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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
...the old installers always had a "tick box" to open the readme, which until recently, were always able to be viewed in offline mode.
With the new Zips, there is no such feature and one is forced to perform a protracted manual search.
They are not accessible from one's Content Library Page, not accessible from the order page, and not accessible from the Product page. The only resource is the Product Index in the site's "Help" tab which us horribly orgnised. as it only gives one a matrix of SKU#s in blocks of 1,000 products.
So the entire sequence becomes a lengthy "odyssey of going from one page to another as follows:
My Account > Content Library > search for product > click on product > Click on Order number > Find SKU# on order page > Go to Product Index > Click on SKU range which contains the product (entering the SKU# in the search field returns a "No Results" error) > sift through 1,000 products listed by name rather than SKU # (many with the "zz" prefix) > click on product name to bring up the info page.
A lot of work to only often find little or no product information or product notes not much less install paths. This should never have been implemented nor should the old installers have been removed until all of product information was completely transferred over to the online database and either a link in the product's listing on the Content Library or Order page to the database was provided, or at the very least, a search by individual SKU# was implemented on the Product information page.
Not very "user friendly".
What does not having version numbers have to do with using the Smart Content tab?
...just expanding a bit on what the attachment says with regards to the news I heard today. You want revisions, you have to use the automated utility to get them or else. Coincidence or by design?
...just expanding a bit on what the attachment says with regards to the news I heard today. You want revisions, you have to use the automated utility to get them or else. Coincidence or by design?
And what does that have to do with the Smart Content tab?
...ach, I said that I was "using" the attachment to the post to reinforce feelings some of us have regarding the fact we were supposedly assured the DIM wouldn't mandatory yet as of today been told the opposite with regards to content updates (which BTW is related to the OT of this thread as it does concern installing).
...just saw the quote in the pic somewhat fitting for this as well.
I use DIM and never use Smart Content.
Coldrake
...I don't use Smart Content because I have a runtime structure that works for me and doesn't cough on my setup.
...I don't use the DIM because it hasn't worked for me form the get go.
Whatever happened to the simple process of purchase, download, install, and go make art?
Perhaps I should have elaborated more...
Basically from what I'm hearing in this thread, there seems to be a bit of a downside with some users who prefer anything but the latest method of installing DAZ content in regards to content management. A lot of people here who I've seen express their lack of approval to functions like Smart Content are here expressing their dislike of the DIM. What I'm intuitively pointing out here is that all of this install directory mess is solved by Smart Content. I've never really seen anyone who uses Smart Content complain about these things and ever since the DIM came out, we've been seeing A LOT of older products receive A LOT of metadata updates. Now DAZ has finally replaced the installers with ZIP files, only to now see people complaining that installing and managing stuff has become more tedious.
Basically, the pattern I'm pessimistically perceiving is: "You want to install content? Have fun driving yourself crazy with our new ZIP files, or have fun with our AWESOME NEW DIM!!" "Oh, you want to manage your installed content too? Have fun doing that yourself folder by folder, or have fun using our AWESOME SMART CONTENT TAB THAT WE UPDATE CONSTANTLY!!"
Again, I'm not complaining. Part of it is simply out of my humor, which drier than an Arabian desert... ; )
..umm, I have. I've seen threads where people were tearing their hair out because somehow the Smart Content database became corrupted and had to jump through a lot of hoops including wiping everything and reinstalling it all to get it working again. No thank you.
I just recently went through nearly two months reinstalling and setting up the runtimes on my new workstation, and still have a couple folders (mostly freebie stuff) to go. Save for new purchases made during this time, the occasional missing product, and updates to some of the early Genesis content I purchased before 4.6 was rolled out, all my installs were from my backup archives. The DIM was useless for that.
I am not about to wipe everything off the HDs, and download/install nearly five and a half years worth of content purchases all over again, especially with my slow unstable connection, just so I can use all the metadata and Smart Content feature. That is ludicrous and would break all the paths for work I currently have completed or is in progress. Overall that would be something like four months of time and work lost. Again, no thank you.
If the DIM wasn't so unstable when it originally came out (it could not even get my username right), and I had a nice stable fast connection, maybe things might have been different, but those were the cards I was dealt and I had to play what as in my hand.
