Materials are for the Material library. Poses (and morphs) are for the Pose library.

Please stop putting Materials in the Pose library. **!!!**They Do Not Belong There!!!. The Pose library has enough crap crammed in it as it is with all the morphs and actual poses, etc., while the Materials library is always virtually empty. 

There is no logical reason for this other than laziness. And actually, laziness isn't even an excuse because it takes more time to create mat poses than it does to just save the mats to the MATERIALS library. 

I just spent the last 15+ minutes looking for a texture set that I recently bought for M4/F4, only to find it in the Pose library. That vendor just lost a potential repeat customer.

Please stop. 

Thank you. 

 

 

~Shane

  I dont.  When installing a prop or figure, I put all mats and poses with the figure/prop.  I never have to look

Bill

People that know everything by definition can not learn anything

Because if we put them in the material room people would bitch about not finding the other textures.

Comitted to excellence through art.

Why/when did this trend even start? That just defeats the purpose of having a materials library, or any other library category for that matter. Might as well just dump it all in the same folder. 

I like keeping my stuff organized and put things where they belong. It makes it faster and easier to locate something when I need it. I expect vendors that I buy from to be organized as well. As it is I don't buy that much unless I need something quick and don't have time to build it myself. 

I also alphabetize my CD collection. lol. 

 

~Shane

I believe it all started from "The name that must not be mentioned" and it has steam-rolled ever since. Why they started it I don't know, I believe they had a material room at the time too...lol.

Nothing wrong with organization, there has to be some way to keep track of all the models and projects I've been involved with...something other than "SciFiBitch_1, SciFiBitch_2", etc.

I can't tell you the last time I actually played a cd...I'm not sure I remember how to work my player! lol.

Comitted to excellence through art.

Hmm, not sure about that. V4 and M4's base materials are in the materials library on install. It's just all the 3rd party content that doesn't seem to grasp the concept. I don't remember the Gen3 figures even coming with default materials.

I mostly only play CDs in my truck. They're all in mp3 format in itunes library on my pc. One mp3 cd in my truck holds up to 7 hrs of music. Or maybe its 4 hrs. Somewhere in there. Way more than a standard cd tho. And I have hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. I tried the mp3 player thing but they kept breaking or the battery always dies so screw it. I still have a cd walkman around here somewhere. 

 

~Shane

 

 

 

SciFiBitch3 feels your pain and is on the look for the MatPose originator, she'll be in touch.

Comitted to excellence through art.

It is my understanding that Mat and Morph files came into being at the time when the program bug that allows conforming clothing to work was widely publicised and exploited. Since it was a quirk of the pose mechanism that allowed this to work, pose files (or files that looked like pose files to Poser) became the norm for injecting morph settings and applying materials. It has been this way ever since I began using Poser some 9 years ago, so the practice was obviously entrinched at that point in time.

Why continue to do it? Because this is how the rank and file EXPECT it to be done. I readily admit that before I adopted my own organization scheme for Poser content, I seldom thought to look in the materials folder for content. If it wasn't in a mat file in the pose folder, it didn't exist for me.

I suspect that vendors would get considerable pushback from the unwashed masses if they were to stop providing mat files in the pose folder, but can't prove it.

A couple of years ago, I became convinved that there was no reason at all for Poser content to be organized as the program calls for. I have posted in other threads the changes I made and the methods I used to consolidate everything in just two folders: Figure and Pose. Now, I care less where the various components are put by the vendor because I move everything into a folder in the figures library. That way, I don't have to go looking hither and yon for the <fill-in-the-blank> that goes with the figure in question.

And yes, I agree with Shade... Poses are the only thing I leave in my Pose folder. All the other folders are empty.

I remember a long time ago when the store here at Rendo was new, Xurge taught me through ICQ how to make a MAT pose file by hand in a text editor because there were no little programs or python scripts to make them at that time. But these days, a MAT pose is an antique concept which I also, frankly, wish would go away. I have two character/texture sets for Dawn over at Hivewire and I went with Material Shaders only for them and stated it up front. Got to train the average user to stop using them.

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8

 

 

@Basic: Thanks for that little history lesson. I guess I got "untrained" by leaving poser for about 3 or 4 years between P7 and PP2012. Turns out the one character set I sold here for M3, around 2005ish, was also set up with mat poses. But that's because I didn't know what I was doing back then. 

I just don't like having a million folders to have to scroll through in one category. The one thing that makes the library categories important is that you can't save from within Poser to just any category, it has to be moved manually. Otherwise, if you want to save a pose then you have to have the Pose library open. Same with all the others. 

Quote -
I have two character/texture sets for Dawn over at Hivewire and I went with Material Shaders only for them and stated it up front. Got to train the average user to stop using them.

Yes, and that's all it should take. Just state that they are in the Material library on the product description, and in the readme. For the handful of people that actually read product descriptions or readme's. lol.  

~Shane 

Mat pose files started back in earlier versions of Poser - there didn't used to be a material room, if I remember correctly.  I think Poser 6 was the first version with a material room, but the material folder didn't show in the Poser Library till Poser 8, so you couldn't access it from the Pose room in Poser 6 or 7.  In the 2 earlier versions, you had to go into the material room to apply mt5 or mc6 files.  I have Poser 6 on my computer for testing so have to do that when I want to apply materials, but it can be done)

There ARE some situations where it makes sense to include pz2 mat poses (since it's so easy to convert from one to the other, for these situations, having BOTH is a good option)

a) if the product is meant to work in Poser 5

b) if the product is meant to work in DS 3 - you can not view mc6 files in DS 3.  I can't recall if it was DS 4 or 4.5 that added the ability to see Poser mc6 files.

For newer products, like the Poser 8+ native figures, and others like Dawn, which require either Poser 9+ or DS 4.5+, there is really no reason to use .pz2 mat files. 

In fact, I've talked to newer Poser users who find it confusing to find materials in the pose folder.  The Poser figures themselves and Poser versions of other products like Dawn, the HiveWire Horse, etc, use ONLY mc6 files, so that is where newer Poser users expect to find them.

Cheers,
Alisa

RETIRED HiveWire 3D QAV Director

Poser 4 Thru 7-or8 compatability

and Slacker pushback

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So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

Quote -
There ARE some situations where it makes sense to include pz2 mat poses (since it's so easy to convert from one to the other, for these situations, having BOTH is a good option)

Poser 7 has a Materials library, it just has to be accessed from the Materials room. Which is silly, but I guess it made sense at the time to e-frontier. And of course there are a lot of people who are afraid to open that room. :eye roll:. 

I'm pretty sure Poser 5 and 6 were the same way, but since I don't have those versions installed I can't be sure, and its been too long since I used them.  

So I guess I can concede that including both would probably be a good option, for content that pre-dates P9/2012, such as the gen4 figures. That way there's the choice of installing to the Pose library for those that don't want to get current. 

 

~Shane

Here is my take on it and it builds on what has been said.

MAT Files were part of a series of hacks that folks were experimenting with to get Poser to do more things with different kinds of Pose Files.  This was around Poser 4 and Poser 4 Pro Pack.

When Poser 5 came out, there was MT5 but it was single-material only, so folks continued to use MAT Pose Files because they could change materials on an entire figure (or smart prop) at one time.

Material Collections were introduced in Poser 6.  But for 2 reasons, folks continued to use MAT Files.  First, DAZ Studio could not use the Material Collections nor did it acknowledge the Materials Library.  Second, it usually takes one or two generations for the overall community to adopt somethng because most people were still using Poser 4/Pro Pack or Poser 5.  DS didn't catch up to using Poser's Material Library until version 4.

Now on whether or not I make MAT Files?  I haven't made them in several years now, thankfully.  They are inferior to Material Collections, which work on Standalone Props - MAT Poses do not (unless you hack them a certain way and a Figure is in the scene).  Like you Shane, I believe Poses and Morphs go in the Pose folder.  We need a Morphs folder as well.  There is no good reason these days, post-Poser 6 and DS 4+ to continue to use them.  That is my general thoughts and I won't be making them.

I did write a tool in the MP to convert the MATs to Material Collections easily because, like you I was seriously tired of dealing with them.

.

As others have mentioned, it's a hold over from the way things used to have to be done. As I recall, in P4 there was no Materials Library. I don't have anything before P8 installed anymore to double check, but I'm pretty sure that the materials library, along with the MC5 (now MC6) materials file type, were introduced with P5.

Prior to P5 (I'm sure someone will kindly correct me if my memory has clouded a bit), the only way to change materials on a poser figure was through a "matpose" file, which "needed" to reside in the Pose Library. So, any vendors that are keeping P4 compatibility in their products will have matpose files in the Pose Library (many also provide have MC6 files in the Materials Library as well).

Edit: Netherworks beat me to the post - and has better info as well!!!

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.

Quote - Here is my take on it and it builds on what has been said.

MAT Files were part of a series of hacks that folks were experimenting with to get Poser to do more things with different kinds of Pose Files.  This was around Poser 4 and Poser 4 Pro Pack.

When Poser 5 came out, there was MT5 but it was single-material only, so folks continued to use MAT Pose Files because they could change materials on an entire figure (or smart prop) at one time.

Material Collections were introduced in Poser 6.  But for 2 reasons, folks continued to use MAT Files.  First, DAZ Studio could not use the Material Collections nor did it acknowledge the Materials Library.  Second, it usually takes one or two generations for the overall community to adopt somethng because most people were still using Poser 4/Pro Pack or Poser 5.  DS didn't catch up to using Poser's Material Library until version 4.

