Since reinstalling all my software I've had my Poser library preferences set to don't search (as opposed to shallow search or deep search).

I've noticed that sometimes it will ask me to locate a file - but when the "Please locate xyz" dialog opens it'll be pointing right at it, like below which just happened now.

I know that in this example Poser's asking for an OBJ whereas the file's an OBZ (compressed OBJ) but that shouldn't make any difference should it.

And I'm fairly sure I've had this happen when the extension of searched for and listed files are identical - I'll try to remember to capture and post that when I see it next.

I have multiple runtimes, which is probably at the root of this - after all if everything was in one runtime and the paths were correct Poser would find every file without any problem.

- There's nothing (except Collections) under C:\Program Files\Poser Software\Poser 11\Runtime\Libraries\ as I installed the Poser 11 content to a different runtime

- The content that came with Poser 11 is in C:\Users\\Documents\Poser 11 Content\

- I have numerous other runtimes under C:\Users\\Documents\ that and add and remove from Poser frequently

From a strict file-system point of view, head.obj has nothing to do with head.obz, even if the latter is a head.zip containing head.obj. I doubt that Poser looks into the .obz to check.
That being said, is the "Deep search" selected in your preferences (in the Library tab)?
If it's only for the head.obj that this occurs regularly, I suggest that you extract the file head.obj from head.obz

I'm fairly sure that Poser always looks into known compressed files - I recall reading that somewhere. Where, I don't know.

All my Poser files (CR2, PP2, PZ2, OBJ, etc) are compressed (CRZ, PPZ, P2Z, OBZ, etc) and I never had this problem before, when I had search set to Shallow. 

I used to use Shallow because so many models, freebie and commercial, had incorrect paths, but I'm now going through the monumental task of trying to fix them. As I find them. If I can be bothered.

I gave up on Deep search ages ago when I realized it was quicker for me to manually locate misplaced files.

I think (but can't be 100% certain) that I've only ever had this happen with OBJ/OBZ files - it happened just now with pointlite.obj, opening up the Locate dialog with the folder containing pointlite.obz. I think I've also occasionally seen it with various other items from my Poser library - not certain whether they were OBJ/OBZs or other Poser files as I didn't make a note, Also those ones may have been simply incorrect paths.

Head.obj (when I open the Material room) and Pointlite.obj (when I change one of the Poser 11 default lights to be a point light) are the ones for which this is always happening. There may be others - I'll be keeping an eye out. 

Simple test would probably be to extract the OBJ as you suggest and see if that resolves it. I'll give that a try.

Poser opens the folder you last had open.  It does not follow the path in the file.   Therefore if you are looking in the right place, but the Cr2 is pointing to the Wrong place, when you agree to the search, you will see the file that Poser can't find.

That makes sense. But the two circumstances under which I'm 100% certain I've seen this are built into Poser, not reliant (I don't think) on any Poser files (CR2, PP2, etc). Poser should, internally, surely know where the OBJ it uses for the head image in the Material room preview and the OBJ it uses for the two concentric spheres/circles that represent a point light are kept, shouldn't it ?

Anyway, before trying Y-Phil's suggestion of extracting the head.obj and pointlite.obj from head.obz and pointlite.obz I thought it best to do a control run...

- Open Poser (default scene)

- Go to Material room (to get the 'Can't find head.obj')

- Go back to Pose room

- Add a light

- Change it to a Point (to get the 'Can't find pointlite.obj')

Guess what ? The problem didn't occur ! It obviously picked up the head.obj and pointlite.obj from the head.obz and pointlite.obz files without any trouble.

I'm even more puzzled now. 

My computer is teasing me !

Curious. If I repeat that process but add 'Load a prop' between 'Open Poser' and 'Go to Material room' the problem does occur.

But sometimes it's slightly different (I thought I'd seen this happen before but wasn't sure) - I get the  'Can't find head.obj' dialog and sort that out, but I don't get the  'Can't find pointlite.obj' dialog. From the Pose room preview I can see the light changes to a point light, but there's no geometry for it so I can't see where it is.

Time for bed I think. If I forget about it it might go away. :D

Setting the search depth to none isn't intended for day to day use. It's mostly there for content testing purposes. It's recommended to set the search depth to at least shallow. That way it will find lights in .LTZ files and cameras in .CMZ.