Actually a well structured custom runtime is the best content management system for the money especially if it is compatible with our workflow. I've used this before and it had no issues....until now with all these change to the method of how Daz thinks we should download, install, and organise the content we purchase in their store. Before this I never had an issue even with the old .exes for I'd just install them to a temp file open, the readme (which could be done offline) then move stuff to where it had to go (like Data, Geometries, Textures) and where I wanted it (the rest of the stuff that goes in the the Runtime/Library folder). Simple.
Manual installing would still be fine if they just did a couple things, 1. provide a useful readme that includes all the install paths with the content package, and 2. have some way for us to know that a product has been revised/updated. According to the explanation from an actual Daz person, it would be too big a job to do that for nearly 16,000 items even though it did exist beforehand (in the old HTML readmes, the installer titles, and email notifications of updates). One possible solution for this would be to add a filter to the Product Library as (according to the same individual) it uses the same regular expression filtering that Install Manager does. So since the DIM can detect an remind one there is a new update, then a filter along similar lines should be able to be created for the Product Library.
...it's not rocket surgery and it will make all of us, DIM/Smart Content users and those with Custom Runtimes, happy.
...just expanding a bit on what the attachment says with regards to the news I heard today. You want revisions, you have to use the automated utility to get them or else. Coincidence or by design?
No, if you want notifications of updates. The download version will always be current, or should be, whether you use DIM or the Product Library page.
How do you get DIM to see different folders?
She's not kidding, really.Ah. Gonna have to try this. First gotta get my Mac to auto reconnect to the shared network drive...
I don't use the CMS because I've been using DS since version 2, and am used to just using the Content Tab, so I've never run into the problems some have with the Content Database having problems and the need to uninstall and reinstall to get it working again.
That said, I have RARELY used the old Bitrock installers to install content in Poser, when I was still using it, or in DS in more recent years. I have ALWAYS installed to a temporary folder on my desktop, and then manually installed to the appropriate Runtime.
This method still hasn't changed for me even though I'm now using DIM. IOW, I only use DIM for downloading as it is so much faster and easier than having to download files one . at . a . time. I've been on a cable hookup here at home for a number of years, but I remember the days I used to drag my laptop to the nearest Starbucks in order to download at a faster rate than my old dial-up connection here at home. Kyoto, I commiserate with your connection problems at home because I've been there, and done that. If you can download elsewhere, then I think DIM is the way to go. The ability to download more than one file at a time, and have it download quickly, to me is a great plus. I still install manually, and will continue to do so. Using DIM hasn't changed that. Using DIM to download my purchases allows DIM to let me know when there's an update to a product, as it will show up under a heading of Product Updates on the Ready to Download page, which are separate from the new Product purchases, so not having an "update" added to the product name, or an updated SKU or some other visual identification of an update, isn't really necessary. I do realize that those who download from their Product Library won't be able to "see" if it's an update, though I think someone already mentioned whatever you download from your Product Library "IS" the most updated version of the product.
As far as the ReadMe files, I don't think I've ever read any of them, except maybe for some of omnifreaker's products, or others of that sort. Regular content products, nope don't think I've ever bothered with them. Oh wait, there was one, and that was only after I contacted the vendor and found out the ReadMe file was actually about a 15 or so page tutorial on how to use the product. Talk about embarrassing. I guess that was the one time I should've read it.
...just expanding a bit on what the attachment says with regards to the news I heard today. You want revisions, you have to use the automated utility to get them or else. Coincidence or by design?
No, if you want notifications of updates. The download version will always be current, or should be, whether you use DIM or the Product Library page.
...I understand that with new content, However what about older content that may have been updated. For example when 4.6 was released several months ago, a lot of Genesis content was updated as well as listed in Jay NOLA's thread. I had to go back, and re-download/reinstall everything that was assigned a new version number.
...well as I mentioned, I'm not about to re-download over five years worth of content purchases. Even at a hotspot and with the DIM working correctly (which I am still having issues with), that would take probably a week or more. Then I would have to uninstall just about everything (at least that which used the old installers) before reinstalling the most current versions. As I also mentioned, most of my content was installed from my archives, not fresh downloads as at the time, it would have taken almost a month just to DL everything all over again file by file (pre DIM).
...and that brings up the question: Say when Studio 5 is released, and everything gets updated again, how does one go about uninstalling .zip content that is updated for the new version when there are no more uninstallers? Do we have to go into every folder in the runtime and delete everything first as Installing over a previous copy can cause issues at times?
