Extract multiple .zip files into a single folder

A Poser or DAZ Studio user may find they want to un-zip multiple .ZIP files. Such as, for instance, a mix of store-downloads and freebie .ZIPs accumulated over a period of several weeks. The default behaviour of most ZIP utilities is to extract each .ZIP into its own folder. You may thus end up with 50 new folders. This is fine, if you want to carefully cut-paste from each folder to assemble a unified runtime, checking things as you go, and then merge that with your main runtime. That’s the best way to do it if your new content is from a wide range of sources, and you need to visually check each one for packaging problems.

But… let’s say you have all the Poser 11.2 free content .ZIP files downloaded. In this case you know that their folder structures are all going to be viable and all be the same. So you don’t need to manually check and re-sort. In that case you may want the popular WinRAR utility, because it can do what 7-Zip can’t — extract multiple .ZIPs into a single unified folder. Here’s the setting to tell it to do that…

(For multiple 3D Warehouse Collada .ZIPs you also need to tick “Rename” when the ‘overwrite?’ prompt appears, as many use the same model.dae file-name).

Then, once you have the unified mega-runtime containing your new content, you simply copy the ../runtime (or in some cases the ../content folder containing the ..runtime below it) and paste it into your existing main ../runtime or ../content folder as required. My main ../runtime folder is under My Documents, which means that Windows is happy to merge stuff into it.

Sadly it’s impossible to have a single .zip extract just its multiple runtime folders, combine them into one, while also retaining its own sub-folder structure. For instance…

|
fluffybunny/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|
fluffysquirrel/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|
fluffybear/runtime/
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|

To a unified single combined /runtime/ folder, thus:

/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries

I’ve spent hours trawling through Z-zip, WinRAR, Powershell, and others. Nothing on earth will do it.

New Poser and DAZ users should know that it’s possible to tell your software to use multiple runtimes. You’re not restricted to just the default ones for your content (which may be in a place that Windows refuses to cut-paste into, or which causes over-write problems on a Mac). It may be more practical to have two different runtimes for i) your core shipped-with-the-software content and ii) your store-bought/freebies content.

Also, you can have the DAZ Studio runtime show up in Poser, though not all the content you see there can be imported to Poser’s stage via the DSON plugin. Likewise, DAZ Studio users can point the software to the Poser runtime, though they may not always be able to successfully load a bit of content from it (mostly due to Poser-only texture formats, I recall).