Attached Link: http://www.divinerealms.net

Is there anything that will somehow "zip" or package all the needed contents for a "scene" (a poser file) into a file or folder that can be opened (or loaded into their directory)  by any other Poser 6 user? IOW,  automatically porting content.

IOW, to eliminate having to create identical file directory "the old fashioned way"?
(hunting down the content, installing it)
This is A) in order to share work with less hassle 
b) make archiving and back-ups easier and less nerve wracking
c) make a re-install of Poser less of an ass-bite

Even if both users (giver, receiver) have to have the plugin, that's okay. 

thanks
Eric

The problem with zipping up an entire scene's contents to share with others is one of copyright - there would be nothing to sto you from giving other people files which you have purchased but which they do not have the right to own. There are methods around this, such as RTE Encoder, which searches your hard drive for a copy of the original files before allowing the new modified version to be unpacked; but whether this would work on something as large-scale as a scene, I'm not sure.

You can use the python script embedded within Poser to compress scene files, and possibly you could then pass this on to other people: I think the scene file would reference external geometry, rather than containg all the vertex data for each figure. But it would rely (I would imagine) on the receivers having exactly the same runtime structure as yourself in order for the scene file to find all the relevant bits.

In short then (and please, bear in mind this is simply my semi-educated guesswork and ramblings, rather than a definitve answer), you can't pack up everything in the scene and give it to someone else (or store it for your own use at another time); what you might be able to do is to compress a file which tells Poser which files belong in that scene, and pass that onto others so that you could work on the same scene together, shutling it back and forth.

Don't know if this helps at all, or if I just wasted five minutes of your time reading this.

jonthecelt

Quote - Don't know if this helps at all, or if I just wasted five minutes of your time reading this.

i am not sure yet, either! ha ha! But  make no mistake, Eye appreciates your help :)

We are a small 3 person company with legitimate licenses for everything; only 2 will be passing poser scenes, but hopefully that number will grow as we grow :) 

I'll be looking.

Quote - The problem with zipping up an entire scene's contents to share with others is one of copyright - there would be nothing to sto you from giving other people files which you have purchased but which they do not have the right to own.

This is far away from being a problem. If it where, we shouldn't have CD's, DVD's and even no internet connection.

Eye'm  just gonna start zipping and archiving my whole runtime directory, which is only  4 gigs uncompressed, everytime I complete a new scene.   Actually, might as well save the entire poser 6 directory. Can pass this around. Coworker can back up their own runtime folder, put mine in, and then change back if they want to.  Problem solved.

Quote - This is far away from being a problem. If it where, we shouldn't have CD's, DVD's and even no internet connection.

Surely you're not advocating piracy, adp? I'm not saying that sharing does'nt exist - nor am I saying that the legitimate sharing of resources is wrong (which is what all the devices you mentioned are supposed to be used for). But taking poser content you own and offerin it to thers without their legal right to own it is wrong, goes against every EULA and licence agreemet you've ticked as you install, and should certainly not be given any sort of support or approval on a board such as this.

Meanwhile, back on topic... eyeorderchaos - if you all have legal copies of the same software and resources/runtimes, then there should be no problem with sharing pz3's across the computers, either. Sharing the z3 shouldn't send any copyright-infringing material anyway, but obviously requires both parties to have the same resources on their computer in order to use it.

jonthecelt

jonthecelt

Try the "Collect Scene Inventory" Python script that comes with Poser.

If you have a small shop and everything is appropriately licensed, you should be able to set up mirror images of the Poser runtime folder on each machine. With identical runtimes, a PZ3 should open up identically on each machine.

A few ways to handle this:

• "Sneakernet" where you set up one runtime exactly as you want it, put it on a disk and manually copy it to each Poser workstation. You could use a CD/DVD or better still an external hard drive or thumb drive.

• Better than this is the option to do this over a network. With external runtimes, you should be able to have one "master" runtime on a shared network drive, and have all copies of poser refer to it by the same drive letter. Don't know how this would affect performance though. It would depend on the speed of your network and the speed of the server that was hosting the shared runtime.

• Another option is to use mirroring software to automatically synchronize changes between runtimes across the network. Each workstation would share its runtime with all the others, and mirroring software running on each machine would be set to push local runtime changes out to all other workstations. MirrorFolder (which I recommend highly f or this sort of thing) could easily handle a setup like this.