Digital Art Zone

Richard Haseltine - 02 February 2013 03:23 PM

The only issue with the zips we have so far is that everything is in a folder called Content - butt hen, Renderosity and a lot of freebie makers do that too.

That’s not something that bothers me, personally.  I just open my runtime in one Explorer window and the zip file in another and drag things where I want them..

Richard Haseltine - 02 February 2013 04:17 PM

Spooky has already confirmed that the default path can be changed.

Hi Richard,

Sorry if I missed it…I have been reading both threads and don’t recall seeing it anywhere. Would it be possible to point to where it is with a link?

If the default path can be changed to external I’m more than happy to give it a try.

Thanks

Pen

I probably should do that instead of extracting to a temp folder and then having to delete all the DS folders when all I want are the Runtime folders.

Alisa Uh-Lisa - 02 February 2013 07:20 PM

Richard Haseltine - 02 February 2013 03:23 PM

The only issue with the zips we have so far is that everything is in a folder called Content - butt hen, Renderosity and a lot of freebie makers do that too.

That’s not something that bothers me, personally.  I just open my runtime in one Explorer window and the zip file in another and drag things where I want them..

Just like to reinforce views already expressed. Its best to keep drives for operating system, applications and data separate. Periodically you will have to upgrade the operating system due to an upgrade or virus. Keeping large amounts of data on your c:drive is just silly especially with the popularity of relatively small SSDs. OK so the installer can use your current location but does not recommend it. Why not? What is the downside? I need that explained before I would use the installer. I’ve hundreds of gigabytes of files and not only from Daz. Its taken weeks to construct my content manager. I cannot simply start again from scratch.

Richard Haseltine - 01 February 2013 04:30 PM

DAZ has always permitted members of a household to share content - you don’t need a separate license for each family member who does 3D, at least as long as they are living at home.

The new EULA packaged with the Install Manager, unlike the old one, specifically says otherwise:

User may copy the Content onto the storage device of an unlimited number of computers. However, use of the Content on any of the computers to which User has installed the Content is for User’s exclusive use and no other individual or entity. Each individual must obtain his/her own license to use the Content.

Roboman28 - 04 February 2013 04:16 PM

Just like to reinforce views already expressed. Its best to keep drives for operating system, applications and data separate. Periodically you will have to upgrade the operating system due to an upgrade or virus. Keeping large amounts of data on your c:drive is just silly especially with the popularity of relatively small SSDs. OK so the installer can use your current location but does not recommend it. Why not? What is the downside? I need that explained before I would use the installer. I’ve hundreds of gigabytes of files and not only from Daz. Its taken weeks to construct my content manager. I cannot simply start again from scratch.

This recommendation (as well as the library reinstall) is more for organization within the Installer program…and more-so for the average user who wants to “set it and forget it.”  The advanced folks can reset defaults anywhere they want and organize each download to go where they want, provided they know what they’re doing.  (i.e., knowing how not to mess up Genesis files.)

I’ve just used this thing tonight and it’s crazy easy.  Set my install filter (remember that term) where I needed it before downloading anything, check the products I wanted (Poser & DS files are still separate with different versions where applicable) hit the Start Queue button and waited.  Installation starts up automatically IF that’s what you want.

Most of us who like to customize have the sense to pay attention to details, so as long as you tell the program what you want it to do, it will do it.

...and I’m so not uninstalling any of my content until something is outdated/updated…but I like this thing very much after one use.

Edit:  One correction about default control…the installer for the program itself has no option to change paths.  That annoyed me.  I’ve been trying to keep as many programs OFF my system drive as possible.

>hi pendaria,,

I never know what daz plan untill it will be released,
but I can confirm,, You can change default path to your volume, or your select HD,
(your daz contents folda) when you use the Install manager.
as you have done so.

about it do not worry^^

even though you may need to manually (simply copy and paste, or serch the directory from file window,
at first time, when use new installer,  but after that,, installer can record user default locaiton .

or you may need not,, I think.. the installer may read .ini file, then auto applied default install path for each user.
(I hope so,, it is more useful,, and it is not difficult, at all to make so)

I am not programmer,, but it seems usuall . if the new installer can not change default location,
DAZ need to apologize every user,, who have changed default location. 

AWSOME!

Glorious!!

That’s the way for future! (At least for Daz’s store products).

- Installers disk room saves must be up 70% (don’t accept “clear after install”, so you will be able to reinstall in seconds)
- Installation mess reduced of 90%
- Installation speed is airplane compared to bicycle.
- Easy board to manage installations in # custom directories.
- Not last and not least, easy way to flash-install one-time-needed stuff in “MyCurrentScene” ad-hoc directory and flash-uninstall it afterward.

And just a question: what about “metadata-turmoil” ?

Edit: I am a DS4 only user, and don’t know how this works with Poser.

