OK. While arguing and moaning about my poser problems in another thread earlier I decided to try an experiment my self...and it worked!

I'm getting the problem in P8 where poser is unable to load textures. To be more precise, in my case, poser is unable to load textures located in an outside Runtime (spare drive) What I did was loaded some of the 3rd party cloathing items by hand into the POSER 8 Runtime on my main drive .....and they work just fine!

So, it appears that the problem causing many of the "unable to load texture" problems is a bad link to outside runtimes?

For the record; I have 3 times re installed poser, each time ticking the box for useing outside runtime folders, to no effect.

Question;
Can anyone please tell me if there's a workaround WITHOUT me having to install gigabytes of  3rd party produce to the main poser runtime.

Thanks all

Have you submitted a ticket to Smith Micro about this one?  It seems to be a recurrent theme.

Yes, Ive done that.

Thanks

Yes, I can tell you the work around, since I'm having this problem since Poser Pro and they've never been able to resolve it. I've reported the issue again with P8 and SM is still working on a solution, but this problem has been there since P7, so I'm not sure if it will ever be solved.

The solution to the problem is very easy. Simply copy the textures complete with folders, into your P8 runtime. That will solve the problem. Poser 8 seems to fail to locate certain textures in external runtimes, but if you place them in the P8 runtime, the problem is solved.

For example textureX.jpg gives you a problem. It's located in C:Program Filesmy runtimesRuntimeTexturesRDNA textureX.jpg

Just copy the complete RDNA folder to where you have installed Poser 8. The you would get something like C:Program FilesPoser 8RuntimeTexturesRDNA textureX.jpg

Make sure you copy the files and don't move them, they still need to be in the original runtime for whenever you apply the item it belongs to, in a scene. First time it will apply fine, after saving and re-opening the problem comes most often.

I've done this with various texture folders and it works great, problem solved for me. The bug is still there, this way you get around it.

I wonder if it's a Vista FileStore problem.

I use Vista but I didn't install it on my C: - I installed it on my external K: instead and Poser finds my textures just fine.

So I'm starting to think it's more of a Vista problem than a regular Poser one. Of course, most people would likely install the program into the suggested location... but that may cause these problems.

Is there anyone who has instaled Poser itself on  somewhere that ISN'T C:Progam Files... and still have problems? Anyone who use OS'es that aren't Vista who's having problems?

In my attempts to narrow down what is causing problems for so many Poser 8 users (which I'm NOT among but it still interests me) we need to know all the details. What OS. Where is Poser installed. Is Norton or McAfee also on the compute rect... 

I'm on XP, problem also there. It doesn't matter where I install it, problem appears. I've tried various firewalls and anti-virus apps, but doesn't make a difference.

I still haven't figured out what causes it, I stopped doing that and looked for a work around, for me problem is gone.

Is it for all textures or just certain ones?  I find that some content makers use the full path (c:program files, etc.) instead of the universal standard of Runtime:libraries...etc.  I get that error only when the textures were stored in an invalid location by the content creator.  In those cases, I have to open the mc6 or pz2 files and edit them manually.  It sounds like in this case it's all textures.  Have you tried manually loading the textures and then creating a mc6 file?

Aeikema,  I love your "Food for thought..." website.  (www.mercypublishers.nl)  Good stuff! 

This bug is associated with only SOME textures on certain items, but not all. The problem is that Poser 8 corrupts the path in its own internal list of path names associated with a scene. It leaves off the first letter of one of the directory names in the path name for the file.

If this happens, go into the material room. Choose an item that is missing textures. Sellect the image from one of the Image_Map nodes that is missing a texture. In the Texture Manager, sellect the down arrow beside the texture name, and you will see all the pathnames associated with your scene. Use the down arrow at the bottom of the list and scroll until you see a blue (I think) check mark. You will probably be able to spot the corrupted directory name in the path.

If you want to navigate to the texture and add it by hand, you can. But, when you save and reload the scene you will have to do it all again, because Poser will corrupt the path again.

lmk

I've edited a lot of the textures hoping it would solve the problem, but it didn't work. I've tried I don't know how many things...... to no avail. SM confirmed it's a bug, so I stopped searching and followed the easy solution, copy the materials in the P8 folder.

