Since I am STILL trying to get every piece of the Poser 11 Pro download to complete successfully (the install manager keeps failing) I was hoping someone could give me some advice on the network renderer. Does it work well? How small of a computer can I use and still make gains? It is cheaper to add multiple mac mini's with windows than to build one titanic super computer. Does this make sense?

I use Queue a lot.

I would echo Nerd3D's answer and his caveats.

Caveats:

[_] Queue does not distribute a single render amongst several remotes; you can only send entire animation frames or entire still renders of a batch list.

[_] Queued renders cannot use GPU rendering.

That said, Queue is great for:

[_] Animations - the work is divided amongst your remotes.

[_] Batch lists of test renders - send several test renders to Queue before going to bed. Your machine(s) will work through the list.

[_] Free up workstation by sending test renders to Queue.

I love doing animations, but to me, 3-4 remotes would be great even if you don't do animations, because they enable you to run an entire batch list of test renders simultaneously.

Again echoing Charles, my advice for remotes is to seek CPU cores (with consideration of clock speed) and sufficient RAM (which depends on your render habits). GPU is irrelevant. To get the most remote rendering horsepower for the least cost, consider buying used/refurbished ex-enterprise server blades. In particular, you want blades with two processors, with lots of cores and decent clock speed. Currently, the sweet spot is the Westmere series Xeon processors, with model numbers prefixed "X", and numbered X5650, X5660, X5670, X5680, or X5690. These are all HyperThreaded hex core processors, so they supply twelve rendering threads each, and with two of them on a motherboard you get have twenty four render threads. Clock speeds range from 2.66GHz for the X5650 to 3.46GHz (and 3.73GHz turbo) in the X5690.

Search eBay for "2x X5650" and you'll see lots of used professional workstations and servers appear. You only want to consider the units with two CPUs. Some will have minimal RAM installed, some will have plenty. For blades, figure on buying a fresh hard drive and buying an OEM (system builder's) 64bit Win7Pro license (about $75). Else, get a group server license and learn to PiXiE boot the remotes. You can connect MAC and Win machines together on the same network. If you get a used workstation or two, they may already have a 64bit Win7Pro license. I'd still figure on a fresh hard drive, though. A dual CPU blade rendering at 100% CPU capacity and the cooling fans spinning at high speed will consume 275 Watts (I measured it with a circuit-splitter meter), which means 2.3 amps of 120v household electric. That's well less than half what one of my dual CPU workstations draws, so I can feed three or four blades from a big batt/surge unit.

no.

These old devices all use DDR3 RAM. Even a modern smartphone is better at accessing memory.

Today, it is quite easy to put together power-saving and highly efficient Ryzen boards.Two of them can do much more than four of the old Xeons when it comes to rendering. Not to mention the energy savings.

To use the Render Queue, does Poser need to be installed on each machine you want to use?

No. You only need the queue manager installed, but it needs to be the same version. So when you download an update, you need to also get the queue manager with it.

Poser would make one of the best mobile apps but it would have to work in conjunction with a desktop version.

LOL @  deimos2k4 resurrecting a 5-yr old thread with "no."

I cannot see setting up one of my multiperson scenes on my 4-inch phone screen. No, I wanted the index finger. No, I tapped the finger. The finger. Where is my stylus? Dangit, I still can't do it.

Your Poser problems would seem smaller on the other hand haha ... there's always the mic icon/button lol

Shouting in the mic: "Select LaFemme's neck... Twist 120 clockwise... shoot, I meant counterclockwise!"

Maybe use the camera to help pose. "Make Lafemme stand like this. Now increase her breasts this much."

You can load LaFemme's face in My Talking Pet app... lol there are actually some cool free apps that will upscale, denoise and add detail to you render, without a watermark... search for "gigapixel" in both stores

Seriously, though, I was horrified to discover it would be much cheaper and more 'future-proof' to build a dedicated network-render 'Box' than significantly upgrade either of my CAD Tower's twin GTX 750 cards. I went heavy on the CPU (Ryzen 7, so lotsa cores) and RAM (32 GB) but light on GPU card. ( A budget 'Radeon' left over from CAD Tower build !!)

As noted above, there are several 'gotchas'. Beyond initially setting up all the 'authorities' etc in Windows, you must optimise Poser's render options for CPU-only. So, keep Superfly's vol-bounces and bucket size at 64 or below. And, for the first few 'jobs', check 'Box' is actually using all its cores. If not, lower that '64' until the other cores join in.

Um, I've asked several times for a dedicated 'remote render' sub-forum, but...