Huge typo. The 3rd paragraph should read If you make MAT files by hacking the text file or copying the materials from a cr2 (or from other people's MATs), you run the risk of not getting the 'double zero' line in your MAT. When you add a texture to an object WITHIN Poser and save it to the library, Poser automatically adds this double zero line after the texture path. mac

Luckily for me, I understood the "0 0" before even considering MAT pose files and make certain that they exist when a texture exists. These are Mac-specific, I think. What kind of eMac are you talking about, stewer? My Power Mac G4 was a 933MHz with 1GB and OS 10.2.1 when I sold it (for need of paying bills and mortgage!). I'm sorry I did, but was hoping to get a dual G5 eventually. ;) But, I'd also need, if I wanted to do so, the MacOS version of P5. P4 and PP will install on either Win or Mac, right? Now we're at about $1200! You guys just love seeing me spend money!! ;0P

I hate lack of continuity in sub-folder names for any particular product (tex under the vendor's name, character or prop file under the product's name and MAT files under something completely different). As stated in previous notes, it makes finding a texture, for example, a complete nightmare. Make the d/l zip name correspond to the product. Often, rather than search for ages through runtime, I'll go into my stored zips, open the one I can't find the location of a texture for, and simply read it from the folder path info. But if the zip hasn't got a descriptive name, it makes life more interesting (I've rediscovered a few wonderful products by opening the wrong zip), though makes the hunt more frustrating. Include a reference in the file name to the character a bit of clothing is designed for. We should come up with a standard one or two letter code in clothing and prop names to designate whether it is conformable or should be parented. Pose sets should have a similar code to indicate which character they're for, and if the user should have IK and/or limits on or off.

Read "and hair" in all of the above.

"scottA, Textures in Geometries??? Oh, right! So THAT'S why Textures is called Textures and Geometries is called Geometries. Silly me!" That's like saying there is supposed to be a separate drawer half full for my socks. And a separate drawer half full for my underwear. Instead of one combined drawer for both. What do you do when you run out of drawers? Build another dresser full of more half-filled drawers? It's not necessary,a waste of space, and not efficient. You can't forget what geometry a texture belongs to if it's all in the same folder.....can you? If you go looking for the files to edit them. You don't need to go through the extra Poser->RunTime-Textures->Subfolder name->texture name to find it. That's a whole lotta uneccesary mouse clicking. It'a already bad enough to have a separate libraries folder to deal with. There's no reason to toss in several extra folders for textures on top of that. If you'd rather do all of that mouse clicking. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. -ScottA "There is no spoon"

Ok, here's the skinny on the "00" thing. Poser 4 will read the files with or without the "00". Pro pack and P5 will not, the "00" is essential for use in PP and P5. And since it makes no difference at all to P4, including the "00" will allow the file to be read by all three versions of Poser. Kuroyume: Yes, it's very easy and simple to install Poser 4 without affecting other installations. Simply install it to a folder with a different name. Example: My Pro Pack is installed to D:Poser 4 and when I need to test something in Poser without propack I install to D:Poser 4 Testing It doesn't really matter what drive you install it on or what folder name you use. It will install just fine. I install everything to my D or E drive since my C drive is only a little over 5 gigs and all I keep there is my OS and peripheral drivers (printer, scanner, etc). I use my D: drive for graphics software and my E: drive for things like word processor, html programs, sound programs, games, utilities, etc. Kate

"If you'd rather do all of that mouse clicking. Go ahead. Knock yourself out." I will. At least the textures will be with all of the other textures as expected, instead of where one lone vendor decides to put them over and above where CL designed them to go to begin with. As far as the dresser drawer theory goes, I have so many socks that my drawers are full anyway, without combining them with my undies. :D Silke pretty much summed up my annoyances, grievances, wants, needs, etc.... My biggest gripe has always been with the ! and ++ for folder names. Major ugh, guys! When DAZ implemented this practice for V3 and M3 I nearly went through the roof. Great thread, Bluebeard. Thanks for allowing us to share what we'd like to see for Merchant standards. :) Brynna, wishing she had a bigger dresser....

