Attached Link: http://www.elektralusion.com

Hello all, I have been talking to Foxhollow about some morph targets of his that I downloaded. I have also been to the Poser Forum and Morph World (what great places) and have downloaded various things here, there, and everywhere. I am having difficulty, with many things, among which is the morph targets. I was told that it did not matter where I put the targets. When I load the figure and select the target, I get the window where I assign the path (I'm on a Mac G3 using Poser4), but when I go to the folder where I have placed the targets (in OBJ format), they do not appear. The original files were all zipped. I had no problem unzipping and saving them. Does anyone know a solution? I would so like to work with some of the morphs. Thank you, Cris

hehe...Just calling the troops in Cris! Fox

You need to set the Type of the file to "TEXT" for Mac Poser to recognize OBJ files like morph targets. Even a number of Mac apps will set the file type incorrectly so you can't work with the files in Poser. I usually just convert the file to a BBEdit file in case I actually want to edit the text (just double-click). You can set the file type with a number of utilities: File Buddy, FinderPop, a number of contextual menu modules, ResEdit... Easiest way is probably to grab MartinC's excellent Poser MacConverter (which you should be using anyway!) from FreeStuff and drop your problem files on it. It will change the type to "TEXT" so you can work with them.

Hi Folks! BTW--On my Mac G3 running Poser4, converting obj files thru MacConverter results in files with PC icons and DOS file descriptions in the Get Info box. I can download them and unZip them and they come in with a generic document icon, but to use them I must usually drag them onto MacConverter--and then the icons change. I haven't been able to figure out why this happens, although it doesn't seem to affect being able to import the files or load the morph targets after I've converted them. Peter (Dr. Zik)

To clarify what's happening here... When I unzip a morph target from Morph World, for example, the .obj file has a Type of "PCFL" and a Creator of "SWIN". This means it is a PC file belonging to the application SoftWindows (which is really weird, because I don't have SoftWindows; think Stuffit Expander must assign these...). Because it isn't a file of type "TEXT", Poser will not list the file in the window when you go to add the morph target. After dropping the file on MacConverter, the file (which is still exactly the same file btw) has a Type of "TEXT" and a Creator of "mdos". This tells the Mac OS the file is a text file that was created with a PC application. Because it's now marked as a text file, Poser will diplay it in the Add Morph Target list. The Creator is what determines what icon the document has, as well as what app will open the file when you double-click it. The "mdos" Creator gives files the PC icon. If you change the Creator of the text file to "ttxt", the .obj file will have a SimpleText doc icon; if you give it a Creator of "R*ch", the Mac will give the doc a BBedit icon, if BBedit is installed on your machine. The data in the file is unchanged by all this; all you're doing is changing what kind of file the OS thinks the doc is and what app it thinks the doc belongs to. Hope this helps...

StuffItExpander is using InternetConfig (or just Internet for Systems 8.5ff) to map the filetypes, so probably the SoftWindows link is set there. There are so many programs that try to add their prefs to it that the file list can get messed up quite easily.

Hello to my fellow Posers: Thank you so much to Fox and everyone else who replied. The initial problem lay in the fact I needed Stuffit 5. Once I obtained that I was able to open Martin's program and convert the OBJ files and, voila, new morph targets. I am delighted and humbled by the quick response to my plight. Cris

Hi Folks! Thanx for the observations, xeno. How/where do I find the Creator such that I can alter it to change all my current downloaded files with PC icons to SimpleText icons? thanx Peter (Dr. Zik)

Peter, you could try to open the "Internet" control panel (for System 8.5ff) or the "InternetConfig" application and look for something like "suffix mapping" - but better be careful, you must know about MIME types and all those technical bits to avoid making it worse... About this "PC icon" thing in Maconverter: They are used whenever there is no "natural" mapping for Poser related files. SimpleText is a poor choice for .obj files, because they are bigger than 32k in 99.99% and SimpleText will refuse them (it is only intended for small read-me's). Setting the "mdos" creator was the best choice for me, because it is not occupied by any real application - whenever you double-click, EasyOpen will ask you which app you want to open it with. You might want to have a look at EasyOpen's various settings, once customized to your needs it is a wonderful helper.

Peter- Martin is absolutely correct about SimpleText being a poor choice for the creator for your Poser .obj files. I set the creator of my .obj files to BBEdit, because BBEdit can handle very large text files (unlike SimpleText), and I actually DO edit the text in the files occasionally. Unless you have a need for the files to open in a particular application when you double-click them, they'll work just fine in Poser with the PC icons. If you just really dislike PC icons and want SimpleText ones...well, I suppose changing the creator is easier than pasting on custom icons! There are many general purpose tools for setting the types and creators of files. Try a search at http://www.versiontracker.com/ for "creator"; you should find several, including some free ones. File Buddy and A Better Types and Creators (both shareware) are two of the most popular. However, don't arbitrarily start changing types and creators for all your files! This is information that is critical for your Mac to keep track of each application's files and icons, and unlike the .obj files for Poser, most files have meaningful values already assigned for both type and creator. But when you really do need to change these values, a utility like File Buddy etc is indispensable. If you can figure out the Internet and File Exchange settings as Martin suggested, the Poser .obj files will hopefully unzip with the creator you want already assigned. It's a great idea I hadn't thought of; guess I have to figure it out myself! Thanks for the tip, Martin.

WOW!...I thought the Mac was supposed to be one of the easiest, user friendly machines around! Text files are...well..probably the simplest, most basic file types on the face of the planet. You guys really have to go thru all this just to see one?

Foxhollow, well,... (almost) all we are talking about here are different looking icons... If you double-click on a .txt file you will always launch one and the same application on Windows. On a Mac you can have 30 different TEXT files, all with different icons and all linked to individual programs. Of course you can open them with any app you like, but the double-click will always start the one it belongs to. And a textfile will always be one, even if you rename it to something like bogus.exe! You get so much used to this, that you start getting annoyed if there is just a single file that you want to belong to BBEdit but is actually linked to SimpleText... and so we are going through GREAT trouble to figure out complex re-mapping schemes to get it all setup automatically... :-) (Douglas Adams wrote about this phenomenon in "Last Chance to See" - highly recommended reading!) As a wise man once said: "If I only got YOUR problems"...

Martin (and Peter!)- Sheesh, that was so simple. Only had to change app and file type for PC "obj" extension in File Exchange control panel for .obj files to unzip as BBEdit text. Doesn't seem necessary to mess with Internet settings. Default setting was to save as PCFL/Swin binary file!? Maybe the ".obj" extension is used for more than one type of file on PC? Sorry I'm so slow, Martin...never had to deal with PC files much before I got Poser and forgot File Exchange was there! Many thanks, again.

By the way... there is a similar problem on the PC as well! My ISP forces me to call my pages something.phtml, and I usually check it with IE 4 on PC. Unfortunately IE will not open it, because it has the wrong extension. So I have to rename it first to something.htm (Windows tells me that this might damage the file), open it, and then rename it back (Windows tells me that this might damage the file). Glad that the big software companies keep us busy and entertained...