November 19, 2010 - P3dO 2.4 massive update

Lots of new features, lots of improvements make this version one of the most massive update in P3dO history. So I am sorry but this is also a massive announcement.

Here's a summary of main additions:

ZipInstaller 2.4	Find dialog	Poser Categories colored nodes	Poser Navigation history
Enhanced Favorites	Runtime Manager 2.3.3	Pattern Renamer 2.4	RGBA layers viewer

	ZipInstaller 2.4 - Poser dedicated unzipper ZipInstaller purpose is to: Install from ZIP into Poser Runtimes. Uninstall from a previous ZIP extraction. Compared to 2.3 version, ZipInstaller 2.4 is a new software: new interface and much more features. Install from ZIP ZipInstaller will list a Zip content, showing pictures thumbnails, collisions, Poser references and... will check if the Zip extraction paths matches the ones contained in the main Figure file. Helper dots (  ) will indicate if you may unzip as-is or not. The example below shows 2 Textures ready to unzip. It also shows that those Textures already exist in target directory (yellow flag).
	But in case of error ( ) simply click the Scene button to fix destination paths. Very simple. Also, ZipInstaller will list Poser References not found in the Archive. Like this:
	Path error detection and fix, missing references, Collision detection, thumbnails. ZipInstaller is a very rich Poser unzipper. Uninstall The uninstall doesn't require an Unsetup list or anything like that, simply open the ZIP again with ZipInstaller and select the Uninstall tab. The plugin will detect the files that have been installed from this ZIP. Click Uninstall, et voila ! Like Awk does empty directories will be removed as well. See also this ZipInstaller screenshot (popup) or visit ZipInstaller page for more information.
	Find dialog Show directory content option That little check-box is a blessing. By clicking "Show directory content" all directories whose name match your query will be populated and their content shown in P3dO's search result set. Little box, powerful effect: type "Victoria V3 V4" in document name, check "Any term" and "Show directory content" and P3dO will fetch all your Victoria stuff. Sort by directory This new sort option is the consequence of the above. Sort by directory is set automatically each time you perform a Search, Explore subfolders or Explore Favorites (new, see Enhanced Favorites below), and unset when you navigate as usual. Thus the above "Victoria" search will be sorted by directory. A directory icon will indicate a directory change in the thumbnails view. Enhanced find As for the Find dialog itself you may now refine your search and ask for All terms, Any terms or Exact phrase when looking for a file: - All terms: i.e "V4 shoes" will return Victoria shoes files, - Any term: i.e "V4 shoes" will return both Victoria and shoes files (including non Vicky shoes), - Exact phase: i.e "V4 shoes" will only return files whose name matches "*V4 shoes*".
	Directory Tree - Poser Categories with colored nodes In the nightmare jungle of your numerous Poser Runtimes, Categories, sub-categories and even sub-categories sub-directories here comes colored directory nodes per Poser Category. Needless to say this is a great visual helper for many operations. Color is the same as the file extension block in thumbnails view. Of course other Categories not shown in the side snapshot are colored too, but also Textures and Geometry nodes.
	Poser Navigation history - Poser Categories Popup menu I updated the Popup Runtime directory list popup menu which is now reflecting your Poser navigation, like Poser does. See side snapshot for what it gives. This will be another great time saver while browsing your Poser libraries.
	Enhanced Favorites Did you know ? That little drop down button at the top of P3dO docking Windows is a menu. In the case of Repository it gives you the ability to switch the Repository to other views like: Favorites, My documents, any custom directory,... Thus you may use the Repository as your Favorites navigation system, and then have both Favorites and directory tree at the same time. In order to better use this feature the ability to customize the Repository thumbnails has been added (a Tiled view is the best imho). Explore Favorites command has been added to context menu. This is the same as Explore subfolders but where the subfolders would be your Favorites. Find command has been added to folder links to quickly perform a Find from the Favorites nodes (Find command has also been added to Directory cells in thumbnails view). Add to Favorites new dialog that will retain previous directory and Favorites icons automatically customized to the corresponding Poser Category (like PoserFavorite does).
	Runtime Manager 2.3.3 Runtime Manager, aka AwkPlugin, aka Scene Manager is a most convenient tool to manage your Poser Runtime directories. What can I do with Runtime Manager ? Scene Manager     Delete (uninstall) a 3D Scene and References at once     Move a 3D Scene and References to another Runtime Empty directories are deleted after the operation ! This not only for Poser but for other 3D file formats supported by P3dO as well: Carrara, 3DS, LWO,... Directory Manager For Poser only there's also a Directory Manager that will grab all Scenes on a given P3dO set (directory, subdirectories, search result,...) and do the same as above (Delete or Move complete directories). Directory manager is the tool to arrange your Poser Runtimes: split a Runtime, Merge 2 Runtimes, do the basic cleanup and management. What's new ? (#A) Menu like header Tab bar to distinguish between the 3 modes (Move, Copy or Delete). (#B) Navigation button: when an operation has been concluded you may go back to the main window and perform another operation. Like deleting scenes one by one, copying the same scene to several destination. (#C) Destination path customization button: the Poser relative path is not necessarily the one you want to copy your files to. This button offers various alternative solutions. Visit Awk Runtime manager page for more information.
	Pattern Renamer 2.4 Pat 2.4 comes with a handy 3 files WYSIWYG preview (see snapshot below) of your renaming settings and a new concept in mass renaming called: templates. There are 4 templates available: Renumber Directory Name Modified Date Creation Date Pat already used templates for Renumbering and you'll see usage is the same, except there is a supplementary step: clicking the "Add Template" button to insert other templates. Date templates customization (Day, Month, Year) is not that user friendly, this will be improved. Note that it is possible to insert regular characters between templates. Another feature is smooth refreshing: Past versions of Pat refreshed the whole P3dO thumbnails when updating. That one will just refresh the renamed cells, and the selection will remain unchanged, allowing another mass renaming on the same set. Visit Pattern Renamer page for more information.