Now on whether or not I make MAT Files?  I haven't made them in several years now, thankfully.  They are inferior to Material Collections, which work on Standalone Props - MAT Poses do not (unless you hack them a certain way and a Figure is in the scene).  Like you Shane, I believe Poses and Morphs go in the Pose folder.  We need a Morphs folder as well.  There is no good reason these days, post-Poser 6 and DS 4+ to continue to use them.  That is my general thoughts and I won't be making them.

I did write a tool in the MP to convert the MATs to Material Collections easily because, like you I was seriously tired of dealing with them.

 

Best answer.  I recall those days of P4 and P4PP.  Mat Pose was considered a breakthrough.  A way to apply textures all at once, or separately, to any figure.  Daz, I believe, shipped V3 and V4 with Mat Pose libraries, and gave them the god-aweful prefixes to have them appear at the TOP of your library.  After which, all vendors started putting symbols like ++++ before the name of the folders, to have their product appear first.  It became the worst naming convention debacle in software content history, in my opinion, as your P4/P5, and in some cases, P6 Pose libraries became cluttered with senselessly named product folders, and goofy attempts to gain your attention.  That is, if you weren't smart enough to install content manually with your own logical libraries, which most people were not.

---

Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

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maxxxmodelz,

I agree with that as well.  I think it's fine to use symbols to organize "within" a folder, but yeah all that !!!! folder names I don't really care for at all.  I don't even like bunches of folders above "Libraries" either.  I could never understand why injection stuff didn't go in Geometries - it's not like the Geometry folder was going anywhere...

I used to move all those things and painfully rework them.  :P  Now I just stick those things in a runtime I don't have to look at all the time, LOL.

Oh god, remember all the .rsr files?  Took forever to get rid of those too and only Poser 4 needed them.  P4 Pro Pack went to .png.

.

It was actually towards the "end" of Poser 3 (shortly before the release of Poser 4) when the the exploit that allows MAT poses was discovered.

Source: I discovered said exploit :) I was getting tired of click-click-clicking just to set up materials for a figure, since there was, at that time, absolutely no way to save a figure's material setup other than to save a CR2. This also meant saving morph/pose data, which would quickly fill an HDD (especially easy considering HDD sizes at the time). So I figured, what the heck, let's see what happens if I copy the material data from a CR2 and paste it into a PZ2. The rest is history.

 

I also firmly condemn the practice of placing material files in the Pose Library - this is 2014.

Folks like you, Nerd and others give us a lot of new ways of doing things.  I remember at the time picking all sorts of files apart to see what I could get away with :D

We have MOR files, Scaling Poses and all kind of channel injectors and so on thanks to your discovery.

I couldn't recall exactly when it happened, so I was hoping to get in the right ballpark.  I started with Poser 4 and I know a lot of things were being discovered at the time and it was so exciting.  Python in Poser was a new thing, as of Pro Pack.  People were playing a lot around with Geometry Swapping from what they picked apart from the Poser 3 figures, that had swapping hands.

It was a blast :)

.

earliest version of Poser I owned was Poser 3

I remember a Poser for AutoDesk Max called Character Studio.

Is that what you all are calling Poser Pro 4 ?

if not then what was the diffrence between Poser 4 and Poser Pro 4 back then ?

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Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
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I think that Poser 4 Pro Pack was an improved version of Poser 4 that included for the first time the use of Python scripts.  I think.

"A lonely climber walks a tightrope to where dreams are born and never die!" - Billy Thorpe, song: Edge of Madness, album: East of Eden's Gate

Weapons of choice:

Poser Pro 2012, SR2, Paintshop Pro 8

 

 

Poser Pro Pack introduced Python scripting, the Setup Room, Motion Blur, export to different 3D apps, export to Flash.  It went from .rsr to png files.  Option to no longer use .bum files.  I remember new toon figures.  There was probably a lot more.

.

I think even at this point some don't understand the difference between .mt5 and .mc6.

I also remember the Pose part of the library getting so full people started setting up texture files under camera settings before the material room appeared in Poser 5.

I also remember the insanity of having to include files that applied textures to Poser 4, Pro Pack, and Poser 5, else customers would be fuming across all forums because their version of choice was not covered.

So I'm assuming merchants are just trying to keep as many customers happy as possible.

Most of the time you can delete what you don't want to use, but most people don't know how add/make what's not there. Hope that makes sense.

I have Netherworks script to convert MAT poses. Lovely little utility.

But I don't mind MAT poses for characters that come with morphs. If I'm going to have to click in a library folder to get to a morph injection, the MATs might as well be right there too. 

I try to reduce my mouse clicks to the least number I can manage, and that's one instance where it works well for me.

If I went with Wiz's method, I could probably reduce my clicks even more. It's a very efficient way to do things. But I can't make myself mix props and figures. For some reason -- superstition, no doubt -- I feel better if I know what category of thing I've loaded.

---

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

     I happened onto Poser halfway through the P6 era, and bought my first PC.  Imagine!  Being able to do 3D right at home!  One of my irritated questions was why the MATs were in the pose library when there sits a purpose-built material library, lonely and unused.

     One of the grizzled vets explained that the MATpose was an inspired hack hailing from the P4/ProPack days.  It was a brilliant solution, and I can understand that the use of the MATpose was retained for backward compatibility for a while, but its day has passed.

     As for vendor concerns, if someone won't/can't spend the money to upgrade since P4/PP, they aren't likely to spend much buying content either.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

I don't mind vanity folders. In fact I think they make sense and I prefer them for a couple reasons. First, it helps me keep track of which artist made what, so if it's something I like then there's a better chance of me buying something of theirs again in the future if I know who made it, and I can know that by the folder names. And the same in reverse, if it's complete crap with some clever promo images that tricked me into thinking it was worth my time and money, then I'll know who not to buy from again in the future. And just as importantly imo, keeping things categorized by artist goes a long way in preventing overwrites. I don't see how it's possible to have a library full of content that's basically the equivalent of dumping everything in a closet and using all your body weight to get the door to latch. But even if you can deal with that mess, how do you prevent overwrites? There's only so many words for panties. Eventually someone is going to use the same name(s) for their files as some other vendor.

The whole 'everything dumped in one drawer' is one of the reasons I don't like DS's content library. I don't know how many times I've clicked on a pair of shorts 3 times before I realized oh crap, that's the texture not the actual model. I'm getting more familiar with it but it's very frustrating and I haven't figured out a way to categorize things more like Poser's library. Yes I know they're labeled, and even color-coded, but that's not the point. Most of the time I'm looking for the item, not the label. If it's in the right folder, I wouldn't have to worry about the label. 

The obnoxious symbols before the names however are annoying and unnecessary. Being at the top of the library isn't going to make me want to use someone's content any more than being at the bottom. It's the quality of the content itself that matters. I don't mind scrolling down the list if you make your content worth my time (and money) to do so. 

As for the geometries folder - it seems SM isn't even following their own file structures anymore, as Rex and Roxie's objs are in the same folder as the .cr2. This may have something to do with scripts tho, but does that mean the geometries folder is technically only still there due to legacy content? Come on, consistency, people. Naming conventions and file structure is regarded as serious business in pretty much all studios. In school we could fail a project just for not adhering to a proper file structure or naming convention for different file types, as it causes confusion and unnecessary time sinks for others in your pipeline who have to search for your files and rename/reorganize them when its time to hand your portion of the project off to them.  

I do however like how SM started putting their conforming clothing in the Props folder, as it makes more sense to me - a label marking it conforming or dynamic is good too, and it keeps the Figures library free for actual figures. But I bet a lot of folks haven't realized that yet, and may have something to do with why people seem to think Rex and Roxie don't have any clothes. There's not much but there's a basic set for each of them. And with the fitting room it shouldn't be too difficult to convert Ryan and Alyson's clothes to them. 

Maybe I'm just ocd. 

Anyway, I'm just ranting. I think I'm done.

 

P.S: There's a hair library too, ya know? For hair. Hair isn't a figure. It's hair.

 

ETA: Apparently P7 had conformers in the props library too. Just checked to remind myself. So it's the 3rd partiers and dazerites putting clothes in the figures library all this time....

 

~Shane

I have Netherworks script and use it on a regular basis as I am still buying content and MAT poses still appear in the Pose folder.  About once a week I run the script with the the pose folder as and source and the material folder as the destination and let it do it's stuff.  That way I always know the material for anything will be in Materials folder.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Just copy the mat poses to the Material library using your favourite OS's file manager.  They will work fine there...

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R_Hatch > Quote -It was actually towards the "end" of Poser 3 (shortly before the release of Poser 4) when the the exploit that allows MAT poses was discovered.

Source: I discovered said exploit :) 

     I did not know that - a tip o' the hat to ye, sir.  A fine exploit.

Poser 12, in feet.  

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Quote - Materials are for the Material library. Poses (and morphs) are for the Pose library. 

There is no logical reason for this other than laziness. And actually, laziness isn't even an excuse because it takes more time to create mat poses than it does to just save the mats to the MATERIALS library. 

Please stop. 

Thank you. 

