Greetings! Like most of us, I have downloaded free objects, purchased from Renderosity, Daz3D, poserpro's, belong to Poserworld, etc., and etc. As I continue to add characters, props, clothing, (especially clothing!) things have gotten rather muddled up. I took a good, hard look yesterday. I've got clothing in the Figures area, figures in the Clothing area, props in the Hair area, and so on. I think I trusted the installation processes too much. I put up with it for awhile, because I usually knew where to find something. But lately I'm just getting lost all the time. Most likely "lost" items are MATs, BUM files, textures and the occasional OBJ file. What to do? I figure on uninstalling, and starting over fresh. After the basic installation, I'm going to make sure I know where each filetype was put by Poser on installation (got a pretty good idea already, but it won't hurt), BEFORE I add anything, then install By Hand each object I've already got. ZIP files I'll unzip to a temp directory, move everything out of there to where it's supposed to go, clean out any remainder junk (i.e., readmes) in the temp file, and move on to the next one. Another culprit is mis-named folders created during the object's installation, especially when you have more than 1 thing from the same vendor. In such cases, I plan to create a "master" folder for that vendor for each object type, (hair, prop, clothing, etc.), and work down from there. I figure a half bottle of Excedrin and about 2 good days should get me through this. And yes, I have bought certain unnamed install products that are supposed to know where this stuff goes. I don't know who to blame anymore, and I'm not trusting anything. (Don't have control of Daz though, since those are EXE's.) I'm just wondering if anyone else has decided to do the same thing, what their thoughts were, and any pitfalls to avoid, that would cost time. I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day. Thanks in advance, for any replies!

Unless a texture is shared by more than one object, then I don't put it in the texture folder, I put it in the figure/props folder. That way, when tidying up, deleting that folder will also get rid of the textures associated with it. Also, when a texture cannot be found, that's the first place Poser looks for it.

...and if you read the dialog boxes closely, even the DAZ .EXE's provide the option to be redirected to install to a user designated file path.

I always Install everything based on groupings in the zip file..I don't ever just let it install by itself since I ran into that same problem myself..what a nightmare..learned my lesson quickly..however the mess was still large. Good luck....I just spent time moving files around rather than re-installing things. Debby

Get P5, you can have a different runtime for each category or genre. Burn the runtimes to rewritable discs. Saves space and the headaches. Mike

I like to totally reinstall everything from scratch every few months. It's a good excuse to cut down on the sheer amount of stuff. I also take all my Poser stuff, and reorganize all the zip files using a template of the Poser folder structure. Then I make "theme CD's" of the originals. (Mike, Vicky, etc.) Then I install the stuff from there. If you have Poser 4, you want to get two essential tools: 1.) PBooost ($20 in the Marketplace, and it will soon be available for Poser 5!), and CorrectReference. PBooost allows you to create banks to further organize your Poser stuff. I have a bank for Mike, Vicky, the Millennium kids, etc. CorrectReference (free!) will go through your Poser installation and fix any bad texture references. You would be surprised at how many items have bad texture references. Also, CorrectReference will fix any texture references when you decide to move stuff around.

PBoost....it is difficult to work? Sharen

'I don't put it in the texture folder, I put it in the figure/props folder.....Also, when a texture cannot be found, that's the first place Poser looks for it' Unfortunately, it means that before poser ever finds your texture, it has to look through the texture folder first, then go through the others. A guaranteed recipe to make poser even slower than it is. The only way to do this stuff is to install by hand, name everything properly, and never install anything until you have the time to try it, find out what it is, and whether you want to keep it. I leave zips alone until I have the time to try the things out. If I like them, ok, they stay. Otherwise, I trash them immedately along with all the texts and obj files. It's one of the problems of having so much stuff available. You want to get it all. Well, do it, but keep it under control. mac

PS You might want to start by ditching all the poser default stuff you never use. Ship it all off to a disc and delete the files. mac

There are some hair packages that install themselves to the Character folder. The files are Cr2 so I think they have to go there. I think the Conner hair from DAZ is one. But then again, maybe if you are willing to edit the files, maybe you can put them wherever you want. I'm not really sure.

Hmmm:i solved my problem by organizing everything in poser by catagory. In the characters folder, props folder, and the texture folder I have a folder called men's clothes. Inside that folder I have 2 folders called poser, and daz. The poser folder holds all clothes for poser figures, and the daz folder hold all the clothes for daz figures. In both the poser, and daz folders are seperate folders for each item of clothing such as: men's dress shirts, men's pants, men's socks, etc. The men's clothes folder in the characters folder holds all clothing with the cr2 ext, the men's clothes folder in the props folder holds all clothing with the pp2 ext, and last the men's clothes folder in the textures folder holds all the textures for all clothing items having cr2, and pp2 ext. This has been done with everything. With catagories such as architecture, enviroment, transportation, etc. It took like 4 days to do and I'm still not done yet. the pose files are the worst.

That will work as long as you're using Poser 5. Poser 4 has limits on how many folders can be inside other folders.

PBooost is very easy to use. Just do a little advanced planning, then drag and drop.