Poser 4
and the trouble with Big Texture Maps:
So, I started playing around with Mil Dragon from DAZ (I had this promblem with others as well)
Poser 4 runs pretty smooth when posing the dragon but when it comes down to rendering....
it drags a little.....I mean freezes up the system or just takes forever.

Now, I found somewhat of a solution aleast for my problems and maybe they'll help you as well
I started in the texture folders:
I'll do the example of the dragon since I've been working with it
Mil Dragon folder has 12 Tex maps and 12 Bum maps and some Trans maps also (ones I'll be using there more but you get the idea)
First lets look at the size of the texture body map which will be used on 4 material zones.(body, belly feet and hands)
The Tex map is 1,274KB and the Bum map is 1,600KB.
Now I'm I wrong in think that the Poser program is using that TeX 1,274KB x4 and Bum 1,600KB x4
for those materials.  
And I'm so not a cumputer wiz so I'm asuming that's alot of memory being used.
Now the head is the same KB size as the body but being used on 13 different material zones.
So, again I'm asuming that all the Textures combine are like tring to open a small program inside
of Poser when you hit that render button (that's alot of    ).
It's way more then my system can handle and maybe some of yours too...

So the solution:
was to size the dragon body Tex map down in size: I did it in pixels the original body was 4090 x 2678 I cut that to 1000 x 655.
Cutting the size down to 151KB and the Bum map to 175KB.  
Holy New Year Diet!  -Batman  
Then I went on to resizing the rest of the body parts. It didn't take that long and the results
out weight my time in doing so...
  
The test render with Dragon standing alone about 10 - 20 secounds (it's pretty fast and it looks fine to me).
I just opened dragon hit pose and added all in render options (will very using 1024 map size on lights )
and hit render.......
I'm working on Jan. pic with props and Lucy and its still under a minute (test rendering)
Now, I'm just playing around here and its nice to use some other models that were made for
faster and more up to date system but still could work with in my Poser 4 and my slow   computer.    

So, if you're still using Poser 4 and have questions or solutions drop'm here.....
Cause I got tons of questions that need answering ....

  
Like Why do I get missing body parts when I load the same characters in a scene?

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Hi maovin

I remember a discussion about the right size of a texture map, in any case, you're right, if you're not going to show pores, a texture map can be scaled down relating to the dimensions of the final render... And you save memory.

What parts are you missing there ? Maybe backfacing polygons ?

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I had to look up backface polys and I had a laugh what is he talking about.....
Duh!
I forgot I asked a question!
I'm using April's P4Vskin and when I load the same two characters one head is there; the other is not.
Also with two EVEs but with the hip.
I'm sure its a ghost in the machine somewhere.....I'll find 'em
Thanks

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Sounds like a crosstalk problem....I don't know why this happens, but sometimes P4 does this with textures too. Had that experience too when I used p4. (currently no Poser installed - hdd crashed after I had all my runtimes sorted out and before I could save them to an external drive, so I kinda lost the fun atm   )

That's good advice on the texture maps, maovin and Tormie.

I also use Poser 4, and have seen the "missing body parts" problem many times.  It happens randomly to me when I start to get more than about four or five Posettes or Dorks at a time in a scene with a lot of props.  Posfan made a good point about crosstalk which can definitely be a problem, but in my experience missing limbs often seem to be a RAM/memory issue with Poser (made worse by the fact that at least on my machine Poser 4 prefers to run out of phsyical memory and stall rather than utilize virtual memory).  One thing that works for me sometimes is just to save the scene, close Poser, maybe reboot my computer or maybe not, and then reopen Poser and the scene.  That doesn't always work, though, so here are some other suggestions if you are having the missing limbs issue:

a) Look at not only the size of texture maps being used in your scene, but also the number of different texture maps Poser is currently holding as active.  If you've been making a lot of changes to the elements of your scene Poser may be holding many texture images in memory that you're not currently using (so that if you wanted to change back to them you don't have to pick "Load Map" again).  In this case exiting Poser and then restarting it will clear out all the textures that are not currently in use from memory.

b) If your composition doesn't call for a relative close-up shot, you may not need bump maps at all in the scene.  You can get rid of them as described in (a).

c) Take a look at the complexity of the characters in the scene.  Unlike in later versions of Poser with those newfangled injection morphs, in Poser 4 the amount of memory required to use a regular figure can jump dramatically as even a few morph targets are added.  If your figure has morph targets that you are not currently using, consider using Morph Manager to make a stripped-down version of the character for use in the current scene by getting rid of any morph target set at zero (just make sure you save them under a different filename that the original).  If a human character is not featured prominently in the scene, consider using a "factory default" Posette or Dork as they don't take up much memory.

d) If you have background or filler objects in your scene, consider whether they need texture maps at all or if you could just set an object color for them instead.  

e) I've found that sometimes if I can't get a character to load from the library without them missing a limb or two, if I make a new Poser scene with just that character and then import this back into the original scene the character will appear properly.

f)As a last resort consider whether there are elements in your scene that you could render separately and add-in postrender to the final image.


