I give up.
dennisgray41
Posts: 754
in The Commons
I can't get freebies into daz.
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thats a very broad statement
DAZ freebies? Freebie obj?
What kind of freebies? How and where are you trying to install them? What problem do you have with them?
freebies that are zipped. mostly from renderosity.
Moved to The Commons as this is a question about Freebies, not an offer of a Freebie.
Wilmap made a tutorial - I think it's on her freebie site - about how to get 3rd party stuff into DS (Daz Studio) https://www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/
And a direct link https://www.wilmapsdigitalcreations.co.uk/view_products.php?cat=10
Wilma's is good but just covers how to install hers.
Sickleyield also has a great, easy-to-follow tutorial on Deviant Art. It also includes suggestions for file management.
https://www.deviantart.com/sickleyield/journal/Tutorial-Installing-Content-in-DAZ-Studio-508155677
Note: If you are installing pre-Genesis DS content or Poser content*, it needs to be installed in DS's Poser Format Content files, not DAZ Studio Format. But her instructions still work. However, I've found a lot of free Poser content where the files aren't packed properly and so they won't show in DS even after refreshing the folders. Those can still be found using Files>Import.
*How to tell: The folders will include Runtime, Geometries, Libraries, Textures etc. not Runtime, People, Data, etc.
Assuming you're using Windows:
1. Quit DS if it's open.
2. Unzip the downloaded file.
3. Open the resulting folder.
4. Open the parent folder for your My Library folder in a new window.
5. Drag and drop the contents of the freebie folder on your My Library folder.
6. Restart DS.
The freebie should now appear in your Content library.
WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING
Do NOT use this procedure on a Mac.
MacOS and OS X FInder do not implement a Folder Merge function, so using the above procedure will REPLACE your the contents of the subfolders in your My Library file with the contents of the freebie folder. To merge folder in MacOS/OS X use the ditto command in Terminal or a third party file management app:
ditto ~/source_folder ~/target_folder
where ~/source_folder is the freebie folder and ~/target_folder is your My Library folder. (Note: ditto accepts drag-and-drop for the ~/source_folder and ~/target_folder).
WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING
If the zip has a top level folder called "Content", do not drag that folder, but instead the next subfolder.
One thing to be aware of is that the quality control on freebies at Rendo is pretty much non-existant, and a lot of the people submitting freebies either don't know the proper way to set up a file or simply don't care. This, sadly, INCLUDES more than a few of the professional PAs.
So, the first thing to do is unzip the file and then look at the actual unzipped folder to see where everything is and what's REALLY included. Sometimes they forget to put all the files in there and, even more annoyingly, it's not at all uncommon for a Renderosity zip file to unzip into MORE zip files. Unzip or or un-arc, or un-7-zip) down util you're actually at the real product At that point you have to confirm if it's a DAZ format file, an old-school poser runtime, an object file or whatever. Sometimes all that's there is a jpeg of a piece or art.
Once you've finally unzipped them down to the actual product files, the next thing is to check where it's installing... since it's historically been such a such a poser centric place, a lot of Rendo files don't go to a master "my content' library" or use a different name, or just have the Data, people, texture, etc. files as seperate add-ons to an attached poser file, or, more likely, just a basic poser file that has to be directly installed into the runtime library . And THEN you need to figure out where in the runtimes it's actually going to install, and under what name, as a lot of the Rendo vendors will have it first go to a dummy folder, use a name that's not shared by any other product you own or... and this is incredibly common... mispell something or add a letter so that often you'll find that the product DID install, but it's in a really werid place that you'd never find, like Genesis 3 Peoples.
Oh, that has happened to me once or twice. A jpeg / png and a readme saying "buy this here". Some freebie - NOT.
I actually mailed Rendo about that once, telling them to take down that partifular "freebie" but I never bothered to find out if they did or not.
All good advice here. I frequently toss ZIP files from other sources into my library and don't often have any issues. Like most anything, once you already know how - it is EASY!
I've found it best to install Freebies into a separate library
Especially for genesis character shapes.
A misconfigured morph can affect your base figure, a common result is the base figure loading with some morph fully on be default, these can be hard to track down if you install a lot of them on your main library.
I learnt this the hard way, took me ages to find the culprit that was giving all my Genesis 2 females a bad case of pinch-face.
Complicated as it can be but it explains why I keep getting different results. Has anyone ever posted a good tutorial to Renderosity to show the proper way to prepare a file for use in Daz? At least some of the people listing freebees would be able to do a better job. Some of these files that don't work at all would be very useful.
