How about !!!!!!!!! CONNIKAT FREEBIEZ

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DIET COKE SPEW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:lol: Yeah, that onew would be just purrrfect  :lol:

or LOL I could do zzzzz freebiez... that way people could just scroll all the way to the bottom. 
To think, noone exploited that one yet!
[Kitty runs and hides]

My texture folder looks like a dictionnary, so much names! From a to z!

Dont forget that you can make a complex subdirectory structure with any modern filesystem.
You should create at least 48 subfolders named like "! ! !" or "+!+".
Further you should avoid short filenames the closer you come to root.
Never let a path be shorter than 240 characters.
Store only a single file per directory.

Going for redundancy is always a good thing...
What should reside somewhere inside the Poser installation can be spread throughout the whole system. ReadMe's included. This way the large capacity of nowadays harddrives will be used in an excellent manner while at the same time it prevents the user from doing what he's best at: conserving digital crap.

Offer formats that are of no use to most of the target group. Offer textures in resolutions that can not be handled by the target app or that are much to low to yield good results.
Provide the ReadMe in at least 20 different variants. Including backward compatible ones.

Create an installer to reproduce your files on every drive and of course into the "system32", "drivercache" and "System Volume Information" directories.
Use the OS-tools to remove user and admin ownership of these redundant file and any possible other rights. For NTFS the effort to screw the FS shadowcopy will surely pay off.

If you create an compressed archive that contains rel. filepaths you should at least try to overwrite as many important files of the target Poser installation as possible. But not the obvious ones like Poser.exe...
Oh, and one thing: never name a file in a way that could let the user know what it contains.

Optional: Offer technical help regarding the installation process and make the user pay for this service.

LOL! A real nightmare you describe here! ;p

@Zarat...   LOLOLOL :lol:
GAH, you reminded me of the program I use for work... and we paid 6 grand for it too! Looking at it on the good side, if it worked properly I wouldn't have time to come here and chat with rendo people! ;P

Does that imply that here the subforums with very low traffic represent the worst software? ^.^
Seeing it this way, 3DS Max should work twice as well as Maya and Poser should work about 8 times as well as any other CG application.

Quote - Does that imply that here the subforums with very low traffic represent the worst software? ^.^
Seeing it this way, 3DS Max should work twice as well as Maya and Poser should work about 8 times as well as any other CG application.

perhaps just the opposite?  :lol:  Well, when my work related cad application (by the same maker as Max) quit working, I had plenty of time to go to it's relative forums and complain....  After a while I gave up that futile effort...

*Regarding the 3rd party items it would be useful already if they find some conventions and stick to them. That alone would already help to limit the organisation work/time for the user/buyer to acceptable amounts.
Only thing required is that everybody sticks to such a convention what shouldn't be asked to much sice industry can do it too and for many decades already.

*Firstly, it's just too late, as I have said before.  Secondly, how would you compel a vendor selling from his/her own site to adhere to any rules.   Thirdly, even if you somehow eradicate the exclamation marks and the rest of the little tricks, there will still be an order.   You'll get lots of sets called "Aardvark for V4" and "Aaaaardvaaaark for V4", which don't break the rules.

The whole problem, in reality, arises from the fact that the existing styles of product names DO follow an industry convention.

Yes, standardize the readmes! I always port mine to a folder under Runtime called: Readme

I've seen a lot of variations on that, maybe we could pick one?

Name them Productname_Readme or in the case of common product names Username_Productname_Readme

I also wish that the Poser creators would make up their minds about capitalizing, wouldn't mind if that was standardized too.

I like having the folder start  ! ! so I can find it easily and then move it where I like.

I'd heard -- and thought I experienced -- problems in Poser with leading capitals, so I got out of habit of ever using them. Oddly enough, it seems to me the library in P6 capitalizes all stand-alone words, regardless of the case of the original file...

