This is fifth or sixth time I've tried to start this thread. Apparently the previous time I got disconnected to taking to long to compose it. Here goes:

I've been trying to render a multi-layered scene with multiple characters, and I've followed all the suggestions I got a couple years ago for how to make it produce shadows on the background picture I rendered from the previous layer, (increasing pixel samples and irridiance caching, lowering bucket size, increasing the yon setting on the camera, making sure ground shadows and ground plane guide are on,) but it just won't make any shadowed even with just a single figure and a couple large .obj's. I've even removed the texture maps for every part of those .objs and simply assigned a colour to them in the materials room to reduce the load and still nothing. No shadows, even cast onto themselves from another part of the .obj that's in the path of the light chosen to create shadows.

So I tried using poser 4 rendering instead, but I keep getting an error message that says: "When using firefly you can reduce rendering memory usage by rendering in a separate process, raising the adaptation threshold or sepcifying smaller bucket sizes." I feel so damned stupid asking this but WTF is a "separate process"? Is it something you do with Poser or with some other program? I can't find any examples of it on line.

I have tried repeatedly to attach a screen shot of my render settings but the attach process won't work, either by selecting and attaching a file or by dropping or dragging. It's only a 70k .JPG. I"ve had to start this thread over and over three or four times because of that.

Also, does anybody know what that error message is talking about when it refers to "adaptation threshold"? There is NOTHING in the Firefly render settings that mention it. I thought maybe I'm going senile because I can't see it. I've sat and looked and looked and looked and still can't find it there. I swear to god, Poser makes me stupider every day. I've come sickeningly close to erasing 4 years of work and taking a baseball bat to this pc, but I just won't give the bastards at the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Aging Services the satisfaction of seeing me do that.

I'm using poser 7 on a windows 7 pc

There is no reason to feel stupid. This a a huge challenge. Not many would have the patience to attempt it. I suspect that "separate process" refers to the layering process you are already doing. Not positive on that. Attaching pics to threads ... the small picture icon at the bottom of the text window should work for you. You choose the image you want to attach from the pop up window and the proper code appears in the "write" window. You can check by clicking the preview tab at the top of the text window. Dragging and dropping I don't believe does work in the Markup language. Feel free to site-mail me if you continue to have difficulties.

Another suggestion. Starting with the farthest "layer" of the scene, use whatever camera view is final view and render ... NO background and save as .png, do this with each forward layer until you get the closest. bringing in ONLY the items for each layer per render. Next Place ONE sided low-poly squares on each layer's position and texture them with each render making them each "billboards". Keep the final closest render 3d. We do trees like this all the time ... it has a good chance of working. Haven't tried it, but this is my theory and suggestion. This way you will get true shadows from each layer ... if you light it properly. That will be the tricky part.

Boni

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"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

P7 was 32bit and most household computers of that era were 32bit. In 32bit, each running process only gets 2GB of memory allotted (there is a "high address aware" trick, but that only gets you about another 1GB). Poser itself will need a chunk of memory just to hold the scene, and the 2GB memory limit applies to the total of P7 and Firefly. So, to avoid running out of memory when rendering, you have the option to run Firefly as its own process, separate from Poser 7. That allows Firefly its own 2GB of memory, while Poser 7 gets its own allotment.

Is your Windows 7 32bit or 64bit?

Which version of Windows 7 do you have?

How much memory is in your computer?

How much memory is your computer capable of reading? (This is determined by the main chipset on the motherboard)

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Thank you so much seachnasaigh for that clarification! That is usseful!

Boni

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"Be Hero to Yourself" -- Peter Tork

Boni posted at 5:05PM Tue, 19 July 2016 - #4276408

"... Another suggestion. Starting with the farthest "layer" of the scene, use whatever camera view is final view and render ... NO background and save as .png, do this with each forward layer until you get the closest. bringing in ONLY the items for each layer per render. Next Place ONE sided low-poly squares on each layer's position and texture them with each render making them each "billboards". Keep the final closest render 3d. We do trees like this all the time ... it has a good chance of working. Haven't tried it, but this is my theory and suggestion. This way you will get true shadows from each layer ... if you light it properly. That will be the tricky part.

