I know that Poser uses rsr's for "thumbnails," while Poser Pro Pack uses png files. Can anyone explain why there is a difference here? Apparently Poser Pro Pack will automatically make png files once you load a given library. Then you can safely get rid of the rsr files? I don't know a lot about png files. I do believe they were introduced in an effort to provide another file format after the originators of the gif file format started asking for royalties. (How did that ever turn out?!) I don't see png files around much. Macromedia FireWorks has adopted png's as their "native" file format. That's about it. Your insight and knowledge are always greatly appreciated! Ron

pngs are indeed better gifs, they are in 24 bit plus alpha chanell and they are better packed, e.i. smaller size. far better than tifs, and not "lossy" as jpgs. since lot of "modern" graphic programms can read & write pngs, and none of them writes rsrs, this desicion from cl can only be greeted. it allows better thumbnails in the side bar, as you can render directly as xyz.png... anyway, as far as i know... can they be animated also?

Thanks for the prompt answer, my friend!! Ron

Ron... Here's some background on the Unisys GIF patent, and why people might want to stop using GIFs: http://burnallgifs.org/ And here's some background on the PNG format: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/ Poser 4 uses RSR format for the thumbnails. It is almost the same as the MAC PICT format, with an extra header and trailer. The RSR Converter program, which is available in the free stuff area, converts back and forth between RSR and PICT. I don't know why Pro Pack changed from RSR files to PNG files for the thumbnails, but I always assumed it was because they wanted to go to a more mainstream file format. (Nothing I know of, other than P3DO and RSR converter, knows how to deal with RSR files.) Each time you open a directory in Pro Pack (for example, you select "Figures/DAZ People"), Pro Pack creates a PNG thumbnail for each RSR thumbnail in the directory that doesn't already have a PNG counterpart. After that, it never looks at the RSR file again. So you don't need the RSR after that. And if you install an updated version of the product with an updated RSR file, Pro Pack won't look at it until you delete the PNG file, and access the directory again. (That's why we ship both PNG and RSR thumbnails with our products.) By the way, there is another form of RSR files that contain geometry. Poser 4 (but not Pro Pack) converts OBJ files to RSR files the first time you access them. There are two ways to tell them apart: - Thumbnail RSR files are small (around 10K); Geometry RSR files are much larger. - Thumbnail RSR files live in directories under the Runtime/libraries subdirectories, while geometry RSR files live under the Geometries subdirectories. Hope this helps.... Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

aleks... Here's what the PNG home site says about animation: "One GIF feature that PNG does not try to reproduce is multiple-image support, especially animations; PNG was and is intended to be a single-image format only. (A very PNG-like extension format called MNG was finalized in mid-1999 and is beginning to be supported by various applications, but MNGs and PNGs will have different file extensions and different purposes.)" So I guess we're out of luck there. Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

wow, lynn, that was in-depth :) yeah, it would be really interesting to have animated thumbnails in poser :)

Anyone have the specs/format for what the header and trailor that the RSR has, as lgrant mentioned? - JimX

"it would be really interesting to have animated thumbnails in poser" EGADS! No thank you, I really don't want a bunch of flashing twitching thumbnails in my library ;)

But it's a pain when people who have Pro Pack distribute stuff with .png thumbnails and no .rsr files, because the large number (majority?) of people who have Poser 4 and not Pro Pack then have to make their own rsrs. As long as both programs read rsr, it would seem better to standardise on that.

We are fortunate to have P3DO Explorer. There is a plugin to convert rsr to png and png to rsr. At this point, I have both Poser Pro Pack and Poser 4.03 on my computer. They are on separate hard drives. The Poser 4.03 installation is minimal. That allows me to do testing and some prep work for regular Poser users?! Which gives us an rsr if I share something.

Phantast...True given a choice of only RSR and only PNG, RSR is definitely the way to go, especially since I have heard that the percentage of Poser users with Pro Pack is about 10 percent. But if you ever issue updates to your products, Pro Pack won't use the updated RSR, because it already has a PNG. That's why we send out both, even though it takes up more file space.

I don't mind having both in a file; but often I find only the png.