~Shane

Maybe the people who complain about this point could help by not referring to them as "poses" when they don't actually pose anything.  Otherwise, you'd feel just as stupid looking for a "pose" file in the materials library.

anyways one thing i always like about the Poser Users was they would get Poser to do anything.
even the P4 manuel reads see forums .LOL

maybe never organized but very capable.

with out the Poser Users getting Poser to do anything .
I don't know if Poser would still be here.

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Quote - The whole 'everything dumped in one drawer' is one of the reasons I don't like DS's content library. I don't know how many times I've clicked on a pair of shorts 3 times before I realized oh crap, that's the texture not the actual model.

My own solution (in a nutshell) is to put each product in a folder. I then move the mat/moph/etc FOLDERS inside the Figure folder that they relate to. This keeps overwrites from being a problem.

I'm not insisting everyone adpot my method. I just think that having different parts of the same item in different folders is time consuming and just plain wrong.  Ultimately, it's whatever works for each individual. My opinions are well known and posted elsewhere, so I'm going to lie in the weeds and see where the rest of the group takes this discussion.

Quote -
Just copy the mat poses to the Material library using your favourite OS's file manager.  They will work fine there...

lol, yes. You are right, wandw. not really that big of a deal compared to other things. am just in one of those moods most likely, where things are more irritating than other times. but its good to know i'm not alone in my grumbles about it.

 

I didn't know conformers started out as an exploit tho, so i learned something new. 

 

~Shane 

Quote - Maybe the people who complain about this point could help by not referring to them as "poses" when they don't actually pose anything.  Otherwise, you'd feel just as stupid looking for a "pose" file in the materials library.

what would be a better term for them? they are materials applied with a pose file (.pz2) not a material collection file (.mc6). 

Probably the best way is to just include both like someone else said. I see some vendors doing that. Or don't. Probably more trouble than its worth trying to change it now. I'm glad i don't have a ginormous library like some (many) people have. Easier to convert as I need where I need it. 

~Shane

Right, they are called MAT Pose Files... :)  If you just called them MATs, it's to close to Material + Collection, so it's set up for confusion.  Folks already call too many things "Morphs", for example of things that already get confused.

As far as other file types willy-nilly all over the place, to use your own term, the folders act as "drawers" for a reason.  The core library folders, to me, are by internal type, so clothing goes in figures because it uses the figure structure.

I just feel like if the structure is not going to be followed, why have one at all?  In that case, just move to the DS system, where there is none at all.

.

AmbientShade - to fix this problem with your legacy content - invest in Netherworks Batch Material Convert program ($9.95 over at Content Paradise) - it will convert all of your .pz2s to .mc6s and place them in the materials folder for you - no muss, no fuss.  I converted a 40Gb runtime in less than 60 seconds.  I can not recommend it highly enough.  I couldn't live without it.

Going forward, there are 2 solutions for this problem.

Solution 1 - Storefronts enforce the current standard as part of the QA process.  If a product is for a modern figure (i.e. P9 or later), then the Poser 9 standards should be enforced.

Solution 2 - Use the customer review process.  As an example, if I buy a product for Dawn (a P9+ figure) that comes with material .pz2s instead of .mc6s, I deduct 1 star and I say WHY I am deducting a star. With some vendors, I could easily run out of stars.  I do the same thing with other stupid artifacts from the Poser 4 era that we are still dealing with today, such as:

thereisnoneedcompressthenameoftheproduct or

I_am_using_underscores_because_I_don't_know_that_DOS_is_dead

I gave all of my material names a leading MAT_ so the search function can't find it.

I use numbers as leading characters to force my customers to laborously hunt down something manually rather than use Poser's built in search function.

ANY MENTION OF MAC CONVERTER in the readme - for those of you who don't know, MacConverter was an OS9 product that converted Poser 3 content to a format Poser 4 could read.  New Mac users end up on a wild goose chase looking for www.softrabbit.de - which shut down over 10 years ago. I shudder to think how many sales this has cost vendors over the years.

I love the vendors, but I swear to god, some of them are their own worst enemies.

Quote - I_am_using_underscores_because_I_don't_know_that_DOS_is_dead

lol - I actually use software that requires the old DOS naming conventions in some of the code (not all, just parts here and there), so I'm guilty of still doing this so I don't have to think when giving file names. This is software that is updated often (at least once a year), and with a retail cost of easily over $10,000 (depending on the modules you purchase) - Oh, and most of it is still 32bit. Some things haunt you forever!

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I don't use underscores for Library Files but I use it for assets like .obj, .py, etc.  When I have to paste a reference, a name with underscores will select the whole name.  Spaces, not so much. :)

.

Hey ssbryan, I do have Mac converter on another machine if you need a copy. 8D

     Like Netherworks, I put all cr2 in the character library, whether it is a doll, clothing, rigged hair, or a cottage with rigged doors & windows.

     A pp2 cottage with parented pp2 windows & doors goes in props.   Dynamic clothing -which is pp2- I also put in props.

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OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

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Quote - Why continue to do it? Because this is how the rank and file EXPECT it to be done...

...I suspect that vendors would get considerable pushback from the unwashed masses if they were to stop providing mat files in the pose folder, but can't prove it.

I've often wondered how many people actually stick with the default library structure. For me, it's unimaginable that anyone would choose to do so if they realized that they could reorganize their content to suit their own purposes. I well remember when I first started using Poser (P8), I was so frustrated with its content organization that I was ready to forget the whole thing. But that's just me.

Maybe we should have a poll to see how many use the default library setup and how many use their own.

---

OS: Windows 10 64-bit, Poser: 10

I can't stand how Daz organizes its content, but as soon as I learned that I could relabel folders and move them around just as I do in Poser, it helped tremendously.

As for enormous Poser runtimes, my solution is to have dozens of external runtimes. I now organize by theme; for example: "Greco-Roman", "Medieval - Renaissance", "Post Apocalyptic", "Pirates and Nautical", "Viking", "Reformation - Victorian", "Religion Angels Demons", "Grunge", "Modern War", "Terrain and Vegetation"... and so on.

If it's a small theme with not too much content, I'll put the clothes in as well, for all non-genesis characters. This works for stuff like my "Egyptian" or "Greco-Roman" themes.

If it's a big category, such as "Modern Urban", I'll keep the clothes separate, in a "Modern Urban V4 Clothing" runtime, for instance. 

By the time I'm finished, I will probably have 30 or 40 runtimes. But if I'm not going to be doing any Egyptian or Viking or Roman renders for a while, I'll unlink those runtimes.

My favorite vendors used to get vanity folders. (Now they get their own runtimes -- LOL). I agree with Shane that it's important to know who made what. Also, it helps should you come across a file reference error with textures (which are often put in a folder named after the vendor rather than the product). The others get folder names that include the title of the content plus their name or initials. "Post Apocalyptic Bar - CG" lets me know right away that it's Coflek Gnorg (who, if I had enough money, would have several runtimes all of his own). 

I know... I have way too much content. :D

---

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

I do vanity folders, I think that's fair. I do Vendor, Package, Item

So... "Netherworks", "Oh-No", "Jo-Jo".

If you want a diferent structure, you could (and should) customize it to your liking.  But the original is logical and easy to find.

I don't get pushback from not offering MAT Pose Files but I have gotten thank you's for not including them. :)  I'm sure experiences there indeed vary.

.

Quote - I do vanity folders, I think that's fair. I do Vendor, Package, Item

So... "Netherworks", "Oh-No", "Jo-Jo".

If you want a diferent structure, you could (and should) customize it to your liking.  But the original is logical and easy to find.

I don't get pushback from not offering MAT Pose Files but I have gotten thank you's for not including them. :)  I'm sure experiences there indeed vary.

To tie this thread briefly to another one, I want a Jo-Jo follower in Skyrim who taunts his opponents by shouting "Oh nooooooooo!" in a very high pitched voice. I also want an idle animation that has him jumping on the player character's shoulder and gripping their neck in a very forceful embrace. :D

---

Back on topic -- Vanity folders used to bug me. Now all I want is consistency from one library folder to the next. If it's "Jo-Jo" in Figures, I don't want his addons to be "Bob" in Props and "Vendor's Stuff" in Materials.

But I honestly don't recall how you organized the folders for that little fellow. I rarely pay attention these days because I just change it if I need to.

In the end, if I like someone's work enough, they could throw everything into one folder and call it "!!!!!!!!Customers_Suck", and I'd still buy it. :D

---

PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

Part of the clothes being in the figures library, rather than the props, and the hair being in the figure library is that in earlier versions they couldn't be saved in the props or the hair libraries properly. It was looking for PP2 and HR2 only and wouldn't load. Also, the props wouldn't take MAT poses, etc.

but but but - There is a search facility in the Poser library. I put materials and material collections in the Materials library for my freebies. If you can't find it, search.

Poser 11 Pro, Windows 10

Auxiliary Apps: Blender 2.79, Vue Complete 2016, Genetica 4 Pro, Gliftex 11 Pro, CorelDraw Suite X6, Comic Life 2, Project Dogwaffle Howler 8, Stitch Witch

I set up seperate runtimes like one for V4, V4 Poses, V4 expressions and the same for M4 and David and so on.  After that there are runtimes for themes such as Space, Cities, Rooms and so on.  If one runtime gets too large I split it which i have done with props so I have one for weapons another for equipment and after setting up a new runtime I move content using P3dO explorer.  Within each runtime I retain the default structure but I also use the Shaderworks Library manager so that might have an impact on how I use the structure. 

