I was in a discussion some time ago about external Runtime folders. It was posed there that very few people were using this feature. I was surprised to hear this beause I use external Runtimes extensively: dedicated per figure or generic for hair, props or landscapes.

It is not my intention to raise another debate about which Runtime organisation is bettter. I am just interested hear whether your *current * list of active Runtimes in the Poser library contains:

• A - one ot two external Runtimes at most,
• B - a handful of them
• C - dozens and dozens

One character replies A, B, or C are encouraged. They make my counting easier. ;-)

C.

C.

Definitely C

C

C

C,,,

The most I had was near 100 when I was testing content, (One for each product I had tested over time)

Average was in the 80s as I retired some and added new ones.

Changed up and try to keep it under 30 or 40. Some are all for one figure or theme (V4/M4 Hardly changed since set up back with Poser 7, Miki, G2. Toons, Fantasy, SciFi, Vehicles, Scenes, Structures, ....)

These I back up regularly and clean up to maintain a specific convention and shorten paths... Sorry Content Creators... I do not need to know this folder is your stuff... Ever since I had some corruption due to length of path in my Poser Library due to inclusion of these extra folders in the path, I have stripped the Library of those folders.

Also hate the whole Exclamation point thing

One wish I do have is for naming the License Text file and Readme Text file for the content package, not generic and place the ReadMe's in the ReadMe folder, not Read Me one time and readme the next!

Also, when you create content, keep the same convention throughout the product.. La Femme, LaFemme, Lafemme, etc... Makes it easier to clean up.

C, definitely.

C

C

C

A

C

B. I have 7.

Edited to clarify...

I actually have 9 external Runtimes but two of 'em were just for safekeeping and I haven't done anything with them since creating them. I could consolidate/delete several because most of the time I can get by with 4, but I'm lazy.

C

B

C.

I have about 100 runtimes. Each figure gets their own, plus I have "themed" runtimes (SF, fantasy, contemporary, historical, etc.)

C (80+)

Just like randym77.

C.

The ability to organize libraries in multiple external runtimes is one of my favorite functions of Poser! ;) It makes it so much easier to find what you want to use, when you need it.

D. Sort of a mixture. While I have one main 60 gig runtime, I use P Booost, so I have many custom folders created over the years to help separate things into more manageable sizes. Also in the process of creating specific separate runtimes, so there will be ways to access content if the main system ceases to function. It would be lovely to go to the multiple runtime scheme, but that would entail unsnarling the main runtime to save the content no longer available.

I actually have several Runtimes dating back to Poser 4, but they're on my Mac. I only have three currently on this PC laptop.

A. I keep the default runtime clean with only content from the Poser install and I keep a second runtime on another drive that has everything I've ever bought or downloaded or made organized into folders.

C by all means. An entire 4G HD dedicated just to Runtimes - separated per figure, gender, hair, type of props, scenes, era etc.. :)

B

B

C

But for organizing my content i use Advanced Library Manager 2 by Shaderworks. Everything is organized and grouped within its ’Favorite’ view. This together with its ’Smart’ view, which shows materials, poses etc. that are associated to the currently selected item, is how i find my way through the huge content collection easily.

B. (5)

C

C

About 50 runtimes or so and 1 empty runtime for testing my own products and also for testing sets I download from the freestuff to see if everything works fine, before it goes in the runtime it belongs to.

B Since a few days, i use 4 Runtimes. I had some issues with my main Runtime to load in PP11, so I split it in 4 pieces. M4/V4, M3/V3, Props and Stuff, Project Evolution. LaFemme and her Partner in Crime is placed in the Poser Runtime.

ghostship2 posted at 11:53AM Wed, 19 February 2020 - #4380983

A. I keep the default runtime clean with only content from the Poser install and I keep a second runtime on another drive that has everything I've ever bought or downloaded or made organized into folders.

Yep, same here.

C ( 60+)

All my runtimes are on a 500Gig Drive with just over 100Gig free. Duplicated on another machine, backed up locally and also backed up to the cloud.

B-1/2.

I split my runtime directories between major figures (V4, A3, Laura, NearMe, Vicky 3), I have one for all third-party figures that don't really have enough to justify a full dedicated Runtime (e.g. Kururu, AnimeDoll, etc), and then I have one old runtime that was my original one, from 2001 or so. That ancient critter holds Posette/Dork, Vicky 1/2, Dina, etc.) My smallest runtime (for NearMe), weighs in at 2.7GB, and my biggest Poser-specific runtime is for V4, at 83GB.

