Digital Art Zone

Hey everyone,
I’m trying to load up a couple of clothing products I bought for Michael 4, but it just isn’t working. It’s the Cowboy pack and the Morphing Heads pack (pumpkin and skull). For starters, even though I put the morphing heads stuff in the folders that should’ve worked, I can’t even get it to show up in my content library. Secondly, the cowboy clothes ARE showing up in my content library, but when I go to load them, nothing happens. There’s no error of any kind. It appears that it does something, but nothing loads up. I have no idea what to do or what I’m doing wrong. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

The Morphing Head pack is for Michael 1 and 2, not Michael 4. If you look at the Additional Information tab on its page http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-s-conforming-halloween-heads/ it states the compatible figures.

Because there are cowboy outfits and textures for several different generations you are going to need to tell us precisely which one you bought for people to be able to help on that one. One possibility which would match what you saw is that you actually bought a texture pack instead of the outfit it goes with.

Given you have bought at least one of the items by mistake you can contact sales support to arrange a refund.

In general you can’t use an item from one generation with a figure from another generation. M4, V4 and K4 etc are the fourth generation figures, V3, M3, and so on were third generation, Generations 1 and 2 overlap, but there are very few items still available for them.

Genesis is Generation 5, with V5 and M5 being particular morphs of the Genesis figure, and can also use Gen 4 clothing via Autofit (and Gen 3 if you buy the Gen 3 figure packs). Genesis clothing can also be used on earlier figures.

Oh no! I just figured if something was compatible with older figures it would be compatible with newer versions of the same figure. Looks like I’m wrong. However, the one pack I bought is for Michael 4 and Hiro, so it should work. It’s just the “Cowboy For M4 and Hiro Pack” but I can’t get anything to load up.

Edit: I just figured out a potential second reason why it won’t work. Do I need to have both Hiro AND Michael? I only have M4 and don’t have Hiro at all. That might be it, even though I’m trying to load the clothes on Michael?

The good news is that not having Hiro isn’t a problem, and that I think I know what the issue is.

Based on your message about other items I suspect you are looking in the wrong place for your content. All items prior to Genesis loaded by default from the Poser runtime area of your content folder, not the Studio areas. Many older items will also not have the metadata to tell Smart Content how they link together. If you go to the Content Library Tab and open the Poser files area, then the first line that is revealed under that, you should see a list of folders including ‘figures’, ‘props’, ‘poses’, ‘hair’ and a bunch of others. Under both the ‘figures’ and ‘props’  folders and potentially the ‘poses’ folder as well will be the files for your cowboy clothing in a folder with ‘cowboy’ in its name.

If you look at the shop page for the item http://www.daz3d.com/shop/cowboy-for-m4-and-hiro/ and the ‘Whats Included and Features’ tab, you can see next to each item (CR2 and OBJ) or (PP2 and OBJ). You can ignore the OBJ, but the PP2 or CR2 tell you whether the items are character (CR2) or prop (PP2) files. The character files will be found under ‘figures’, the prop files under ‘props’ and any textures or poses (both .PZ2 for historical reasons) would be found under ‘poses’.

Hey DWG,
Thanks again for the reply. Ok so you mentioned the Poser runtime folder, but I’m using Daz Studio. Will those folders still possibly contain what I need? Also, I should mention I never downloaded the Poser files for any of my content, only the DS files, so could that have something to do with it? I’ll check the file folders you mentioned right away. I’ll update this if I make any progress.

UPDATE: Ok, I checked all the poser files/folders and none of the missing stuff is showing up in the Poser areas. Shoot! Well, I guess at least that tells us something. I’m just not sure what to do about it. Also, when I dug around in the actual file folders, the only thing I could find for the Cowboy for Michael stuff was in the textures folder in the runtime folder. It’s as if I only have the textures but not the actual physical objects installed (obj, cr2 files).

Make sure you download all installers. Unfortunately some Platinum Club items included the textures with the installer for the DAZ Studio settings, but to use the product you needed the Poser version - which contained the same texture files.

Hello Richard,
I did indeed download and use both installers, but still no luck. It doesn’t give me any errors unless I’m not selected on Michael, then it says “this item requires you to select an item in the scene” but if I select Micahel and try to load any of the clothes, nothing happens. The only thing I haven’t installed yet is the additional resource files that you can download from the product page. It’s asking me where I want to install them, and I have no idea what to tell it.

UPDATE: OK I GOT THE PROBLEM SOLVED! I called tech support and they figured it out right away. Basically, when I installed all my new content, it was installing to the wrong folder, so Daz couldn’t find the content. I had to go in an manually specify the folder it was going to, then everything installed perfectly. Thanks for your help, guys. Can’t believe it was something so simple =)

You’ve said both:

“I should mention I never downloaded the Poser files for any of my content,”

and

“I did indeed download and use both installers”

 
Does that mean you have since gone back and downloaded the Poser installers you had ignored before? For Studio you need both the Poser and Studio sets of files. If you haven’t been back and rerun the installers, then you need to do that.

Despite files being referred to as ‘Poser’, Studio has always used them, it has a parallel set of files that can be used solely on Studio, but to allow content to be used on both Poser and Studio it has always been provided in Poser format (Generation 5 content for Genesis is the only exception). You can’t ignore the Poser files, they are fundamental to the products you are buying, and you need to be able to find your way around the Poser file structure - which is things like runtime/libraries/character when seen on the disk, or Poser Formats/(parent folder of runtime)/figures when seen from within the Content Library Tab of Studio.

“this item requires you to select an item in the scene”

 
That’s the error message when you try to use a texture without having the item it goes on selected. Are you getting to this texture file via the Content Library tab (specifically under Poser Formats/(whatever)/figures/m4cowboy), or via the Smart Content Tab? How many different files do you see there?

“The only thing I haven’t installed yet is the additional resource files that you can download from the product page. It’s asking me where I want to install them, and I have no idea what to tell it.”

Those are template files, they are used as guidance for creating new textures and are completely unnecessary for the outfit to function. They can be installed anywhere, or not at all. It won’t make any difference to the whether the outfit functions or not.

I’ve checked back and I do own the Cowboy pack. I’ve just reset it and there are four installers:
5205552 8/1/12 Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Poser Files - exe - pc Available 4
5205552 8/1/12 Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Poser Files - zip - mac Available 4
5205552 8/1/12 Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - DS Files - exe - pc Available 4
5205552 8/1/12 Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - Cowboy For M4 and Hiro - DS Files - zip - mac Available 4

You need to download and run both of the files identified as PC, which I’ve bolded (or the Mac files if you are on a Mac) nb your order number, the first thing on each line, will be different, but that is not significant.

If I download and run the Poser files installer, 8648_4_dpc_CowboyForM4andHiro_4.exe then it installs 15 .CR2 files into runtime/libraries/character/m4cowboy, 4 .PZ2 files into runtime/libraries/poses/m4cowboy and 4 .PP2 files into runtime/libraries/props/m4cowboy (and other files elsewhere, but these are the important ones).

If I download and run the Studio files installer, 8648_2_ds_CowboyForM4andHiro_2.exe, then it installs 17 .DS files into (my content folder)/people/Michael 4/Clothing/M4 Cowboy, and 6 .JPGs into (my content folder)/runtime/textures/RD/M4 Cowboy.

You need to confirm that you have all of both sets of files installed, and run the relevant installers if you do not.