Quote - Aeikema,  I love your "Food for thought..." website.  (www.mercypublishers.nl)  Good stuff! 

Thanks, it's a bit old, I'm working on a full color comic for the website and once that's done, I'm going to update the English part.

So far, I haven't seen this problem with my P8 under Windows XP and I have external runtimes from previous versions.  It will hiccup if memory get too bogged down but it seems to recover rather well.

The bug is probably a charateristic of the path name to the files that don't load, because for me, it is the same textures on the same prop/figure each time.

LMK

lkendall.. send some examples of Products that cause this (URL for the Product)

I have all my Runtimes, including the Poser 8 on External or Network Drives and I have never been able to duplicate this. Apparently the issue also does not show up in Collected Scene Data Files.

If we can get an example of the product and what Poser does that adds to the issue and are able to duplicate the issue, it will help.

IM me the Incident Number after you send the information, and I will make sure it gets to the right people.

ratscloset:

I have not tried to see if they do this in every case of trying to load the figures, but I will. It does happen every time I try to load the scene I am working on now. In this scene that I am working on these products fail to load any textures:

Creatura Serpenta for Victoria 4, ps_ac2296b, DAZ
Lost Realms for M4 and H4,  ps_ac3139b, DAZ
Seraph Wings, Product 70359, Rendeosity

I am presently rendering something so I cannot try to see if these products will not work in another scene.

LMK

I tried but the textures for the above products will not load either from the Figure menu, or the pose menu. As you can see in the list of directory paths to the textures (from the Texture Manager), the first letter of one of the directories is missing (circled in blue).

I can add these textures in the Material Room by hand, but when the scene is saved, the corrupted path names will still be there when the scene is reloaded after the program is restarted. If the scene is closed and reloaded without restarting the program, the texture paths will still be correct.

LMK

This is the exact problem I have every time when trying to use a texture (any texture, skin,clothes,hair,etc)

I have contacted SMith Micro and to be honest, they didnt seem to know why nor did we find the solution. So Poser 8 just sits there.

Quote - This is the exact problem I have every time when trying to use a texture (any texture, skin,clothes,hair,etc)

I have contacted SMith Micro and to be honest, they didnt seem to know why nor did we find the solution. So Poser 8 just sits there.

A few posts from the beginning I've posted a solution, then you can use P8 without a problem. I seriously doubt they will find a solution, since the problem has been there in previous version also.

Thank you. I wonder if SM will make another hot fix for this?

About copying the textures over to Poser 8 runtime, won't that take up my memory and space on my computer by having the files/folders twice? Just wondering.

I am going to try what you said though. That will be great if it works for me. Thanks again for the tips.

It will take up some more space on your harddisk, but not more memory. What I've done, is only copy the folders that cause problems, the rest that is working I did not do anything with.

I have this problem too and I've been unable to solve it. The thing is, ALL my textures load fine, it's just the error messages that are annoying. It doesn't happen all the time and it seems to affect my most recent purchases of content and ONLY content that involves the Poser Material room. For instance it's never happened in MAT pose files. The solution mentioned above is a bit confusing for me as I installed my Poser 8 content, that came with Poser 8 on the same drive as all my other runtimes; so do I copy my textures to the Poser 8 external runtime or do I copy the textures to the runtime in the application folder? You see I chose option 4 when installing Poser 8 and chose to install the content to an external drive ( "D") and put the Poser 8 Application on my "C" drive.

Anyway for those interested the error message that I get is:- "Texture could not be loaded. Image map file could not be found, or there is not enough memory to load". I then click "OK" depending on how many textures are involved and the loading of the prop or character goes fine. the whole thing is repeated when I render the scene. Again I press "OK" and the render progresses without a hitch.

I have Windows XP Pro 64 Bit so this is not a Vista issue.

