I can't find my thread, and no "reply" e mail has yet been sent to my box, so I am going to re-state my dilemma right here up front... I am trying to understand what form or format that is legal, and appropriate to share our custom figures, created with the pro pack... a while back I answered Mason: (Mason, forgive me for repeating myself here... I can't find the thread, and I am very concerned about this issue!) I am sure that everyone at Renderosity is also concerned... Mason was kind enough to answer me, but Curious Labs has not yet.... Steve? I wrote: Hi Mason, Okay now I am confused... you said: __________________________ The thing about cr2s is you could "steal" a character obj anyway. All it would take is for you use the group tool, group the whole figure, add them to a group then save the cr2. The cr2 would then contain the entire obj data. ____________________________ So I replied to Mason: But how could you "use the group tool" if you don't have the original obj that allows you to OPEN the cr2 figure in the first place? If you try to open a library character cr2 in poser without the original obj in your geometries, Poser will crash or lock up! (at least in my P3 and P4.3) Does PPP let you open a cr2, with no "backup geometry"!? Or are you saying that a PPP cr2 has, inside IT, the whole geometry? Perhaps the best way to share custom figures here at Renderosity now, is with a pz3 file? (if it is still called that... I mean where you do a "save as" in poser, and save the whole "scene") ? I would think that both Renderosity and all of it's users would be VERY concerned and want to know how to "do the right thing" so we all can still enjoy sharing, even with all these new versions of Poser... I certainly hope that after all the support that we all have given Poser, and Zygote that we are not "shut out" ...and unable to share anymore... This would be a good reason to stick to Poser 3 or just 4.3! Thanks for answering me, and being patient with my confusion and questions!

Well Marie, if you wish to send a figure that has a custom obj file then using Mover will make it legal. If you are using ProPack, ProPack makes a whole new obj file with the custom geometry in the cr2 IF you save the figure in PPP. Again, using mover you could pass this new obj around by using the base figure as a key. For example, if you made new groups on the p4 nude woman model, you would get a new obj file from Pro Pack with your changes inside but you can still use the p4nudewoman.obj file in your poser directory as the key file for Mover and distribute the new obj encode with the p4nudewoman as the key. If you got a cr2 from someone that has custom geometry in it and it refers to a base figure in your poser geometry folder, you can still open it in pro pack. What will happen is pro pack will load it just like p4 did. If you save it as a new cr2, however, and it has custom geometry, pro pack will then create a new obj for that figure. If you wish to then distribute that new changed figure you'd have to use mover to encode the obj file created by pro pack. PZ3 files do NOT contain the obj file. They are merely cr2 files with the scene's lights, cameras etc stored in them. You can actually just load a pz3 as a figure by renaming it to a cr2 and load it in a character library. As for my earlier comment about grouping the whole figure and forcing the obj data into the cr2, that was a confusing and extremely rare example. Please ignore it.

THANK YOU, MASON! I am now comfortable, and clear on how this all works!! I really appreciate it!!!!!