I searched for a previous question on this, but did not fine one. What is the best way to load a group of smart props at the same time.. .say, some smartpropped earrings, necklace, bracelets, rings, etc. 

I know you can save props as a group then load that group. But the smart-prop functionality disappears that way. I have to re-smartprop each piece, which thanks to Poser's clunky parenting process takes longer than to load the smart-props individually.

Is there a script or other method of loading a group of smart props all at once, and have them remain smart props? I'm not afraid to edit files, and I have learned how to run multiple scripts with the "readscript" line. But I don't know how to load multiple props the same way.

Save all of th props through the Select Subset button to your props library. Open the pp2 with a word editor and under each props code change the parent: UNIVERSE to smartparent: lHand (or whatever body part you desire).

Thanks for your reply. I've been there, done that. But I tried it again just to make sure. It doesn't work. Only one piece smartprops (to the neck), the rest load parented to the universe even though they all have the smartparent line in the pp2.  In theory it should work, but for some reason it doesn't. Poser ignores the smartparent in all but one.

By the way, there's no colon. It's just smartparent lforearm, not smartparent: lforearm. But it still stops smartpropping after one piece.

I even tried adding :1 after each body part (smartparent lforearm:1) because I have seen it that way in some individual smartprop pp2 files. Makes no differrence. 

hmmmm, it should and does work. Not doubting what you say...just saying is all.

Also understand that if you save the file through Poser after editing the pp2 file you destroy the smart parenting...multi smartparenting only works through code/word editing.

After you edit try closing and reopening Poser. What version are you using?? Service packs?

"It's just smartparent lforearm"

Are you spelling the bodyparts correctly?   For instance, it must be lForeArm, not lforearm.  You must use the exact internal names or it won't work.  "neck" worked because that's the correct spelling/capitalization.

Some body parts have capitals and others don't? I'll have to check that and see if that's the problem. Thanks for the heads-up!

jancory, you were absolutely right. The body parts must have the exact mix of lower and capital letters as the internal names. For some reason they used NO caps in the parts that are not symmetrical pairs, and incorrectly capped the A in ForeArm. And They didn't bother to spell out Shoulder, but chose Shldr instead. Logical and consistent, the people who coded Poser are not. Thank you for solving a frustrating problem.

darkedge, you were right as well. When parented props are saved singly, the parenting is preserved. When saved as a group, Poser changes the parenting of all but one to Universe. It must be changed back in a text editor... with the exact eccentric spellings and capitalizations of the internal names.

So many important things about Poser are undocumented, but must be discovered by trial and error... and word of mouth.

Attached Link: Camel Case

This is great information - thanks DarkEdge.

"Logical and consistent, the people who coded Poser are not."

In this case, I'd say they were, though programmer’s logic can be odd - heh, heh, gotta defend my peeps :-)

Programmers often use "Camel Case," in naming program variables and Poser's body part names seem to follow that scheme, using alternating lower-upper casing for words. Thus, the non-symmetrical parts have no caps because they are usually one word e.g. hip. Symmetrical parts get a cap for the second word, e.g. r(ight)Collar. There are non-symmetrical parts with caps, e.g. Vicky’s tongueTip, if they are composed of two or more words. On the forearm, I think the coder felt that “forearm” looked/seemed better thought of as two words. I often do the same with compound words, so I might do rEyeBall instead of rEyeball .

On the shoulder, it appears that there may have been an eight character limit on the body part names – at least for the original Poser figures. Doing a quick check on Posette’s .cr2, that seems to be the case. Spelling out shoulder would have yielded nine characters. I’m just guessing here. If there was a limit, it was lifted by the time Vicky 4 came out with her aforementioned tongueTip (and tongueBase) parts.

 

well, Poser was never known for its logical approach!  interesting article; something i've never read about, but have always struggled with  glad i could help.

Quote - On the shoulder, it appears that there may have been an eight character limit on the body part names – at least for the original Poser figures. 

Wow, that takes us back 2 or 3 decades. Like the way PC people continue to spell_like_this. Microsoft gave PCs the ability to use blank spaces and more than 8 letters a long time ago. (I think back around the time they realized the human race would be around beyond 1999.) But old habits die hard, I guess.

That was the whole reason why I used lHand and lShldr as an example, showing upper an lower case.
The thing about body parts to remember is everything in the middle is lower case, everything to the left or right is lower and upper case.

Glad you got it working correctly!

Quote - Microsoft gave PCs the ability to use blank spaces ...

Which cause no end of trouble, and sensible people avoid using them in file and directory names.

I avoid spaces in file and folder names whenever possible. You never know when you'll have to login from a linux box to fix something.

Attached Link: Poser History

The 8 characters was just a guess based on the names they used. I’m not sure why the internal names would have to conform to any OS limits though, and the actual file names like P4NudeWoman .cr2 exceed 8 chars. DOS/Win may have moved past 8.3 when Poser came out and even at that, AFAIK, it was originally released for the Mac and I don’t know what the limits were for OS 6 or whatever it was at the time – probably bigger than MS though. You’ll have to ask Larry Weinberg what the rationale was.

“Which cause no end of trouble, and sensible people avoid using them in file and directory names.”

No disrespect but I can’t say that I agree with that, at least not as a universal dictum – it all depends on the context. If you’re working in a multi-OS environment where they don’t translate well then perhaps. In a Windows (and probably Mac) GUI environment, which is what most people use, I think they’re fine. They contribute to readability and enable a more natural naming convention. I prefer “My Documents” to MyDocuments,” etc. The goal is to make things easier for the average user. If you’re using a command line interface (or writing code for that matter), yeah, it is a hassle to have to enclose them in quotes, but again, I think most people are using the point and click GUI most of the time. In that context, IMO, there’s no compelling reason to have AccountsReceivableAug09 any more than AcRc0809, if the OS will support using “Accounts Receivable Aug 09” If there are problems with individual apps or Oses, they need to be fixed. Computers are so widespread now, they should accommodate humans, not vice versa ÷)
 

It only caused no end of trouble for those whose roots were in the command-line interface and who were accustomed to this_kind_of_naming_convention.  I suppose it's still widely used on the PC side to maintain compatibility with those who use Linux, as somebody said above, or who still have an old 286 PC I suppose. But mostly because it's decades-old habit. I know a lot of people who still put two spaces after every period and 3 spaces at the start of each paragraph, dating back to primitive  typewriters.

As far as I can remember, Macs never had the "no spaces" and "8 characters" limits that the DOS and WIndows programmers originally placed on themselves so long ago. If Poser was an original Mac product, perhaps it only adopted the old-style PC naming structure when it was released for the PC. It takes me back to the 1980s whenever Poser requires adherence to this structure (it drops the 2nd word if you name a material with 2 words in the Group Editor, for example).

It’s a matter of what works for you. I go back to the pre-DOS days of CP/M, so I have a lot of command line experience. Even the Linux crowd recognized they were never going to get any mainstream traction without a modern desktop environment. You can make a good argument that the command line can be more efficient, but I don’t like using it. Typing “copy c:oldfiles*.txt c:newfiles” is certainly faster than using Explorer, but maybe it’s the abstract vs. the feeling that you’re actually manipulating concrete objects that appeals to the GUI centric. At any rate, most people do seem to have a strong preference for one or the other.

“I suppose it's still widely used on the PC side to maintain compatibility with those who use Linux…”

You sound like a Mac person. Believe me, after all the ‘stupid “Windoze” user’ comments, no self-respecting Windows user is going out of their way to accommodate the penguins. In fact, we use folder names like “Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0” just to confuse and frustrate them ÷)