Got a small weirdness here, I hope it's something fairly basic that a relative newbie like me just hasn't figured out yet... (and yes, I've RTFM and I'm none the wiser)

I was installing a few downloaded models the other day and there were no texture paths in the .zip (no readme either), so I opened the .cr2 and discovered the textures were supposed to be nowhere near the Poser directory. I checked a few other model files, and found hardcoded paths leading to:

C:/Program Files/Metacreations/...
C:/Program Files/Creative Labs/poser/...
C:/My Documents/...

(FWIW, I have Poser installed on D:/Program Files/...)

Many of them also had relative paths from the Runtime folder, or just the filename, some with ":" as a separator -- are these created on a Mac?

Now, this mishmash of paths has me totally confused. Could this contribute to models loading slowly or causing Poser to fall over more frequently? How does Poser search for a texture and how hard does it try to find it in the hardcoded path?

When I started reading these forums a couple of months ago, I remember someone mentioned a program that's supposed to correct paths and file references. Does this program work for Poser 4.0.3 with Win98?

(No, I won't say "Help me, Obi-Wan, you're my only hope...")

(Oh, &@#%...)

Blast from the past. That is a pain. Metacreations was the original owner of Poser and CuriousLabs changed the file folder like Daz changed the paths away from the old Zygote folder. If you are up to it, make your own folders and change the cr2 path yourself in a text editor. You could just delete the pathes, apply the texture manually from your own designated location, and resave. Hope that helps, Anton -"Support the community. Report file sharing and illegal hosting" -"Life is like a box of chocolates. If you sit too long, you get sticky"

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=hogwarden&Topsectionid=0

Thanks, Karen, that was the program I've been trying to remember the name of. Got it now, and I'll install it later.

Erm... what counts as a "large" runtime? I've been collecting assorted schtuff for a couple of months now, and the total runtime folder's expanded to...

ARGH!!!

It can't be over 3GB already, can it? Maybe I should defragment soon, as well...

3gb isn't so big... LOL... but it's pretty large. The way I use it is to just run it on one folder at a time. I use P5, so I've got subfolders... so for example I'll run Character>Clothing>V3>Dresses. Let that complete and then on to the next one.

and the file paths should be written like this: "Runtime:Textures:folder name:texture name.jpg" the ':' replaces the '/' so that it will run on windows AND Macs

Ahah! Another mystery solved, thanks, geoegress!

I've now looked at the doc file that comes with Correct Reference, and it does mention the difference between ":" and "/" as folder separators. I've also come across a lot of pointers in the form of just ":texturename.jpg" but the file is actually buried three or four (or more) levels deep in /Runtime/Textures/ -- presumably this is treated as a "lost pointer; hunt for the file" situation?

It'll take a while to convert all the stuff in my runtime, but if it helps performance, it'll be worth it. I prefer relative to absolute paths whenever I can -- is there any way to set Poser 4.0.3 to use them, or is Correct Reference the only easy(ish) way?

Correct Refererence is the only way of changing over to relative paths, unfortunately. Well, unless you want to go in and hand-edit all the existing files ;-) Any textures that are not referred to with full path, Correct Ref will usually search and find and correct the path, as long as they are somewhere within the Textures folder that you specify when you start the program. Only if they are in another folder somewhere will it fail to find them. However, I have noticed it can't always find textures this way, so you will end up having to hunt for some of them manually.