i doanz like seeing extra folders in my libraries directory,  other than the poser default; Figure, Face, etc.

how about putting the morphs in the product's texture or geometry folder?

or :Runtime:vendor:etc..  ?

If it bothers you, why don't you put them where you want them? ;o)

Laurie

Paths, Laurie. Mind you, if you have a copy of Poser File Editor or even Notepad++, it's a quick and simple matter of changing the paths in the files that reference those morphs, I should think. Hmmmm might try that... I've been changing texture folder names from those egotistical "!!!MyAmazingTextures" folder names and then changing the path in the referring files. Tedious, but doable for neatniks everywhere.

Quote - Paths, Laurie. Mind you, if you have a copy of Poser File Editor or even Notepad++, it's a quick and simple matter of changing the paths in the files that reference those morphs, I should think. Hmmmm might try that... I've been changing texture folder names from those egotistical "!!!MyAmazingTextures" folder names and then changing the path in the referring files. Tedious, but doable for neatniks everywhere.

Personally I don't care what a vendor names their texture or geometries folder.  Granted it's a royal PITA trying to find the files if you happen to need them, but mostly I just care about the main poser library folders such as character, poses, camera, props etc. 

Quote - Paths, Laurie. Mind you, if you have a copy of Poser File Editor or even Notepad++, it's a quick and simple matter of changing the paths in the files that reference those morphs, I should think. Hmmmm might try that... I've been changing texture folder names from those egotistical "!!!MyAmazingTextures" folder names and then changing the path in the referring files. Tedious, but doable for neatniks everywhere.

Oh, I knew that. But if she's dissatisfied with how things are done now, and no one's likely to change what they do now, why not do it how she wants it, even if it takes an extra step since she's one of the few who's voiced a problem in that area? ;o). Sometimes, you just have to do something yourself, no matter how much of a drag it is...lol.

Laurie

DAZ started a unfortunate trend when they "invented" INJ morphs by putting the !DAZ folder directly in the Libraries folder.

If they'd put this folder one level down, everything would be much tidier.
As it is, pretty much every merchant that does custom morphs creates their own folder in Libraries which really clutters things up.

To move the directories contain the INJ/REM files would mean editing the paths in any files that use them, which would be impratical for the DAZ morphs, but would be possible (but mildly tedious) for single character sets.

Quote - > Quote - Paths, Laurie. Mind you, if you have a copy of Poser File Editor or even Notepad++, it's a quick and simple matter of changing the paths in the files that reference those morphs, I should think. Hmmmm might try that... I've been changing texture folder names from those egotistical "!!!MyAmazingTextures" folder names and then changing the path in the referring files. Tedious, but doable for neatniks everywhere.

Oh, I knew that. But if she's dissatisfied with how things are done now, and no one's likely to change what they do now, why not do it how she wants it, even if it takes an extra step since she's one of the few who's voiced a problem in that area? ;o). Sometimes, you just have to do something yourself, no matter how much of a drag it is...lol.

Laurie

I agree, Laurie. It's all very much "I can't change the world, just my little corner in it" or however that goes. You wouldn't believe how much time I spend going over other people's shaders and making them work in PP2010, and taking stuff out, and fixing stuff.

You know what I wish we could have? I know I'm asking the impossible, but: here's one of those ideas... some venue or something where we could pick apart a shader, and optimise it for a given material. I do not pretend to know much about shaders, to be honest, so it would be a learning experience for everyone. However, there are issues with the idea. Copyright infringement would be a big one. It would almost have to be like a secret society or something...

I know, another idea that kept me out of the really good schools :biggrin:

ETA: did I just hijack the thread ?? :blink: :a_lipssealed:

I've rarely learned anything looking at someone else's shader that I'd want to keep. (I have learned a lot about what doesn't work that way.) So if I was going to build a new shader for a 3rd party something (which I do all the time) I'd pretty much not be interested in seeing what's there already. All I want is the maps. If you were to have me participate in such a discussion, showing me what's there already would be pretty much a waste of time, so no need to be concerned about violating intellectual property rights.

The biggest problem to collaborative shader discussion, as far as me participating, would be that I'm unlikely to have whatever item you've got in mind. Of course, working with freebies would be no problem, or you could buy the item for me or get the vendor to give it to me, and then I'd shader it up.

Most of the time that I'm fixing something, I use a shader I've got in my collection and tweak it. And almost all that is in my collection is something I've already given away in a thread or on my site.

OKAY, folks, we finally know what to give BB. :woot: My stars, I'd be ever so keen to send some stuff your way: fully bought and paid for, too! Gifted.

But, right you are, sir... no question that most of the shaders are poo, but it would be interesting to examine them at least for intent, wouldn't you agree? I mean, like that bogus tooth shader I did for the hat, a lot of it was just "yup, this'll do" and has no basis in physical reality, as close as Poser can approximate physical reality.

I'd warrant that this concept drove 99.9999% of so-called shaders on the market - I mean, people are selling this stuff! It would be nice to at least have an alternative approach.

But, this would probably involve some shocking time involvement that your commitments wouldn't allow... fully understand, BB.

ETA: I know, I'm a troublemaker... :biggrin:

Well, it doesn't have to take tons of my time. Most of the equations needed I know already and it's just a matter of choosing parameter values.  You show me the prop, I show you the formula. 

I have dozens of shaders for glass, metal, plastic, paint, wood, china, nylon, leather, cloth, granite, marble, ceramic, clay, mud, blood, water, oil, etc. Assuming you have need of these sorts, they are pretty much instant. It's just a matter of choosing color and shine. Others besides me could try different parameters and show the results.