Did you know ?
Since 1.9, you may convert current 3D scene to OBJ. Well, this is the purpose of that button and is based on the Save As dialog.
The whole exporter has been reviewed, simplified and new options added to generate MTL Texture paths.

Tip when exporting to OBJ click that check box ("Prompt for formats options"). This will automatically show the format options dialog once you have selected the file name.

Special mention for this cute feature.
P3dO is showing system thumbnails provided by Max shell extension. So you must have Max (or the shell extension) to see something.

If you know other Paint or 3D software with Windows thumbnails don't hesitate to report them to me, I will add those asap. btw Paint Shop Pro and Painter Windows like Explorer thumbnails support are coming soon.

Anime Studio thumbnails are associated to Anime Studio files in the same way as P3dO does for Poser, Daz Studio and Bryce.
This is the first in a series of Updates to add Anime Studio support to P3dO.
Anime Studio now has a Poser like content manager but no doubt P3dO is far far ahead.

I reviewed a number of image loaders to add RGBA information to the InDepth tree.
These are: DDS, TGA, PSD, TIFF and BMP formats.

RGBA layer viewing is a feature which already exists in P3dO.
It is the ability to combine Red, Green, Blue and Alpha individually, or select any combination, by checking the appropriate check box in InDepth tree.

I reviewed this and added a ctrl+W shortcut to allow switching from keyboard.

As well ctrl+T has been added to set Transparent and Opaque picture preview from keyboard. Note that when "Opaque" preview is set, layer switch will loop through RGB channels, regardless of existing Alpha channel in picture.

Direct Draw Surface (DDS): I completed the already existing DDS reader. P3dO is now supporting the most common DDS resources formats:
A8R8G8B8, X8R8G8B8, A8B8G8R8, X8B8G8R8, R8G8B8, A4R4G4B4, X4R4G4B4, A8L8, V8U8, DXT1, DXT3, DXT5 and ATI2 (aka 3Dc aka BC5_UNORM).
Some others are coming, to complete the recommended requirement of a DirectX DDS viewer.
Nintendo Texture Palette Library (TPL): I8, RGB5A3, RGBA8 and CMPR formats, first texture only. So far, P3dO is the only TPL browser. If you need some other TPL formats, I just need TPL sample files to provide them.
Pixar image (PXR). Probably not complete, I did this one on my own from Photoshop exported pictures.

