scotchfairy - 12 March 2013 01:20 AM
I’ve noticed a fairly serious problem: the Daz Install Manager, the Documentation Wiki, and the Install files that pop up when you first try and install Studio3D all seem to have different ideas about where the image libraries should be installed under Mac OS X.
The default installation paths are there if you don’t have installed things in another location, if so, you will have to choose that location. This is not Mac OS X specific at all, but the whole notion of “Runtimes” and “Content directories” is a heritage from Poser (which came on Mac OS X 7 or 8 if I’m not wrong.
Depending on your setup, diskspace, milage, there are several different ways to setup your installations.
(a) Use the default where DAZ Studio materials are located in ~/Documents/DAZ Studio/My Library (I think it is)
(b) Select your own location of choice. I recommend to have a separate disk (mine is called DAZBoot), which mounts as /Volumes/<diskname>/<what you want here>. Why is this a good solution? If you have both Runtime(s), your DS temporary folders and the place where you save your own texturemaps etc located here, you can access it all from a second computer (as long as you save as .duf), and then not only loading the .dufs will work, but all files referenced as /Volumes/<diskname>/<whatever> will load without any fuzz.
scotchfairy - 12 March 2013 01:20 AM
Worse, a good many of the “Read Me” and other set up files in the Documentation Center Wiki seem to be incomplete. Help files that are missing the last third to half of the install procedure for an item are worse than missing ones. Similarly, there are many, many items in the store that it’s unclear which version of the software they’re meant to run on, or even if they’re superfluous for users with newer versions of Studio3D. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve paid for some Genesis items that I may not actually need, but can’t verify if the files were included in my current version of Studio3D.
That is because DAZ has been converting (or is in the progress of converting) 15000+ items. Personally I can live with old read me’s that are temporary broken, it beats “not being able to install the content at all as old content using WISE installers was either Mac OS 9 or Rosetta dependent”. The info about which version the work for in the store is sometimes broken, but I recommend using DS 4.5 64 bit version on Mac OS X.
What items do you not need? Most content comes in several flavours, often Poser + DAZ Studio, there is no cost involved if you by something that is for both versions. The only is when there are things for M4 and Genesis that is a bundle of two items.
scotchfairy - 12 March 2013 01:20 AM
The program looks impressive, but trying to install this mess as a naive user is a pain, and I’m not a Mac OS newbie. I still haven’t figured out why none of my library items will show up as Smart Content, even though they’re showing up in the Content Library now. Some of the purchased items say on their ReadMe pages that they have updated metadata which should fix that problem.
Only items with metadata shows up in the Smart Content, and sometimes DAZ Studio lose the connection to the Smart Content Database. Pesonally I never use smart content, I always use the Content Browser, as smart content only exists for a very small portion of all content I have, and I don’t have time to make my own, I rather learn were my stuff is (and believe me, that’s a lot of stuff to remember)
scotchfairy - 12 March 2013 01:20 AM
And I don’t understand why adding “V4 and M4 for Genesis” doesn’t add those characters to the library (that I can see). I have Victoria 5 and Michael 5 already installed, and they show up correctly.
V4 and M4 for Genesis are morphs that makes Genesis to be shaped like V4 / M4, nothing more. It is useful fitting items for V4/M4 onto genesis, and when you are using Poses made for V4/M4 on Genesis, or Skins, but it is nothing more that that.
scotchfairy - 12 March 2013 01:20 AM
My only real complaint is with the inconsistent documentation. After all, it took me over a week to get Adobe CS 5.5 completely installed and running on my system, and I’ve been using Photoshop for 10 years, and Illustrator for closer to 15. Large package installations are a pain, even when everything goes right.
The documentation is sometimes weak, I agree. When I started about a little less than 3 years ago, I did three complete reinstalls before I understood where things should go. I did as most people do, trust the “suggested installation path” from all content installers, but that is the path that was when that installer was created. That is why I personally love the DIM /DAZ Install Manager. You just set it up telling it where should the stuff go, and then it “just works”. One thing to keep in mind is that you need to know if you separate your content into a Poser (Poser content works in DS, often anyway, but doesn’t have any DS shaders) and a DS Runtime, or if you chuck everything into one single place. I have done differently on my two machines and mostly because Poser suffers more that DS when you have one big runtime. You can also sort by content type. There are numerous posts all over internet about how to make the perfect runtime for Poser. If you only run DS, I say chuck it all into one place, it is much easier.
I hope this helps!
