Noob Question: Items Appearing As Big Grey Blocks?
Tourist
Posts: 109
Hi to all, I'm a neophyte when it comes to 3D.
I've been playing with Daz for a little while, learning many things along the way but I still have a long way to go.
Lately I tried loading items purchased from another place (by vendors who are on the Daz store).
After manually installing them in my library folder I thought I was good to go but the items appear as big grey blocks when I try to load them and I get a message about missing files.
One item is a car the others are clothes.
On the other hand, poses that I installed manually work fine so I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.
Any help would be appreciated.
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Comments
That means the Data folder (and therefore probably the Runtime folder with the textures and the foldr with the user-facing files) went in the wrong place - you need the Data, Runtime, and any other folders at the same level in the zip to go to the content diectory you are using (e.g. /Documents/Daz 3D/Studio/My Library), merging their folders with the equivalent folders that are already there. Windows users can just drag the data etc. folders in the content directory, Mac users need to manually merge.
Thank you Richard for the answer but I'm still confused.
For example, the car that I bought contains 3 folders, one for "Poser", one that says "Templates" and one for "Daz".
I had originally placed the "Daz" and "Templates" folders in /Documents/Daz 3D/Studio/My Library but it didn't work (I ignored the "Poser" file included).
Do you mean I should break down the components of the "Daz" and "Templates" folders that came in the package and put them separately in different places?
The car's "Daz" folder contains itself 2 folders, one "Documentation" and one "My Library", the "My Library" one in turn contains "Data", "Figures", "Mats" and "Textures".
I haven't seen a Runtime file.
Sorry to be asking more questions but I'm really new at this and need to learn it once and for all.
The stuff from Daz/My Library needs to go in your My Library folder. The doccumentation folder items can go anywhere - put the whole Documentation folder in the My Library flder or put the actual documentation in the folder with the .duf files would be two obvious options (I usually do the second). The Templates you won't need unless you create your own textures, and it doesn't matter where they go.
It is now working, thank you for your help.
It would be a great service to encourage new users of DAZ if there were a script available that would load unzipped content into the DAZ My Library (not the plain "My Library") so that the ugly grey blocks don't appear subsequently in renders. It is very discouraging to decide to buy a product where the confusing dsf / duf files are not placed in the correct folders and all one can render is those blocks, or white plastic skin.
I would like to stress It is NOT CLEAR how to transfer folders successfully all the time from the uncompressed zip file to the My DAZ Library folder. I have watched ALL the video tutorials on this subject on Youtube. There is an assumption that all Vendors make the same folder hierarchy, but it sadly isn't so.
The zip file must be uncompressed. This may be assumed to be understood, but I think there is room for confusion. In my old Windows 7, the Windows folks in their wisdom took away the ability to unzip folders with a native program so I had to find one to accomplish that task. Windows 10 restored that ability.
First of all where is that folder I must transfer to? I found mine in User's "Public Documents" in Windows 10, but I have no idea why there is even a Public Documents folder since I don't share on a cloud, etc. So there's that. Has to be the User folder, not the one you think is on your hard drive. This is never made clear in the tutorials. Then the User folder is some weird abbreviation. I made a shortcut so I don't have to remember what the heck it is called and keep the shortcut on the desktop. I extract the zip file to my desktop. It makes a folder, or folders, and those are what I will work with to transfer to My DAZ Library.
Next, what exactly is in the zip file? I am amazed at how many levels of folders one must drill down through, to get to the Vendor folder, because that is what should be transferred to DAZ MY Library. Sometimes, more often than not, because there are redundant folders called Runtime, and sometimes 4 times deep, that the Runtime gets put in a different place in the User Name/DAZ My Library. When that happens, you can't tell where the heck the folders actually ended up without a lot of searching. You will know this by the pop-up message "can't find this or that texture file"
I have begun to search down to the vendor name folder in the unzipped folder, and copy that from the unzip to the Library, because that is how the Library works, through the Vendor name in the main or central Runtime folder that will list by Vendors, not products. So you have to know the Vendor name and whatever the heck abbreviation they may have used. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks.
The best advice I got was from this forum. Basically: The files that are labeled with the extension ".dsf" MUST BE in the Data folder, or the ugly grey blocks render. I have most success doing that myself directly. Then I just load the textures manually into my Surfaces panel since the Vendors will often have 2 or more texture files that maddeningly are not consistent, (arms in one file, torso in another), so jump around from one to the other until I've found and loaded the textures I want. Then I save all my hard work as a preset, so I don't have to do it again.
That's about the simplest explanation that helped me. A script that would just put the darn dsf files into the MAIN DATA Runtime folder would make it easier. I don't know how to write a script, but maybe someone will take pity and write one for newbies and less experience file wranglers. That would remove the ugly grey blocks.
The Data and Runtime folders in the zip will, barring a packaging error, be at the same level of the zip - those, and any folders along side them, go in your content directory - My Library or My Daz 3D Library if you are using the defaults, it doesn't matter which.
My experience is different. All of my DAZ purchases have been installed by the DAZ Install Manager. It doesn't seem to install to "My Library", which is on a different path than the "My DAZ 3D Library", significantly, the first seems to be in the User Documents, and the latter in User Public Documents (And I don't even understand that). I didn't set either up that way. There is 1 DAZ product in the My Library which apparently I installed, and DAZ put it there. I forgot I even owned it! So, if you're a noob, and you don't know this, it does appear to be important which to use when manually installing 3d party products.
As for "packaging", well that is about 50% of the problem, not DAZ's of course, but that's where some of the frustration at the grey ugly blocks comes in. If those are just dropped into "My DAZ Library", like all the tutorial say, it doesn't always work. DAZ will pop up a "can't find dsf" ----message, but if you slog through, you see the dsf file is actually "there". Why the error message? That's the beef I have with the process.
Where the packaging seems to involve several internal folders, before even getting to the products, and, more often than not, the textures say for a character will be spread over several file folder, which also causes DAZ to pop up "Can't find" messages. Again, not DAZ's problem.
What I was proposing was a script that "knows" the path for the critical dsf file that if not found, causes ugly grey blocks to render. A special dsf script. Because just drag/drop or copy/paste just doesn't do it all too often. I spent 3 days researching why those grey blocks were occuring in my renders. NONE of the tutorials or other posts I searched said, (must have dsf files in DATA). Only Kendall Sears mentioned it on the DAZ forums. When I found that, it worked. So why not have the computer find and install it with a script?
Part 2 continuing: The reason I am insistant about this is there are no Data, People, Runtime etc files to manually copy to from an unzipped folder in "My Library" on my computer. Apparently, the DAZ program is not looking down that path.
If the zip doesn't have at least one of Data and Runtime folders (possibly nested in othe folders) then it is either not set up correctly or it is an add-on set of presets for another product, or a script, or settings-only content (e.g. light sets). If the asset and texture folders are not set correctly in the zip then a script would be hard-put to fix that.