Boni, thanks for that suggestion about the low poly squares. I'd used boxes for that, but never the low poly squares. Maybe they'll look better than my renders on the boxes.

seachnasaigh posted at 5:09PM Tue, 19 July 2016 - #4276411

P7 was 32bit and most household computers of that era were 32bit. In 32bit, each running process only gets 2GB of memory allotted (there is a "high address aware" trick, but that only gets you about another 1GB). Poser itself will need a chunk of memory just to hold the scene, and the 2GB memory limit applies to the total of P7 and Firefly. So, to avoid running out of memory when rendering, you have the option to run Firefly as its own process, separate from Poser 7. That allows Firefly its own 2GB of memory, while Poser 7 gets its own allotment.

Is your Windows 7 32bit or 64bit?

Which version of Windows 7 do you have?

How much memory is in your computer?

How much memory is your computer capable of reading? (This is determined by the main chipset on the motherboard)

Hi seachnasaigh, I think my pc is 32 bit, but I'm not sure. I looked in "My Computer" for the main drive, but can't find anything that will tell me what version it is. Oh, wait, I just found it in the control panel. I have to keep switching back and forth with a kvm switch because that pc is off line... OK, it's 32 bit, Windows 7 Home Premium, service pack 1, ..... with only 2G ram. @&$?!&%#@*&! The old windows xp pc I'd been using prior to getting this "better" one had 4g of ram, if memory serves me correctly! Now that I know how to check that, I'm going to boot it up and take a look. I'll probably go back to using it. A phenomenal old workhorse, it served me well for more than a decade.

Consider putting 4GB in the newer computer; it probably wouldn't cost a whole lot.

If you want to pursue this, you can size up your situation by running a free utility called Speccy (from Piriform.org); it will tell you what type of memory your computer uses, and how many DIMM slots the motherboard has.

It will also tell you which processor you have and how many cores/threads that processor has.

If you run Speccy, you'll get a summary window like so:

Click on the RAM (I boxed it in red), and Speccy gives more specifics about the memory in your computer and how many DIMM slots you have. Then click on and expand on of the occupied RAM slots (I expanded slot one, boxed in red).

Post screengrabs of those two Speccy windows, and I can tell you what you'd need to upgrade to 4GB.

You can find out how many threads your CPU runs by pressing simultaneously Ctrl+Shift+Esc; that will open Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab, and you should see green/black graphs appear. There will be one CPU usage history graph for each processor thread. How many CPU usage history graphs do you see?

Do you know someone who is sufficiently computer-savvy to install RAM sticks?

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Thanks seachnasaigh, for your suggestion about Speccy. I'll download it and transfer it over to my windows 7 pc on a thumb drive. Hopefully they'll let me install it without demanding that I register it on line, like so many software vendors are doing nowadays. Even freeware.

I do this a lot.you can always type ya words in email ,word ,notepad n then when you have it all copy paste to thread.

you can post .jpgs in another post also

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Hi seachnasaigh, Once again I couldn't seem to attach files, so I'm trying another browser (was using seamonkey, I'm on firefox now...) Here's the screen grabs you asked for: Wow, now I see a buch of gibberish, but still no pictures. Anyway, it looks like I've got a couple free ram slots. Depending on what you tell me, I'll probably ask a guy who does all my tech work to add that ram. Thanks for helping me with this. (now let's see if any pictures show up when I post this...) JOhn

I saw the same problem. I was doing test motion renders in Preview mode and everything was fine. When I tried making animations using Firefly it would sit there for hours, then crash. I finally tried rendering as separate image files and it went much better. It would still occasionally crash in the middle, but at least then you have some image files instead of an incomplete Quicktime file. I could then restart the animation at the first missing image. So one interpretation to "try rendering in a separate process" could be: render animations as separate images, but do it in small batches". For example, a 6-second clip at 24 frames/sec would be 144 image files. You could do images 1-72 first, then do a separate rendering for images 73-144.

