Here's the question.

I use the grouping tool to add some new material groups to Vicky. Currently, if I wanted to sell a bunch of "painted-on" garments that easily mix and match because of those groups, the only way I can give the groups to my customers is to encode the whole Vicky figure. My gut feeling is that newbies and some others are turned off by a product as soon as they see the words "decode" and "seed file." (One doesn't know how easy decoding is until one tries it, and some people won't try it.)

But suppose I capture the new material-group-face information by making a file comparison with standard Vicki. Couldn't there be some way of "injecting" that information in a new type of MAT/MOR-like file analogous to a morph injection?

This would be such a neat and useful hack if someone smarter than me could figure it out.

(See also http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=990251)

Speaking as a programmer - I doubt it. If we are down to contemplating this level of file-massaging, then it is time for a more automated encoding utility. Hmm. Like self-extracting win-zip file. Off the top of my head, I would think like this: a new "standard" folder within Poser folder, maybe called "Installers". Author instructions to user would say: after unzipping to your Poser folder, go into folder "Installers", and double-click on "MyCoolProduct-installer.exe". That would be a file that this hypothetical encoding tool would have made. It would look for the appropriate seed file - and would only have to pester user if it wasn't found. If found in the expected place, it would place the decoded file where it belongs. Maybe you could suggest this to the various folks who've written the existing encoder utilities? NOTE: the "ideal" solution would be like DAZ installer, that handles the whole unzip process, and was modified to support checking for seed file(s).. but that is a bigger project - someone would probably have to charge money for such a utility to recoup their time writing it.

That's a terrific idea, ToolmakerSteve.

Since I can't make that happen, I guess I'll have to work on my copy and manuals to make it clearer to prospective customers just how easy the decoding process is.

Thanks for hashing it out with me.

Bill

Can you inject grouping information? This is just of the top of my head, so it might be wrong. I would say yes, and no. Yes: Grouping information, applies to geometry. Geometry can be either internal (to a Poser library file), or external (in an obj file). Poses apply to library files, so you could add grouping information only if the geometry was internal, and I think you would have to inject the whole geomCustom channel(s). No: So it's possible, but no, it's not really practical for anything but a small prop with internal geometry. At least that's how I see it. I wonder if RTEncoder accepts command line augments? You might be able to automate the decoding process with a batch file or some other sort script.