i'm a newbie cause i only have poser artist (p4 non pro pack) and would soon get upgraded to a higher version i heard that since propack, poser is able to read and store most library files (pz2 pose files, cr2 figure files, etc) in zlib compressed format i clearly see the advantage of such thing as most textbased files poser uses in libraries are taking much space (from 40% to 50% of my total poser installation) but the option is only available when you save a file from within poser as i heard it was using zlib compliant routine, i tried to gather informations about zlib thing. i found the official website for zlib encoding/decoding dll. now i need someone to tell me if there is a way, a tool, that would allow me to compress (or extract) zlib files (command line or front end gui thing or both). my main aim is to recursively zlib compress some critical libraries's subfolders of my runtime for start, and be able to uncompress a given file later if i ever need to edit it by hand in a txt editor, then recomprersss it ponctually, but the key word is batch and recursive, to start with all of that can someone give me tips and advices about it ? i have the zlib.dll installed on my computer, but without application that can talk with it, it feels rather lonely

ProPack doesn't use compressed files.
P5 can compress everything except the geometries and thumbnails.
P6 can additionally compress geometries (OBJ format).

Both P5 and P6 come with scripts to compress and uncompress files (these are based on the standard Python gzip module).
Any compression utility that understands gzip format can extract files.

A lot of 3rd party Poser utilities won't work with compressed files.

Poser 5 won't automatically compress OBJ files unless you save a figure to the characters library with embedded groups in the file, in which case it saves a .obj together with the .crz. Poser 5 will read compressed obj files, however, and you can hack the compress and decompress Python scripts to automatically compress your geometries. I have doen this, and it saves me a lot of space. The one problem is that Poser will ask you to locate the proper obj file when loading some figures or when using geom switching. There are a few Python scripts over in the Python forum which will compress and decompress the Poser files. They can be run from Tkinter if you install Python on your system.

kawecki has a utility in free stuff here that will decompress Poser files.

i was mostly thinking to use it on .cr2 and .pz2 files any way (command line utility which can do recursive batches) to compress things without python anyway ?

You can get the gzip (gzip.exe) command line utility from the gzip home page . Thanks to Mark Adler and Jean-loup Gailly . http://www.gzip.org/ You could then try this ... ECHO OFF FOR %%f IN (C:folder*.cr2) DO C:foldergzip.exe -l %%f SUF .crz %%f > C:foldergzipFileInfo.txt FOR %%f IN (C:folder*.pz2) DO C:foldergzip.exe -l %%f SUF .p2z %%f >> C:foldergzipFileInfo.txt ECHO ON copy into notepad, rename as gzip.bat, and double click it . it basically looks for cr2 files in C:folder, converts them, using gzip.exe in C:folder into crz files . -l switch lists the info and > prints the stdout (screen output) to gzipFileInfo.txt . And does the same for the pz2 files, except >> appends the .pz2 info to the same text file . More on MSDOS batch file commands at - http://www.cs.ntu.edu.au/homepages/bea/home/subjects/ith305/description.html he he - just don't zip up your entire disk drive by accident .

Message edited on: 08/24/2005 15:49

thanx a lot... that sounded exactly as what i wished in my mind will try this, of course modifying the bat script according to my needs and pathes well i think (correct me if i am wrong) that i can safely convert at least cr2 (who takes much room), poses and obj (geometrie) maybe ? or at least cr2, since i would not edit them often, and would i need to, i woudl unpack he one i'm working on and let it non compressed as long as i need to work on it :) sounds great idea many thanx

Don't convert the obj geometries ! I think obj converts to .obz - I've only got Poser 5 so I'm not sure . The obj references in the Poser library files will not find a .obz file . PZ2s, if thy're not referenced by cr2 files . Daz offer addons in pz2 format for morfs and materials . Sometimes their original cr2s reference these pz2s . If they do, you won't get the addon directly from cr2 . You will just have to manually inject them with the pz2 Pose - which may or may not be a hassle .

ah yes forgot about the geometries adressed by the other files, me stupid in fact it is not a problem. i checked size of folders within poser installation, and libraries (cr2 filesmostly) takes half the size just by themselves, the other half is shared by textures and geometries, and guess what takes most space ? textures :) (i mean, over geometries, in teh second half of the install's space used :) i'll stick to cr2, sounds safest way :) thanx (btw: frenetically unwraps poser6 upgrade shippign box just arrived this mornin... jesus, i barly even covered 15% of learning poser 4/artist mysteries and i get 2 generations more in the facE.... i wont sleep :)

The obj references in the Poser library files will not find a .obz file . For the most part, I have found this to be untrue. I compressed all of my geometries six months ago. No real problems since. Poser 5 will find most of the compressed objects. It mainly gripes about geomswap geometries being compressed, but it still loads them after asking you to locate them. The Sixus figures seem to complain when loaded from the library, although I'm not sure why. I have had very few problems with Poser 5 since compressing my geometries. Honest! It may be good to advise people not to readily compress their geometries. It changes the workflow a bit. But it can be done with Poser 5, without any disasters resulting.... Whether or not it's a good idea is another question. :) Not to drag things OT....

Poser 5 and 6 come with a Python script that recurses through all folders and optionally removes the uncompressed library files (when compressing) or the compressed ones (when decompressing). I decompressed everything for easier editing the .cr2/.pz2/whatever files (disk space is no problem in my case). The scripts worked perfectly.

So it does . Thanx for the info .

can you tune the script to only recurse/work on sme folders and not others ? or it's "all or nothing" behavior ?

Can be done. The script uses os.path.walk, the callback function that is called can be modified to return immediately when a file is in a certain set of folders. Maybe it's easier to mark the folders (including content) you don't want to changed as read-only. The script will try to do the conversions, but it won't be able to. Since exception handling is in place, the script then will just skip those files and start handling the next files.