Hi everyone, I downloaded a few free Vicky 3 characters here and installed them and for some reason the thumbs for some of the characters are not showing up in Poser 5. The characters came with the pz2, a 91x91 png thumb, and the rsr file, but there is still no thumb when I open Poser. I even went so far as to make my own rsr from the supplied png using p3do explorer, but still no thumb. I've opened and closed poser multiple times and restarted my machine. Still no thumbs. Can anyone suggest what the problem might be? The big head-scratcher is that I installed more than one character and for some of them the thumbs work and for others they don't. Help! Thanks, Josh

Most likely the stuff is installed in the wrong library. For example, if you put a Character file in the Pose library, it would not show up. So take a look at the file extension and see if it's in the right library.

If you have more than a certain amount of items in one folder, the thumbs will stop showing, but the names will still appear. Is this what has happened? The SR4 readme tells you how to fix this: Library ------- - If desired, Poser can now omit the thumbnails when browsing library categories that contain more than a certain threshold of items. Default is 100 items per subfolder. Please adjust the previewNum value in Runtime/prefs/LibraryPrefs.xml if you prefer a different value.

You don't need RSR thumbs for Poser 5, just the PNGs. If Poser sees a library with only RSRs in it, it should make PNGs automatically. I don't think it's the previewNum because you can see thumbs for some items; this would only apply if the entire library folder had no thumbs.

It should also be noted that on the Mac, the alpha channel in the PNG file needs to be black in the areas that the thumbnail has visible pixels. A lot of PC generated PNG thumbnails are distributed with completely white alpha channels. I use graphic converter to invert the alpha mask on these and then the thumbnail shows as intended in P5. For P4, the RSR file will need to be combined with the CR2 or PZ2 file using PoserMacConverter. Once that's done, the thumbnails are usually fine in P4. If they're not, the PICT in the resource fork (from the RSR file) may need to have its alpha channel inverted - should be all black, not white.

What sometimes works is to use P3DO to convert the .pngs to .rsrs which Poser can almost always read, then delete/rename the .pngs and let P5/PPP create new ones. P3DO manages to read some .pngs that are beyond Poser's ability. But there are some which defeat P3DO too. Then its a case of open and re-save in Photoshop (or the like), and repeat as above. BTW, I've noticed a recent increase in the number of really badly malformed .pngs, so perhaps some new buggy utility tool is out there? For vendors and others Quick MAT is the new easy way to create .pngs on-the-fly with it's incorporated Thumb-O-matic - and it creates .rsrs at the same time too.

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone. After trying all of your suggestions I think I have the problem solved. It turned out to be what layingback suggested. I renamed my png, opened poser and the thumb poser created showed up like magic. It's kind of odd, but as long as it works I don't care too much. I was kind of suspicious from the beginning because 4 of the 6 folders I was having problems with were from the same person. Maybe I'll have to let them know that there is something wrong with their png's. At any rate, thanks a bunch. It's always nice to know that if I ever have a problem I can always ask the forum and someone will have the solution. It hasn't failed yet. :) Thanks again, Josh