I agree with kuroyume0160 that Poser's habit of grabbing the first texture or obj file of the same name it finds is a serious fault of the program. I've emailed ef about it and suggested that they develop a patch to prevent this from happening. I don't know if this still happens in Poser 7 but Poser 5 will grab the first texture file it needs and Poser 6 adds to that grabbing the first obj file it needs with the same name. What's the point of having fully qualified references in the library files if Poser is free to disregard them when trying to locate the files? This can really cause some weird issues and as a vendor with a lot of products I'm sometimes hard pressed to come up with all kinds of unique names for everyday items :)

I've always listened to customer's suggestions on what they wanted in the product folder structure and have tried to suit. One thing I do that someone complained about though was to use the same texture file in several products. I don't know how to get around this one. It may be true that you have several other products of mine that use this exact same texture but how can any one product know this in advance on install? Each product has to supply all the textures it uses or it will not work.

I think that consistency is what most everyone (including myself) is looking for in this. I customize my library folders a lot but leave the geometry and texture folders alone. So as a vendor I structure my own folders just the way I'd prefer to see all texture and geometry folders structured: vendornameproductname. Easy to find everything by each vendor :)

• Rick

Quote - You'll get lots of sets called "Aardvark for V4" and "Aaaaardvaaaark for V4", which don't break the rules.

Actually, considering my gender and biomass, I think that Aardvark for Apollo Max would be more appropriate for me.

I'm in a big quanadry on this one... 
From a user point of view, I frequently find myself going back and forth in how i want to sort the content, sometimes it's by vendor, sometimes it's by theme, sometimes by figure... 

What would be really cool is if poser redid it's interface, and allowed sorting based on keywords. That way where the files are would only matter internally as long as internal and relative paths are correct.
That way, perhaps may execute content searches based on, I dunno V3 by outoftouch, or V4 Sci-Fi, or Uzilite (main and addons).
And it could be up to the vendor to provide a little xml file with keywords for it's product.
Sort of a database driven content search . Shouldn't be that hard to do.

Of course, that doesn't solve a thing at present!

If everything were miraculously fixed, and merchants adhered strictly to a uniform naming system (couldnt make that a law though) some "genius" would in  a year (who's new to merchanting) would realize using "!" would put them on the top, and the ratrace would begin again. lol.   I have noticed a trend with the !, *, and +++ at the begining of item names to get it higher on the list, it comes and goes, like the wind.

I'm simple, maybe a dullard, I dont know, but I know how i like things.  I like items (free or purchased) to come with a distinct useable directory to automatically unzip to in their right prospective spots!  The correct folder names, and the correct directories, but I'd LOVE to see these dissapear:

MYDOCUMENTS/poser4 (or 5, 6, 7)/Runtime..... so on so fourth
OR  a completely BLANK file structure, with minimal to NO explanation (in easy english) where to put the stuff!

I can't tell you how many items I have, free or purchased, where i get regularly "obj not found", and I cant use the item!   Now I'm sure I could get a laundry list how to fix this, move the item to where it belongs or WORSE........ how to edit the CR2..... but, pardon me, why should I have to know any of that?  Why can't it be where it belongs in the first place!!!!

Just asking :)

And to Connikat......  here's my suggestion for naming something.  In the past "Joes freebies" doesnt help me six months from now.  I'll know on the day i download it its a toilet bowl, for instance, but when i'm looking for a toilet bowl in a month, six months, a year....... I'll have no clue its in there!

So if I were giving away a free (or purchased) toilet bowl I'd name the folder in figures or props....

Kirins Toilet    ..... alternately you could make a subdirectory, "kirin's freebies/kirins toilet".  Though the first makes it easier lol.  Just a suggestion.

It's not just Daz3d, its in Poser too, with Poser 7 -shudders-  CRProII found thousands of reference errors and dozens of duplicated files. I ended up unstalling Ps7 and staying with 6, much to my son's disgust at how I removed yet another present. And slowly adding things that I use a lot to it and taking the dorks that I rarely ever use and putting them on another drive.