As for helping to speed up the render time, here are some suggestions:

1) You mentioned you had the lights set at a shadow map size of 1024, which I think is pretty high.  Of course it depends on what you're doing, but unless your scene is meant to be lit in a harsh way there's not much benefit in my opinion to going above 512 on the shadow setting and the effect on reducing render time should be very noticeable.

2) I may be wrong but in my experience Poser needs less memory to render an image in the workspace as opposed to rendering in a separate window.

3) If you haven't already done so, turn off the little Poser Guy that walks across the screen while the image is rendering to let you know what percentage is finished.  In the PoserRuntimeScripts folder, rename the file named something like "status.avi" to "no-usestatus.avi" and the little guy (who takes up memory and calls for extra screen redraws) will go on vacation.  If you miss him just rename the .avi back to its original name.

4) Think about the number of lights you are using.  It is almost always better to have fewer lights that are carefully placed, and less lights equal a faster render time.  Also consider whether you have any lights for which you could turn off shadows.


I would guess that you probably knew most of that stuff already, but perhaps if others are having trouble too these tips might help them.


Endosphere

Thanks
Posfan & Endosphere

  

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While catching up with the posts here, I remembered something about Bump files in P4.

Bump files are usually very big and take a  lot of memory. But there's a trick.

Resave the bump files as JPG files. Then create a MAT Pose with MPE using the JPG Bump file.

This way Poser 4 is able to read JPG Bump files!!

You can't apply the JPG bump file manually - Poser won't read it.

Here's a PS action ready to download to turn b/w bump files into the green P4 bump file.

"... hdd crashed after I had all my runtimes sorted out and before I could save them to an external drive"

Been there, done that. Except mine was a HUGE 3DS archive, neatly sorted & categorised, duplicated on the two D: drives on my two PCs. Then one D: drive died by inches. While I was still trying to identify cause, then recover from failure, the other D: died...

They were identical drives, from a bad batch. Maker later left the business...

I was able to recover *most* of my archive from the upload/download directories on the PCs' C: Drives, but I was never sure what I'd lost, and a lot of the web-sites had vanished...

Sting in tale: I'd bought three (3) drives together. I'd put the other into a portable USB box, used it for 'take on holiday' stuff with lap-top-- It died a year later, on holiday.
D'uh.
---

Um, I found my Poser 4 needed the BigRAM patch, otherwise it fell over in bizarre ways.

I've got v7, still in box, but I can't install it because the CAD_PC would need to dial out. And the CAD_PC cannot spare Norton's overheads. I'm thinking of getting a Yoggie stick to off-load the firewall's resources, but I can't justify the £ 100...

And, um, I seem to be 3D-blind at the moment. I can't see meshes in my Mind's Eye or think creatively. Same happened in 2004/5, which took me out of Poser for several years...

My head hurts...
 

Hi Nik, welcome back

Well, it's always a tragedy when you lose your precious data on a borken HD, I use to change them once in a couple of years but if it has to brake, it brakes ...

In the new case I took last year for the PC I could install the HDs with a huge fan in front of them and another behind, keeping them cool...

I keep the zipped packages on an external HD and the runtimes on the main HD, I make copies of the works that I make on my own.

About the inspiration, well, don't worry. It's a while that I'm uninspired , maybe it's the kind of life and work that I have, who knows ? BTW I've not lost the fun and sooner or later it will come back...

Actually I'm on a (sort of...) Mac for main applications...

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Howdy folks!   I had a question about the old P4.03 and Memory Patches.  

I understand that SmithMicro has said they cannot distribute these patches because of third party license agreements, but I was wondering if any P4 users had tried what sounds like a potential alternative?

This was mentioned earlier this year at Rendo, and one member replied that it worked for him, but I never heard anything further.

Anyway, thought I'd mention it here and see if it might help anyone.   (I've not tried it, and do not know the author, Geert De Peuter, but he hosts apps he has written to patch various older MetaCreations products)

Geert De Peuter's general MetaCreation patch:

http://dev.depeuter.org/

@Nance

Are you having any trouble with Poser 4.03 that you believe would be addressed by a patch and if so, could you elaborate on the trouble?

I run Poser 4.03 myself and the only time I ever get an "Out of Memory" error is if I try to load a cr2 that references a missing obj in the runtime\geometries folder.  I don't believe that qualifies as an actual bug, but rather just a reaction to an unsolvable problem that Poser doesn't know how to deal with.  In other words, the problem is unsolvable without the user intervention of finding the referenced obj file so the cr2 can load.  The obj must have existed at one point during the creation of the cr2 or it wouldn't be referenced; and therefore it is the user rather than Poser that has made an error (by moving or deleting the file) and the user who must correct the issue.

