With all the wonderful material being created for Poser there is a real problem with finding anything. The folks who are creating an item all want to be recognized and set the zip files to put their creations in obscure directories. Instead of simply "men's clothing" they will create a new directory named "!!!xxx" so they will appear first on the list.I have one item that I dumped in a directory named.. "!!!!!!!!!!!xxx" It makes it very hard to find anything and I personally find myself removing their creations. Why??? Because I can't find it. How about giving some slack and choose some of the mainstream directories and drop the "cute" names. Reb

I usually audit my directories once every couple of weeks... I move the stuff I want to keep into generic directories ("Vicky's closet", "~Stephanie Chars", etc), and damned few artists get a directory named for themsleves (Dark Whisper and Zrincx are about it for now... :) This has been an ongoing thing for eons - everyone wants to be at the top of a loooooooong list. It takes less than five minutes to audit a week's worth of freebies and other incoming stuff; most of the cutie names evaporate under my relentless pursuit towards being anal about how my directories are laid out :) /P

I agree with you guys. Being new to Poser, I have literally downloaded several Gigs of free stuff from Renderosity and other sites, and I have been going through the pile for the last few months to see what I like and don't like. Anyway, the whole directory thing is out of hand. Once Poser 5 gets here (very soon) I plan to use it's Hierarchal directorys to straighten things out. All similar items in one directory, no matter WHO made them. Then, when I want, say, a pair of glasses, I don't have to search up and down for the pair I want. It's going to be a job, but in the end it will be worth it. It would be nice if the content creators helped us out here. Of course, there may be people who like having things arranged by creator. Anyone want to share their viewpoint from that perspective?

I agree, I've been frustrated for some time now about this and have begun auditing my directories as well. The biggest frustration for me has been trying to find textures.

Actually I like it if the creator uses their name in the directory. It's the obscure ones, Vicky dress 5, that tend to frustrate me. I used to get annoyed with the !!! in a name too but then I read that some do it so if you unzip to your poser directory it's easy to find because it's on top. You can always go in and remove them. shrug Personally I never unzip to my runtime dir though. I create dirs and drag and drop to install.

Having a Mac I'm not as dependant on the 'this has to go in this named folder' syndrome as PC users tend to be, at least it appears that way from some of the instal instructions I've seen :-) I had lots of weapons in my props folder, most in their own entry but it was beginning to get out of hand cause when I wanted a Walther P-38 I had to go down to nearly the bottom of the ENTIRE props list to find it AGH! So I had enough of that and decieded to put all the weapons in combined sections, anything with an edge gos into Edged Weapons, anything that goes bang gets put into Guns, and anything that uses energy as a blade or a 'bullet' goes to Energy Weapons. Other things get sorted by use or type, such as furniture or tools. This way you can impose some order on your library so you don't spend 10 minutes hunting for that nifty dagger you forgot who made it :-)

As a consumer, I agree with you on the 'ego' directory names... I always rename them as soon as I install them (fortunately, there's relatively few merchants who insist on their stuff being at the top). As a merchant, I've been concerned about directory clutter too and have been trying to come up with a scheme to help combat it wherever I can. Most directories (pose, prop, face, lights, etc) can be renamed by the end user, but the geometry and texture directories are usually tied to the various MAT, cr2 and prop files. Starting with my most recent few products, for the geometry and texture directories, I put everything in a 'Spanki' subfolder, then subfolders under those (by character or package name, or in the case of some textures, by category (metals, woods, reflection, etc)). I hope this helps keep down clutter while making it easy to find geometries/textures for my products. - Keith