The tricky stuff is generating procedural patterns - such as the fish scales in my avatar or the chain mail I posted years ago. That takes a while.

Quote - Well, it doesn't have to take tons of my time. Most of the equations needed I know already and it's just a matter of choosing parameter values.  You show me the prop, I show you the formula. 

I have dozens of shaders for glass, metal, plastic, paint, wood, china, nylon, leather, cloth, granite, marble, ceramic, clay, mud, blood, water, oil, etc. Assuming you have need of these sorts, they are pretty much instant. It's just a matter of choosing color and shine. Others besides me could try different parameters and show the results.

The tricky stuff is generating procedural patterns - such as the fish scales in my avatar or the chain mail I posted years ago. That takes a while.

And probably Matmatic. As in: Python formulas.

I guess this "intent-based" approach was originally an analysis sort of thing. But when you think it's all about people totally not having a clue what they're doing and making something that happens to look reasonably good and believable to THEM in that set of lights, I really can see the point of "why bother". Just put a shader that actually works there and be done with it.

Not all require so much math that you need to use matmatic.

For example, I've posted many glass, metal, and water shaders that are just a few nodes.

For what it's worth, I try to be very consistent about what folders I put what things into (readme files in RuntimeReadMe, geometries in RuntimeGeometries, textures in RuntimeTextures) but it's arbitrary - I expect the vendors who actually care about this mostly already do it that way, and those who aren't doing it that way probably don't really care.  Best bet for you is probably going to be to contact particular vendors and ask them to change their habits.

last weekend, i officially finished moving the P7/ef menagerie .pmd and obj files to the texture subfolders and repointed the links in the .cr2 files.   :thumbupboth:  :rolleyes:  starting the character injection pz2's next.  some of these want the whole ++ morphs set injected, but adding readscript statements will make the file load only the morphs required for the character.

:huh:  shaders?  i don't understand attaching an ambient occlusion node to the specular for a human character skin.  it makes the skin render so bright, details wash out. ??

Quote - some of these want the whole ++ morphs set injected, but adding readscript statements will make the file load only the morphs required for the character.

That's just plain dumb, even the first V4 dial spin character I prepared for distribution (Seraphim freebie) wasn't that dumb.

edit: well actually that wasn't the first, that was the second - my first one I did do it the dumb way

i think it depends what software they used to make the files.  there's a 1.5 software something, i'll play closer attention next time to which software it says prepared by

That's not really an excuse for an experienced creator, it's pretty easy to write the things by hand if you look at how the DAZ pose files are written.

slowly but surely 

Cheers to the artists who write to a Morphs folder

(MistyLaraPrincess)> *Quote -*i doanz like seeing extra folders in my libraries directory,  other than the poser default; Figure, Face, etc.

how about putting the morphs in the product's texture or geometry folder?

or :Runtime:vendor:etc..  ?

That's a good idea, MistyLara. ^^  I dislike the clutter also.*

I use a folder at the top of my library folder named "!Morphs". Everything that is a morph goes in this folder under the same organization system that I have for all of my other folders. The "!DAZ" folder is the only one I leave alone. The fact that I sometimes have to search for a particular morph Poser is looking for does not bother me (that and I have WAY too much content to go changing all the references). I feel that my system of folders is quite efficient and it is something that I have developed over the last 12 years or so that I have been using Poser. I tweak it every so often, but I have not made any major changes to it in the last four years. Nothing I put in my runtimes has the original folder structure it came with. I modify everything, which can be time consuming, but it is entirely worth it in the end. It just comes down to creating a system that works for you and that you are comfortable putting time into.

---M

Quote - ...she's one of the few who's voiced a problem in that area? ;o). Sometimes, you just have to do something yourself, no matter how much of a drag it is...lol. Laurie

Are you kidding? You can't hear the screams of every new user who has had to come to terms with Poser's content management? Oh, dear. What's it going to take?

Somewhere in the distant past (before I started with P8) Poser and/or DAZ surrendered control of their basic directory structure to any and every vendor who happened to come along. The end result was one of the most confusing, disorganized, inefficient, incomprehensible, confusing (did I say that already), user-hostile train wrecks I've ever seen in a major software product. I think it would be a step forward if vendors simply distributed their products at random all over your hard drive. At least that way no one would ever waste time trying to make sense of it.

I have to wonder how many potential users - and therefore how many potential sales - have been lost to SM because noobies couldn't make heads or tails of the library. "A MAT is a POSE? Whaaaa?"

Hehehe...I never said content management wasn't  mess...it definitely IS...lol. What with all the !!!! in front of the folder names and what not ;o). Always drove me nuts too. It would have been nice if early on, everyone would have agreed on something, but they didn't, and now we see the trainwreck we have today. I'm hoping that someday this will all be fleshed out, but for now, we (the users) have to deal with it. It's a fact of life with Poser. It's a good thing to go on the wishlist though ;o).

Laurie

Really, all the individual content creators wouldn't have had to come to agreement, just the big content distributors. All they had to do was require that content be submitted in zips with a given structure, and the content creators would have had to deal with it.

At this point, I suspect that the horse is far too long out of the barn to make all that much impact, but still.... if the big resellers (say, DAZ, Rendo, RDNA, and CP) could all agree on proper directory structure for various files, and enforce it with vendors starting from today, eventually it would probably get sorted out as older products got outdated. At the very least, new products would have some semblance of order.

Even though the 4 resellers above don't have a monopoly, I suspect that if they were all unanimous in one way of doing things, the smaller stores would probably feel compelled to be consistent with the bigger ones at some point too.