I've just been helping somebody with a mysterious missing file message problem in his props. I've seen this problem a few times now. It's caused by a reflection map called SilverRefl.pct (and probably by other .pct reflection maps also). I strongly urge you never to use a .pct reflection map in your products. For some strange reason many (but not all) Poser users find that even if the file is present on their system, Poser will be unable to find it and will report that a file is missing without telling them which file. In general if Poser complains of a missing file but doesn't tell you the file name or type, that means it's a reflection map that's missing. The odd thing about .pct files is that Poser often misses them even if they're present in the correct place. Since it doesn't happen for everyone and doesn't seem to have anything to do with their Poser version or operating system, you can't rely on yourself or your beta testers to find this bug. Just don't use .pct reflection maps.

'Tis true - Poser on my main machine (Win98) can find .pcts, on my daughter's machine (Win98) it can't, on my work machine (Win2000) it can't. PCT is a Mac format originally, that may have something to do with it; but there are other instances of the Windows version of Poser having trouble with files. Importing video formats, and being able to find the Acrobat version of the manual via the Help menu have both given sporadic trouble in the past. Not to mention the Great Bump Map Disaster. :-(

The really weird thing is that on my system (Poser 4, win98 SE) it sometimes finds them and sometimes doesn't. I have a theory that it depends on whether Poser searches the reflection maps folder or the textures folder. I haven't tested it yet though.

My system uses 98SE, currently my Poser4 dir is a sub of C: ( though it was once in the default location) . The default location for reflection maps is ..Poser 4RuntimeReflection Maps. Poser is capable of reading PICT so the fact that PICT was originally a Mac format should not be relevant. Whilst I have never had this problem myself, I suspect that the problem is caused by the path statement in the materials section of the prop or what ever it is, ideally it should be relative with Runtime as the base, I also keep a copy of SilverRefl.pct and GoldRefl.pct in my textures directory, because some props look for it there. One thing I am certain of, the file format is NEVER an issue in FINDING the file, it can only be an issue in displaying it.

Not so, I fear: here is a screen shot from my Poser 4.03 operating under Windows 2000 Professional, when I try to open a reflection map from the materials dialogue. The two .pct reflection maps are definitely in this folder, but despite the file type saying "all files", only the .jpg versions are visible. Note also that .pct does not appear anywhere in the file type list. This Poser install just does not acknowledge the existence of .pct files at all: the same thing happens from any other 2D image opening dialogue. Incidentally, "all files" seems not to mean all files as it does in other Windows file open dialogues - try any file open action from Poser, and you can never see every file type in a folder. This may have some bearing on the fault; any Mac users care to chip in?

Apologies for arrogant, and wrong assertion.

No apologies necessary, Les. I detected no arrogance in your post, just the understandable puzzlement of someone who is sitting in front of a system that works. For all you know, I may be suffering from "loose nut behind the controls" syndrome. ;-) I suspect that Poser has its own internal idea of what file types are appropriate, and perhaps bypasses the Windows file type mechanism in some way that I probably wouldn't understand. It would be nice to have an explanation, but if not, Ajax's original suggestion seems adequate. Don't use them pesky picts!

Ajax: As per lesbentley I am confused. It works fine on XP, GENUINE INTEL P4,512,1.6G (untweaked and allowing MS to send updates.) It may be some driver etc. that allows pict to work on my system that your friend doesn't have, a registration problem ,an old driver, or some tweak your friend has applied to his computer. My folder structure is default. The only thing that I can think of That I might have that your friend doesn't is povray 3.1 and 3.5 beta. HJpro,photoshop,corel,psp,geek, ... could it be an anti virus program running? some other program conflicting? . . . Not using Propack. . . . Don't know if any of this is relevent, sorry I don't know how to help other that not to produce anything refering to a pict file. I hope you can resolve this. - bikermouse

I did the same thing on my home system that I did to get the screenshot above (open a reflection map from the materials dialogue), and the file type list was full of all sorts of exotic extensions, most of which I didn't recognise. I think these are Mac types, which just reinforces what I suspected all along - but doesn't really help much. :(

I'm not looking for a solution. I don't believe there is one. It's some sort of Poser bug, pure and simple. I'm just saying don't use pct files as reflection maps for anything you plan to distribute to other people. If you want a reflection map in your product, then use a jpg. This is a bug that crops up for a lot of people. It's by no means isolated to me or the particular guy I was helping out on this occasion or to EnglishBob. It's not a well known bug, but it is a known one. I'd like it to be better known, so that people don't get trapped by it so often. That's why I posted.

Sorry Ajax, hi-jacked your thread there a bit. ;) It's just that things like this bother me... I NEED to understand... must have answers...