P3dO is now showing Jpeg EXIF data in the InDepth tree. From Archives as well of course.
This first version is intended to validate the EXIF parsing, so feel free to contact me for any oddities. I expect a plural, here :).
Landscape vs Portrait, IPTC and GPS information are yet to come. I promise soon.

Thumbnails cache speed has been improved - should say fixed - and your pictures thumbnails will now load almost instantly.
InDepth tree list INJ/REM content.
Poser displacement maps added to the Poser references list in InDepth tree and a bug fix on INJ/REM references.
MTL added to the OBJ references list.
Poser viewer deeper search for Textures (now similar to Poser).
Pose viewer allow viewing of partial PZ2 (body parts).
ZipExplorer fixed number of files issue.
Thumbnails view auto scroll when dragging over the edges.
Rsr2Png 2.3.4 updated UI
shift + delete will definitely delete a file like in Windows Explorer
Custom Formats in options dialog: add new extensions to P3dO's internal filter list
Directory tree: Faster in both expanding and refreshing.
Fixed: when renaming a directory, the renamed node is automatically sorted.
Fixed: navigation history and I updated to Vista like history navigation.
Fixed: Carrara References list in Scene Manager (2.3 bug).
Fixed: thumbnail vanish when dropping (copy) a file on a Tree node.
Fixed: crash when reading some Zipped/Rared picture formats (PSP, PCX and probably some others).

Dutch translation updated, thank you again Frans.
Spanish translation updated, thanks to Luis Salgado Duarte. Thank you so much Luis.
French translation updated by me.

November 12 - P3dO pro 2.4 beta

P3dO 2.4 first release. The purpose of this upload is to validate 2.4 - Eagerly waiting for feedbacks :) Then 2.4 will be officially declared released next Friday and P3dO 2.4 will be released too.

Of course 2.4 is similar to 2.3.5, since 2.3.5 was work in progress on 2.4, but there are still new features. Note that my what's new list from 2.3 to 2.4 contains as much as 34 features and bug fixes. Probably a record in P3dO history.
I will describe 2.4 in detail next week. Today let's just talk about new features since 2.3.5. For a more complete reference you may read the 2.3.5 updates page.

I updated the Popup Runtime directory list popup menu which is now reflecting your Poser navigation, like Poser does.
See above snapshot for what it gives.
This will be another great time saver while browsing your Poser libraries.

P3dO is now showing Jpeg EXIF data in the InDepth tree. From Archives as well of course.
This first version is intended to validate the EXIF parsing, so feel free to contact me for any oddities. I expect a plural, here :).
Landscape vs Portrait, IPTC and GPS information are yet to come. I promise soon.

note The thumbnails cache speed has been improved - should say fixed - and your pictures thumbnails will now load almost instantly.

Nintendo Texture Palette Library (TPL). I8, RGB5A3, RGBA8 and CMPR formats, first texture only. So far, P3dO is the only TPL browser.
Pixar image (PXR). Probably not complete, I did this one on my own from Photoshop export images.

October 29, 2010 - Pattern Renamer 2.4

P3dO Explorer 2.4 will be available in 2 weeks so this month update is a limited one with two plugins:

PatternRenamer 2.4
ZipInstaller 2.4.

Pat 2.4 comes with a handy 3 files WYSIWYG preview (above snapshot) of your renaming settings and a new concept in mass renaming called: templates.
There are 4 templates available:
Renumber
Directory Name
Modified Date
Creation Date
Pat already used templates for Renumbering and you'll see usage is the same, except there is a supplementary step: clicking the "Add Template" button to insert other templates.
Date templates customization (Day, Month, Year) is not that user friendly, this will be improved.
Note that it is possible to insert regular characters between templates.

Another feature that will be activated with P3dO 2.4 is smooth refreshing: Past versions of Pat refreshed the whole P3dO thumbnails when updating. That one will just refresh the renamed cells, and the selection will remain unchanged, allowing another mass renaming on the same set.
Visit Pattern Renamer page for more information.

And yet another ZipInstaller update. I am not done with this software yet, there are many other updates coming.
This version adds a list of References not found in Archive. This may be a normal situation (if for example the missing Reference is Victoria OBJ), but it may not. Anyway, in case ZipInstaller is not able to find a Reference in the archive it will add it at the bottom of the archive content, like this:

See also this ZipInstaller screenshot (popup) or visit the plugin page for more information.