Finally, I have a positively titanic-sized DS Content directory (I used to have two - one for DS 3.x and one for DS 4.x, but I merged those a long time ago when I realized I didn't need two.) Since DS allows for a more freeform means of organization (only Geometry (or "data") and Texture files really have to be in a specific hierarchical place), I realized that I only need one directory to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them. It weighs in at almost 400GB.

Penguinisto posted at 5:20PM Wed, 19 February 2020 - #4381027

B-1/2.

I split my runtime directories between major figures (V4, A3, Laura, NearMe, Vicky 3), I have one for all third-party figures that don't really have enough to justify a full dedicated Runtime (e.g. Kururu, AnimeDoll, etc), and then I have one old runtime that was my original one, from 2001 or so. That ancient critter holds Posette/Dork, Vicky 1/2, Dina, etc.) My smallest runtime (for NearMe), weighs in at 2.7GB, and my biggest Poser-specific runtime is for V4, at 83GB.

Finally, I have a positively titanic-sized DS Content directory (I used to have two - one for DS 3.x and one for DS 4.x, but I merged those a long time ago when I realized I didn't need two.) Since DS allows for a more freeform means of organization (only Geometry (or "data") and Texture files really have to be in a specific hierarchical place), I realized that I only need one directory to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them. It weighs in at almost 400GB.

My runtimes are along the same lines with one for V4, M4, Dawn and Dusk but then I have split out the poses for each so I have a V4 and V4 poses and the same for the other figures. Same breakdown for props but broken down for type so there are props for Cities, Buildings and Rooms. I have a lot of sci fi content so there is a runtime for Space, Sci Fi and Space Craft. Effectively if any runtime becomes too large it is subdivided into different runtimes which is why my total runtimes are over fifty.

Thank you all. C appears to be most frequent choice up to now but let us not jump to conclusions. I will let this roll one more day and then tally up.

Just a reminder the question is about the number of runtime folders you have now active in the Poser library, not about the number of folders you have on disk.

FVerbaas posted at 7:12PM Wed, 19 February 2020 - #4381037

Thank you all. C appears to be most frequent choice up to now but let us not jump to conclusions. I will let this roll one more day and then tally up.

Just a reminder the question is about the number of runtime folders you have now active in the Poser library, not about the number of folders you have on disk.

I have archived off some runtimes such as my V3 runtimes but the ones active in the library is still above fifty.

FVerbaas posted at 1:06PM Wed, 19 February 2020 - #4381037

Just a reminder the question is about the number of runtime folders you have now active in the Poser library, not about the number of folders you have on disk.

Well, I usually don't have more than 1-2 dozen runtimes active. But I switch them regularly. For me, that's kind of the point of separate runtimes. I only load the ones I need for my current project, and punt the rest. Less scrolling that way. For example, I have "Christmas" and "Halloween" runtimes, but usually don't have them active unless those holidays are approaching. If I'm using M4, I don't need the La Femme or V4 runtimes active.

About the only ones always active are the ones I can't get rid of (the ones that come with Poser), and my "Hair" and "Lights and Materials" runtimes, since I generally use those with every figure.

B.

I have a whole lot on disk, but restrict the runtimes IN the Poser library to about 10.

C like posted above. Runtimes for every character. Then over a 100 for all kinds of categories for various buildings (architectures), vehicles, factory equipment, office equipment. Bushes, Flowers, trees, ground cover, morphing ground, backgrounds and the list goes on and on. I take a lot of pre-made marketplace scenes and add to them or rip them apart and use pieces from one with pieces from others.

B

hornet3d posted at 6:40AM Thu, 20 February 2020 - #4381047

Just a reminder the question is about the number of runtime folders you have now active in the Poser library, not about the number of folders you have on disk.

I have archived off some runtimes such as my V3 runtimes but the ones active in the library is still above fifty.

Ditto - I specifically have a 2TB SSD secondary disk on the laptop because the runtime directories combined, swallow 1/3 of the thing, and they're all attached to the software.

Thank you all. I promised I'd tally today and report on this goundbreaking research project. . I ticked:

• 4 declared A's who run a lean schedule as far as number of active connected Runtimes.
• 10 B's who keep a sort of middle of the road policy
• 25 C's (including yours truly) who keep a broad palette at their hand.

This result would line up with my initial feeling that the external Runtimes feature has a more broad use than it was suggested in the conversation I referred to in the first post of this thread.

Again thank you all who participated.

Damn, just missed it, but for what it's worth, I could not have given the single-letter answer anyway, cause I don't use an external runtime, I just use the default one. I think the only content I ever bothered buying were the official DAZ Morphs++ and Muscle Morphs for M4 and V4, so the default runtime is easily sufficient.

C.