PS. I'm considering re-installing Poser 6 and re-saving all my problem Poser Materials to see if that helps, particularly, as somebody has stated that this problem was introduced in Poser 7.  :-)

I just tried what aeilkema suggested and it works! Thanks very much aeilkema.     :-)

Thanks for the images and information lkendall... Out of curiousity... the Drives/Folders... are they Shared Drives/Folders? That is the only thing that is unique about my set up I could think of. Mine are shared because I do not want to have to install content on each machine that I have a version of Poser on, just to be able to test. I do not have those specific products to test to see if there is something about them. I am going to see about getting some of the mentioned products to test, but if someone wants to try changing the Share Settings on a Library to see if that changes the way the Scenes are saved and let me know if it changes anything, that would help.

I have a similar problem with some TeraiYuki2 textures, after some research i have found something of interest, the main runtime was on this place : G:Gfx-3DPoserTeraiYuki2
and the runtime with problems was on this place : G:Gfx-3DPoserTeraiYuki2-free

When  i was loading something from the TeraiYuki2-free runtime, Poser 8 cannot find the textures, i have looked on the material room and see this path for the texture in the drop dowm menu :

G:Gfx-3DTeraiYuki2free... (notice : the - was replaced by a ) 

After some experiments i have moved the runtime to  : G:Gfx-3DPoserFreeTeraiYuki2 and Poser 8 find the texture.

From my observations, if you have two runtime who start with the same characters Poser 8 get confused and miss the textures, the problem probably is on the code who search all runtimes for a texture.

Note : this is not reported to SM,  i am on the move until the mild of the next week and my travelling laptop don't have Poser installed, once i am back in my hometown my idea is to create a set of runtimes to demonstrate the problem.

 I've noticed that Poser 8 doesn't much like underscores either. Perhaps it's both dashes and underscores that cause problems? 

I'm not sure how consistent it is though. The very first day I tried Poser 8, I had this problem, but after a reboot it went away. Doesn't make any sense of course, but there you are.. glitches never do :)

I hope it's solved. I don't like the fact that Poser internally just decides to skip letters in a filename...

Hmmm, rjjack has a point. in the picture of my pathways list attached above. The corrupt parts are "...M4antasy..." which should be "...M4Fantasy..." and "...V4haracters..." which should be "...V4Characters...".

In both cases a capital letter in the middle of a directory name has been replaced with a "".

In rjjack's case "...TeraiYuki2-free" was corrupted to "...TeraiYuki2free" where the "-" is replaced with a "".

Is Poser 8 replacing character in the pathway, which it cannot parse (capital letters and characters like "-") with a "". I am at work so I cannot check to see if changing the Directory name from "M4Fantasy" to "M4fantasy" will work.

lmk

Can others confirm this only happens to the Character after a Number, when that Number is in the Path (Like TY2-free or M4Fantasy)  That appears to be the common denominator for the issue from the reports I have gotten on this.

It should not happen to a the Folders after the Runtime Folder and those that end with a Number (such as a Runtime called M4 or TY2 would already have a Slash after the number, so should work.)

This might explain why I have not been able to duplicate it.. I am going to try in a bit to duplicate, but for those other characters that people are reporting Poser does not like, let me know if that is only after a Number.

Quote - Can others confirm this only happens to the Character after a Number, when that Number is in the Path (Like TY2-free or M4Fantasy)  That appears to be the common denominator for the issue from the reports I have gotten on this.

Well I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but the Runtime I'm having problems with is called:-

"Poser and DAZ S Content 2"

As I've mentioned before, it's only happening with the Poser 'Materials' part of my Library and I've not had any problems with Material files in the 'Pose' part of my Library.

Quote - > Quote - Can others confirm this only happens to the Character after a Number, when that Number is in the Path (Like TY2-free or M4Fantasy)  That appears to be the common denominator for the issue from the reports I have gotten on this.

Well I don't know if this is just a coincidence, but the Runtime I'm having problems with is called:-

"Poser and DAZ S Content 2"

As I've mentioned before, it's only happening with the Poser 'Materials' part of my Library and I've not had any problems with Material files in the 'Pose' part of my Library.

Are you seeing a Slash replace a Character in the Path, like the others are reporting?

Quote - Are you seeing a Slash replace a Character in the Path, like the others are reporting

This is where my case is different, as the textures load perfectly, it's just the damn error message I'm getting.