I understand that, EnglishBob. And I appreciate your "corroborating evidence". It would be nice to nail exactly what circumstances give rise to the problem since that's what CL will need to know to fix it. Unfortunately I don't have enough info to do that yet. I suspect there may be more than one set of circumstances that act as a trigger.

Hi Ho, EnglishBob suggested that I should take a look here, since there's a possibility that the problems might be (somehow) Mac related. Before I start I must say that I hardly work with the PC Poser (except for specific testing) and although I occasionally code for the PC, I'm not too familiar with low level stuff. In a word: I'm just guessing here... Having said that, a couple of ideas: 1) I don't know if the "file type" filtering under Windows is a high level system service, or a low level custom filter - on Mac it is low level (as soon as a selector popup gets involved). I really don't know about the PC, but on Mac there is a difference between "all files" and "any file". "all files" means "supported by the application", which is simply the whole set of individual types further below. "any file" means absolutely every file - if it's the same on PC, then it would make sense that .pct won't get listed, because it's not on the remaining list. MetaC/CuriousL are using a porting library to create the PC Poser - it might be possible that this "all files" entry mimics the Mac behaviour. 2) Poser's texture searching is 100% voodoo, and I gave up to understand it... and the Mac version of it differs completely from the PC version. Part of it is even hard-coded into the compiled code, and it changed with every beta version and between localizations. Further, the PC version seems to be especially unreliable - there once were threads about odd behaviour with Poser's prompting for missing bumpmaps. On some PCs you were able to select a different filetype, on others it locked Poser. We never worked that out. All I can say is that the reflection maps never seemed to cause trouble on Mac. 3) This might be a clue to follow: To my knowledge there is a significant difference between Poser with/out QuickTime - and I believe that (at least some of) the unpredictable behaviour on PC is due to this. Poser seems to be able to open a certain subset of PICT format on its own (like the thumbnail data), but obviously not the full set. But it uses QuickTime services to support additional filetypes, so this might be the difference that triggers some strange effects. To add more confusion - some PC people will have the QuickTime kernel, but don't know about it: If you uninstall QuickTime, you get a warning that uninstalling the kernel might cause trouble to your system. If you decide to leave it (at that point), then it will leave the graphics engine on your system (that is used by Poser) and only uninstall the user front end. In other words: Poser will continue to use its features, but the user believes he got rid of QuickTime. And to add much more confusion - some "still images" services are not included with the "simple install" on PC (different to Mac), but only with the full/authoring install, or available as a custom option. From my (limited) experience with the PC Poser, I must say that Poser runs better with QuickTime installed. Hope that helps, MartinC

Ajax: a coincedental dl of a gun model led me to another idea. If poser can't find the bump files, it may not be able to find the texture files as it appears to follow a relative path, and it may lose track of where it is in the file structure . . . (this from watching the behavior of the directory search poser does when asking you for file names it can't find.) this behavior, if an accurate description, could happen in any file with multible external references and would start at the first file it can't find. . . . I set both the bump files and the texture files to what turned out to be the proper directories for all references to the two files: :MDP:XXXX.jpg :reflection maps:silverrefl.pct but neglected to change the bump jpgs to bum files. poser asked for locations for BOTH the texture and bum files. realizing my mistake I converted the bump jpgs to bums, did nothing else, tried again and the file loaded without problem, silver texture and all. . . . The implication of the above is that it may not be a bug. However, someone who has had this problem in the past would have to try it out for confirmation. note the path used by the author for the BUMP FILES ..... G:/poser/etc.../xxxx.jpg note the jpg extention for a bump file. the superblackhawk gun model file in freestuff is the file of interest here. - "TOO MUCH INFORMATION" I know, I know. forgive me martin i don't mean to step on your toes, but i wrote this messege in notepad before i logged back on. If it helps my qt is up to date and as far as i know functioning properly.

oops two file should read all files as there are i think four bump jpgs and the reference to silverefl.pct

oops. not a bug should read not a poser bug.

EnglishBobs illustration shows that his copy of Poser is not capable of loading PICT images. Each Image Loader used by Poser is a seperate file in the "plugins" folder. The loader for PICT(pct) images is either missing, corrupted or has some compatibility issue which is leading to it being disabled. It would be a lot worse if the "dead" loader were the jpeg one!! H:)

Martin, you're a genius. :-) I installed a minimal Quicktime on my work machine, which had never had it since I reformatted. I included the 2D image support, and - hey presto! Poser can now see Mac image formats. My home machine has Quicktime already, which is why it works there. I think that just about wraps it up. To summarise: * Don't include calls to Mac formatted image files in anything you distribute. * If you have trouble reading Mac images, install Quicktime. Thanks all, and goodnight!!