ScottA, But Textures in the Geometries folder? Let me ask you this. Do you own tools? Because if you do, I'll know where to find the ketchup. :-)

I see where ScottA is going here with textures in the Geometries folder, but it is the convention set up by CL, as already said. Otherwise it would have to be renamed "Geometries&Textures" so that everybody gets it (eventually). That would screw up about, oh, seven billion already existing products. You might want to rethink that, ScottA! ;) Okay, stewer, I have the eMac (with SuperDrive - Yeah!). The only way to get Poser 5 for Mac is at CL, correct? Will look into it later tonight. Now it's time to relax with Junkyard Wars and Enterprise, thanke ye very much.

Ok the forum ate my last message. Probably best. :P Basically, I can find my socks in the dark. And I don't keep them with my feet. Or my feet with the socks. Actually if I were to go by my sock drawer, I'd be convinced I only have one foot, because my washing machine lives on a steady diet of socks... (I'm winning, I buy 2 identical pairs. That way if it eats one of each, I still have a matching pair. HAH!) The last thing I want is to have to deal with lone socks in the middle of my undies. Aaaaanyway.... I have maybe gone into the geometries folder 20 times since I've used poser. And I've used it for years. I go almost daily to textures, be it to add something, or smooth something, or try something out... I don't care where you want to keep your textures. You're free to do with them what you want and to put them where you want. But if you want to sell items other people use, you better make damn sure you're putting the stuff where they look for it. Not where you want it to be, but where people LOOK for it. I'd say at least 75% of poser owners don't even know a geometries folder exists, nor where to look for it. But they know where their textures are, because there is a folder called TEXTURES. Hell I know a lot of people who are pretty durn lost when it comes to find the C: drive! Yes, it would be nice if everyone were 100% computer savvy, but the reality is - maybe about 25% are. The rest aren't. And you have to make it easy for all levels of proficiency, not just the 25% who give out their phone number in Binary. PabloS - ROFLMAO!

Part of the problem with putting textures anywhere else other than the :runtime:textures folder is this is where poser is set to look first. Yes, you can put them almost anywhere, but why would you. There are enough newbies out there it is a lot easier to try to follow the convention that was first setup, that is all, nothing more, nothing less. The same argument could be said for MAT Pose files, one guy puts all of his clothing textures, etc in the light folder, then all of his makeup and people textures in the camera folder. And put just his pose files in the pose folder. However, customers state that they want them in the pose folder, if they want them there, let them move it. While this may have wisdom, it is really not up to us to reinvent the wheel. We are just trying to document what the convention is. If you want to move them, that is fine. However if someone moves textures out of the :runtime:textures folder, Poser won't be able to find them, without recoding the MAT Pose file and I don't think we want our customers to have to do that. Anyway, yes your points do make some sense, but not to what we are working on. What we are trying to do is to establish the norm. As entitled, this is Suggested Standards, this means that we will encourge these, but there is nothing that says that someone can't do something else. What we are trying to do is to come to an agreement on basic locations. At this point it appears that there are many that would disagree with you. Obviously, you have thought this out and it makes sense to you. But, I doubt that most would agree with you, so I will not be changing the proposal! Sorry about that!

Readme's belong in the Readme folder as stated by many members and in the nice graphic displayed above.

re: Readme files... Something to keep in mind... Daz distributes all of thier products as executable installer files. That means two things, relative to this discussion... 1) the installer program 'installs' the product, so there's no need for 'installation instructions' in the readme file. 2) the installer program will 'display' the readme file, so the customer doesn't (initially) need to go looking for it and can always find it in the (Daz-created) ReadMe's folder later for reference. ...the products you purchase from Renderosity do not use an executable installer program, they come packaged as zip files. The readme file has (or should have) "Installation Instructions" in it. Logically, a customer would read the readme file (including the installation instructions) before installing the product. It therefore doesn't make much sense to put the readme file into a subfolder. I create my packages like so: ProductName_Runtime.zip <-- contains the full Runtime directory structure of the product. ProductName_xxx.zip <-- contains ProductName_Runtime.zip, license.txt and ProductName_Readme.txt ...when you unzip ProductName_xxx.zip, you get the readme file, license file and the runtime zip. The installation instructions in the readme file will tell you to copy the runtime zip file to your Poser directory and unzip that there. Anyway, I know that a lot of packages just come as one big zip file where the readme is included (somewhere in there), but that just doesn't make sense to me from a 'new user' point of view (obviously once you've installed your millionth Poser package, you'll have a pretty good idea of how to do things without referencing any installation instructions, but we need to consider the new users). Just out of curiousity, does anyone here simply download things directly to thier Poser directory and unzip them there? Or do you download to some storage place, unzip there, then copy the Runtime folder over to your Poser directory? (I'm guessing 90+% do it the second way).

