I've seen lots of threads started by people frustrated and confused by Poser locking up during renders. Most of the ensuing discussions have focused on machine specs (esp. RAM), operating systems (esp., XP vs Win98), and other potential causal or contributing factors.

I've experienced many of the same problems running Poser 4, especially when my machine was running on Win98, but the problems have not entirely disappeared since my upgrade to XP.

What I finally discovered is that the single most important factor influencing whether or not an attempted render crashed seems to be the number and complexity (read, shadow mapping) of the lights in my scene. Because Poser seems not to remove existing lights when you bring in a new set, I found by looking at the Light Controls tool that scenes that I thought had only a few simple lights were loaded with "artifact" lights I had toyed with before settling on the currently active set. I've also noted that some of the light sets out there are EXTREMELY complex with dozens of spots casting shadows and, therefore, requiring significant system resources for shadow mapping. This seems especially true for some of the global illumination sets I've come across.

I've also discovered that Poser and other applications can load into RAM, then that RAM is not entirely freed up when Poser and/or the other applications are closed. End result: too little in the way of system resources are available, even if a RAM update utility like RAMBOOST is run, making Poser more prone to crashes.

My two-part solution, which has worked quite well so far, is to:

(1) start with an opening "UNTITLED.PZ3" scene which has NO lights, then pick the light set I want to use for the scene and stick with it as I load my characters and configure the scene (and if it is a demanding scene with several Millenium figures, I use one of my very simple light sets which cast few or no shadows).

(2) for demanding scenes which might cause a crash, save the scene and reboot your machine before going straight to Poser, reloading the scene, and rendering (i.e., don't open other applications which might use --then fail to fully release-- RAM).

If others have additional, or alternative suggestions, please pass them along; and I hope my suggestions are helpful.

TG

Ya I had the same type of render hangs and found setting the lights and shadows to one. Also loading poser with no character helped load faster. but the biggest thing that was maddening Poser did'nt release memory and I had to reboot to get all memory back. Then I read about setting vcache. using cacheman. Now all the memory is released when I return back to the desktop.that was with Win98. I up graded to XP !!I dont' see any difference in speed!!. rendering or system and I have plenty of ram Pent4 1.6g 640 meg ram

Hm..no rendering crash yet. Athlon XP 1800+ on epoxboard, 512 MB RAM, NVidia GF2-MX400. (Well, a good cooler for the Athlon!)