Content installed with DIM can be uninstalled with DIM (as long as you don't delete the manifests files).
It's not so much "lack of approval", more like "have no use for". Take me, for instance. I started way back in the dim mists of prehistory with Poser 4, then P5 and P7 when I found nice upgrade offers. I started by just dumping items in my Runtime where the installers put them, leading to the expected hideous mess. By the time the first betas of D|S came along I'd been on the forums here for a while, and come across many tips to manually reorganise and sort my content so everything made more sense, like Categories without the database. (I had also found some things the installers had put into the most unlikely places.) By the time D|S2 came out, I was using Poser less and eventually stopped using it altogether, so I no longer needed to make sure my Runtime was still useable by Poser — I could do a lot of merging, so I could find things more easily.
When Categories came along, I didn't need them, so I never bothered to set them up, because (a) my manual system worked, and (b) the Categories database system was... to put it kindly, a bit fragile in its earlier incarnations. Why throw away a system that worked, with no guarantee its replacement was reliable? Also (c) my content collection was so large by now, it would take weeks if not months to recategorise everything. Worth the effort for someone just starting out (or willing to start all over from the beginning), but that didn't fit me (and a lot of others here on the DAZ forums).
The DIM wasn't any use to me for pretty much the same reasons, except now my content collection was much bigger, so re-downloading and re-categorising everything — and making sure I didn't throw out any non-DAZ content that DIM would have ignored — would have been a full-time job I just did not have time for. I was also archiving my used installers in a system of organised and categorised subfolders; something DIM couldn't do to begin with, and I'm still not confident it could do it now in a way I would find useful.
So, in a straight-up choice between carrying on with a manual system that works, that I've been using for several years with no major oopses, and which has no database needing maintanance and regular backups in case it self-destructs; or a complete re-download of every single item of DAZ content, throw away my old organisation because DIM won't understand it, and rebuild everything from scratch... guess which I decided to do?
...and if you don't, uninstalling means deleting manually.
...and if you don't, uninstalling means deleting manually.
How do you delete non-DAZ items that come in zips?
...yeah I know, but those are no where near as large a part of my runtime and again, I get notifications which ones have been updated.
So again this says to me, if one doesn't use the DIM, life will be more difficult than it used to be when we just had the old installers.
...I think I get it, I had a feeling things might end up going this way and I was right.
How do you delete non-DAZ items that come in zips?
Each. Specific. Folder. At. A. Time.
Very. Tedious. And. Time. Consuming.
...updates for from other stores are also no where near as frequent as those from Daz. Every time they tweak 4.x, everything has to be updated again. Five+ years of purchases every time? With my crappy connection, I don't think so.
(see my sig).
So how does having installers instead of zips make that easier?
...ugh, this is ridiculous.
It used to be so simple. Never had to update unless there was an actual revision to the content files. Now every time there is a new version of the app, content needs to be updated again, and again. I'm not about to rip everything apart kill all my scene files by breaking all the paths spend several weeks downloading and several more to reinstall everything using the DIM (if I can get the bloody thing to know who I even am) and then have to deal with database update issues/reloads every time things are changed again.
This is just plain stupid. It never used to be such a bleedn' headache until all this CMS/Smart Content/DIM rubbish.
I used to have an adage in the workplace that went: "they keep trying to make software and hardware so smart it actually becomes stupid because it gets in the way of doing things efficiently."
If it weren't for Genesis, I'd uninstall 4.6 and go back to 3.1.2.32 and 2.3.3.146.
...I'm through here as it seems others know better and my concerns mean nothing - unsubscribing.
There's no need to do any of that. I'm afraid you just don't understand how these things work.
Coldrake
Sorry about late answer, but here it comes:
1) Create a folder—like Genesis 2—inside "Studio" folder (or where ever you have "My Library" or equivalent of the basic install of DSwhateverversion). Mine, for example, would be C:\Users\Skiriki\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\
Note: if DIM insists installing to DIM default location, you can just flip a birdie to it, and just tell it to install stuff where you want!
DIM will create directories it needs automatically, so you don't need to copy the directory structure from other places. It is enough that you have a root directory (like Genesis 2, Animals, Plants, whatever) ready.