Good thread. I heartily agree on the !!!'s and +++'s and whatnot. DO NOT do this. (Please) I have no problem with the vendor creating a folder with their name. (Personally, I would actually prefer it. If I remember a dress I bought from merchant XXX but not the name, I can just go to their folder, as opposed to sifting through a large folder of Victoria's Clothing since I didn't remember the name. It also helps enormously in crediting. No matter where you put it, I will move it. But if I forget to, 6 months down the line I will probably not credit you 'cause I have zero memory anymore.) As for textures, I move everything to a folder for the merchant. My only major peeve is if I bouth 4 shirts from one merchant, and instead of going into a folder for "MerchantX" or even my less preferred M3 Clothing, I get four new folders in my textures folder called Shirt 1, Shirt 2, etc. This comes from back in the pre-Mat file days, but I still want to be able to find what is in there without going through 1000 folders. Just my 2 cents.

Spanki..yeah I install to a temp folder. The installation process for me is so painful now. I use ProPack. Anything to make this easier would help. _Install to temp folder (daz stuff too) _Hunt down the readme and glance at it _Set two copies of Explorer side by side, one to my temp directory and one open to poser/runtime _Drag Geometries to poser/runtime _Search in textures to be sure there are no .bum files. _If there are .bum files right-click and sendto photopaint and convert to jpg _Drag Textures to textures _Open P3DO Explorer and go through each library folder and tell P3DO to convert rsr to png _when that's done use Explorer's search to find all leftover .rsr and delete them _run Correct Reference on every item in temp libraries _fix any problems CR finds _Go through each folder and figure out where I want it in my runtime/libraries _rename folders to my convention _if files can be merged into existing folders, be sure there are no name clashes and rename files as necessary _use a renamer program to rename extensions where necessary _move folders into my runtime/libraries _pray I did everything right and didn't forget anything. -------------- The biggest problems I have are: _.obj files not in geometries. I have to create a directory in Geometries for the object and load the cr2 or pp2 into a text editor to change the reference by hand. _missing or misspelled texture names (this includes textures the vendor didn't put in runtime/textures). Slows CR to a crawl. Takes sleuthing to correct. I suggest every vendor run Correct Reference on their own files first. _duplicate texture names. Won't be spotted until it's too late. AND THESE HAVE TO BE FIXED BY HAND. Please NO GENERIC NAMES FOR TEXTURES. (there, that feels better) _readme files buried deep in nested folders. BTW, I found a good dozen readme folders. Readme, Readmes, Read me in various locations Poser, poser/runtime, poser/readme, poser/runtime/readme/read me. I finally gave up and just delete 'em after I glance at 'em. -------------- Naming Texture folders. I think it's best if the runtime/texture/folder is the name of the vendor. I have a few reasons for suggesting that actually. But I'm tired of typing already. LOL

Maybe Ron Knights (aka Bobby_Boucher) only buys and uses DAZ products and only uses things which self-install wherever a marketing monkey has put them... but most of us buy and use products from a wide variety of sources and some of us are intelligent enough to want to put files where WE please. Even with DAZ products, I don't use their installer. I self-extract to a custom folder and do my own installation. Otherwise you get Vicki bits in Zygote Character, Zygote Characters, DAZ Character, DAZ Characters, and a half dozen other places, some of which might possibly include "V" or "Vicki" as part of their name. Who needs to search all over the darkside of the moon for a particular Vicki character, when all of them can be in one nice tidy folder? If any readme goes into the generic Poser readme file... it will never be seen again. I don't go there. I doubt if most people make daily treks to their readme Folder to see what has been copied over lately. I put the readmes with each appropriate file when I unzip the package. Also, I don't deliberately put textures into Runtime. They stay outside in my Poser Folder under a neatly set-up series of folders and subfolder. It may take Poser a hair longer to find them... but I don't have gold.jpg overwriting itself all the time, and I don't have a bloated Runtime only good for bragging rights because it is too fat to run a job. I've started putting the textures for various garments in the main folder for that garment, even if the textures are by another artist. If all the textures for PhilC's Fantasy Wrap are in one folder with the wrap and all the textures for SergeMarck's Consulat Dress are with the dress it makes loading them from the Materials Room that much quicker. Carolly