Ah Renderosity's freebies... how you taunt me with nonfunctioning content. :D
Okay, I only really had a handful of things from there break like that, but I've not really grabbed many items from there. One group of freebies that did break consisted of some freebie rooms, furniture and props from one particular maker. There were some beds that didn't actually include the bed objects, just the loader thumbnails and the images that would have been applied onto the beds if they'd ever been able to be loaded. o0 Another was some rooms, where the graphics folders were there, but weren't remotely close to where the scene loader was expecting them to be, and were simply in a folder next to where the prop itself was.
Most freebies designed for Poser or Daz that I've gotten from there and other places have been easier to deal with, though.
If you are going to collect freebies, and I've collected a LOT, you simply have to have a complete understanding of the directory structure. There are good tutorials out there, mostly from the anarchy of the V4 era, but still applicable. DAZ specific content is generally a lot better organized than Poser content. A lot of Poser content does work in DS, albeit with some fiddling. If you always unzip a freebie into a separate directory, you can look at what's there and decide how to move it. You have to do that. There's no other way that's reliable. A lot of recent DS specific free content has "Content" as the top level folder, just like the files from DAZ. Some even include the metadata, although this should not be expected. DAZ themselves created some confusion with "Content" vs. "My Library" as the top level folder, but this is easily resolved just by looking at the zip file content. Another gotcha is the Windows transition to having no user data files in "Program Files". Almost all content belongs in the user area, not Program Files. Some freebies have "Program Files" as the top level folder, but the content is really just user data. There are certain things that are inviolate, and must not be in the wrong place, or the item will not work.
Runtime/textures/(artist name)/... - Any freebie that does not have its texture files in this template is not well structured. Some .obj files have the textures in the same folder as the obj, which is really old Poser style. I keep those in a separate OBJ folder, as they have to be imported once before saving as a DS scene subset or asset.
data/... - This is where all DS specific data goes, that is, anything that is not a directly user-facing file like a prop or a standalone figure. Sometimes morphs are just a dial, with no character preset. If you end up with two or more "data" directories after installing a free item, you probably did something wrong.
DS uses top level folders People, Props, Shader Presets, and so on that keep things well organized. If you inspect a freebie that messes up this structure, you can either deal with it, or simply delete it. In some cases, things are not fixable.
In short, it's free, you got what you paid for, if it's easy and it works, it's a blessing.
Yup, I've collected lots and lots of freebies, and it is true that you often have to drill down into the unpacked folders to see what to do with it to get things to where they need to be. Fortunately, most of the time the ones I've gotten have placed their stuff into a Content or My Daz 3D subdir in there, and most of the time I simply drill down into that, lasso-select everything there, right-click and invoke Copy, then go to the coresponding place on my machine, right click in there and invoke Paste. But yeah, sometimes you run into issues where some of he subdirs in there have typos in the name, i.e. Peoples instead of People.
I usually unpack my zips in my Downloads folder, drag-and-drop a shortcut to the page the item came from (that is, the product page), and then I invoke Cut on that entire folder, Paste it into a staging-area folder inside my My Daz 3D Library folder (and oddly, the staging-area folder I arbitrarily picked, and have been using ever since, was an existing ReadMe folder), and THEN navigate inside the just moved folder to find the Content or the My Daz 3D folder, drill down inside that, and cut-and-past the entire content of that over into my working My Daz 3D Library directory a directory above that ReadMe staging-area folder. If its simply a Runtime folder in there, then I simply merge that with the Runtime folder inside My Daz 3D Library.
On the other hand, if the contents of that unpacked archive turns out to be something clearly not Poser or Daz Studio oriented -- say, if its just a folder with some .OBJ files in it -- then I move the entire folder over into a different directory that is separate from my My Daz 3D Library, but next to it.
I then cut-and-paste the zip file, along with a copy of the shortcut to the product page, into a subdir in my Downloads where I store all the zip files, in case I need to go back and look at the contents of one of these zip files again. I have different subdirs in there for each content site. I.e. I have a Daz3D.com folder in there, a Renderosity folder, a Renderotica folder, a ShareCG folder, and so on. This is particularly handy if I've lost track of where a particular product located its stuff, I can simply open the zip file again and look around in there. ("Gee, where was that crazy, orange hovercraft again? I know I got it from ShareCG... [Finds and opens the zip.] Oh, it's in ... > Props > PurpleWombat > HoverDingdoodle.")