As for finding vendor information I do that seperately using a database I purchased from Daz and appears no longer to be available.  This allows me to find information such as Vendor, date purchased, full price, sale price, store purchased and lots more. 

I often use the search function on this database as the product screen remains live with the search screen overlayed.  This gives me a large picture with all the details a soon as I click on the search link. I use this when I want to find something to use in a scene I am building but not sure what I have that would be appropriate. 

I also use it before I purchase something if I think I may already have it.  I know Rendo, where I do about 90% of my purchases, already checks this but there have been occasions when I have purchased the item from another store. 

I can also make a note if something has a problem and the fix if there is one and I keep this information in mind for future purchases.

Only real downside is keeping the database up to date but even with promo pictures added it only take a few minutes to complete each time I purchase something.

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

2 things I'd like to point out in response to the op...

1. The "average" hobbyist user isn't nessessarily using the most recent version of the programs as their systems may not be capable of meeting the system specs required for said new versions (not everyone can afford to upgrade to the latest computer system every year or two to support the upgraded software)... It's also entirely possible that users may simply choose to stay with one version of a program or another because they see no need to upgrade or because they are comfortable with the versions they are using...

In order to ensure that the widest market audience is supported it is often nessessary to continue to provide older file formats and file structures that will still run in older versions of the programs we use. As the older versions fade out (which happens over time when the average user base is finally able to upgrade to newer hardware and software) the older file structures and formats will fade out to be replaced with newer ones, how-ever this also means that even newer versions of file types and structures will probably be in use by the leading edge users.

As a vendor it is nessessary to ensure wide base compatibility to maximize potential income and sales... and not terribly feasible to try and keep up with the constant shifts in customer preference and software. It is rather more important to keep up with the needs of the "average" users needs than to try and keep up with the few "leading edge" users.

Also... it's simply not possible to meet the demands and preferences of each and every customer, as each one wants something different. Sure, vendors could make a model that would work in every conceivable program and include every possible permutation of customer preferences, but you certainly wouldn't be paying the low prices that most vendors charge. More likely any attempt to do so would drive the price so high that no hobbyist user could afford either the content or the programs!

 

2. The only difference between a pz2 materials pose, and an mc6 materials file is the file extension and a single line of code in the text file... both of which can be easily changed (there are a number of simple tuts on how to convert back and forth between pz2 and mc6).

Anyone that can change a file extension and use a text editor can change one to the other in about 2 seconds. Of course it's not nessessary to change anything as pz2 mat poses will load just fine from either the "Poses" library, or the "Materials" library... it's simply a matter of organizing the files in your runtimes...

I know why people did it, I started out with Poser 4 and Poser Pro Pack which didn't have a material library, what I don't know is why people still do it. It's not like materials now days would be compatible with Poser 4 anyway. 

Also, I hate prefixes in folder names like "!!!! MAT FOOBAR" or whatever other character, it adds one more step to a product install process, renaming the folders...

With all the Poser sell and all.
I would have thought most ever one uses Pro 14 anyways.

I would have thought anyone going threw hard times right now that needs to wait to upgrade.
Probably not doing alot of shoping right now.

I would have thought anyone that doesn't care to upgrade.
Probably's not a big shopper.

but since a lot of stuff in the stores reads works for Poser 4 & up.
Who knows maybe 2014 Poser 4 users are the biggest spenders.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

When did it start? With Poser 3 or so and really caught on in Poser 4. Some of the vendors have been around so long that it has become a habit. Then there still is a compatibility issue..... some vendors still seem to believe that we all user Poser 4 or 5. Vendors are still teaching other vendors how to do things and they pass on these ancient techniques.

If you become a vendor and start learning all the stuff you need to sell your products, you are basically taught outdated stuff, no one took the time to update. While Poser has moved on, most vendors and those teaching stuff haven't. You can find tons of teaching on how to things the old way, but a lot less on how to things the new way.

It's one of the reasons Poser is still in the dark ages, while DS has moved on. It's not that Poser isn't capable of these new techniques, it's the vendors in general refusing to utilize them. Look at Dawn.... we expected a new figure based on all the improvements Poser has to offer, what did we get? Old stuff!

When it comes to materials, most vendors still live in 90's or so. They use outdated texturing techniques. The material room has so much to offer, but most have no clue how to make their own materials.

Learning takes time and most vendors claim they're too busy already making money. In the real world one has to move on, follow courses, stay up to date, or you may loose your job. As long as the Poser community keeps on buying stuff based on old technology, vendors do not need to move on. Because of that, we will be stuck in Poser 4 time a long time.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

You really can't blame MAT poses on backwards compatibility for everything.  There are some items on sale marked in the product requirements as needing Poser 9, Poser Pro 2010, Poser Pro 2012, Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2014, yet they include MAT Poses.  This has nothing to do with backwards compatibilty for these items. 

I don't use Dawn so I have not purchased anything for her but I am willing to bet some of the Dawn stuff on sale still has MAT Poses.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Well, I understand the vendor angle, trying to make their content appeal to as wide an audience as possible to maximize profit. I seem to recall the Gen4 figures only being compatible with P5 and up, so there's not a lot of reason to still be supporting Poser 4. Most people still using P4, and even P5, generally aren't big spenders, since there have been numerous sales and promos at prices so low that just about anyone with some pocket change could afford to upgrade if they wanted. There was a point when Poser 6 was being given away for free even, to anyone with a valid P5 serial. I think that was around the time of P7's release.

Right now P10 upgrades are on sale for about the same price as 2 dresses for vicky. But I'm sure there are still folks out there who will skip it cause it's still not cheap enough.

I agree with the point regarding vendors that refuse to update their pipelines out of laziness or a philosophy of not trying to fix what they see isn't broken. If it's working for them they don't see a reason to change. The problem with that is it eventually reaches a point where that refusal of new methods prevents everyone from progressing. The only way to really counteract it is for other content artists to make a serious effort in producing more content that utilizes the newest features and methods, to act as examples of what is possible and get their customers anxious for more of it. In the process it squeezes out the old stuff and makes room for the new. It does take risks, since building for the latest features narrows the customer base for what you produce innitially, but it also doesn't require an all or nothing approach either. Some items can require only the latest version of Poser while the others can still be backwards compatible.

I agree with backwards compatability to an extent but eventually it becomes a barrier to progress. Most software is only backwards compatible up to a certain number of versions, 2 or 3 at most. That helps to keep customers moving foreward and almost forces them to eventually upgrade or just get left behind. Of course that also requires having figures that people actually want to use. If most everyone is still content with using Gen4, because they aren't seeing anyone producing better figures that are designed for Poser's latest tech, then there's no real reason for them to want to upgrade the software. And what happens when the Gen4 figures no longer work in the latest version of Poser? As it is I've had issues getting various morphs to function correctly in PP2014. Hiro 4, for example - still cannot get him to load no matter what I've tried. Freak 4 loads just fine and I used the same install process for both of them. His head loads, and his forearms change, but the rest of him stays M4, including his eyes. Very frustrating. I don't have that problem in P7. 

 

~Shane

I think if the masses want to see a change then content creators will listen and conform to your wishes...that's part of customer service.

Comitted to excellence through art.

    From a vendor point of view, the progress of updating to newer formats and structures will always lag behind the upgrades and improvements in software... it's just a fact of life... it does take time to learn how to utilize the new features to incorporate them into a product properly (which is often somewhat more complicated than it is for an end user because we have to learn the new features first as a user and then as a content creator)... A good vendor should always be working on improvements to their skills and tools but making content is much more complicated than simply using it once its made... we have to learn the new features, and, the new tools needed for content creation... then learn how to properly implement these changes into the products we make so that said products will actually work the way they're supposed to.

    Yes it is nessessary for vendors to continue to improve their products and to incorporate new features, but to completely drop backwards compatability in favour of making sure that all the latest features are taken advantage of will also alienate a large protion of the marketplace... DAZ is an example of this. They chose to make products that could only function within DS (or in Poser using the DSON Importer) so that the main new features could be used, but in the process alienated a large number of long-term customers... particularly Poser users who now often have difficulty getting products to work within their chosen program. As we are all aware this also caused a massive community backlash when many users found that they could no longer use content they wanted to buy or had already bought. I can't and don't speak for DAZ but one would assume that this had a detrimental effect on sales... at least in the short term...

For larger sites like here at Rendo, and even at DAZ, the narrowing of the customer base and associated backlash is a bad hit but manage-able... for a small 3rd party vendor that can mean the difference between having business and being out of it entirely so they would need to be somewhat more cautious in the choices they make in implementing new features and supporting new upgrades... and more deliberate in their planning on doing so...

    One also has to consider the enormous pressure on vendors to not only offer new features but to continually keep pressing out new products and to meet continuous customer demands and requests. Again... not as big an issue if you are selling through a big site with a huge customer base but if you're a lone artist or a small site it can be a almost impossible task just to keep up... you have to work almost 24 hours a day to keep new products coming out and to meet new requests and demands, plus learning everything you need to know about any new features to be considered. It's a constant trade off between time, need, and productivity.

Of course, much of this would be less of an issue if companies would provide proper documenation of new features and make it easier for those of us on the user end to learn how to use and implement them... It's this lack of documentation that causes a great part of the lag in adopting new features into products... since much of the documentation has to come from the end user instead of the companies making the programs...