-DR

Lot's of good suggestions in this thread, but I didn't see my particular pet peeve mentioned...

Thumbnails. In theory they are supposed to visually represent the item, you know, so I don't have to load it to tell what the item is... I have gotten packages- purchased, where the vendor decided to create an icon that visualized their "company" name, and used the same thumbnail for every component in the package. That tells me nothing, except that you took a short cut that's not workable for me. In one case, the package consisted of magical effects, each with a catchy "magical" name that told me exactly zip about what it looked like... useless.

Another was a product brokered through DAZ, a clothing set that featured the figure in silhouette, where the shirt thumbnail, for instance had the other clothing items blacked out and the shirt highlighted by being in color. Okay, good, I know it's a shirt. Good, I know what package it came from and the name of the vendor. Bad, I may want to use the shirt with somethng else, but aside from knowing it's a shirt, I have no idea what the shirt looks like.

Mainly, I'd just like it if content providers packaged content as if they actually use Poser. And before someone counters with D|S, these issues predate D|S and further if you are a merchant, you are getting my Poser dollars by claiming your product is compatible with Poser.

I'll give you a recent pet peeve of mine...mat pose files for characters or hair that include x, y or z trans for various parts of the body, etc.  Say I create a scene and get all the details worked out and the poses perfect or near perfect. I then wonder how that character would look as a blonde instead of a brunette or instead of using Suzie, lets try Violet. You click on the mat pose file to change something and the main character in the scene jumps out of postiion and screws everything all up. Granted you can undo things. But that means you have to open the Mat Pose files for that product and search and remove those references that never should have been there in the first place in my opinion. If they are there for a purpose then include that info in the readme, don't leave us guessing why you did certain things if they are there for a purpose. Tell us!

might i also add templates to the pile of detritus that accumulates in the runtime? when products do see fit to include them, i see some that are logically placed, other times they are scattered to the winds of the runtime. some appear dumped in with readmes with no clue as to what zip they came from. i'm sure others will speak about the template boondoggle as well...

regards,

waningmoon

Quote - I'll give you a recent pet peeve of mine...mat pose files for characters or hair that include x, y or z trans for various parts of the body, etc.

I'll give you another one.  Pose files that move the body for no good reason.  It's one thing if it's one pose in a set meant for characters (say a dancing couple).  It's another if it's a pose for a single character.  I have a large scene, I move the figure where I want it, carefully making sure the feet touch the floor and so on, look at it, decide a slightly different pose would be better, click on it and the figure is back at the origin.

Quote - Lot's of good suggestions in this thread, but I didn't see my particular pet peeve mentioned...

Thumbnails. I

I'll second that one! And even worse is when you get a pack of textures and you get NO THUMBNAILS! There's nothing worse than having to make PNGs for all the eye colors, etc in a texture pack you bought.

The other thing that irks me is that we are now on Poser 7 and people are still making stuff that is designed for Poser 4. I understand designing for the lowest common denominator, but I would hope that most Poser users are at least on 5 by now so can we please do away with the .bum file references! It is very unreasonable to expect vendors to keep making files that are compatible with software from four versions ago. How many software companies nowadays are designing for Windows 98? At least offer the Poser 4 version of your file AND a poser 5/6/7 version.

Right on for the thumbnails, I'm on the bandwagon, but I could add to it!  How about not just a thumb of the item, but a better reference WHO the item is FOR, what figure!

Again I'll know who its for when i buy and load it...... hot chance in six months i will.

Quote - Right on for the thumbnails, I'm on the bandwagon, but I could add to it!  How about not just a thumb of the item, but a better reference WHO the item is FOR, what figure!

Again I'll know who its for when i buy and load it...... hot chance in six months i will.

I think that BATLAB probably has someof the best thumbs -- they have the figure abreviation and (usually) which of his sets they belong to. Plus his file names are organizaed well so that even though they all install into the same character directory, they are sorted by model and by product.