If you are using a 32bit computer, rendering as a separate process uses a separate executable (FFRender) to render, while your scene setup is handled in the Poser executable. A 32bit computer is limited to 4GB -total- for the Video card onboard memory (VRAM) and system memory (RAM). Any one process can at most use 2GB (you can set that to 3GB if you know how). If you render within Poser, then Poser and Firefly -totaled, together- are allotted 2GB. By running Firefly (FFRender) as a separate process, Firefly can use a full 2GB for rendering.

I see from JWarndt's Speccy screenshot that his machine has 2GB; He could increase that to 4GB (by getting two more 1GB sticks of DDR2 memory) and that would give him more rendering capacity.

@JWarndt: Yes! Get two more more 1GB DDR2 memory sticks! Also, have the computer technician set the high address aware switch so that you can allot 3GB to any one process. My apologies; I didn't notice previously that you had posted.

For future computer purchases intended for 3D use, don't even consider any 32bit machine; they simply don't have enough memory capacity. For 3D use, get a 64bit computer and at least 12GB-16GB RAM (12GB if triple channel, 16GB if dual channel). And use 4GB or 8GB memory sticks instead of filling all of the slots with smaller capacity sticks; that way, as you learn Poser more deeply and begin making complex scenes, you can fill those empty RAM slots to add to your capacity.

Another crucial issue for a 3D computer is to get a processor with a lot of cores -preferably HyperThreaded- and fairly fast clock speed. A HyperThreaded hex-core would be good.

The best bang for the buck is to buy a used professional workstation which has ~two~ multi-core processors. These things were frighteningly expensive new, but they sell used for a mere fraction of their original price. And being commercial grade equipment, I've never yet had a Xeon processor or a server/workstation motherboard die on me.

In 64bit, separate process is still useful; it allows to get a render going (in separate process), and then you can work in Poser on the next shot/scene. If you render internally, then once you begin a render you cannot work in Poser until that render finishes.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Example of a used workstation... Used HP Z800, two X5660 Xeon processors (dual HyperThreaded hex-cores = 24 render threads!), 48GB RAM, Quadro 4000 video card. $465

Assume that you'll buy/install a new OS hard drive and maybe a second storage hard drive, and you'll new to buy an OEM 64bit Win7Pro license. Get an OEM license; don't waste money on a retail packaged license.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

@JWarndt: If you haven't added memory yet, send me a PM; I have a few 2GB DDR2 (PC2-6400) sticks with metal heat spreaders on my shelf.

Important info regarding 32/64 bitness and multi-core rendering: P7 was 32bit only. Poser Pro, which was derived from P7, used a 32bit setup studio (the Poser executable), but you could render in 64bit. It only divided up the render into 2, (3?), or 4 sections, so anything beyond four cores goes unused.

The pro version of P8 was Poser Pro 2010; both the setup studio (Poser itself) and Firefly can run as 64bit. Firefly will use all available processor cores by dividing the render up into multiple "buckets" (like tiles of a mosaic). Same with P9/Pro2012, P10/Pro2014, and P11/P11Pro.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

@JWarndt: Here's how you set Poser to always render in separate process:

Edit => general preferences => render tab => tick the "separate process" box => OK

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Seach!

Is there an advantage to always running in Separate Process?

putrdude posted at 1:55PM Thu, 06 April 2017 - #4301807

Seach!

Is there an advantage to always running in Separate Process?

For a 32bit system, rendering in separate process allows Firefly to have the maximum memory allotment, instead of having to divide it up between Firefly and Poser.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5