    The last thing a vendor has to consider is that by adopting the new features of one program he (or she) may be eliminating an entire customer base by rendering his/her products useless in another program entirely (DS versus Poser functionality being a perfect example). This potential loss has to be weighed against the potential gains. By continuing to use older file formats and structures, you can maintain a certain basic level of cross-compatibility between programs. In some other programs and markets this wouldn't be an issue, but the Poser/Daz community is a bit of a special case from a vendor perspective...

I'm not arguing against changes or different ways of doing things... i'm simply pointing out the many things a vendor has to take into consideration when making products. Just like there's no "Make Art" button in Poser... there's no "Make Content" button either (beleive me there are times I wish we had both)... It's a long and involved process to create content and lets face it, if everyone could do it we probably wouldn't have sites like Rendo to shop at...

cschell : a Link to ya store would be cool.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Allow another typical "wiz" ignornat question...

What is the difference between applying textures using mat poses and applying materials via the material folder? Both asppear to take one click from my keyboard.

What is the real issue here that is upsetting people and that I am missing?

It is not the loading that is the issue it is having to look in two places when you a looking for materials, that said it is not much of an issue a couple of minutes a month with Netherworks program sorts it.  I have more a problem with stripping out the readme or read me or read mes files and all other combinations of naming used.  I strip it out of the runtime and stick it in one big folder called content documentation.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

     [1]  Logical placement - When I first got Poser, silly me, I looked in the material library for files to change textures.  One of the old hands told me "They're in the pose folder."

     That made no sense to me.  In retrospect, I now understand why, but again, the time of the MATpose has passed.

 

     [2]  Even distribution of libraries.  The pose folder is bulging;  the purpose-built material library sits nearly empty.  Also logical identification by file type - it's not a pose. 

 

     [3]  Accumulation of garbage in a cr2.  Sometimes using MATposes repeatedly can incrementally add no-longer-used data in the cr2.  As I understand it, this occurs with improperly made MATposes but not with properly made MATposes.

 

     Regarding ReadMe files, Poser provides a place for them - shared documents > Poser Pro 2014 Content > Runtime > Readme.  I often find ReadMe folders created by products & freebies stored beside the runtime folder.  More often, the folder is properly within runtime, but they just couldn't bring themselves to spell it correctly.  I see readmes, read me, et cetera.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5

Upgrading is not always a matter of money. Even if the price drops even more, it's not going to entice me to purchase. Poser Pro 2012 offers everything I need and I see more and more compatibility issues with older content.

Yes, there's quite some old stuff I still use and not everything works well in PP Pro 2012, while it works fine in PP Pro 2010. I've still got the older version installed for that reason and I'm not moving forward.... as well as no new stuff that will add much to what I can do with Poser already.

Artwork and 3DToons items, create the perfect place for you toon and other figures!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=23722

Due to the childish TOS changes, I'm not allowed to link to my other products outside of Rendo anymore :(

Food for thought.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZw0dfLmLk

Quote - cschell : a Link to ya store would be cool.

Np... www.schells.ca... my site is called Schell's Armour Works... :)

Quote - > Quote - cschell : a Link to ya store would be cool.

Np... www.schells.ca... my site is called Schell's Armour Works... :)

Cool looking Armour & War Machines ,What app's do ya use in ya work flow ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - Regarding ReadMe files, Poser provides a place for them - shared documents > Poser Pro 2014 Content > Runtime > Readme.  I often find ReadMe folders created by products & freebies stored beside the runtime folder.  More often, the folder is properly within runtime, but they just couldn't bring themselves to spell it correctly.  I see readmes, read me, et cetera.

 

With regards to Readme files, I tend to use a standard file  runtime prepared by someone else and distributed as a freebie, so if anything is wrong with the spelling, I please ignorance.

I will point out thought that because I do use a Mac, and I know that MacOS stopping supporting the Classic OS years ago, even if you could download Mac Converter, it wouldn't run on a machine with anything over OS10.2 anyway.

Quote - Cool looking Armour & War Machines ,What app's do ya use in ya work flow ?

 

Thanks! :) I model and assign material zones in Hexagon , generate texture templates and uvmapping in UVMapper, paint the textures in PhotoImpressions 4 (with samples generated using Filter Forge as needed), then do figure rigging in Daz Studio with additional figure testing and adjustments in Poser. Final beta-testing is done in 2 versions of DS and Poser 7 on my end, and 3 or 4 versions of Poser through a beta-tester (plus ERC coding if needed) to ensure cross-compatability.

 

Do modern PC's run the old programs?I believe I lost use of Poser 2 and 3 when mac went to to OSX. And Poser 6 when MacOSX lost Rosetta for Pre-Intel programs.

 Now I am getting nostalgic! I need to get a OLD Mac so I can run my copies of Poser 2, 3 and 4 again! I remember the excitement of trans maps-no more plastic helmet hair!

I used Mac Converter all the time and a text editor to edit my Cr2's. Fun times!

I think OS 10 could still Macs still had Classic  OS9 bundled with them. and OS10.2 could run it in emulation mode.  But after OS10.2 Apple killed the Classic envioronment. No Intel Mac can run it at all. You'll probably need a Pre Intel Mac or a Power Mac to run it. And don't forget that Poser 4 was a memory hog.

On my end, this is done for DAZ support, plain and simple. Poser has a MAT room...... Daz does not. Daz has access to the POSE library....

 

Does this make sence?!

My Store   My Gallery    Contact

Quote -  

Do modern PC's run the old programs?I believe I lost use of Poser 2 and 3 when mac went to to OSX. And Poser 6 when MacOSX lost Rosetta for Pre-Intel programs.

 Now I am getting nostalgic! I need to get a OLD Mac so I can run my copies of Poser 2, 3 and 4 again! I remember the excitement of trans maps-no more plastic helmet hair!

I used Mac Converter all the time and a text editor to edit my Cr2's. Fun times!

on PC's it's a maybe with OSwindows 8.1
took a bit but got C4D 9 to work but none of the plugs work.

on windows vista never got Corel 8 or Poser4,5 to work.
never tryed on windows 8

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - On my end, this is done for DAZ support, plain and simple. Poser has a MAT room...... Daz does not. Daz has access to the POSE library....
Does this make sence?!

crystal clear

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - > Quote - Cool looking Armour & War Machines ,What app's do ya use in ya work flow ?

 

Thanks! :) I model and assign material zones in Hexagon , generate texture templates and uvmapping in UVMapper, paint the textures in PhotoImpressions 4 (with samples generated using Filter Forge as needed), then do figure rigging in Daz Studio with additional figure testing and adjustments in Poser. Final beta-testing is done in 2 versions of DS and Poser 7 on my end, and 3 or 4 versions of Poser through a beta-tester (plus ERC coding if needed) to ensure cross-compatability.

Thanks cschell

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - Thanks cschell

 

No probs... and thanks for the interest. :)

 

Quote - On my end, this is done for DAZ support, plain and simple. Poser has a MAT room...... Daz does not. Daz has access to the POSE library....

 

Does this make sence?!

 

Indeed it does... I have a similar reason for using and including mat poses as well... cross-compatibility with DS while still making things useable in Poser...

Quote - Allow another typical "wiz" ignornat question...

What is the difference between applying textures using mat poses and applying materials via the material folder? Both asppear to take one click from my keyboard.

What is the real issue here that is upsetting people and that I am missing?

 

Allow me, I wrote this last August, it is still accurate today.  This is why we can't have nice things in Poser........

Dear Poser Vendors,

I love you guys and gals, but I swear to god, some of you are your own worst enemies.  Making your products hard to use means I am less likely to buy your products in the future.  That sounded important, so let me repeat it:

Making your products hard to use means I am less likely to buy your products in the future.

That sounds a little nebulous; so let me get down to specifics.

Let's start with a little background material and what started this……

Every single product that I have purchased over the past week for Dawn (A product that ONLY WORKS IN POSER 9+ and DS 4.5+), was designed for Poser 4 compatibility.

When I question vendors about this, I get a song and dance over "backwards compatibility".  Apparently, many vendors out here in Poser/DS land are unsure of what level of "backwards compatibility" is necessary in 2013 – specifically in regards to material files (.pz2 vs .mc6).  I have been told repeatedly by vendors that this is necessary because not everyone has updated to the latest version of Poser –

"I have to make .pz2 for materials because the product is for Victoria 4."

This is incorrect.

The earliest version of Poser that will support DAZ's Gen 4 figures (V4.2, M4, K4, Aiko 4, The Girl 4, Freak 4, etc.) is Poser 6, according to DAZ. 

Understanding Content File Types - Supported Applications:

 helpdaz.zendesk.com/entries/22… 

 If you are a vendor, bookmark this page - this will show you what file types can be read by both DS & Poser - don't guess, know.

The earliest version of Poser that uses the .mc6 file format is Poser 6.  In addition,  DS4.5 and later can read .mc6 files - from the above webpage:

Studio 4.5 also supports the following Poser formats (.cr2, .pz2, .pp2, .fc2, .pp2, .mc6, .lt2).  It does not support .pz3 (Poser Scene) format or Python Scripts.

So, what does this mean?  It means that Poser 6 (not Poser 4) is the de facto, if not de jure, baseline for compatibility purposes between Poser & Daz Studio.

Knowing this, why in the name of all that is holy are vendors still making materials as g(##!&##@% .pz2 files instead of .mc6 files?  That was a hack for Poser 4.  There hasn't been a need to do it for almost a decade now.  

