Detecting Poser vs. DAZ content

Taoz

Does anyone know of a way to safely detect whether an install zip is for Poser or DS? Like scanning file extensions for the files it contains?

Cybersox

Besides actually opening it and looking at the files?  I usually just use P3Do explorer or Izarc to take a look inside the compressed file for the telltale extensions. 

Lyoness

I have gained a little expertise in this...

You need to read in the What's Included and Features section of the page
at the end, it will list the types of files included... this is where you need to pay attention.

• Iray Compatible:
  Daz Studio Iray Material Presets (.DUF)
• 3Delight Compatible:
  Daz Studio 3Delight Material Preset (.DUF)
• Poser based files:
  Poser Custom Material Presets (.PZ2 and .DUF)
  Poser Material Poses (.PZ2)

so you need to check and read what's included to know what to expect in files.

Taoz

Hm, thanks, but I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough.

I'm working on some auto-installer code for mixed non-DAZ content files and want to make sure that the content is installed correctly, so that DS content that isn't compatible with Poser don't end up in a Poser runtime, incorrect folder structures are being corrected, and things like that. So I want to get as much information as possible about the folders and files in the zip by scanning it to examine the folder structure and the file types etc..

 

SixDs

"DS content that isn't compatible with Poser don't end up in a Poser runtime"

That is far easier said than done, as I am certain you must already know, Taoz. Take material files for legacy (pre-Genesis) products such as those for V4. Since DAZ Studio uses differing material settings, it was not unusual to find one file with DS settings and another for Poser settings. The DAZ Studio files may have been in native DAZ Studio format, and therefore belong in the library outside of the Poser runtime, or they could have been in Poser format (i.e .pz2) and belong inside the Poser runtime (even though they are of no use in Poser). If both the Poser and DAZ Studio files are in .pz2 format, the only way of differentiating them would be by filename, which could be exactly the same. It would not be unusual to find this, with the only differentiation being the folder into which they were placed. The number of variations is almost endless.

Another example would be content that is intended to be placed in a Poser runtime but where a spelling error or similar exists. For example I have often encountered situations where the folder name "libraries" has been mispelled. Or the subfolder "character" has been pluralized to "characters". Etc. How do you account for those?

Differentiating between DAZ Studio format files and Poser format files is easy enough based upon file extensions, and placing those files in the appropriate folders should also be easy enough (either the DAZ studio standard library folders outside the Poser runtime folder, or the standard Poser folders within the runtime folder). However, you obviously don't want to have the utility just dumping the selected files wholesale into, say, the Poser "pose" folder, you want to preserve the creator-generated folders that they were packaged with, since not all files have unique names and are differentiated by the folders names within which they are found. The potential difficulties give me a headache just thinking about them.

I don't mean to discourage you, and wish you the best of luck, but you have a great deal more courage than I! It would be different, perhaps, if there were strict conventions and some way of enforcing them, but, alas, you know as well as I that that is only sometimes the case.

Haruchai

As well as what SixDS has pointed out it is also worth remebering that a lot of the older DAZ content, especially for MATs, used to put dsa and pz2 files in the same folder with a shared png. They were meant to go in the runtime. If you auto detect the DAZ content and only install that in Studio it will potentially not have png files associated. I realise that I don't have a solution in any of that but I agree that this is a minefield of different vendors/stores all doing it different ways which has changed over time. As far as I can see is that, for content at least, the only relaible file type not to put in a Poser runtime is duf.

I wish you luck and hope you get where you want to go with this.

Taoz

Thanks for your replies. Yea, I know, not s simple task, but I do like a challenge. :)

What I intend is to do what can be done/fixed automatically, and then make user options for handling the rest. Most install files are OK, so not a lot of files need editing, and most of it can be handled automatically I think.

As for misspellings these can be detected and corrected automatically in most cases, based on which folder structures and file names/extensions that are mandatory. I've actually been thinking of writing a DS library fixer which will fix things like misspellings of default folders which put things in the wrong place (my own library is full of these), that's fairly simple. But if people reorganize their stuff manually anyway it will probably be a waste of time.

I do not mean to mess to much with the content of the install files, I just want to ensure that those that are meant for Poser only aren't being installed in DS, and vice versa, and that everything works as intended after installation.