OK. Whatever.

@SteveJax -  There seemsto be a significant disconnect between what you see as the certification process and what I and others are suggesting. The criteria for certification are straightforward and black and white. The effort required to review a product should be about five minutes. The idea is not to create some hurdle that the vendors have to overcome, it's to simply give them a set of standards to meet.

That is part of the Windows standard. To arbitrarily seperate commands that are so similar to each other would bring up all sorts of other usability issues. Still, it would be nice if there was an Undo Save command.

Quote - Actually it shouldn't be called a "runtime" folder anymore; SM should rename it to a "crawltime" folder.

Actually it should never have been called Runtime. "Runtime" has a specific technical meaning that is significant to the developers writing the code but is meaningless to the average Poser user. It should have been called "Content" or perhaps "!!!!!Content" ;)

@LBAMagic: I can easily see 3D grapics becoming the next big deal on web sites and advertising media, but for that to happen it will have to be much, much easier to use and much, much more stable.

There is another thread on this forum where people were talking about the idea of DAZ buying out Poser. I mentioned that my preference would be for someone like Adobe to snatch it up and intergrate it into their suite of tools. It will take a major software publisher with a solid understanding of what makes a good business model to bring Poser out of the hobbiest arena and turn it into a real tool that we can maybe start making some money out of.

Oh, yeah - that was a good piece of prose you wrote. **
**

Quote - Creating a site like the one quoted would set up an elitist caste system among Poser users and anyone with enough cash to throw at the certification site would get certified!

You may have missed this bullet: "The quality of the product is not an issue."

The criteria for certification are pretty black and white (see the lists by Andrwe_DEC and Keith). If a vendor doesn't adhear to a naming convention, for example, how much do you think it would cost them to bribe a certifier, and how much do you think it would cost them to simply follow the guidelines? In my experience, most people are willing to follow a standard if they know what the stabdard is, even when they don't especially like it. I've heard the expression, "Any standard is better than no standard."

Quote - What? You think someone's going to start a certification.org site like the one above and do all that file checking and certifying for free? You must think Pie falls out of the sky!

Yep. Look at all the Wikis out there, and look at all the open source work being done. People do stuff like this all the time.

I've been lobbying for a certification program for a while. It would be nice if SM or Renderocity took the lead, but anyone with a little more free time and ambition than I have could get it going. Just create a web site like "PoserCertification.org", list the criteria for certification, and start certifying. Some thoughts:

• Anyone could certify a product but you might want to limit it to official certifiers.
• Certification is a pass-fail thing - you either meet the criteria or you don't.
• The quality of the product is not an issue.
• Vendors who don't want to be certified or object to the idea can go about selling their products just as they do now.

I wonder if SM and sites like Renderosity realize how many potential clients and sales they are losing out on because of problems like those listed above. I know I gave up on Poser and Daz twice before slogging my way through the stinkin' swamp pit that passes for content management. It seems to me that it is in everyone's best interests to implement some set of basic standards.

Quote - @ Keith - your list is superb.

I suggest you submit it to the PTB and ask them to make it part of the submission criteria.

PTB? What's that?

Ya' know, I've noticed a distinct cultural shift here at Renderosity from what I'm used to. I come from the world of programming, but I suspect that most people here come from the world of fine arts, graphic design, photography, etc. Programmers as a group have inflated and fragile egos that get bruised easily enough, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone warn against an idea because it might hurt somebody's feelings.That's just not part of the culture.

I'm not saying one approach is better or worse; I'm just making an observation.

Quote - Having said that, there are vendors who's stuff I buy whether I need it or not, because I know they're good and if there is any sort of problem they'll appreciate the feedback and do something constructive about it.

If you don't mind, will you please share those vendors with the rest of us.

Actually this ties into a proposal I made in another thread about having a "Poser Certification" for products that meet certain criteria. The idea is that Smith Micro or Renderocity or me or you or anyone should come up with a set of guidelines that any product should meet before being offered to the public. This might include things like a standard naming convention and directory setup, specific information in the ReadMe file, and of course it should be debugged and do what it claims to do. Products that meet the criteria get to carry the "Poser Certification Logo", and those that don't can still be sold just as they are now.

In the meantime, perhaps we can start with a list of merchants that consistently deliver quality products.

Well, we can assume that the file itself doesn't get modified until you save to it. I'm a little skeptical that Ctrl-Z does everything it's suppose to simply because of my own experiences, but I can't say for sure.

Quote - Every damned thing I buy I have to test and, usually, correct: it's rare that something's put together properly and 'just works'.

OK, rant over.

Ya' know, it would really help if people would quit giving 5-star ratings to every single stinkin' product that comes along. I'm sure the vendors appreciate all the warm fuzzies, but I bet they would also appreciate some constructive criticism. Buyers would also like to know of any problems with a product, but I rarely see anything but platitudes.

Quote - Currently, Poser requires the different types of items to be in their respective folders. 

What version of Poser are you using? I'm using P8 and I don't have that problem.

I gave up on the default installations and started using my own approach. Characters go in the Characters folder along with their mats, poses, props and anything else that was built specifically for the figure. Hair goes in the Hair folder regardless of what type of file it is. If it's hair, it goes in the Hair folder. Clothing whether conforming or dynamic, goes in the Materials folder.

Quote - Conforming clothes are FIGURES, they have bones.  Dynamic clothes are PROPS, static, unboned objects. No, hair is not always hair.  True hair is an auto-parenting prop really.  It has no bones and it is closer to a prop than anything.  Some hair is not really hair (though, by a mesh it looks like it).  Many modern hair items are really FIGURES.  Like conforming clothes, they have bones and are posable.  These types of hair are not the same as the true hair props.

All of which is no doubt true and of great importance to developers and vendors, but not to me. I am a user, not a developer. When I want to add hair to a figure, my primary consideration is finding hair that looks right. A secondary consideration might be the kind of file it is. 

Software interfaces should be designed with the user in mind, and, if at all possible, the interface should not be designed by the same people writing the code, because what you get is what you see with Poser - an interface designed from the developer's point of view.

Well, that was fast. So if you have the choice, use the material files (.mc*) and just delete the pose or matpose files (.pz*).

It would be a huge first step if Poser simply published their standards so that vendors knew what was expected of them. And it really doesn't need to be Poser or Daz to establish the standards. It could be done Wiki style. Remember, you can still sell your products without the "certification". The "compatibility logo" just establishes a product as one that has met certain standards.

The rsr issue is really part of a larger problem having to do with Poser's absence of standards for third party products. I'd like to see Poser take the approach that MicroSoft did during the early days of Windows.

During the days of DOS and earlier, application developers could use any look and feel they wanted and have their product behave any way they wanted. When Windows came along, MS said to developers that if you wanted to use the Windows logo on your packaging or call your product "Windows compatible" your product had to meet certain standards. These standards controled the overlook and feel, the behavior of the mouse and keyboard, and lots of internal, technical stuff.

Poser needs to do the same thing. They need to come up with a "P8 compatible" logo that vendors can assign to their products if and only if those products meet certain criteria such as (off the top of my head):

• Use pngs instead of rsr files.
• All produsct should come with a ReadMe and that ReadMe should contain specific information including the file list. There should also be a specific naming convention that the ReadMe follows.
• Content should go in folders where ordinary users would expect to find it. Hair, for example, should go in the Hair folder, not in Character or Pose or any of those other places where Hair shows up.
• Those character specific morph injection folders (or whatever they are) need to have their own place in the directory structure.
• ...etc.

SM can add to or delete from this list as they feel, and I wouldn't mind. I'm not that concerned about WHICH standards they have as long as they have SOME standards.