My runtimes (I have two) are a disorganized mess.  I'm thinking about buying PBoost II, I have Poser 6, running on Win XP.  To those who've had experience with it - is PBoost II hard to use? Any problems with it?
thanks,
Linda B

i have poser 6, windows xp and pbooost ii. my runtimes were also a mess. for me personally, pbooost has been a life saver. you can easily divide up your booty however you want, quick and easy access...no more hunting for things. me likes.

hope this helps

Thanks, I did a forum search but not much turned up on PBoost II, which made me wonder if there were problems or issues I didn't know about. I know a lot of people struggle with organizing their runtimes - so I wondered why it isn't Super Popular. But if it works for you with P6 and XP, sounds like it's worth a try.

Why you might think PBII isn't Super Popular... With many people using P6 they are setting up external runtimes to fit their workstyle and linking them back to P6. In effect what PBII does. My own experience, note that I'm a PPP user primarily, I prefere the old 1.3 version and use it all of the time. I did go from 1.3 to 1.4 to 2, than back to 1.3. It just happened to fit the way I work the best.

Isn't it a lot harder to sort through multiple runtimes, though? Doesn't it get pretty complicated? I'm afraid I'll put something where it doesn't belong and mess up my whole library...  Would PBoost be easier?

all original poser 6 content is under original runtime...curiouslabs/poser6/runtime...then i have everything else (m3,v3,ect) under the downloads runtime...curiouslabs/poser6/downloads/runtime.

everything in pbooost is still accessed through the same subheads as in poser ie; figures, poses, props, ect. but you can even break everything down further than that if you want. like in poser if you want to access m3 (for instance) you have to go to figures/dazpeople/m3...me i just go to figures/m3...and there he is. maybe using m3 isn't a good example because you probably use him so much that you know exactly where to go, but what about those shoes, or armour just for him. what the hell where they under, zygote, blackhearted (free plug!),  bladesmith...now where are those things!?

i have my stuff broken down under props as weapons, armour, clothing, architecture, ect...plus you can see everything at once without scrolling all the time, pictures included (see attached). i can open pbooost twice (side by side) and drag and drop, making a new folder is just that easy, then drag and drop. renaming is easy. between learning modeling, poser, photoshop, cr2's, materials...i have better things to do with my time then making multiple runtimes, constantly scrolling, where is that belt!!!

it was a huge improvement for me from day one. i am going to reorganize it again and further break stuff down to individual characters, but i am not stressing about that. it will take me less time than working in poser and i won't be frustrated by it taking all day. it is very easy to work with, you tell it what to do...not the other way around.

so in answer to your question...all i have is 2 runtimes, going from one to the other is as easy (and as fast) as a mouse click. this might sound like an advertisment but it isn't. i am an artist and i like to be creative, and i understand that sometimes creativity can be laborous (like getting just that right kind of texture and bopping back and forth between photoshop/poser/materials) but i choose not to labor over organizing my booty...i let a little program do that.

me...i just want to create.

Sounds great - the worst part of Poser is the endless scrolling - I'm getting PBoost.

lol! if someone had just told me before i bought that, "you won't have to scroll like an idiot anymore!" i would have purchased right away too!

howards a good man, if you have issues/concerns after purchasing he will work with you...but i think you'll like it.

Attached Link: Advanced Library

Does Advanced Library have advantages over PBoost?

Probably, depends on what you see as an advantage and what PBoost can do (don't own it, and have no desire to do ever ,-)). Well, you can try it for free (and then continue to use it for free ;-)). But with AL you can create your own virtual folder structure. Depending on how organized or unorganized your runtimes currently are that can be easier or harder. AL lets you create your own folder structure, while not touching Poser's. So if you create a "Hair" folder in AL you can drag and drop Poser's libraries/hair folder there and also the "librariescharacterhair" folder (if you organized your character hair in a "hair" subfolder that is) and the "librariesposehair" and "librariesmaterialshair" folders, too. (And of course from different runtimes, too - you just need all runtimes added in Poser...) When you browse the hair folder inside AL then, it'll merge those folders and just give you one flat tree. This way you'll find the character hair together with the poses and materials that are for it rather than browsing for them in a different category again... Of course you need a certain order in your runtime first... There's a lot more, like search (on all indexed files), filter (on the displayed results) customizable keyboard shortcuts, a history of last loaded files, running Python scripts, loading content into DAZ Studio, Carrara, too... And of course you can have multiple windows open. But it's not doing any file shuffling, you've got to do it on your own, so it may not be for you. But maybe P3dO Explorer is more for you ;-)

Attached Link: http://www.hogsoft.com

As the announcement says, with PBooost II SR1 you can now ditch the Poser Library Folder system ENTIRELY.  Or, just leave it shut, and use that valuable space for something else.

As is typical of Howard, SR1 is entirely free (to PBII owners), and even most of the PBooost -> PBooost II monies goes to an arts charity.  Which is one reason Howard remains not a rich man ;-)  So help him out by making PBooost "Super Popular", eh?

BTW, if you want to see the info on PBooost problems, look on Howard's own site - www.hogsoft.com.  Everything's there for you to see.  But I should warn you, there still isn't much though, and if you break it down, you'll see that each significant problem - even if it's a "nut behind the wheel" problem - gets fixed PDQ in a update.

(Full Disclosure:  I'm a long time beta tester for Howard - after getting PBooost early on - but I do NOT gain financially in anyway from sales of PBooost.  But the FII plug-in is another thing entirely ;-)

What about system ressources or Poser memory using by Pboost? I have P6.

While there must be some, it's hard to imagine that you'd notice it.  System resources is not the issue under W2K/XP that it was under Win9x.  Nor does it affect Poser memory significantly - it uses Poser Python (PPP/P5/P6) (or P4PyE for P4 which uses zero Poser memory) instead of the library panel, so as the latter is very image intensive, it seems unlikely to increase memory usage.  (The library manager will still occupy memory of course due to Poser's total lack of any real memory management.)

And PBIIalso no longer resides in memory between Poser sessions a la the original PB, relying instead on the included Hogsoft Hub which uses a very, very small memory footprint in your Windows Tray, but can reload PBII in a click.

Trade this against huge user workflow improvements, and modern mouse support - thumbwheel, right-click menus, etc.  (If you have 2 monitors, PBII can reside on the other monitor and always be visible.)  And anything has to be better than that ridiculous near-circular pop-out menu selection at teh top of P5/P6 library panel!!!

Quote - Why you might think PBII isn't Super Popular... With many people using P6 they are setting up external runtimes to fit their workstyle and linking them back to P6. In effect what PBII does. My own experience, note that I'm a PPP user primarily, I prefere the old 1.3 version and use it all of the time. I did go from 1.3 to 1.4 to 2, than back to 1.3. It just happened to fit the way I work the best.

I have PBoost 1.4 and wish I could run it.  I am using WinXP service pack 2 and PBoost crashes everytime I try to start it.  I don't have the funds for PBoost 2 at the moment.  Any suggestions on getting the older version to run?

Kuladen,  I think I know what's causing it, but Howard is the man to tell you for sure.  Go to his website (hogsoft.com) and post in the PBooost forum there, and I know he will help you.