I have a product designed for Poser 5 that I would like to be compatible with older versions of Poser and also the Pro version. I have no dynamic hair or clothing there. All clothes are "conforming". Is it enough to manualy edit the CR2 files and change version number from "5" to "4.01"? What about face (FC2), props (PPZ), and so on? Is manually "cheating" the version number enough? Would it work on Poser 3? What about MacIntosh computers? I have been reading the info from Rendo merchant resources, and there is a lot of confusing comments about MAT poses compatibility and just nothing specific about how to make your P5-made producs backwards compatible. There is even a section describing how you need to do about "nothing" to make your product Mac compatible, but I am not so sure of that. I wish Rendo would make this clear, since backwards compatibility and cross platform releases would increase sales.

The best way to be certain is to have someone with Poser 4 test your product. :) Poser 5's materials can be much more complex than 4's, and I'm not sure to what extent P4 will ignore the extra features. They would be easy to strip out with a CR2 editor. Poser 3 can't use transparency, smart props, magnets, lots of things. I don't think there are many Poser 3 users still out there. As far as Mac compatibility goes, MartinC's Maconvertor is generally reckoned to do a good job; but it's still a good idea to get a Mac owner to beta test for you.

Since Poser 5 has introduced significant amount of new features, expect to get backwards compatibility up to version 4, Pro, and Macs would be enough to me. To that extend, changing CR2, PZ2, FC2, etc version numbers back to 4.0 should do the trick. Apparently, the only risk are the PZ2 MATs, that can potentially have new P5 stuff that P4/Pro won't recognize. But since my product has no dynamic cloth/hair nor textures, I am assuming that is gonna be Ok. My last question was if it is Ok NOT to include PNG files, sending only RSR thumbs. I've got two replies claiming that is Ok, but Mac users might have to get the PNG files separately.

** An update ** I have just talked to Laetia and she confirmed it is not necessary to include PNG files if you provide RSR thumbs. She claims both Poser 4/Pro for either PC/MAC will do Ok without it.

** Another update ** I just received feedback from the Rosity private merchant forum that claims: - Half the merchants who replied think PNG are NOT necessary, including Laetia, a Rosity tester. - The other half replied they ARE necessary. - The ones who thought it was necessary claim that there were enough clients complaining about the missing PNG files. And, the say, the client is always right. There seem to be some disagreement about this issue.

I know that Windows PP and P5 will auto-convert RSRs into PNG - I've seen that on my Poser 4 runtime. Once I linked it to Poser 5, any library that I'd used in P5 magically had PNGs in it. Sometimes, what the customer thinks they need and what they actually need are two different things. Sometimes it's easier to just give them what they think they need. ;)

There have been some quite informative info at the PrivMerc forum concerning this issue. Both PC and Mac users commented about this over there. The major issue seems to turn around Poser 5 for Mac, and how it does not convert RSRs into PNGs. And there doesn't seem to be much tools available for that. In addition, that is also the case where if RSRs are provided together with PNGs, there WILL be file corruption on Macs with Poser 5. They first have to delete all RSRs before then can use PNGs. If these are not provided, then there is a problem. That's more or less the summary.

Ah - so you have to provide RSRs for Poser 4 users, and you have to provide PNGs for Poser 5 Mac users, and you have to give the P5 Mac users explicit instructions not to install the RSRs? That, or make two different versions available. Why can't life be simple? :/

Actually, the RSRs will already be available, since the vast majority of Poser users are supposedly PC guys (statistically speaking, please Mac users, do not take this the wrong way). ^^ As for Mac Poser 5 users, they will HAVE to delete RSR files in order to use PNGs, or according to a Mac user at the PrivMerc forum, file corruption WILL occur.