Digital Art Zone

So embarrassed to need help with this—I used Poser 4 for years and bought and installed tons of DAZ content with the wonderful VISE installers. But then I went back to traditional art and only decided to return to Poser recently. I’ve studied up on P8, but cannot find anything anywhere (here or at Renderosity) on how to properly install DAZ content on my new Mac Air. (OSX 10.8.2)

Two attempts to install V4 have failed, due to not having a clue what address to type into the little box on the installer. I was used to just selecting my Mac’s hard drive with the old installers…

And then there’s the Power Installer folder, which I can’t figure out and don’t know when (or if?) I’m supposed to run it.

Could someone take pity on my ignorance and tell me how to do this, please?

What error message do you get when trying to install?

Powerloader is for DS only, you don’t need it for Poser.

Power Loader is for DAZ Studio only, you should not install it for Poser 8

The installer for V4 should be pointed to the Folder which ‘holds’ your Runtime folder, and then everything will go into the right place.

Thank you so much! My tech support friend will help me to figure out what the address should be and I’ll be able to do 3D computer art again. I really appreciate the fast replies!

Or not….it took an hour of creative Mac geek work to get V4 and her morphs to install. And it only worked because he figured out how to force the installer to run as root from the command line.

I definitely have admin privileges, but on our OS (10.8.2 Mountain Lion), the installer didn’t see that and didn’t ask for a password. Hence the 0755 permission errors. Have other DAZ customers using this OS reported the problem or mentioned solutions?

( Here’s hoping there’s a fix for ordinary humans, because I need to be able to install my own products and not have him do his arcane command line thing each time I buy something…:P )

New problem following the command line force install of V4—she shows up in my Library, but when I click on her icon, I get continuous Cannot Find messages.

Two of them were “V4BODYGrps.pz2” and “V4BODYChnnls.pz2”, but there were so many more of them that I ended up having to force-quit Poser 8

Can anyone suggest a fix?

Not sure if it’s related, but I also get a lost ground object message when I first open Poser 8. Did a lot of searches of various forums and tech help pages, but didn’t find any other users with the problem…even though I swear I’ve heard it mentioned many times before.

I’d be really grateful for any help anyone can give. I’m now behind on a painting project that means a lot to me. I just need to pose and light V4 and do a simple render in order to have a model.

Those files are created when you “initialise” the figure - they essentially list the addons you have installed in a way that lets Poser build the complete figure. Ddi you allow the installer to run the initialisation step? Where is V4 installed, and what operating system are you using?

The only way to get the installer to run at all was for my tech support person to “go into the command line to get it to install as root”...whatever that means. And we still didn’t get Vicki installed in the right place, I guess, though the destination was the runtime inside Poser—I don’t have any external runtimes.

But from what I’m reading above, I have a feeling that doing that doing the Mac geek magic caused it to not “initialize”—which isn’t something I can ever remember having to do with Poser 4 and the VISE installers, so could someone tell me what it is and how to do it, please? Maybe it had a different name back in the Poser 4 era?

Spent some time at Smith Micro this AM and learned that they won’t support Poser 8 on my Mac Air running 10.8.2. But they will support Poser 9, so if I want to use Vicki and my other great DAZ content, I may have to pony up for an upgrade. Not happy about that, but it is what it is.

I still need to learn more about installing products, though. Has anyone done a walk-through for newbies that I could look at? Or did these changes in installers happen gradually enough that everyone just somehow caught on to having to type in a destination for the files and also initializing them? With an old VISE one, I just selected my Mac’s hard drive and it installed them in my Poser runtime, so I’m lost. And haven’t been able to find any tutorials. Any help with installation would be appreciated.

Initializing started with the 4th Generation figures—it’s a method for adding new morph channels to the figure, instead of having to create a new cr2 if you run out of channels.

To initialize manually, go to Runtime:Libraries:!DAZ and run the file DzCreateExPFiles-V4.command

Thank you, fixmypcmike—I went and looked in my (non-working) copy of Poser 8 and clicked on it, only to be told I don’t have permission to access it. Is that just part of my on-going Poser 8 vs OS 10.8.2 problem, or is there something I need to do before I can run it? 

Also, you said to initialize manually and Richard (BTW, thank you for the reply, Richard!) mentioned it as being part of the installation process. If the installer will do it, is it OK to just do it that way? Once I upgrade to Poser 9, I’m hoping to learn how to install DAZ products in the simplest possible way—things have gotten really complicated compared to Poser 4 and it’s intimidating. If I didn’t desperately need access to a virtual model for my painting, I’d probably just throw up my hands and walk away. But I miss creating images in the program too and have wonderful products that I’d love to use.

I really appreciate all the help everyone is generously giving out here.

The installer should do it, and being an installer it should have permission to make the changes. However there are various ways in which it could fail - hence the advice to do it manually. This is why it’s not a good idea to have your content in the application folder - Windows can block some things from working.

The forum just ate my reply. But the gist of it was: won’t have to fiddle with Windoze, being on a Mac Air…not that this new Mountain Lion OS isn’t causing more problems than I’m used to having to deal with. But at least it’s not Windoze. Or so I tell myself.

I’m keeping the info on manually initializing just in case the upgrade to Po$er 9 doesn’t solve my V4 installation difficulties. Missed an art show submission deadline due to this kerfuffle, but there will be more shows and I really, really need a customizable female model for my fantasy and surrealist paintings ASAP.

Wish there was a workable (and less expensive and complex) alternative to Poser, but I’ve heard that DAZ Studio has problems running on the newest Mac OS too, so might as well stick to the devil I know (well, used to know)...any opinions on that line of reasoning?

fixmypcmike - 02 October 2012 02:49 PM

What error message do you get when trying to install?

Powerloader is for DS only, you don’t need it for Poser.

I’m a newbie, first post

I’m using Poser 9, thought I had to install the Powerloader files. Will uninstall them now, are there any files in the runtime I have to delete manually or will the Uninstaller take care of that?

contact - 13 October 2012 12:13 PM

fixmypcmike - 02 October 2012 02:49 PM

What error message do you get when trying to install?

Powerloader is for DS only, you don’t need it for Poser.

I’m a newbie, first post

I’m using Poser 9, thought I had to install the Powerloader files. Will uninstall them now, are there any files in the runtime I have to delete manually or will the Uninstaller take care of that?

 

The uninstaller will take care of it, or you can just leave it—Poser will ignore the extra files.

The uninstaller will take care of it, or you can just leave it—Poser will ignore the extra files.

Thank you for the fast reply!