I'm having issues with the shruggling clown in the library palates; it doesn't happen with all my items, just some--it doesn't matter what vendor they came from.   I look at the tiems in P3DO Explorer and they are there linking with their respective .obj and textures, but for some reason Poser 8 isn't recognizing the content.  Sometimes it will load these items into the scene other times it won't.  I need to update P3DO Pro, but apparently it can load things into Poser and I can see the thumbnails for each item there.

Does anyone know if PzDB 1.1 can work around these issues?

Is this a thumbnail file format issue?  If so how can I fix it?

If the thumbnails are .rsr, Poser 8 will not recognize them.  You will need to convert them to .png format.  P3DO has the capacity to perform the conversion.

Attached Link: http://neocron.lunarpages.com/alforum/index.php?topic=1489.0

Thanks, I appreciate your input.  I know that P3DO Pro will also convert .RSRs to .pngs--but I'm not sure if it will do the entire library.

As for Poser not finding everything; it used to excell at that, I rarely had an item that it couldn't find--but not it seems that it does not have problems finding all the shruggling clown stuff.

The P3DO freebie can also do conversions.  I do not believe it can convert an entire runtime library, just specific folders.  EnglishBob's solution is much more thorough and convenient.

"EnglishBob's solution is much more thorough and convenient."

But a slow process, and it slows my computer down. This is best to do over night, or while you are at work.

LMK

Quote - If the thumbnails are .rsr, Poser 8 will not recognize them.

Poser 8 is not fully backwards compatible with earlier versions?  That's disappointing.  That means DAZ Studio might be the way to go in the future.

I wonder what other areas on not compatible with older content?

Quote - > Quote - If the thumbnails are .rsr, Poser 8 will not recognize them.

Poser 8 is not fully backwards compatible with earlier versions?  That's disappointing.  That means DAZ Studio might be the way to go in the future.

I wonder what other areas on not compatible with older content?

Up until now, Poser has been amazingly backwards compatible. But at some point it's time to move on. So the Poser 4 renderer isn't part of Poser 8 anymore either. If you have content that requires that, it won't work properly.

As for the .rsr thumbnails.. it's, as I understand it, a mac format, that Poser, which is originally made for the Mac, still used out of veneration for the old times. Since Poser 4 pro pack it has been able to use pngs. Why anyone would still supply stuff with .rsr thumbs is beyond me..  I stopped doing it a few years ago.

I'm not using parchment to write on either... ;)

I remember some merchants were providing .rsr files for people who were using Poser Artist (not to be confused with Poser Figure Artist) which was essentially Poser 4 with a new name.  I guess that was available for a while until Poser Figure Artist replaced it.  They wanted to make sure that all their stuff was fully compatible. 

At any rate, I'll have to see if those files are actually .rsr files or if there is another problem.  Its happening with  content from a variety of vendors; even an item for Freak 3 (which is more recent).  That's why I'm looking at using P3DO Pro to load items into Poser that I can't properly see in the runtime library or another library utility.

In the end I may reinstall Poser 7 just so I have a way of exporting directly to Vue (which does not accept Poser 8 imports currently and I don't think it will until Vue 8 comes out).   

Is anyone else getting the shrugging clown for items that previously showed fine in Poser 7?

Quote - I'm not using parchment to write on either... ;)

The nice thing about parchment is that you could still write on it if you had some.  I may use a computer, but if anybody tries to take my pencils away from me, they'll have to pry them out of my cold dead writer''s cramped hands. :)

There is an awful lot of good old content out there that didn't include png files.  DAZ, long after P5 came out, only distributed rsr files in their runtime. I don't know exactly where the cutoff will be when png and rsr files were routinely distributed with runtimes.  P4 came out in 1999 and P5 in 2003.  I'll guess that it was another 2-3 years before merchants routinely included png thumbnails with their products. That means the vast backlog of Poser products, free and commercial, aren't going to have thumbnails in Poser 8. That won't affect anybody that has large libraries of external runtimes installed in earlier versions of Poser, but it will be a royal pain for anybody installing content that they only have on disk. 

This isn't a minor problem of backward compatibility, but a fairly significant thing that will hopefully be addressed in updates.  Poser relies on external content and it's not a good thing to make it difficult to use content that was created more than a few years ago. Anybody suffering a catastrophic loss of their installed runtimes is not going to enjoy this lack of backwards compatibility when they find out that the majority of the content they reinstall has no thumbs. There are at least other solutions to fix that, but returning rsr support is a feature that is needed.

I converted my .rsr last night; I was shocked at how many items had .rsrs.  Also have my runtime backed up if something get screwed up.  Speaking as one who had to reinstall all my old content in the past, it's no picnic.  Of course you can create new thumbnails if you have the patience to load up content and resave it to the library; I'd only do that for favorite items.

