I was trying to open James in Poser 5 and it couldn't find the geometry file.

I opened Poser 7 and turned off the compression option in General Preferences and resaved James. Doing that saves the figure as a Cr2 instead of a compressed Crz. It does not uncompress the geometry files. Opening the geometry files in WinZip allowed me to extract the uncompressed Obj files.

That took three actions to make the figure usable in P5. Is there any way to do it in one step?

I think the  python script, uncompressPoserFiles.py, can do this.

I use the free utility "Poser Compressor 1.1" (PoserCom.exe) from Dimension3D, you can find a link here in the Dimension3D Free Stuff.

Whilst it won't decompress the crz and obz at the same time (unless you use it to decompress the whole Runtime), at least you don't need to start Poser to use it. It also accepts Drag & Drop. I find it very useful.

You can use WinZip outside of Poser to uncompress the .**z files, too.

Any other unzipper can do this. 7zip is free .

There's an inherent problem in the cr2/crz files themselves, they point to the wrong thing. If you uncompress the James.crz and look in a text editor, it points to an .obj file not an .obz file. Maybe P6 isn't particularly finicky about .obj or .obz so long as one of them with the correct name is in the character folder, it just assumes that's the one you mean and loads it. Perhaps P5 wants things done properly as per the .cr2.

I used Winzip to uncompress the obj files, but was hoping to not have to do three separate actions to make the figure usable in P5.

I was also surprised to find that the P6 figure geometries are in the Figures library. I tried to find them in the Geometries folder unsuccessfully.

There's not much info in the manual about this. It said that the figure needs to be resaved with compression turned off in preferences, but didn't bother mentioning that doing this won't uncompress the geometry files. That caused me to waste more time closing P7 and opening P5 only to find that the geometry files still couldn't be found. P5 was only searching for the obj file called out in the Cr2 and didn't care that there was an obz file in the same directory. I forgot to check if P5 would accept the obz compressed file if I manually clicked on it when P5 popped up a dialog that it couldn't find the obj file. P5 does support file compression.

Quote - There's an inherent problem in the cr2/crz files themselves, they point to the wrong thing. If you uncompress the James.crz and look in a text editor, it points to an .obj file not an .obz file. Maybe P6 isn't particularly finicky about .obj or .obz so long as one of them with the correct name is in the character folder, it just assumes that's the one you mean and loads it. Perhaps P5 wants things done properly as per the .cr2.

Poser 7 and Poser 6 both will find References of OBJ or OBZ if it is an OBZ or OBJ. Poser 6 must have Absolute Paths and Poser 7 can use Relative Paths. This is why there is an issue with the G2 Figures and Poser 6 Users. They must uncompress the OBZ so Poser 6 can find it, since the reference is not absolute.

Poser 5 likes the File (CR2/CRZ) to say OBJ not OBZ, but will find it as an OBZ if the File is in the exact location specifiied and the same Runtime.

P5 doesn't use OBZ, those were introduced in P6 (which is why the uncompress script in P5 doesn't have that extension in it's list).

Thanks ratscloset. That's useful information.

Quote - P5 doesn't use OBZ, those were introduced in P6 (which is why the uncompress script in P5 doesn't have that extension in it's list).

Good news! P5 does read compressed files. I just opened Jessi without uncompressing the Crz or Obz files. I had to manually point to the obz geometry files, but that was easier this time around because I knew where to find them.