If you are only going to make 1 file, make it an .mc6 – let the luddites get a conversion utility.  In all honesty, it's like saying that even though we now have 64-bit computers and modern operating systems, we should still use 8.3 file naming conventions because there are still a few CPM and DOS holdouts running an IBM 8088 pc.  Let Poser 4 go.

Moving right along to file/folder names & conventions or Wherein my luv for vendors turns to "Flames, on the side of my face, breathing-breathing - heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heaving...."

Thereisnoneedtoramallofthefilenamestogether - Poser 4+ and Daz Studio can't run on DOS or OS9, so there isn't a need to do this anymore.  Not only is this unnecessary, it is hard to read.  Hard to read means I am less likely to buy your products in the future.

Nor_is_there_any_need_to_use_underscores - We have been able to use spaces for about a decade now, leave the DOS naming convention behind already. 

ALLCAPS - why are my folders and file names shouting at me?  When I am fixing things like this, I am saying a lot of things about the vendor – none of which can be repeated in a family-friendly forum.

Consistency – It may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but when the product has one folder name in the Character folder, a slightly different one in the Material folder and a third variation in the Pose folder, you go directly to my DO NOT BUY FROM list.  Vendors that do this show an incredible lack of attention to detail.  If a vendor screws up something a simple as this, I have to wonder what else have they messed up.

Figure's name (or your name) as the lead for a file name - If I have a dozen dresses named Dawn Dress #01, Dawn Dress #02, Dawn Dress #03 search function becomes useless, whereas Dress#01 for Dawn, Dress#02 for Dawn, Dress#03 for Dawn, is better for the end-user, regardless of whether they have 1 runtime or 60 runtimes.  As far as your name going first, please check your ego at the door.  It isn't about you, it's about the end-user.  The only place I should see your name is in the Geometries folder and the Textures folder, so that you don't accidentally overwrite obj and png files that some idiot vendor decided should be in the root geometries or texture folders.  (See what I did there?)

01, 02, 03, as leading file names - you are rendering the search function useless.  Don't be that vendor.  If I have to go & spend half an hour to rename dozens (or in one case, over a hundred) file names, yeah, I'll remember who you are, and not in a good way.

Leading !!!! characters - yeah, real cute, getting your folder to the top of the list.  Guess what, YOU AREN'T THE ONLY ONE DOING IT.  So stop it already.

And the worst offender  -  Naming material files MAT_name, MAT_name, MAT_name.  Again, this makes your product harder to use and find - try name_Material, name_Material, name_Material, this makes it easier to find.  Better yet, move to the 8+ year standard of an .mc6 - If it is in the Materials subfolder, as it should be, we know it is a material.

Poser 9+ issues……

Poser 9 and later comes with a scene folder to hold your .pz3 files - please start using it.  In addition, would it kill you to add a .png file to go with it?  You're going to make a render at some point – resize it to 91x91 and make the "Shruggy Guy" go away – Not adding a .png shows a lack of attention to detail.  It also makes me wonder if you have cut corners elsewhere.

I have noticed that starting with Poser 9, smarter vendors are adding a Morphs subfolder to the standard library to hold things like .pmd files and .pz2 files that the customers should not be fooling around with.  This is a really, really good idea.  It means fewer custom folders cluttering up a runtime (Note to end users, don't move those legacy folders like !DAZ into a Morphs folder – those files have hard-coded locations in them.)

Metadata follies…..

From the aforementioned "Understanding Content File Types from DAZ".  Submitted without comment:

'Metadata': These files are not needed for any application.  They were originally intended for use with other applications outside of DAZ Studio, but this is no longer necessary.  They may be disregarded.

Windows Follies:  I don't run the windows version of Poser/DS, so someone else will have to address these.

**OSX Follies: ** We haven't had to use Macconverter for over well over a decade now.  Obviously, vendors that develop on Windows have no idea what this product is or did.  It converted Poser 3 content to formats that Poser 4 could read.  Now, not only do you know what it does, you should realize how pointless the program is in 2013.  So please, stop sending your customers on a wild goose-chase looking for www.softrabbit.de. The website went dark about a decade ago.  There is truly no telling how many sales some of you have cost yourselves by telling users this.

We don't use .rsr or .pict files anymore either - The software portion that could actually read them was chucked, along with a lot of obsolete code with the release of Poser 8.

If you lead off a filename with the # character, OSX can't read the .png or .jpg, so don't do that.

Ego Folders*, or "Where's my brick…….."*

I realize that getting vendors to dump their ego subfolders is a bridge too far, but I do want to point out that:

   a.  Your product isn't the only product in my runtime.  Hiding your products in ego folders makes your products harder to find, harder to use, and me less likely to purchase your products.  Especially if you are also doing some of the stupid stuff I mentioned earlier under file/folder names & conventions.  I have a list of vendors I won't buy from even if they made the "rug that tied the room together" – why would you want to go on that list?

   b.  If you make a add-on pack for a product, put the name of the product in the folder, i.e. <Add-on pack name> for .  If you do this, it makes it easier for people who aren't anal-retentive about runtime structure to actually find and use your magnificent add-on pack.  (I am not being sarcastic here – I have bought literally hundreds of items that I never would have purchased if it weren't for another vendor making a cool add on pack for a product.  You are truly the value-added part of the equation.)

 Note to the people that are too cheap to upgrade their computer/software - Right now (August '13 ed), there are over 1,400 1st Generation Xeon Dell workstations over on ebay.  (I just looked.)

You can pick one up for as little as $150 (including shipping).  No, that isn't a misprint.  Lots of them are coming off lease, and they are being dumped for pennies on the dollar - as an added bonus, they will plow through rendering faster than a new i3 or i5 computer will - just sayin'. 

Did I mention you could replace those dual cores for quad cores (giving you 8 cores for your render engine for about 80 additional dollars) and more performance than an i7?

If you are hell-bent on getting a new computer – a perfectly suitable one for Poser/DS can be had for around $250.

Poser 9 is on Amazon for $60 (August '13)- the price of about 4 good outfits – and you now have access to weight mapped figures and genesis too, if you are willing to deal with DSON.

 

End old rant.

Quote - On my end, this is done for DAZ support, plain and simple. Poser has a MAT room...... Daz does not. Daz has access to the POSE library....

Does this make sence?!

As I mentioned earlier, you are correct in terms of DS3 - it can not read the Poser Material folder.  However, DS 4+ (I believe - defiinitely DS 4.5+) and on CAN read the Poser Material folder, and can read mc6 files as well ;)

Cheers,
Alisa

RETIRED HiveWire 3D QAV Director

too long, didn't read...(no offence intended)

 

I don't think anyone who makes content knowingly supports poser 4. Everything i've seen is p6 and above. If they say p4, they are too lazy to wiki if they have a quick question about "when was X feature added.

 

My Store   My Gallery    Contact

Quote - too long, didn't read...(no offence intended)

 

I don't think anyone who makes content knowingly supports poser 4. Everything i've seen is p6 and above. If they say p4, they are too lazy to wiki if they have a quick question about "when was X feature added.

 

If you had read it, you would know that P6+ & DS4.5 both support .mc6s.  They say it (P6 compatibiltiy), but they don't actually know what it means.

Quote - too long, didn't read...(no offence intended)

 

And I didn't intend that to come across as scolding, so my apologies if it did - reading through long threads can defintely be a challenge!

What I was meaning to do was agree with you that there ARE certain situations where using pz2 mat poses makes sense even today, which some people seem to feel is unreasonable.  Many DS users did not upgrade to DS4.   

Cheers,
Alisa

RETIRED HiveWire 3D QAV Director

It's really not that big of a deal. With as many vendors as there are, the long-running methods aren't likely going to change much any time soon. Many of them likely don't even pay attention to the forums since that's not where the bulk of their customers are.

SSGBryan is correct that the idea that V4 requires pz2 files instead of mc6 files is a complete misconception. V3 would have required this, and even then it was only due to the non-existence of mc6 files through the majority of her reign. It's possible that the innitial release of V4 was listed as being Poser 5 compatible, and if so then .mc6 files wouldn't have worked because they didn't come about until Poser 6. But V4.2 and M4 both install with .mc6 files in the material room with their default textures. So really the only explanation for the continued use of .pz2 files for textures is due to old habbits. There is no real reason to use them now. 

Regardless, I'm beginning to regret having started this thread. I don't buy a lot of 3rd party content. I buy the figures I need to work on for my clients and utilities that make that work faster and easier. It's rare that I buy anything for my own use unless its something that I really like, or if I want to do some add-on work. So I'm really not familiar with the way a lot of vendors package their content. Seeing files that don't belong in various places based on how the library is structured bugs me. I have my own runtime that all my custom work goes in but it's structured exactly the same as the stock library. I've never bothered to customize the stock library. I shouldn't need to. 

As for naming conventions, the underscores and the run-on words is a common practice even in the pro CG world. Some software still requires it, and a lot of studios run on custom versions of Linux, they don't use Mac or Windows anything. I'm not sure if the naming conventions are a requirement of Linux or not (i don't use Linux). Maybe it's just one of those old habbits that have never died, like .pz2 files instead of .mc6 files. When I name my files, I always capitalize the first letter of each word accept for the first (usually). It makes it easy to read without spaces. Sometimes spaces in a file name can corrupt the file depending on what program you're trying to open it in, so there is that too. 

