For those who visit the DAZ forums, you'll know this is a real peave of mine, but after another mind numbing day of building installers, and spending at least 75% of the time correcting references, I thought I would bring it here as well.

When you reference an image file for textures in Poser (4) you MUST path it correctly, or you may as well not have a path at all, because Poser is going to ignore it.

"image.jpg" will get the same results as
"yourfolders:image.jpg"
"textures:yourfolders:image.jpg"
or any of these preceeded with a :

All of these are Wrong.

The only method that Poser will use to go directly to the file is this.
"Runtime:Textures:yourfolders:image.jpg"
(or with a preceeding : but there is no need of it)

Failing to reference images correctly means poser is going to search the entire contents of the "Textures" folder and its subs for all files by that name THEN get around to loading one of them.

Not only does this slow things down dramatically (more the more you have installed) but it can find the Wrong file by the Right name.

It's just as easy to reference correctly as it is to do so incorrectly. The only difference is, the users of your products don't end up with MATs applying the wrong image in a texture and they don't have to wait wile Poser churns through a hundred products' textures to find it.

Message edited on: 12/11/2004 04:41