I just again checked and the paths look alright to me. By putting the offending textures in my Poser 8 Runtime, the error messages have completely stopped. I did just now, remove those textures from the Poser 8 Runtime for this test and the error messages returned.

Okay.. your issue is not related to this... that is a separate issue

Yours could be permission... to be clear, Poser 8 will find and load Textures outside of the Main Runtime or even on external Drives. Why it does not for some, I am not sure personally.

You should contact Support. You can send a Site mail with your incident.

Yes! Well done lkendall for noticing this.
I am seeing the same thing.
Here are a couple of examples (two different types of file path corruption):

The path to an external runtime called Hair02 is being corrupted to:
C:GrafixContentHair2Runtimetextures...
The 0 is replaced by a .

The path to an external runtime called V4-Clothing02 is being corrupted to:
C:GrafixContentV4Clothing02Runtimetextures...
The - is replaced by a .

I am Vista 64-bit.

When I get home, I will check to see if the corrupted paths are being saved to the scene file when I save it. That might be a helpful detail.

I also need to figure out if this happens with everything from directories with numbers in the name. I don't remember having problems with files in directories named "...M3Armor..." or "...V3Cloths..." but some of these the things in those directories might be installed on one of the old Poser 5, 6, 7, Pro, etc. runtimes located on my C: drive and not on my E: where most of my runtimes are installed.

I am hoping for a fix short of renaming every single directory on my hard drive. Obviously, Poser should accept any file or directory name that is allowed in the OS. Anything else will just cause confusion.

lmk

I scanned through some *.PMD and *.PZ3 files, and I did not find references to the corrupted pathways. I am sure Poser 8 is not saving them in scene files.

I turned on sharing for my extra drive where most of my runtimes are located, but it didn't do anything. I also checked, but Poser 8 does not care if letters are upper or lower case in directory names.

ratscloset is right. Poser 8 does not like anything but a "" following a number in the pathways to an image or texture. When you look at the Poser directory structure. Poser always installs something like this "...Poser 6..." or "...Poser 7...". For whatever reason, the Poser 8 search routine for textures not only expects a "" after a number, it puts it there in the texture list in the Texture Manager in the Advanced Materials Room.

I renamed my V42 folders using "xlii" instead of "42", deleted the folders from the library, added the renamed run times, and loaded a scene. I then added the textures by hand that had come from those runtimes, saved the scene, closed and reopened Poser 8, loaded the scene, and the textures opened. The M4 textures did not, as I had not renamed those directories.
 
On a whim I copied the M4 directories, renamed the copies to "Miv...", added them to the library, refreshed them, closed Poser 8, reopened the application and loaded a scene. This time deep search found the textures without me applying them manually.

I hope that the programmers and bug squashers can find this one before SR1. I am not going to go through and change all of my runtimes yet. If you must do so I suggest that you:

1. Copy the offending runtime to someplace where you have enough gigabytes.
2. Rename the copied runtime to something that doesn't have any numbers in it.
3. Add this to the library, and refresh it.
4. Load you figure, prop, hair, scene, whatever, and let deep search find it.
5. You can delete the added runtimes later, when Posaer 8 is fixed, and let deep search find the textures again.

LMK

Dang, the forum software removed all of my backslashes, and would not let me edit or update my post. I find that a bit ironic considering the discussion.

LMK

I have Poser 8 installed on XP Pro 64bit in f:/Program Files (x86)/Smith Micro/Poser 8 with an external runtime at f:/Program Files (x86)/e frontier/Poser 7 and it works for me. At least as far as path names are concerned.

Thanks for confirming that LMK...

The Project Team is aware of the issue and hopefully it is addressed in the Service Release.

Thanks also to the others that provided feedback that helped narrow this one down.

Not meaning this as an excuse for a bug like this, but I hope you all can see how something like this will not show up in Testing...

Not for any reason, but I just realized that if I ever use a Number in a Parent Folder it is always at the end. I have added two Runtimes like this to my System so I have them to test (Called Test 2 Runtime (that catches the Runtime name issue from the past_) and TY2 Test.

Hopefully they never are needed....