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I am not really sure if I like this one. The current behaviour is to open the last used texture/image folder which is often the correct one if you want to change more than one texture on an object or figure.

But yes, there is a lot to improve in the folder handling of Poser (scenes, images, objects, textures, python scripts)

Well I'd be happy if it just had the full path listed somewhere.

That's not UAC, that's group permissions. Turning UAC off won't prevent that, and you'd have to follow the instructions for changing group permissions at the link that the error popup gives you.

Those DAZ installers are the only things that do that, at least from what I've seen, and it's not just the old ones - the newer ones do too.

When you open a texture node in the material room it would be nice if Poser opened the folder that contained the actual texture that's already applied so you know you're at least in the proper  texture directory.

Quote - It does this for at least a couple of reasons, the main on being that the new files written to disk include several mipmapped LODs, and caching them in this format means that they can be paged in as required to avoid memory problems.
This is an important improvement and negates any texture size / quantity issues during rendering (preview is another matter though).

Ah I see, thank you for explaining that. :-)

Well the scene I'm working on that prompted me to write this is about 4.5 GB. Three figures with clothes and hair and a whole bunch of props.

I do use raytraced shadows yes, but I'm not going for ultra realism, more like artistic effect, so I also have alot of lights that use shadow maps too.

Bucket size is set to 64. Windows 7 x64, 8 GB 1064 RAM, Pentium quad core Q9550 (2.83 ghz slightly OCd to 3.1 ghz and very stable btw. )

Like I said, after it finishes that first render, all the others fly by. Surprisingly fast, really - much quicker than Poser 7 Pro Pack ever was.

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Right click and you get a list to choose what you want selected. dizzi I think posted  a tip on how to keep the same item selected. Those notes are at home and I am in Asia on business. Somebody else  who knows that trick, can you please post the details.

Well I know that, but that little feature has its own problems too, although I use it all the time.
I would really prefer though if a locked object didn't even present itself for selection.

If I've locked an object, I've done it for good reason and I know how to get at it if I should want to move it again.
Thanks for mentioning that anyway. :-)

Quote - Nice way to slip in an ad for a new product, thought that wasn't allowed?

I  for one am really glad he did it.
F*ck the rules.
I read this, and then read about PoseMorphLoader, which I had never heard of (and wouldn't even thought possible), and now I'm going to have to get it. I have been wanting to be able to do the things it claims to be able to do for a long time now, just thought there was no way possible.

So thanks for the ad, Phantom! :D

Quote - Interesting points there, Schecterman.

My observation regarding the devout people I know is rather the opposite.  Maybe that's because  Christianity - or any other religion - isn't mainstream thinking here.  Anyhow, The ones I know of  have - in the main - thought, debated and questioned everything.

Then again, I can choose my friends.  I tend to keep away from people who aren't open to question and discussion.  That's not to say we spend all the time debating the existence (or otherwise) of God.  

It's probably a geographical thing. Here in the American South, thinking is discouraged.
Not just religion either, but pretty much all thinking. ;-)

Quote - .... theists conceive of a metaphysical that intersects the physical....

What you wrote is fine and all and I'm not going to try and argue with it, but I wanted to highlight that one part of what you said.

The problem with that is, most religious people - at least the ones I personally know, couldn't care less about metaphysical this intersecting physical that...

They believe because they were told to believe, raised to believe, and told that to doubt is to put one's soul in jeopardy.
To think about it all too much is skirting dangerously close to damning oneself to an eternity of fire and brimstone (in spite of the fact the Bible clearly says that Hell is only for Satan and his evil minions, but that's a whole separate argument altogether), so thinking is discouraged.

That's not to say there aren't some really devout religious people out there who don't think about it and who aren't capable of appreciating science and enjoy a good debate, but the majority of religious people seem to not be interested in anything but just believing - "I believe and that's that, and it's not up for debate."

Thinking about it, most of the religious (at least Christian) people I've met (including my entire family), actually know very little about their own religion, let alone science, let alone debating either. I've met alot of devout  people who thought Christ was Jesus' last name. ;-)

But my point being, I don't think the majority do a whole lot of thinking about it.... Thanks for everything, Jesus, 'preciate that whole sacrifice thing and all, and I'll see you in heaven one day, cuz if I believe, I know I'm saved....

Try something else before doing that...
Open up Poser and save your default scene as something - whatever you want, and close Poser.
Then open that .pz3 file in a text editor. It's just a text file after all. Remove all the references to Simon and then save it.
Then try opening that in Poser and see if you get a Simon-less, non-crashing scene.
If so, save that as your "preferred state".
Never know, it just might work, and it's a helluva lot easier than reinstalling the whole system. Besides, this is Poser's problem not your system.

I can't remember what I had to do, but I do remember that it was a problem getting rid of Simon and having Poser crash in the process all the time, but I eventually did and all was fine after that.

Oh I remember that thing about not being able to delete Simon. I can't remember now how I got around it, but you might try holding down the Shift key while pressing the Del key.
That prevents Poser from trying to store it into memory as an undo, which could be the problem.
It'll tell you that this action is not un-doable, but I think it should work. Then just try saving out a new startup preferences by going to Edit>General Preferences and setting the startup state to No Simon.
Or you could just save out a blank empty .pz3 scene.

I appreciate it.
Yeah, I know all about Edit>Restore, but I have a few figures that are already "memorized" fully morphed out and I want to zero them all. Pretty big task because in addition to all the ++ morphs, I've made several hundred of my own.

Hmmm, I'll have to take a look at that Poser Pocket Knife when I get some time. Looks like I could use alot of that, so thanks!

Just thought of another few things...

It would be great if a locked object couldn't be selected in the document display window, but only through the hierarchy menu or that drop down list, and if it didn't highlight when moused over. I have dozens of locked background objects that all want to compete for my mouse's attention when all I want to do is select an arm of my foreground figure...

It would be great if when you select an object that's parented to a figure if the figure's name showed in the document window instead of whatever figure was selected before.
Example-  hair objects: Say I have a hair prop on V4 called V4 Hair, but I have M4 selected. It will show M4 as the figure name with "V4 Hair" next to it. It should change the figure name to V4, if that's what the hair is parented to.

It would be cool if lights that are set to invisible STAYED invisible even if you selected them to make a change, like all other objects do. Lights always turn back to visible once selected.
And by visible, I mean the icons, not whether it's on or not. I make them invisible because they get distracting and in the way of what I want to see at times, especially when I have alot of them in a scene.
Sure I could change the size to so small you can't see them, but when you reload a scene, the lights are back to normal size again... which reminds me...

Quote - Attached link to info on a recent episode of Horizon entitled "What Happened Before the Big Bang?", which went over some new thinking (including by some previously staunch BB supporters).

I can't watch that - it just says "Not available in your area" when I try to play it.

At any rate, I too saw something recent about some new theories about what happened before the Big Bang, but it seems almost irrelevant being that technically time - our time that is - didn't even exist prior to that. So it's like anything before the big bang is more or less something that happened in a different universe.
It all gets pretty weird. ;-)

Quote - Hmm... But then there would be another issue.  When I'm animating, say moving from far shot to close shot, it would be hard to adjust a setting depending on the distance. Is this really the only way to address it?

People animate with Poser?  ;-)

I don't know, really. You might just have to deal with setting it very low and leaving it there. It adds render time, but it doesn't seem to be too drastic of a difference. Of course that depends on the complexity of your scene.
There might be some other way, but I don't know what that might be short of using texture maps that don't have that issue.