I actually have the old Poser 4.03 memory update (Poser4MemoryUpdate.exe, dated 4-9-2002, 914kb) that I downloaded years ago, but in all this time I have never actually installed it, and therefore can't say if it solves any problems or not.  The reason I never installed it is that I was never satisfactorily able to determine what exactly it is supposed to do or what alleged problems it is supposed to address, and my philosophy is if it's not broke don't fix it.  I looked at the link you provided and after reading the second page describing that fellow's patch I unfortunately don't really understand what his patch is supposed to do either (presumably because I've never noticed any troubles that caused me to say 'hmmm, there ought to be a patch for that.').

Do you know what sort of IP rights issues surround the old Curious Labs patch?  It sounds like something you may have researched, and the patch file I have doesn't seem to have a licensing agreement.  If you knew more about it and could satisfy the PF mods there aren't any IP issues (or what they are if they exist) I would then be happy to upload the patch file to the PF files area for those that have some reason to believe it would help them.  It does seem highly unusual (I did a cursory google) that this trivial and antique patch doesn't seem to be available anywhere except a warez site or two, so what could the so-called 'rights' problem be?

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful without more information.

Thank you Endosphere, but uploading something that refers to a copyrighted program to PF is a nono, it would mean BIG troubles (especially for me )

BTW, and *I'M NOT SUGGESTING IT* if this update is not available anywhere, you and Nance could contact each other by PM...  And find a solution ( I'm not suggesting it ... )

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Thanks Endo & Tormie.   I was following up a post originally made by a member at 3DCommune (who was re-installing P4 and had lost the patches) and I'd hoped perhaps Those-What-Guards-the-Treasures-of-Poser-Past might have a line on that update.

As I recall, the Memory Patch allowed P4 to address memory greater than 2Gig.   With the size of models & textures these days, that gets maxed out pretty fast.

Sounds like its just more headache than profit for the rights-holders to sort out a distribution scenario.  

And while I would never suggest it either, I suspect the solution  that Tormie didn't suggest would not raise anyone's ire if the patch were to be encrypted with RTEncoder using Poser.exe as the Key file.

I appreciate the input.  I figured if anyone might know, you guys would, so I'm going to rest assured that it is no longer officially available anywhere online.

Thanks again!

After reading about the tales of Hard Drive woe on this thread, I'm beginning to think my collection of 13 1Tb external drives (from 2 different manufacturers) and a 2Tb NAS box for network storage isnt quite as paranoid as I thought it was... Though it has to be said, I could barely fill 3 of them at the moment.  But multiple copies at multiple physical locations do tend to make me a little happier.

Then again, I learned the hard way about losing years of work in a minute.  About 10 years ago, my flatmate decided to borrow my PC to check out some floppys he's "aquired" from a pal, and STUPIDLY booted from them.  Of course, they were virused, and 2 Gb of hard-won downloads, and 12 years of CGI work went to the bit-bucket in a flash.  And this was back in the days when (slow) dial-up ruled supreme, and 2 GB was a monstrous amount of space - and almost impossibe to reliabley back up.  It still aggravates me thinking about that.

Even now, right out of the box, one of my brand-new 1 TB externals started making unhappy noises within minutes of unpacking it.  (It says a lot that you can hear a hard-drive head banging away from across the room while you're watching 'The French Connection' in 5.1 surround sound...)  I've contacted the store I bought it from and informed them I'm going to run it 'til it fails... then return it.

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Am I the only one who thinks they named it Windows because it is a major pane? BA-DUM BOOM!!

Whoah, 15 terabytes for personal data!  Not long ago I would have thought that was excessive, but given the changing nature of data use and management it doesn't seem fanciful at all.  That's unfortunate about your just-out-of-the-box HD being a lemon, but on the bright side at least you know to be wary of it rather than having it suddenly fail with no warning as happened to me with an only-several-months-old drive earlier this year.

Making regular back-ups is definitely a best practice, particularly for nostalgic people like myself who have a lot invested in antique software and arcane files that are irreplaceable.  Since my own major HD crash last year where I lost a lot of data, I've been religiously making backups to CDs once a month--which saved me lots of crying when the replacement drive I bought also failed shortly thereafter.

The threat of lost artwork is yet another great reason for everyone to post their pictures on Posette Forever--if you lose a file locally, you'll still be able to remember and appreciate it here on line.  As you said, multiple copies are good but mulitple copies at multiple locations are even better.

I researched that Poser memory patch thing a little more, and while sadly I did not find anywhere to download it (which is lame--if the current owner of Poser refuses to support older versions it doesn't inspire much confidence that their own current version will still be supported a few years into the future) the details of what the patch was supposed to do is that it allows Poser 4.03 to address installed RAM larger than one gigabyte in volume (not 2 GB).  This explains why I never noticed any reason to install it, as my old computer only has 512 MB of RAM (which knowledgeable people told me years ago I was WAY more than I would ever need).