For as long as I have had Poser it has had difficulty finding geometry and texture files... often even if the path seems to be correct. I have utilities for checking and correcting paths but this remains a constant hassle. In your experience does Poser work better with absolute paths or relative paths?

Also, is there a way to remove recently used textures from the drop down list in Materials Room other than closing and restarting Poser?

And is there a script that will open a texture for a selected material in Poser with its default app... say irfanview so I don't have to navigate there to have a look at or edit the image file?

Is your app set for deep scan?

Quote - In your experience does Poser work better with absolute paths or relative paths?

It depends on how likely you are to want to move content around (you should also consider what will happen when you change machines) but absolute paths are going to be troublesome at some point.

Quote - Also, is there a way to remove recently used textures from the drop down list in Materials Room other than closing and restarting Poser?

No.

Quote - And is there a script that will open a texture for a selected material in Poser with its default app... say irfanview so I don't have to navigate there to have a look at or edit the image file?

Should be possible.

I have tried deep scan and shallow scan and seem to do better with shallow scan. Strangely using a python loader such as by Dimension3D or ockham seems to load faster and with less incidence of missing files than loading from the library pallet.

I guess I'll stick with relative paths?

"Strangely using a python loader such as by Dimension3D or ockham seems to load faster and with less incidence of missing files than loading from the library pallet."

But then you have the problem that you cannot UNDO a loaded item, meaning you have to delete every part manually. And if you load a pose for a figure you cannot undo that either. So the Dimension3D is creating a new problem.

The problem of bad written scripts will still exit with the Poser files. You have to change them to correct paths, always beginning with Runtime as in Runtime:Geometries:etc or Runtime:Textures:etc

There is a program called CR PRO that corrects wrong paths for everything you have in your runtime automatically. Very helpful.

By the way, if you use another 3D program like Vue it will also ask for geometries or textures if the paths in the scripts for the Poser files are incorrect. The same for DAZ Studio.

...and if your files contain relative paths, where should they start? I've seen files taking these possible options:

1) Starting with :Runtime:... like this:

   figureResFile :Runtime:Geometries:...
   reflectionMap ":Runtime:Textures:...

2) Starting with the directory inside Runtime:

   figureResFile :Geometries:...
   reflectionMap ":Textures:...

3) Sometimes even taking it one level further:

   figureResFile :Creator:...
   reflectionMap ":Creator:...

In my experience, the third case almost always causes problems, and the second case sometimes does. If I ever find troublesome files I always edit them to use the first case (which might, I suppose, be what's meant by "absolute path" in this thread?).

Of course, very occasionally full absolute paths like "C:......Runtime...." turn up, and they always cause trouble... ;)

I've always found Relative paths starting with :Runtime: to work the best.

Part of the problem is whether or not files have unique names. If a texture is named wood.jpg, there's a fair chance that there are multiple textures  by that name and Poser might grab the wrong one.

poser 8 seems to be able to find the file even if the path is wrong (OS X), and there was a thread here about dozens of files which had wrong paths.  thus whether it's a correct partial path or a correct absolute path might not matter (OS X).

With deep search turned on, Poser 6 thru 8 have always found textures, for me, as long as they exist in runtimes that have been linked to. Geometries, not so much. Those really do need a correct relative or correct absolute path or Poser can't find them.

 I swear... even with deep search I have somewhat frequently had Poser fail to find a texture and I have then compared the path in the file using a text editor with the existing file and directory path and found them exactly matching. Gremlins I guess.

I've always said anything that runs under Windows is more Alchemy than Science. :tt2:

Truer words!

I have never truly liked any app that didn't fit on a floppy disc.