They are based on a sort of "fuzzy logic". eg: gen4 stuff. la femme stuff. toon stuff. common stuff (like plants, buildings, architecture). For figures (like la femme) they are separated into clothing, people, etc. Clothing into "tops" "bottoms". I move poses and mats to folders with the mesh they're used on. For things that have multiple texture groups, they are named with the "item/!Material" folder.

I once tried to mess with the metadata files but poser was rubbish for that. It needs a DB runtime. pg is a bit overkill but it's more than fully capable. Also, actually retro-building the necessary metadata was brutal. As it is now, I keep the data in content zip extended attributes. I hate sidecar files. Syncing them is a bish-and-a-half. :)

The runtimes are mostly about the mesh+rig, and things that are meant to conform to the mesh+rig. I remove (ie: turn off) runtimes I'm not using for a project (to declutter). I also keep each poser versions installation in their own. They are all in a single "content/poser". I run a rsync to mirror between my machines. The rsync does a cleanup (removing Daz files, DS_stores, etc.) and does a dedupe (but only with each runtime) that dedupes to hard links. The rsync is clever enough to do the same on the other side.

When I dev something, it's within its own dev runtime, which I can just clean and zip when done.

I generally only have a few runtimes open per project. If I'm doing an interior la femme scene, I hardly need toon, old poser versions, PE, etc. runtimes.

I wish we could rename the library folders within Poser, so it picked them off the directory structure. Like "library/!" so instead of character, props, hair, I could have "figure' "clothing" "accessories" .

Given a recent discovery by a beta tester, there ought to be an option D, here, for thousands (the user has over 4000 [should be a Dragon Ball joke there somewhere]). The ability to search that many runtimes seems to switch off above 2^10, apparently. Possibly an optimistically hard coded limit, but we'll see if that gets amended.

Having a separate runtime for each product from each vendor could do that. It's just a matter of how one chooses to organise one's content. If Poser were to provide more, smart content management tools, with working search functions, even that shouldn't be a problem.

An0malaus,

Poser does have a search function. Most vendors, however use insane naming conventions that keep the search function from working properly.

I can only agree with ssgbryan. For some reason that escapes me everybody seems to want to make things as obfuscated as possible.

The volume and the nature info we want to manage is much different from the thing it tired to manage when Poser was born. It is time for a good discussion on the subject in a different thread.

@ssgbryan I'm very aware of the search function, but problem reports indicate that it ceases to operate at all if the number of runtimes in the library exceeds 1024. Less and it works. More and search no longer functions. Feels like a bug (or feature) rather than an invitation to debate how we should arrange our content. If everything gets a common name, or people want to eliminate what they see as stroking vendors' egos by naming folders for creator rather than type of content, then those are certainly valid topics of discussion.

@FVerbaas, obfuscation and complication can arise in a similar manner to boiling a frog. Raise the temperature slowly, or accumulate bits and pieces of content over time, all in similar packaging and distribution formats and the extremes on offer may be minimal folders with huge quantities of cryptically named files, or huge numbers of cryptically named folders with few files. If the names are less cryptic or allocated in awareness of what others have done and avoided duplication, then nobody gets hopping or boiling mad. Conjuring the right search terms can be an arcane artform for some.

A. Like @Ghostship, I have only two runtimes: Poser 11 Content (stuff from the install, w/ no customizations -- and hardly ever used) and My Poser Content (for everything else, from purchased items to freebies to items I've made myself). This is my main runtime, and the Libraries section is extensively organized using my own folder and subfolder system as well as color-coded folder icons and Finder tags (so I can quickly find, for example, all dresses or all dining tables).

I tried multiple runtimes years ago, but I found them a pain to navigate and a waste of disk space, as I ended up with lots of geometry and texture duplicates. Having the ability to extensively customize what I want in each of the main Libraries folders has resolved the anxiety I used to feel when trying to find things that were installed wherever the vendor thought they should go, and I hope Poser never locks users into a rigid library structure!

ssgbryan posted at 2:39AM Mon, 02 March 2020 - #4382251

Poser does have a search function. Most vendors, however use insane naming conventions that keep the search function from working properly.

I have never used the Poser library's "Search" function b/c it's so much faster and easier to search using the Finder (which can do simple searches as well as more complex combinations, like all PNGs with the word "chair" in the filename added within the last 2 months). If I control-click on an item in the library, I get a "Show in Finder" option, making it super easy to navigate to content that way.

As for naming conventions, I just rename everything to whatever makes the most sense to me! I also assign my own Finder tags to the preview images for various items, like Shoes-Female, Desks, Steampunk, or whatever. I'm pretty sure you can do advanced searching and tagging in Windows Explorer as well?? My thought is: why depend on Poser (or any application) to organize and search my content, when my computer's OS already excels at those tasks?