Other then what has already been mentioned, my two biggest things are this: File list in the readme file. That way if I ever run into a "missing" file, I can consult the readme (if I can find it) and see if it was included and where the heck it went. The rsr vs. png thing has already been addressed. It is very important ;) My BIGGEST peeve is version errors...absolutely no reason for them. I am on P4 and whether it is a character, prop or pose/mat file all you need to do to prevent this is make sure that the version number is at either 3.0 or 4.0. Anything higher then that and you get that stupid, freaking, crash making version error. BIG PET PEEVE!!!! I cannot tell you how many products I have installed that I am going to have to go through and fix myself, I should NOT have to do this. I paid money for the products, I should not have to go through and correct these. If the merchants don't know about this, I would hope that the beta testers would report it when they run into it. Please make sure that whomever you have beta testing, you have enough testers that each version of Poser is covered. It will save you grief in the long run that is for sure :) Poser 4 is not as forgiving as ProPak for some things and what works in PP may not work correctly in Poser 4 believe it or not ;) Just had an example of that come up the other day while I was testing something. Great thread by the way and about time!! Pendy

As for the textures part... All my textures, whether it's for free items or for my MP items, go in a folder, in Textures, named TrekkieGrrrl. Likewise, all my geometry files (that'll be the obj's) goes into a folder, in geometries, called TrekkieGrrrl. MOST of my stuff ends up in a props folder called TrekkieGrrrl too. I have made a few deviations from that course, and even (sorryyyyyyy) made a folder once starting with --. The few items I have put in folders other than TrekkieGrrrl are the ones I can't find when I need them LOL There are some exceptions to that rule lately. I am now trying my luck at Daz and the folder(s) there will most likely NOT be called TrekkieGrrrl but something more related to the product, as you are more anonymous at Daz than on this MP. When I credit, I also allways credit Daz if it's something I have bought there, and not the artist who actually MADE the stuff. Oh and I think that when ScottA is talking about geometries, he's actually referring to the character folder? That's the only place where it would make sense to go to EDIT something. Some of the japanese artists also put their textures there, together with the cr2. And sometimes even the obj. It makes moving stuff with PBooost an absolute NIGHTMARE! Please don't put it all in one "drawer".

Pendarian was posting while I was typing, so I will just add this: The file list is SUPPOSED to be in the ReadMe. I have had a product fail Rosity's testing becourse I forgot that list, so it is something they DO check for. That said, it is a relatively new thing, so older products may not contain the file list.

On Installation - I download the zip to where I want to store it, and then extract it to the runtime in Poser. I use 6 runtimes - Generic bog standard Poser runtime, V2, V3, M2, M3, Scenes. So if it's a building - it goes in the scenes runtime, V3 into the V3 runtime and so on. Then of course I end up with V2 stuff in the V3 folder - which I don't always clean up. I don't always know if I can safely move stuff, I don't always know if I have moved all the bits I need to move because I don't usually know what goes with what. I found out the hard way that V3 / M3 figures need to be installed at the top level runtime or they don't work, so I ended up with 2 installations of them. In a way, I'm rethinking the whole thing again. But so God help me - the organizing of my files isn't made easy. If I buy something, that means I want to use it right away. Without having to copy / paste stuff all over the place. Then some bright spark goes and sticks stuff into a vendornameruntime... folder and I have to go and pull the runtime out of there and stick it where it belongs. Another gives me a huge long list of files and where I have to put them. Manually. (I HATE that) Another assumes that all my stuff is in C:Program FilesMetacreationsPoserruntime............. - Trust me, it's not. I can live with the extracting to a temp folder to make it easy to copy stuff to where you want it. But if you do that, you use a Renderosityruntime folder please, and then ALL packages should go there. Not just the odd one. It's the odd ones that really mess stuff up. I won't like the above, but I can live with it.

I unzip most everything I have to a temp folder, and rearrange things to where they make sense to me. I don't user any folders with the artist's (merchant's) name. It's much easier to find stuff by category or Poser character. We have clothes made for Vicki, etc. I use the ReadMe's folder for readme's because it is a good place to start.