 What they could/should have done was to include Dizzy's nifty little program in Poser. That way people could get rid of all their old .rsrs and have proper png's instead. PNGs are nice also if you're using file explorer to look for something. That one won't show rsr files either.

Can MAC people still see rsr thumbnails? As I've understood it, the RSR thumbnail is/was part of the actual file on a mac, something with a ressouce fork (which I haven't the foggiest idea what is, I just remember the name)

There's no question that PNGs are better than RSRs. Unfortunately, the Poser programmers went with a graphics format that wasn't compatible with PC graphics programs and the bulk of Poser content created before 2007 relied on the RSRs and not PNGs for thumbnails.  I just looked at a few DAZ files and found content made as late as Aug 2006 that didn't have any PNGs (Clyde Puffer).

It's outright wrong to be abandoning RSR thumbnails when the bulk of Poser content made before a few years ago only provided that format. There are Poser users with thousands of files that won't have thumbnails in Poser 8. No software company ought to be arrogant enough to ignore the needs of their customers--except for maybe Microsoft. Apple has been selling a lot more computers lately because of the overall frustration Windows users have with Microsoft's lack of concern for their user base. I'd still love to slap somebody at Microsoft for all the hours I wasted relearning how to use Office products after they completely changed the interface in the 2007 version. Nobody can convince me that moving commands from the File menu to their new squiggly graphic was an improvement in usability. I'd like to not have to spend ten minutes turning off all of Word's "helpful" features any time I install the program on a replacement computer or when I get an upgrade to the program. Just because I hit a tab on one line doesn't mean I want every other line to have a tab. I used to have nightmares of Microsoft programming autonomous robots that would try to take over the world--but then I remembered that they'd crash in a few days.

Quote - I'm having issues with the shruggling clown in the library palates; it doesn't happen with all my items, just some--it doesn't matter what vendor they came from.   I look at the tiems in P3DO Explorer and they are there linking with their respective .obj and textures, but for some reason Poser 8 isn't recognizing the content.  Sometimes it will load these items into the scene other times it won't.  I need to update P3DO Pro, but apparently it can load things into Poser and I can see the thumbnails for each item there.

Does anyone know if PzDB 1.1 can work around these issues?

Have you Dbl Clicked the Shrugging Clown?
In the past when I have had that happen I could Dbl Click and it would load. Then I could save and have a png file.

Mariner, some things will load, some won't.  Some content that was installed with Poser 7 won't open--but these were seem to be Content Paradise items that I never use anyway--so in time I may simply delete them.

The .rsr to .png conversion went without a hitch; except it came up with a few items it said it couldn't convert (4 I think) and I can always resave items to the runtime and they will generate new thumbs.

I agree withTrekkie Girl though, Poser should have offered to do the conversion for me.  Like in the old days when the went they changed the bump map file format from Poser 4 to Pro Pack--the program detected the old files and automatically converted them.  The only people who would find this undesireable are those still running Poser 4 or Poser Artist.

 Mariner...

PzDB automagically converts everything to png. And I guarantee you, it's a better solution for content management than anything else I've tried (and I've tried them all!) It's the only solution I've found that lets you group things together in an infinite manner without having to physically move/rename files, a pastime guaranteed to create grief at some point down the road.

As to the argument that we can't abandon something because there's a huge backlog of it... that's the same argument that was made when the idea of digital TV was introduced. Seems to me TV looks a lot better since the switch, and the networks have had little trouble making the old content work. Perhaps we in the Poser community would do better to embrace change and progress and spend less time carping about non-issues that are easily solved with just a little work.

My $.02

The Wiz

Quote -  Mariner...

PzDB automagically converts everything to png. And I guarantee you, it's a better solution for content management than anything else I've tried (and I've tried them all!) It's the only solution I've found that lets you group things together in an infinite manner without having to physically move/rename files, a pastime guaranteed to create grief at some point down the road.

My $.02

The Wiz

Thanks for you for you input.
I have been using Poser for many many years and have never felt the need to use something such as PzDB.

P3DO explorer also does it; I think even the free version does it.   But I downloaded the little app that English Bob mentioned and it works wonderful.

I am considering PzDB, I am having trouble finding stuff and I'm sure there is content I own that I've forgotten about.

 ROFL

I guarantee it! You ought to SEE the stuff it found that I had forgotten about!

TW

Oh, well, Advanced Library can convert RSRs, too. (Just so every app is mentioned here...)
And it allows me to find Poser content since years and is better than anything I've ever tried (maybe because I made it the way I need it? ;-))... Oh and it loads content into Poser 8 the same way the library interface does it..End of Advertisement.

But maybe back to the problem: Can you post the full path to an item that's not working?