I am personally much more comfortable with directories named after creators, than with directories named for categories. This because there are categories such as "Vicky clothing" that grow so huge by themselves, they are as unmanageable as the whole thing alltogether. Also, there are items, such as hair, that end up some in Figures, some in Hair, some in Props, and these you can not group anyway. Same for some props, morphing sunglasses (to mention an example) is between the Figures, while there can be other sunglasses amongst the props. On the contrary, when you have a directory for each merchant, if merchant is consistent with naming, then everything that belongs to "xyz" package (like, say, hair hairpose hairmat props etc.) is alphabetically listed and quicker to find and use. I for instance hate if I load a character, to have to fo Figures folder-load character, then move to and browse Poses folder-load mat poses, then browse again Poses folder-load bodypose, then browse to hair-load character hair, then browse back to figures-load character clothes, then browse to props-load character props, then go to light sets... If I have a character called "xyz" with textures, mats, props, light sets, etc, I definitely like it much better to just have to open one folder and find everything in there.

I prefer items to go into a creator's folder, it makes it easier to find after installation. I hate having to search for a new item so I can check it out.

Just to clarify, I prefer it going to the artist's folder too (or the name of the character/product). What I object to is the use of special character prefixes (!, A-,01_,+, etc.) to make their folder sort to the top of the folder list. I use special characters within my product's folder, if I need to group items, but I don't use them in the folder name itself.

I have to agree with the original post. When you get one or two items in a folder, its wasted space. The library pull down boxes don't expand outward. You have to go hit the down scroll button, which sux. Now i know a lot of you like all that mouse moving and button clicking and scrolling, etc, but I hate it. The time I spend clicking and scrolling and yada yada sux. So I use pboooost to organize the library. Even the textures should be sorted cuz I usually have to use the windoze search feature when importing an obj into Bryce. Unfortunately, I can't sort the textures because the cr2's etc look for a particular directory. What a disaster! All this can be minimized by standardization. If the artist wants recognition, put your name on the rsr. Make the files easy to find. How the hell am I supposed to remember that a texture for a saddle is under a name that doesn't even give a clue as to what's there?

Oh, as for folders that grow too large to manage, like "Vickie clothing", I understand. That's why the poser god invented the ability to make a folder called "Vickie Boots" and "Vickie pants" etc.

I always install new downloads into a "dummy" Poser4 folder on another drive, then after verifying the installations I go thru & prefix all the library folders with a "!! " prefix and edit the name to fit into my indexing system, then when I copy it over into Poser 4, I can find and check out the new downloads. Once that's done I close Poser and use Yarp's P3d0 to sort the new items as needed and edit out the "!! ". My biggest gripe is with vendors who let ProPak dump all the OBJ and texture files into library folders, and don't bother fixing the mess before uploading into the marketplace. I don't know why that's not something the Beta-testers check for, but even though it seems it's okay with the MP to sell such a mess, it's NOT okay to me. I HATE having to hack a new CR2 just to make it work when it's a product I paid for. When it's FreeStuff, I'm humbly grateful for the artist's generosity in sharing it and cheerfully fix it myself, but when it's a commercial product I can't help but curse the vendor's lazy bones (mentally).

User and vendor here. Its interesting the differing views here. I'm an inveterate downloader and guess like most of you have now got unmanageable directories. I think if it wasn't for the promise of library heaven in P5 I would be seriously thinking of converting to a categorised rather than artist based structure. We will see if P% makes things any easier. In defence of vendors I really don't think its an ego thing_ more a 'following convention' thing. But I think some of you guys have a valid gripe_ with the explosion of available stuff its getting out of hand! Leather_Guy, again this obj thing isn't a laziness issue.. Its that flipping Pro Pak that (I believe) recreates the obj. in the library structure..When I uploaded some of my earlier models (with my obj in 'geometries' I was informed by the tester that I should put my obj.'s in the library files. I had assumed (and carried on in blissful ignorance)that it did'nt make any practical difference, but am happy to be educated if anybodies got any comments.

Absolutely no categorization or hierarchy will solve the problem of easily finding a file when you've got lots'n lots of'em! Ask two people what they would consider a logical set of categories or hierarchy, and you'll get three answers (at least!). What Poser needs is a good search facility, more or less like Google or Yahoo. We already have several good add-ons to Poser which help a lot, but if anyone out there wants a programming challenge, how about a "Prowser" w/ a "Poogle" ;o)

I was one of the first to make custom directories when I was brokering and obviously used "Anton" in the names. I think people wanted to get infront of the "A". :) who knows.

