In the end, Poser is just another piece of software. It interacts with memory, processing power, file system and even the network. Use it wisely.

Download this tutorial in PDF format (1.4 Mb)

Poser – the program

At the bottom line Poser is just a piece of software, with an inside and an outside.
At the inside you’ll find all the features that the Missing Manuals will tell you about (in other articles), at the outside it consumes CPU power, RAM space, loads and stores its files and interacts with you following the software settings.
This article discusses this outside part of the program, as far as the interaction with Windows is concerned. I’m not familiar with Apple, sorry for that, but perhaps some tips and tricks are generic enough.

I’ll kick off with considering Installation, including issues that might disrupt the working of the program in general.
Once I’m up and running I might face program crashes when my scene gets too large and complicated. That’s a memory issue, so I’ll discuss Ram Usage next. Once I’ve survived on that, I will notice that some renders take a considerable amount of time. No sweat, my machine is multi-tasking so I might do something else in the meantime.
Hence, CPU Usage is the third topic. I’ll end this first, basic part with some miscellaneous topics (File Usage, including the Library and Poser Settings) on the interaction between Poser and the file system, and with you or me: the user.

The second part focuses on working more efficiently. Rendering Strategies discusses rendering in background and using the Queue Manager (both for Poser Pro 2010+ only), enabling me to work on one Poser scene while rendering another. Rendering Performance discusses the workflow itself. A lot of time is wasted with unnecessary test-renders and with doing the right things in the wrong order, over and over again. And finally Professional Considerations presents a peek in the real kitchen. Pro users meet schedules, deadlines and budgets because they don’t do in 3D what can be done in 2D.

For those who want or need to tweak or reset Posers behavior via the backdoor: the Appendix reveals the details of the Poser.ini file.