Murgatroyd - 04 February 2013 06:54 PM

Richard Haseltine - 01 February 2013 04:30 PM

DAZ has always permitted members of a household to share content - you don’t need a separate license for each family member who does 3D, at least as long as they are living at home.

The new EULA packaged with the Install Manager, unlike the old one, specifically says otherwise:

User may copy the Content onto the storage device of an unlimited number of computers. However, use of the Content on any of the computers to which User has installed the Content is for User’s exclusive use and no other individual or entity. Each individual must obtain his/her own license to use the Content.

So I noticed from another thread - I will ask about that.

Temporarily removed.

So far I am VERY VERY happy with the DIM. The points I am trying to bring up are suggestings to make a great product even better!

I was hoping that there would be a way to also organize if the DIM installs metadata updates or just the content updates.
But there are workarounds for that.

Back on topic:

I did notice one thing when installing the DIM.

It seems that there is a way to change the suggested default path of the content files.
That this would not be possible is was worried me first but turned out to be no problem.

it seems that there is no way to change where the DIM itself is installed?

I noticed that my e-mail adress is clearly visible in this folder

C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager\UserAccounts

Again my original concern was privacy.

If you work at home with your family there are some concerns that the kids may play around with that account information.

If you are working in a large office and many different people have access to the same workstation one may also prefer that no User Account information is placed in the shared space that can be accessed by all users that log in.
There may even be work stations that give “Guest Users” access.

It is not a problem for me in my current situation but I still believe that it is something to be considered.
I post this intended as general feedback of things that may or may not have been considered
Currently I am well aware that most DS users are located at home. But one day it may be the case that DS will be used like photoshop by a large crowd of people in offices.

More important real pressing question:

Which DIM files do I have to make a backup of when I want to prepare for the next system crash or for a system update like win7 to win8?

My main idea is that I do not again want to download all files just in order to “feed” them to the DIM so it knows they are there.
Allthough downloading really is very fast. I prefer to have the DIM remembering after a crash / reinstallation what is allready placed in the runtime so that everything can be set up quickly when CMS, .dsx,dsa metadata backups etc were made as well.

I asume that I have to make a backup of all folders in:

C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D\InstallManager

I asume I probably should make a backup of my “/downloads” folder were the .zip and .dsx files are placed if I do not want to redownload them.

Subquestion:
Are those .dsx files the “minimetadata” as they were called in another thread?

Is there any other location I missed?

I expected also something to be placed in C:\ProgramData\DAZ 3D because I found a folder called My DAZ Library there before.
But it vanished now after I started to do a clean installation.

Is the DIM out if so where can i download it?

Acudia3D - 05 February 2013 03:13 PM

Is the DIM out if so where can i download it?

It’s being sent out to a limited number of people at a time, as a preview - my copy came a few hours ago.

I am impressed.  It seems to work well and do what I want.  I have content going back to Studio 1.  It is in several different locations, usually corresponding to the convention at the time.  It is in folders scattered over the file system, and none is the default.  I did make yet another location, since it strongly suggested doing so.  It installed there and so far the content all appears in Studio and appears to work even though Genesis is not installed in that location.  Thus it looks like you can put your content pretty much where you like.

I was not planning on uninstalling much at this time, but I tried a few.  It is tedious to run the uninstallers and re-download the products.  In addition, it is not really necessary since it all works where it is.  It would be just for consistency and ease of management, and can be done later. It seems to be your choice whether to do this (always a good thing).  In other words, it should not interfere with your current way of storing content.  I would be cautious before trying to reinstall Gen 4 and earlier content. 

I found the UI pretty easy to use and understand.  It is certainly orders of magnitude easier to download, install, and manage your content in my opinion.  It eliminates the problem of separating the Mac from the PC downloads among other things and should eliminate all-nighters when you download a big bundle.

It does seem to use the C:\Users\Public\Documents\DAZ 3D folder independently of where the content is stored.  It would be nice to have this and where the executable is installed be configurable, but it isn’t a biggie to me.  It should not be hard to move the content to a different computer.  It is not clear what has to be done to move the installer files, but hopefully copying the files in this folder would be most of it.

In short, it seems well done and provides a real benefit in managing content.

I would suggest looking at the 3 YouTube videos first.

I discovered that I am getting a lot of errors in the DIM log like:

WARNING: QAccessibleWidget::rect: This implementation does not support subelements! (ID 3 unknown for QWidget)
WARNING: QAccessibleWidget::rect: This implementation does not support subelements! (ID 4 unknown for QWidget)
WARNING: QAccessibleWidget::rect: This implementation does not support subelements! (ID 4 unknown for QWidget)
WARNING: QAccessibleWidget::rect: This implementation does not support subelements! (ID 3 unknown for QWidget)
WARNING: QAccessibleWidget::rect: This implementation does not support subelements! (ID 2 unknown for QWidget)

When Googling for this I didn’t find any explanations except possibly problems with content created in DS 4.0.  The content I download with DIM was all recent.

Is there an explanation?