Hey EricofSD! Do what I do with Bryce, if you have the HDD space. Just create a folder called OBJ Exports or Poser Exports, go through you Poser tree and copy -all- the textures into it, and save your obj exports into that same file. Bryce first looks in the same folder where the obj-mtl files are, and if all your textures are there, no sweat! Just be ready to be very afraid when you see how -many- you have.... ;)

I don't mind so much the vendor names for geometries folders, but I HATE the !!! and + and other garbage for library files and textures. I'll decide if I want your stuff at the top of my directories, thank you. There's several vendors who use ! or + so it's meaningless. It's like all those companies in the phone book who try to be cute with names like AAA car service, AAAA car service, etc. They all look alike. Stick your name in the .rsr/.png file and I'll remember it's your stuff. (Poserstyle does a really good job with theirs.) I have folders like Vicki - Fantasy, Vicki - SciFi, etc. so I have items by theme. If I need a fantasy outfit, I can mix and match the clothing. How many people say, "I want to wear a Ralph Lauren outfit today, or a Liz Claibourne outfit?" Nope, its, "I want to wear a business pantsuit, or I want to wear shorts." If I had a designer who tried to enforce where in my closet I place their designs, I'd never buy from them. (Yes, I'm in a rant mood.)

The exclamation point is good for keeping default files or key files at the top of a folder with the other MATs and thing after it. I din't realize using them as folder names was so common. Good to know.

IMHO if somebody wants credit for the work they do when they're giving you freebies then that's a small price to pay. Come on, it doesn't take too much time to sort things out to your own taste.

There is a plus to a merchant's folder, as well... take a large set, clothes, hair, props, the works (like Assassins). If I were to put the gun with GUNS, the hair with a generic hair folder and so on, how on Earth would I remember which pieces go with that character??? I don't have the time comparing items to a picture to find parts, and I sure don't feel like renaming everything.

Why are you so concerned about having a matching set? If you put all the footwear in a given folder (say Vicky Footware) then you know where the boots are and you can find them, or pick another set of boots to mix 'n match.

One thing I absolutely HATE is when people put up freestuff, or purchase items, and they somehow add the item name to the BEGINNING of the pathname in the zip file, - i.e., prop xxx has an install path in the zip file that says propxxxruntimelibraries.... which makes it absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to use the path at all when installing from the zip file - as the files will end up in Poser 4propxxxruntime.... NOT in Poser 4Runtime.... In these cases you have to manually put them in appropriate folders, so there is no point to having the paths in there, it's just a hindrance and inconvenience, and usually the stupid, frequently miles-long path has to be hacked out of the cr2, or pp2, or whatever anyway in order to get the damned thing to work at all. How Irritating! A while back I downloaded something that had a path 15 levels deep, starting at C:Program files etc. Really makes ya want to grab the turkey and 'beat him freely about the head and shoulders' with a small planet.

You are right Allen, That situation is one of the more irritating. I really can't understand why they do that. Maybe it's like the old saying: "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" *8-)

Just open the "item name" folder, grab its "Runtime" and drag that to your Poser 4 folder. In WinXP, if you keep the default Zip folders association for .zip, you can open the source drag the Runtime directly into place (if you have the folders visible down the side of the explorer window then double-clicking a zip folder automatically opens it in a new window, which is handy).

Then you have to go back and delete the "item name" folder. When you've downloaded a dozen or more things, and have to do this whole rigamarole for each, it's a MAJOR paininnabutt!! I can't figure out how, or more importantly WHY, they do it this totally fucked-up way to begin with. Is it just that they want to know anybody who downloaded their stuff has to jump thru a bunch of pointless hoops, or what?

Wow - Peng, I'm honoured ;-) d