Ego folders help to keep things organized as long as they don't have annoying symbols in front of their names that screws up the alphabetical order. And you can thank DAZ for starting the !!EgoFolderTrend. I guess they did that so that all their figures stayed at the top of the figure list to make it easier for people to find, but it didn't take long for other vendors to figure it out and start out-doing them with the same approach. 

 

~Shane

One thing I do try and do as a vendor is to place all of my stuff in the same set of folders...

If the figure is found in say "mechs" (for example) in the figures library (this also includes any conforming add-ons for said figure), the poses, mat poses, and such will be found under the same folder name in the poses library and any props under the same name in the props library... it made sense to me to do it that way for ease of organization and consistancy...

I have to admit  I'm guilty of "vanity" folder names... I always place everything in folders that start with "Chris's...", but here again I try to ensure some consistancy... if I make ships then they would all go in a folder labeled "Chris's Ships"... poses, mats etc would go into folders with this same name and separated into subfolders as needed... props to the same name and separated into subfolders for specific figures as well...

Maybe not a great solution but I try... atleast this way all my stuff can be found under a consistant set of names...

 

Speaking as an end user... (I am one as well as a vendor)

 I do have to agree about the added exclamation points etc added in front of folder names... it's annoying... I can deal with the vendor adding their name to a folder (it makes it easy to remember which artist made what and in fact I've found this handy when people have asked about something used in a render) but why add un-needed numbers, symbols, etc, to a folder name...

 I also get a bit annoyed when a figure is under one folder name, the poses under another, and the props under a 3rd name... it makes it very hard to find items, poses etc at times...

It was seeing complaints about things like this in forums in the first place that led to my decision to make sure that everything could be found under the same name in each library section...

If you have a PC how do ya make ya content ya sell or give away work on a MAC ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

ssgbryan helpdaz.zendesk.com/entries/22…  Booked marked
Got any more useful links for vendors ?

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - If you have a PC how do ya make ya content ya sell or give away work on a MAC ?

All of the poser content files (except the .png) are text files. 

Fascinating how short the collective memory is.

I've been posering for almost 10 years. Here's the story I learned about !!! prefix

It has nothing to do with ego. It is simply this:

In earlier versions of Poser (which were still widely in use when I started) there was a flaw in the library. It could only show 100 items per folder. Period.

So guess how many vendors got complaints that their product doesn't work - it doesn't show up when I install it!!! You suck! 

Then one really bright vendor figured out that the files are listed in ASCII alphabetical order, and the ! character comes before all the printable characters that exist. (It is ascii code 33, the lowest number that shows a glyph.)

So they solved their customer support problem by putting one ! in front.

Then other vendors saw the same problem, and solved it by one-upping the ! with !!. This made them first in the list, and customer support problems dropped to zero for a while.

Then the first smart vendor, who is now getting complaints from the unwashed masses again, changed their prefix to !!!, thus making them first again.

And so on, until E-Frontier or Smith Micro (can't remember which it was, but it's the same Poser crew) finally got smart and expanded the number of items that would show. 

 

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - Then the first smart vendor, who is now getting complaints from the unwashed masses again, changed their prefix to !!!, thus making them first again. And so on, until E-Frontier or Smith Micro (can't remember which it was, but it's the same Poser crew) finally got smart and expanded the number of items that would show.

Smart for some vendors who were experiencing problems, yes.  However, it became a highly abused practice, much to the frustration of the end-user.  If the vendor's name began with A-D, there was very little danger they were being shaved off the library visibility list.  That is, until everyone started adding glyphs just to appear first, and pushing everyone else further down the list, destroying the very reason for the practice in the first place.  It became a rat-race of who had the most glyphs before their vanity folder's name.

---

Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.

Quote - Fascinating how short the collective memory is.

I've been posering for almost 10 years. Here's the story I learned about !!! prefix

It has nothing to do with ego. It is simply this:

In earlier versions of Poser (which were still widely in use when I started) there was a flaw in the library. It could only show 100 items per folder. Period. 

That I honetsly didn't know... I got into 3d after it'd become a standard practice and the rat race had begun to see how many "!" or other glyphs could be added infront of a folder name (a practice I didn't like and don't use). Was a smart solution I must say... too bad it became abused like it did...

FWIW, you also used to be able to put MAT Pose files in the Camera folder also in P4 (uuuuurgh...lol).

I haven't used MAT Pose files in years. Why should I when I have mt5 and mc6 files? ;)

Laurie

Ahh the potholes in memory lane..............

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket
Charles Péguy

 Heat and animosity, contest and conflict, may sharpen the wits, although they rarely do;they never strengthen the understanding, clear the perspicacity, guide the judgment, or improve the heart
Walter Savage Landor

So is that TTFN or TANSTAAFL?

My pet hate is multiple ego folders for one vendor because his three products create "Joe Blow", Joe_Blow" and "!Joe Blow" folders.

Quote - When I name my files, I always capitalize the first letter of each word accept for the first (usually). It makes it easy to read without spaces. 

I tend to do the same. I also try to keep filenames as short as legibility allows so that the whole filename will always display. I often come across names that are so long that the last part (usually the important bit) isn't visible in certain viewports and you can't see the difference between things like:

"Cool Special Occasion Outfit For Victoria 4 - Blouse.cr2"

"Cool Special Occasion Outfit For Victoria 4 - pants.cr2"

because they both show up as "Cool Special Occasion Outfit F..."

Quote - Consistency – It may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but when the product has one folder name in the Character folder, a slightly different one in the Material folder and a third variation in the Pose folder, you go directly to my DO NOT BUY FROM list. 

The trouble is that there's no single, central "Best Practice" guide on this stuff. If you are trying to figure out how to do it and you look at 10 examples in your own runtime you'll find 10 different ways, most of them flawed.

I think Poser itself started the rot with stock content folder naming that was all over the place and no naming consistency at all between the various cr2, obj and texture files which made up a figure. Even the library structure displays "Figures" and "Expressions" but the folder structure behind that calls them "Character" and "Face" (and there's another unconnected "Figures" and "Head" folder in the runtime). 

Thanks E.Clarke and Rorkonn! Good thing I kept my old G5!

BB-I still have old !!! Content. I forgot there was a reason for doing that!

Quote - I think OS 10 could still Macs still had Classic  OS9 bundled with them. and OS10.2 could run it in emulation mode.  But after OS10.2 Apple killed the Classic envioronment. No Intel Mac can run it at all. You'll probably need a Pre Intel Mac or a Power Mac to run it. And don't forget that Poser 4 was a memory hog.

Quote - Now on whether or not I make MAT Files?  I haven't made them in several years now, thankfully.  They are inferior to Material Collections, which work on Standalone Props - MAT Poses do not (unless you hack them a certain way and a Figure is in the scene).

There's actually another problem with pz2 MATs that I suddenly remembered really annoys me.

Let's say you've got a clothed character, and you want to apply a MAT to the clothing, and fail to notice that you've got the character selected instead. The pz2 will proceed to add those material zone to the character (which won't show up, since there's no geometry associated with those materials). For a one-off image, this isn't a huge deal, but if you're reusing that character, you have to either manually remove those extra materials or use one of the add-on tools you can get that will allowyou to do it.

And it's not just clothing materials applied accidentally: I don't know how many character MAT files I've used where when I go into the material room after applying it I see extra materials created because somehow there was a material named in the MAT that was slightly different from what it was supposed to be: variations on "tear" and "nostril" are especially common.

With an MC6, however, when you apply it Poser will specifically point out if there are materials that aren't present in what you are applying it do and ask if you want to create them. If you click on "no", those extra material zones aren't created. It saves much grief.

As other people have said, MAT poses (and MOR poses and sub-dividing MAT poses) were originally a hack on the cr2 file. But when the file was renamed with a pz2 extension, Poser would apply the MAT or MOR as if it was a regular pose file.

Then, because pose folders were filling up with MAT poses, people found that they could change the extention to cm2 and fill the Camera library with MAT poses. (This is also why camera files can include code to hide and show the walls of a room.)

In Poser 5, e-frontier decided to officially support MAT poses by calling them material files, but these just affected one material. In Poser 6, the full material collection file was added. And in Poser 9/ Poser Pro 2012, Smith Micro made the materials library available without needing to go into the Material Room.

To me, arguing over MAT poses and material collection files is like the arguing which version of Microsoft Word is better: the one with the usual File, Edit, View menu or the version with the ribbon. Many people are used to the File, Edit, View menu, but they should move on and get used to "progess", right?

And, of course, content creators can't win: for every person who says they want the "new way" of using material collection files, another person will say they prefer the "old way" of using MAT poses. Should a product zip file contain both MAT poses and material collection files? No, because then customers will get confused and ask which files they should use.

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

Quote - And in Poser 9/ Poser Pro 2012, Smith Micro made the materials library available without needing to go into the Material Room.

Actually, that was Poser 8/Pro 2010, though the point still stands.

 

You know, it might just be a good idea if someone could to a poll, that would have the greatest chance of catching the largets number of users, to find out which version of Poser a person uses the most. The results would have to be made publicly available to benefit vendors.

But it would let people know just which version of Poser has the largets number of users, and they could tailor their products to that version (with extra files to handle features that later versions have as well).

________________________________________________________________

If you're joking that's just cruel, but if you're being sarcastic, that's even worse.