I have been known to put the stupid ! file names on things but only if it it for a DAZ product that already has it .. That way it tries to install it in the same place. "!Mat M3" for example .. If I made another file called "MAT M3" then those people that haven't changed the file to exclude the ! will have another folder, I have assumed that most people haven't changed it so it is a question of majority rules and all that. But I will never create a ! on my own ... Also, for MAT files, please include the name in there in soem fashion .. Hair files are the worst. I can't tell you how many "MAT Blonde" files I have ... just a "MAT Flip Blonde" would be good. I also do agree about the textures in the textures folder etc ...

Just to let you know, we are proceeding with this. I have made several versions and we are still reviewing these in the merchants forum, building a concensus. Once this is done, we will post it here in a new thread for a review. We hope to post it here in a new thread, with it near a final draft. Thank you for all your comments, you have been heard! BlueBeard AKA Leo

Just adding to the list:

• Absolutely no "generic" texture names. As was said earlier, how many "eyes_blue.jpg" textures do people have? C'mon, at least put the character name in front of it, such as: yuma_eyes_blue.jpg.
• Triple-check the MAT poses for path names. I can't count how many times I've had to correct MAT poses that had pathing information like "f:my filesgraphicstexturesstuffblack.jpg" Or maybe this should fall under the "testing" done by the staff here.
• Name your textures with the same name as your character. Six months after I've extracted everything, how do I know that the "BLmanHead.jpg" texture goes with the "Elfin King" cr2 character? Name the texture "ElfinKing_Head1.jpg" instead.
• ALWAYS zip file from your "Runtime" folder with "use folder names" checked. I don't want to have to read instructions in a readme file to know that that the bldress.obj has to extracted to runtime:geometries:john:clothing:dresses. On a similar note, double-check this. I hate opening zip files to see that the folder names all start with the same name, such as: johnruntimegeometriesdress johnruntimelibrariescharacter johnruntimetexturesdress If you extract these files, yep, every single one will go to c:program filesposer 4runtimejohnruntime... and not the proper places! By the way, is there any chance that these standards can be applied to free stuff as well? I know that people will say that free stuff is free, so who cares. But, once providers get into the habit of zipping their free files, they may not change their habit when zipping items for sale.

I forgot one thing: No one has brought up the issue of bump maps. What is "best":

• Leave the texture as a jpg and reference it in the cr2 character or MAT pose and assume that everyone is using Pro Pack or Poser 5 and can use jpg files as bump maps.
• Leave is as a bum file and add 20 to 30M to the zip file... or more. Just how big does a 4000x4000 file become when it's converted to .bum format?
• Name it "_bum.jpg" with directions (in the readme) for people to convert it to .bum format before using the cr2 character or MAT poses.

My preference with bump maps: name it _bum.jpg, with directions to convert if necessary, and do not reference it in the CR2. Then have 2 MAT poses, one for PP/P5 that calls for a jpg, and one for P4 that calls for a bum. I'm wierd. I'm on P4, so I convert to bum, then resave the bum as a jpg (so it's now green and red, but in jpg format) and make the MAT files reference the jpg. It's way smaller and works the same. (Thanks, Dodger, for this trick!) The only problem is that it can no longer be applied through the material dialog, or Poser tries to BUM it again. It has to be put on with a MAT file.

I have both Poser 4 & Poser 5. I convert all jpg bump maps to bum, then save them with the original file, and rezip everything for a new CD Burn. Later, if I need to reinstall, I delete the bum bump maps if I'm installing in Poser 5.

I'm throwing this out there cause I haven't seen any mention of it. Has anyone seen/heard of what kind of library scheme Daz|Studio will use/demand. I assume it will be able to use the runtime scheme ... but that's just an assumption. Will D|S have its own, perhaps different, library scheme?

I think we'll find that out when it goes to public beta :) Unless Steve wants to shed some light on it... Oooohhh Steeeee-heeeeeve.....

Small pet peave. I have some texture files that are *.psd and *.cdr. Those are Photoshop and Coreldraw specific files, and I don't use Photoshop, and I am sure a lot of other people don't either. Also, could someone enlighten me as to what a *.pict file is and why someone would make them?

a pict file is a Macintosh Pict file. It is sort of like the PC bmp file. You will need to convert it to use it.