Ah yes, that is what it says in the manual (Poser 11 reference manual pages 42-43 screenshot below) although it doesn't mention anything about compressed files there.

But consider me as a pedant and perpetual content tester - I prefer to edit a Poser file and correct erroneous paths than to wait for Poser to find the file for me (which it sometimes failed to do even after a long search using Shallow or even Deep)

Setting the search depth to none isn't intended for day to day use. It's mostly there for content testing purposes. It's recommended to set the search depth to at least shallow. That way it will find lights in .LTZ files and cameras in .CMZ.

Hmmm...

The two files I've seen this happen with, Head.obz and pointlite.obz, are part of  Poser 11, and as stated on page 46 of the Poser 11 reference manual - "Please note that all content included with Poser is compressed." 

Which would make it doubly bizarre that Poser itself didn't know that its own zipped files are zipped, wouldn't it ?

I think what Andy (donnena) said, to paraphrase "the fact that it opens at the correct folder is a red herring", is probably the key. My guess is that it's because Poser is erroneously looking for Head.obz/obj and pointlite.obz/obj in the default Poser location, C:\Users\\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime\Geometries\ even if the user installed the Poser built-in content to a different location, as I did.

I think what Andy (donnena) said, to paraphrase "the fact that it opens at the correct folder is a red herring", is probably the key. My guess is that it's because Poser is erroneously looking for Head.obz/obj and pointlite.obz/obj in the default Poser location, C:\Users\\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime\Geometries\ even if the user installed the Poser built-in content to a different location, as I did.

I have Poser11 in its old "SmithMicro" folder, even though it's Bondware's version, it's located on the drive C:
Besides this, I've Poser12 installed on a new drive: P:Poser:Poser12 and the whole collections of runtimes in P:Poser:Runtimes, all in common to both Poser versions, except that Poser11 doesn't have Poser12's content in its own collection.

From my own observations, Poser seems to search in the whole runtimes collection, starting with the first (as displayed in the Library window). Their order is written in the Poser-related  roaming profile folder, in a file called "LibraryPrefs.xml".

When it fails to find what it's looking for, it presents a folder that seems to correspond to the last position from which I've imported an object, or an HDRi or any bitmap I was looking for.

Y-Phil posted at 7:02 AM Tue, 10 May 2022 - #4438384

...When it fails to find what it's looking for, it presents a folder that seems to correspond to the last position from which I've imported an object, or an HDRi or any bitmap I was looking for.

I've been trying to come up with a set of steps that produce this fault repeatably with file searcgh set to None. But sometimes it's finding both ('Head' and 'pointlite'), and sometimes finding neither. Then this happened:

Although I'm not 100% sure it's highly likely that on the previous run it asked me to locate pointLite.obj. So on this run when it can't find Head.obj it opens the "Please Locate..." dialogue with the last folder from which I'd located something for it.

And I'm now fairly certain that the runtime that Poser first looks in (and if file search is set to None the ONLY runtime it looks in) to find an OBJ file is the runtime from which a Poser file (PP2, CR2, etc) was last loaded.

Okay, I think the fault is now repeatable. But I'd appreciate somebody else who uses multiple runtimes confirming this. All you need to do (assuming you're still using the Poser default startup scene) is from the Poser main menu temporarily set Edit > General Preferences > Library > File search to 'None' and perform the following steps

- Open Poser (default scene), make sure you have file search set to None

- Load a prop. To reproduce the fault condition load it from a different runtime, i.e. any runtime that doesn't hold the default Poser content. Note that if any of the paths in the PP2 are incorrect you'll see "Please Locate..." dialogues for each and every one of them.

- Go to Material room (to get the 'Can't find head.obj'). N.B. If the preview image for the PoserSurface is not displayed (the eye is closed) you'll have to display it.

- Go back to Pose room

- Add a light

- Change it to a Point (to get the 'Can't find pointlite.obj')

(When you've finished don't forget to set file search back to whatever you normally use :D )

And confirmation that it's got nothing to do with compressed files. Even with the OBJs extracted from the OBZs the same problem occurs.

Curious thing though - why doesn't it ask me to locate spotLite.obj when I do 'Add a light' after 'Go back to Pose room ?