Quote - > Quote - And in Poser 9/ Poser Pro 2012, Smith Micro made the materials library available without needing to go into the Material Room.

Actually, that was Poser 8/Pro 2010, though the point still stands.

 

You know, it might just be a good idea if someone could to a poll, that would have the greatest chance of catching the largets number of users, to find out which version of Poser a person uses the most. The results would have to be made publicly available to benefit vendors.

But it would let people know just which version of Poser has the largets number of users, and they could tailor their products to that version (with extra files to handle features that later versions have as well).

The poll would need to be kept up to date & would need to inclued DSON & DAZ Studio also.

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

Quote - You know, it might just be a good idea if someone could to a poll, that would have the greatest chance of catching the largets number of users, to find out which version of Poser a person uses the most. The results would have to be made publicly available to benefit vendors.

A poll is a good idea in theory, but it has a few built-in problems: how to publicize the poll so people know about it and then getting the most number of people to answer it. The poll won't do much good if 100 or 1,000 people answer it... especially if sites like Renderosity might have over 250,000 members.

Then if only 1,000 people answer the poll and 500 say they use PP2012, you can't say "50% of the Poser community uses PP2012". You could only say "Of the people who took the poll, 50% said they use PP2012". And it doesn't help it 500 people say they use PP2012 when 249,500 Renderosity members and X number of people at DAZ don't use it.

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

That is always the problem when a question such as this is asked in the forum.  Even if we all agreed that MATS in the pose library was a good thing our opinion would not carry much weight as the number of Poser users that read forums is a very small minority.  The number that actually post is even smaller and within that small number there is rarely widespread agreement.

The same situations exist in another currnet thread about the popularity of conforming clothes.  Here we could all agree that dynamic would be best but if any vendor catered for just active forum members they would not make enough profit to keep them in underwear for a week.  With the exception of those that did not wear any.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Well since I only have Pro 14.
I'm making content for Pro 14.
I couldn't make content for an earlier version of Poser that I don't have.

We could guess all day what Poser version users buys the most content.
For all I know 99.9% of all market sells are for P4 users.
So I may never even make a wooden nichle as a vendor.

but if ya want to get rich ,go to wallstreet.

 

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

The poll results could be updated at about the midway point between Poser releases.

 

Advertise the poll on the major Poser website front pages, and Smith Micro could send out an email mentioning it.

 

And like most polls, the point isn't get assume you've gotten everyone, but to know that you're only looking at a cross-section of the user base. Also, all it would be is an infographic, vendors are free to do what they want with the data, even ignore it if they so choose.

 

Quote - ...as the number of Poser users that read forums is a very small minority.

Do we have concrete info on that? Has Smith Micro released Poser sales data? Maybe the Poser community is smaller than people assume, or the number of Poser users that read the forums (any Poser forums) could be larger than expected. Remember that there are people who read but never post as well.

________________________________________________________________

If you're joking that's just cruel, but if you're being sarcastic, that's even worse.

RDNA : Members 93,732

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CGTalk : Members: 556,647

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

 

Quote - ...as the number of Poser users that read forums is a very small minority.

Do we have concrete info on that? Has Smith Micro released Poser sales data? Maybe the Poser community is smaller than people assume, or the number of Poser users that read the forums (any Poser forums) could be larger than expected. Remember that there are people who read but never post as well.

 

No there is no concrete info and I doubt the ever will be but if the number of people that post here and the other popular Poser forums are anywhere near a majority I really do not see how Smith Micro could be making any profit out of Poser.  Even if everyone on the forum upgraded to the latest version I do not see it being viable and posts show that many forum users are not using the latest versions of Poser.

So no concrete information but I still think it would be a mistake for any company or vendor to base their commercial plans purely on what is said in any forum.  Not that I am knocking forums I find them informative and useful but when it comes to speaking for the Poser Community in a single voice any forum is severely limited.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

what I get about public companys.
it's all about the stock.
so the idea is to release a upgrade.
so SM stock will go up.
I don't even know if it matters that much to the stock ,
if they sell 1 or 1000 upgrades.

all I know is public companys don't survive like we do with money.

if a public company stock goes under then there done for even thou they have
property buildings PC's software etc etc.

if I have just 1 PC and some app's I'm a long long long ways from done for.

they say they woun't close a slow franchise store cause it will make the stock drop.

 

 

============================================================ 

The Artist that will fight for decades to conquer their media.
Even if you never know their name ,your know their Art.
Dark Sphere Mage Vengeance

I thought I'd pop back in and add some more thoughts to the original question of why merchants continue to use MAT poses...

First, there's "interia": many merchants have been using MAT poses for years, they don't receive any complaints from customers, and they think their sales are decent. They tend to think things like "This is this the way I've been doing it for years, so why do I need to change?" or "I don't want to change the files in case this upsets customers and I lose sales." (Yes, there's little difference between a MAT pose and material collection file, but some merchants may be nervous like this.)

Second, how many top sellers will see this thread and change their ways? "Well, if a few people are complaining in the forum, then they must know better than someone who's been Vendor of the Month and Vendor of the Year for the past 5 years". Sorry for the sarcasm.
Seriously, though, I bet you could look at any of the top 25 best selling products and all of them would have MAT poses. So why haven't the top merchants switched to material collection files?
I'm sure this is because of point #1: they've been using MAT poses, and no one has complained, their products sell great, so why should they change their workflow?

In turn, if other merchants see that top sellers don't use material collection files, and their products are the best-selling on the site, why should they use material collection files? Sure, this is faulty logic since it takes more than MAT poses/ material collection files to make a great product, but still.

VanishingPoint... Advanced 3D Modeling Solutions

mc6 files can be created with one click and saved to the material library. The same thumbnail can be used from the mat pose and copied into the material library. Creating mc6 files takes a fraction of the time and clicks that creating mat pose files takes and there's no manual editing involved other than creating fancy thumbs for them.

The plus side to that is that it's easy for the end user to convert their mat poses to mc6 files without the need to use a 3rd party script or do any manual coding.

Thanks for the tip on the Camera file mats. Learn something new every day. 

 

As for polls, the best way to get the most people to answer a poll is to give them an incentive to do so. In Poser's case, that would likely be a free gift at the end of the poll/survey, or percentage points off in the marketplace(s) that hosted the polls. There are far more people that shop here than post here, and there are a lot of people who read these forums and never post a word. I receive PMs all the time from people who never post. 

The results from all participating sites would need to be combined and then factored in based on the total number of users on each site, but the poll would need to be hosted on one site and linked to from all participating sites in order to prevent duplicate results from the same users. 

Whenever polls are taken for voting demographics, for example, they don't call everyone in the region, they only call a handful of them - 1 - 10% or so, if that - and the estimates are based on those results (combined with other factors of course). 

But even if several thousand users answered a poll, I doubt it would make any difference on how most vendors package or market their content. They're going to continue doing the same thing they've always done until they decide for themselves that they should change, based on sales or what their own customers tell them, or what new trends they see developing, if they even bother to pay attention to those trends. 

That's my take on it anyway.

 

~Shane

I don't like having MAT poses in the Pose folder, but then I don't like 'read me' files under any name in the runtime.  I don't use Daz so I don't like Daz materials in my runtimes either.  That is my choice so I manually unzip the downloads and every few weeks I work through my runtimes making sure nothing slips through the net. 

As it is my choice I don't complain if some files are not in the place I want them.  Come to think of it I don't really complain if I don't like a product I just don't buy from that vendor again.  The only feedback I give is to credit the use of the product if I use it in a gallery render.

 

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

IIRC the difference between a .pz2 that changes material settings and an .mc6 that changes material settings is 2 lines at the top of the file. In all other respects they are identical. In fact you can switch them back and forth by changing those two lines and the extension. 

 

As for why they are in Poses? Tradition. Poser only had one place to put them originally, Poses, and that is still where most people look for them.

Quote - As it is my choice I don't complain if some files are not in the place I want them.  Come to think of it I don't really complain if I don't like a product I just don't buy from that vendor again.  The only feedback I give is to credit the use of the product if I use it in a gallery render.

The only problem with that approach is that unless you let the vendor know why you won't purchase from them again, they'll not consider that maybe they should change.

Would you change a part of your personality that people didn't like, if no one told you they didn't like it?

 

As far as MAT .pz2 files, I seem to recall it being mentions (by bagginsbill I think) that .pz2 files also contain information for stuff relevant to poses; like animation info, rotation, and translation data. Data that is completely unnecessary for a MAT file.

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If you're joking that's just cruel, but if you're being sarcastic, that's even worse.

Yep, I see your point that if I don't complain the vender will not change but in many cases there is little point.  If there is a little problem that is easily sorted then it does not seem to be worth the bother, particularly if it is one of those negatives that others might see as a plus.  To the other extreme the product just does not work or is so far off being ready for the market that you wonder how it made it through for sale in the first place.  These days that is rearly the case but when I first started buying it was not uncommon. 

 

On the rare occasion I have tried to give critical feedback it has been a waste of my time.  For example, the product that I put off buying for a long while because it looked low quality in the promos.   In a moment of madness I purchased it and it was quite brilliant.  I did email the vendor saying I liked the product but felt that they might be loosing sales due to the promos not reflecting the quality of the product.  Result - nothing, renders remained the same and no reply.  I could even have accepted if there was not reply but the promos changed. 

 

Still I am taking this thread off track so I will leave it at that and bury my head back behind the monitor.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.