I have to convert a load of Poser 5 files from a PC to a MAC running Poser 6. I know that people recommend MAcConvertor for this but the current version for MacConvertor on the Soft Rabbit website is 2003, long before Poser 6. Has anyone had any problems using it with P6 and if so can they recommend solutions and a possible alternative.
PXP

MacConvertor works fine in the Classic Environment, although it is not required for P6. My favorite tool is McPBrowser by FMorgan, available here at Renderosity.

I haven't had to do any conversions at all since moving to OS X. All the stuff that I was using on the PC flavor of Poser5 opens just fine in OS X Poser6.

The only utilities you need to deal with any Poser 5 or 6 content are to decode the RTE and PCF formats (both are ways of distributing modifications to commercial meshes such that they can't be used unless you have the originals). MacConverter handles (most) PCF files, but you can also use the Free Mac port of Objaction Mover (http://www.lamarchefamily.net/nakedsoft/) if you run into them. RTE files are more common, and can be decoded cross-platform by RTEJava (available in free stuff).

Optionally, fmorgan's McPBrowserPRO (or the free subset) will convert old RSR files into modern PNG previews. (The "pro" version provides some minimal but useful library management functions, as well as an easy content installer.)

Yep! The idea that Mac users have to convert Poser PC files to Mac format is pretty much irrelevant today. Since the release of Poser 5, the formats have been the same. So, just put the files from the PC in your Runtime folder. Chances are good that they will work without a hitch. And, as dbutenhof said, you can convert RSR files to PNG using fmorgan's PoserMacConverter Lite. You can find it here: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=fmorgan&Topsectionid=0

Thank you all for your tremendous response. I had no idea that you could simply put the PC runtime files from Poser 5 straight into Poser 6 on the MAC and get them working ,I will be getting fmorgans program too. I think e-frontier should be making more of this fact to MAC users since its really a big selling point! Thank you again PXP

The link doesn't work anymore, anybody have the file?

Hi, I really love Kaveman's software called Ditto. I just drop the zip or if I'm not sure, drop the runtime into the source and select my poser runtime as the target and hit the button ditto, and the file with all the folders in the right place automatically gets put there, without me having to manually do it. PC have this anyway, because when they copy a folder to another folder it doesn't overwrite the folders just the files if they are identical, whereas with macs when you put one folder of same name into a folder that has a folder of the same name, the folder will get overwriiten, ie PC (and the ditto software) do a folder merge. Ie when PC people say they manually instal files into poser, they are not talking about all the work that mac people have to do to manually install. Love esther PS oaky, that's al ittle off topic, but I thought it might be useful for mac people to know. I find the software indispensable!

Good point, estherau! I've also found dittoGUI to be of great help. I wish Apple would give us the option of having file copying & moving work the way Windows does it. (Blasphemy, I know! ;) ) Barry w, sorry, I didn't know that fmorgan's site went down. I'll try to get in touch with him.

@PXP, the only other issue you might have with PC to Mac poser conversion is .png alpha channel inversion. If you find any png icons that are visible on the PC and not in P6 on the Mac, you will most likely have to invert (black->white,white->black) the alpha channel before they will be visible. Not all PC origin png icons have this issue (no problem if there's no alpha channel). but there are definitely some that do.

I wish Apple would give us the option of having file copying & moving work the way Windows does it. (Blasphemy, I know! ;) )

Note, "the way Windows does it" is also the way UNIX has done it since long before MacOS or Windows. And Mac OS X is, after all, UNIX. The directory replacement behavior comes from the traditional MacOS filesystem. (I don't know if Apple changed the UFS [default UNIX] filesystem to behave the same way, and hardly anyone uses UFS on MacOS mostly because it's case-sensitive while many Mac [and Windows] programs, especially nearly all games, seem to rely on case-INsensitivity.) I would suspect they did change UFS, because the inclusion of NeXT "package" technology complicates this issue. A "package" is really a directory, but the system treats it as a file. (It's more or less the "next best thing" replacement for the old MacOS resource forks.) Replacing part of a package, or adding files to an existing package, would generally be a bad idea. (Though there's no reason, in principal, that the copy couldn't be sensitive to whether the directory was a package.)

KDoug and estherau refer to a GUI 'ditto', which sounds useful (though I wasn't able to locate either name). However if you're comfortable with the UNIX command line, (i.e., via Terminal.app), it comes down to just the 'ditto' command, which can unpack a zip archive and store the files into a directory tree without overwriting the directories (i.e., without deleting existing files unless the archive replaces each file explicitly).

You can install most normal Poser packages (where the root directory in the zip is Runtime rather than "libraries", or "Poser 6") with this:

ditto -xk poserstuff.zip /Applications/Poser 6/

If you're not sure, you can see the contents with the command:

unzip -l poserstuff.zip

Attached Link: http://www.ilike.co.nz/dittogui/

Barry w (& PXP if you want the Lite version), fmorgan says he doesn't have a problem with my sending you his program. So, send me an instant message with your email address and the next time I log onto Renderosity, I'll email you the file. He also said that he didn't know the link was dead and he's going to look into that.