I'd like to take on the task of cleaning up my Poser directory, but I don't want to move something or rename a folder that will cause a conflict the next time I try to call upon a particular character, prop, etc. Does anyone know the "rules" of moving things around within directories?

I'm anything but an expert, but I am one of those people that will tinker with things until they break (and then tinker some more until it is unbroke:) As far as directories go, here is what I have found: * materials generally seem to work no matter where you put them (as long as the extension (ie .bmp or .jpg) matches what is found in the poser file and they are still under the runtime:textures directory) * Geometries are very picky. You can open the poser file (cr2, pz2 etc) and manually change them (to a new place) but if you open the file in poser and it can't find the obj, you might lose your work, or at least be unable to open the object) -- Be very careful regarding your geometries folder * Poser files are very flexible. You can put pz2 files under camera's and faces (as long as you rename them to what ever the files normally found within the tree, such as changing the name scaryvicky2.pz2 to scaryvicky2.cm2) This allows you to reduce your pose folder, but can be time consuming if you don't have any file renaming tricks available. To make things more complicated, I keep all pz3 and morph geometry files completely outside of my poser directory. It allows me to keep the size of that beast to a minimum (if you can call 6gigabytes minimum) If you are running out of space, look into MOR files. If you are like me, you have lot's of millinium figures with small modification (downloaded morphs or one's you've made yourself, or maybe even characters you downloaded free or by purchasing). You will be surprised how much disk space these can provide you. Do a search in the forum for MOR files (maybe there is a tutorial out there? When I clean house (and it looks like it is about time), I usually don't delete anything immediately. I move it to another drive (or folder) and make sure everything is still working before I delete. This does require that you have more disk space than you currently are using. Hope this is what you were looking for, eric

Thanks a bunch, that does give me a little more confidence before I jumped in there and started movin things around!

The best suggestion I can give is to make sure you've backedup everything. If you're brave, you can backup your entire runtime folder. You might need to zip the contents first. Be aware the size can be massive. My textures folder alone required 2 CD's, after it was zipped!

You're positive about poser not caring about what kind of file is in what part of the librairie as long as the extension is changed? This one is great, I hate to run for my hair in three different folders (hair, character, props)... If I can really move all this to the underpopulater Hair folder, thanks a bunch for the tip :))))

There might be some that don't work (I don't think you can put poses in the lights folder.) First try out one or two, before going to the trouble of moving things (and having to move them back). Face and Camera is a good place for those extra poses. Also, I highly recommend working out the MOR file business. It is quite handy (though time consuming). eric

Well, I tried with my hair props and chars, and so far, no glitches... Probably going to move some of my MAT poses to props and char and faces too... For people looking for a mass renamer, there is The Rename at http://www.herve-thouzard.com/therename.phtml, which is freeware and works quite well... P3dO now has a beta renamer plugin too...

DOS commands come in handy too, if you don't mind messing with the command line stuff;) eric