2) Click on DIM’s settings icon, and go to "installation". Add a folder (using +), like "Genesis 2" (for name) and then point it to folder you just made.
3) When you install—as the example I’ve been using here—new content pertaining to Genesis 2, just use the pulldown menu of DIM to install there. Make sure that updates have "Respective "installed" paths" checked, and then you don't need to worry about updates, as they will slither to right places automagically.
4) In DS, go to "Content Library" tab and right-click on DAZ Studio Formats, and "Add a base directory". Pick that "Genesis 2" (for example), OK, and there it is! You might want to tell DS to re-read metadata (via content database maintenance), or you can do it in DIM too.
Just make sure that you do not run both DIM and DS at the same time. Just set things in DIM and then close it, then open DS.
If you need screencaps for further advise, I can provide.
With Windows 7 you can skip right to step 2, there is a Make New Folder option in the browse function.
Sorry about late answer, but here it comes:
1) Create a folder—like Genesis 2—inside "Studio" folder (or where ever you have "My Library" or equivalent of the basic install of DSwhateverversion). Mine, for example, would be C:\Users\Skiriki\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\
Note: if DIM insists installing to DIM default location, you can just flip a birdie to it, and just tell it to install stuff where you want!
DIM will create directories it needs automatically, so you don't need to copy the directory structure from other places. It is enough that you have a root directory (like Genesis 2, Animals, Plants, whatever) ready.
2) Click on DIM’s settings icon, and go to "installation". Add a folder (using +), like "Genesis 2" (for name) and then point it to folder you just made.
3) When you install—as the example I’ve been using here—new content pertaining to Genesis 2, just use the pulldown menu of DIM to install there. Make sure that updates have "Respective "installed" paths" checked, and then you don't need to worry about updates, as they will slither to right places automagically.
4) In DS, go to "Content Library" tab and right-click on DAZ Studio Formats, and "Add a base directory". Pick that "Genesis 2" (for example), OK, and there it is! You might want to tell DS to re-read metadata (via content database maintenance), or you can do it in DIM too.
Just make sure that you do not run both DIM and DS at the same time. Just set things in DIM and then close it, then open DS.
If you need screencaps for further advise, I can provide.
Could you please do screen grabs as I am starting all over again with DIM since they came out with Genesis 2...lol. That would really help me out immensely as I want a folder just for Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 so that way I can tell which is which...sigh *Huge Smiley*!!
Okay, screencap time!
Step 1: Go to "Settings" by clicking on the wheel piccy in DIM. Click on the icon indicated.
Step 2: Give some sort of label to your folder, so you'll know what's supposed to go there.
Step 2B: Click on the button indicated after naming your folder.
Step 3: Browse for the folder path. In my case, I keep my DAZ Studio files under My Documents/DAZ 3D/Studio/ folder, where you can glimpse the directory called "My Library", which usually contains all DAZ foo. But since we ARE going to make a sub-folder which does NOT go inside the "default", we back to "Studio" where we create our desired folder.
You can create this folder wherever you want it (with the caveat of NOT USING Program Files or other protected directories in Windows). As long as DIM knows where it is supposed to put stuff, and it has the folder where it should be, it will pump it there.
Step 4: I created my directory, and press "Select Folder".
Step 4B: Now it looks like this in DIM.
Continued in the next post.
I see there's a bit of disarray of images, but that's okay, that's why I labeled them.
Step 5: As a whole, DIM should now show this in tab "Ready to Install" when you have "Show Details" checkmarked. Good.
Step 5B: See a bunch of content path shortcuts. Select the one you want to use whenever you install content that should go there. After the first install of content, updates will go there (or where you chose to install whatever you put in) automatically, when you have "Respective "Installed" Paths" selected.
Install stuff.
Close DIM.
Start DAZ Studio.
Step 6: Go to Content Library. Right-click on DAZ Studio Formats. Select "Add A Base Directory".
Step 7: Select the folder you just created and where you put your stuff. You may need to browse. After selecting the folder, it will appear to the bottom of the list.
Step 8: Repeat the same procedure for Poser Formats directories! Some stuff has both Poser and DAZ content, and DAZ side can't see the Poser content's "Runtime" stuff, and Poser directory side is blind to DAZ content. You can have Serious Opinions about that, but that's how it is, so until it changes, you gotta deal with it. *thhhbt* :P
Congratulations! You're done!