- what are you guys doing to make multiple clothed figures feasible in one scene?

Using a PC. grin Go bug SM. Something is not right. The Mac UI was a big rewrite this time around to get it to 64 bit. Not so with the PC UI.

All right, I'll do that. Meanwhile, I'd still like to know how folks are slimming down their multi-figure scenes to tax the system less.

For example, I remember somebody posted once that he/she used a script to delete all unused morphs from a scene once things have been morphed to satisfaction. Not sure what it was called, or if it can be used in the new Posers.

Using Fast Tracking can help a lot when moving the camera. You can use small low quality image maps, simple shaders, and low quality render settings whilst setting up the scene, and only change to high quality version in the final stages of tweaking the scene. If feasible do the posing, or as much of it as you can before injecting morphs into the figure. Hiding figures and other elements of the scene that that you may not need to see all the time can also help. If the camera settings have been finalized, you can paste into the background before hiding things. Where feasible close other applications that may be running in the background.

Quote - I remember somebody posted once that he/she used a script to delete all unused morphs from a scene once things have been morphed to satisfaction.

There is something on ockham's site "Strip zero morphs from CR2 or PZ2 or FC2 to make a lean file", right at the bottom of the page, don't remember if I ever used myself though.

I have a mac and I can get about 11 or so fully dressed daz figures into a scene with a room and props but then it gets very heavy to move around. I've used it though and made some pics.

Love esther

Try going to Render Settings, clicking on the Preview tab and seeing which boxes are ticked, particularly those to do with Hardware Shading. If 'Enable Hardware AO' is enabled, disable it. If 'Enable Hardware Shadows' is enabled and you don't really need it, disable it.

See if that makes it run a bit smoother.

I do have 56GB of RAM - maybe that is helping me.

Love esther

I'm on a PC, but when I need multiple morphed, clothed and posed figures in a scene, I simply create a separate pz3 for each character, then merge them together for the final render with File>Import>Poser scene.

Quote - I'm on a PC, but when I need multiple morphed, clothed and posed figures in a scene, I simply create a separate pz3 for each character, then merge them together for the final render with File>Import>Poser scene.

These are all good tips, some of them I already use. I rarely use hardware shading or shadows because it really slows down the responsiveness. I'll turn it on just to set the lighting then turn it off again. I wish there was a quicker way to do it than going into Render Settings, switching to the Preview tab, checking and unchecking boxes, saving settings.

I like the idea of merging pz3 files. It always seemed to be clunky in theory, because you need to tweak the positioning after merging, but it's better than having the scene full of figures during the whole process.

Another idea I've been playing with... As each figure is posed and morphed to a final state, I convert that figure to a prop (after saving the clothed figure temporarily to the library for recall). This seems to speed up the scene considerably, I'm gessing because hundreds of morphs are gone. The drawback is obvious: All I can then do is move the prop. Expressions, arm and leg movements, etc. are all impossible. Plus I have to remember to keep weeding out the library of figures stored temporarily. But I have a folder just for that. A drastic measure, but it's a way to get a bunch of figures in a scene.

I'm envious of those who say they can put 7-8-9 clothed figures in a scene without  performance issues.

In your general prefs:

Make sure render to separate process is checked and up your number of threads to double whatever the number of cores you have.  If you have 4 cores, go to 8 threads.

Lower the number of undo levels.  It defaults to 100.  The more undo levels you have, the larger the cache windows seems to hold onto.

Do not use the render cache to save renders.  Lower it to 1.  If you keep renders cached this is another resource eater.

If things are really slowing down, take a look at texture sizes.  Don't use high res textures on background and midground figures and props.  You can make your own mid and low res textures by taking the textures into an image editor, lowering the size of texture and saving under a new name.

Background and midground figures don't need all the bump and spec maps. 

If you are using full dressed figures, hide as many body parts on the base figures and clothing as you can.

If the camera can't see it, it won't render it so it doesn't need to be in the scene.  Unless you are using a figure to create a true reflection.  This is probably the only exception I know of.

As stated above, use only the morphs you need.  If you need to add all the face morphs to get the face, do that first.  Then save the face morph.  Create a new scene.  Load a base figure without all the morphs added and inject the saved face morph.  This keeps the cr2 lean.  Same for body morphs.

I nearly always use the Poser 4 figures. They have smaller geometry files than many later-made figures and made adequate images, and my Poser 7 can handle several of them at once easily.