Also if, after doing 'Add a light' I change it to Infinite, Diffuse IBL, or Area Light it does that without any problem. It's specifically the Point Light that throws a wobbly. 

(No, the default scene only contains two types of lights - three Spots and one Area Light. So it's not that Poser had already loaded the othe light OBJs, at least not via the default scene)

If the sought OBJ / OBZ file-name is longer than eight characters, do others initially hide off left end of field ? This is an occasional problem with texture files, but very disconcerting...

FWIW, don't such 8-character fields hark back to the earliest days of Poser ??

That's an interesting point as the only light geometry that cause a problem (pointLite.obj) is 9 characters, whereas the other 3 that don't (areaLite.obj, infLite.obj, and spotLite.obj) are 8 or less.

However, Head.obj is only 4 characters and the same problem occurs with that too.

So I don't think that's the problem - at least not for Head.obj. Although it could be the problem for pointLite.obj I think it more likely that an an explanation that applies to both pointLite.obkj and Head.obj will be the answer

P.S. I recall having to use eight character filenames (usually 6 characters followed by ~1, or ~2, etc) when using the DOS cd (change directory) command, and having to use  dir /x (print directory, displaying 'the short names generated for non-8dot3 files') to find out what 9+ character directory names had been truncated to. I just checked and it's still the case if you run cd from a command prompt in Windows 10. dir /? gives the explanation of the /x option. So, for example, a file/directory called 'My Poser Stuff' would be truncated to 'MYPOSE~1'

3dcheapskate posted at 9:07 AM Tue, 10 May 2022 - #4438393

And confirmation that it's got nothing to do with compressed files. Even with the OBJs extracted from the OBZs the same problem occurs.

Curious thing though - why doesn't it ask me to locate spotLite.obj when I do 'Add a light' after 'Go back to Pose room ?

Also if, after doing 'Add a light' I change it to Infinite, Diffuse IBL, or Area Light it does that without any problem. It's specifically the Point Light that throws a wobbly. 

(No, the default scene only contains two types of lights - three Spots and one Area Light. So it's not that Poser had already loaded the othe light OBJs, at least not via the default scene)

The very first runtime for Poser11, in its Runtimes collection is its own "Poser 11 Content"

Y-Phil posted at 2:23 AM Wed, 11 May 2022 - #4438424

3dcheapskate posted at 9:07 AM Tue, 10 May 2022 - #4438393

And confirmation that it's got nothing to do with compressed files. Even with the OBJs extracted from the OBZs the same problem occurs.

...

Curious thing though - why doesn't it ask me to locate spotLite.obj when I do 'Add a light' after 'Go back to Pose room ?

Also if, after doing 'Add a light' I change it to Infinite, Diffuse IBL, or Area Light it does that without any problem. It's specifically the Point Light that throws a wobbly. 

(No, the default scene only contains two types of lights - three Spots and one Area Light. So it's not that Poser had already loaded the othe light OBJs, at least not via the default scene)

I tried to follow these steps and problem: search=None means one question for each object present in the default scene, and the same question coming back and coming back and coming back and... pew...
I'm stopping there the test, sorry

The very first runtime for Poser11, in its Runtimes collection is its own "Poser 11 Content"

I'm guessing that your default scene isn't the Poser default one ?

And I'd guess that your default scene includes things from other runtimes ?

I get the same if I open one of my own scenes. I get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the first OBJ. If I look for the missing file manually and click Open when I find it, then I get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the next OBJ. Etc. Then it goes through each texture JPG in turn.

On the other hand If I click Cancel (i.e. I don't look for the file manually) and when the "The file was not found. Do you want to continue to look for missing files?" appears click Yes, I then get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the next OBJ. Etc. Then it goes through each texture JPG in turn.

Oh dear, that's irritating ! 

I'm guessing that your default scene isn't the Poser default one ?

And I'd guess that your default scene includes things from other runtimes ?

I get the same if I open one of my own scenes. I get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the first OBJ. If I look for the missing file manually and click Open when I find it, then I get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the next OBJ. Etc. Then it goes through each texture JPG in turn.

On the other hand If I click Cancel (i.e. I don't look for the file manually) and when the "The file was not found. Do you want to continue to look for missing files?" appears click Yes, I then get the "Please Locate..." dialog for the next OBJ. Etc. Then it goes through each texture JPG in turn.