Safe way to remove old content?

comixfana

I seem to have quite a few empty file folders in my content library; some that were supposed to contain clothing but ended up only loading textures or shaders (always read the item description before downloading, I know!) and many freebies from ShareCG that give me the error message "cannot find missing file". 

I tried muddling my way deleting said empty folders, ended up accidentally deleting a poses folder that was working fine (reinstalled it, still works fine). So...any tips on "cleaning  up" the content library?  having less empty folders/redundant folders/useless folders would make locating content less time consuming!

Silver Dolphin

I hear you, I had a similar experience. I now keep daz, renderosity, and freebies in seperate runtimes due to problems. Daz studio really need the 3d content to be a seperate program that is connected to daz studio but is it's own program that way if things go south you can just stop the program and restart it. I have tooooo much content and it is becoming an issue. I also run both Poser and Daz studio but try to use some content in both programs. It would be nice if they all played nice with one another but everyone wants to be proprietary and this is a problem for getting things done. I think we need a script or program for people to safely remove and install non daz content. I still would recommend having your stuff divided by who provides the content that way you can figure out what license belongs to what. Just because a content provider gives something away for free, does not mean you can use it any way you want! If you find a better way let me know. Good luck

comixfana

Silver Dolphin said:

I hear you, I had a similar experience. I now keep daz, renderosity, and freebies in seperate runtimes due to problems. Daz studio really need the 3d content to be a seperate program that is connected to daz studio but is it's own program that way if things go south you can just stop the program and restart it. I have tooooo much content and it is becoming an issue. I also run both Poser and Daz studio but try to use some content in both programs. It would be nice if they all played nice with one another but everyone wants to be proprietary and this is a problem for getting things done. I think we need a script or program for people to safely remove and install non daz content. I still would recommend having your stuff divided by who provides the content that way you can figure out what license belongs to what. Just because a content provider gives something away for free, does not mean you can use it any way you want! If you find a better way let me know. Good luck

I guess one way to go would be to delete everything and reinstalling everything anew...except I don't want to, I've accumulated too much stuff since last September when I decided to ditch Poser 6 and stick with Daz Studio...I have a few freebies (and yes I do check that commercial as well as personal renders are allowed) that work well, others that don't,  paid content from Renderosity that doesn't work at all (the Mighty Mite Gloves I wanted to use for my Batman character for instance...yet the Freebie Ninja bracers combined with the No Suit gloves work fine, go figure...)

I wish Daz came with a "restore content" or "locate content" function, it would make our lives easier!

3Diva

Yeah, I too got tired of missing file errors and just the general chaos that comes with mixing freebies and purchased content. So I had to create a New Library just for Daz Studio content that I purchased in the store and it's made my life so much easier. I love freebies and several of the products only found "elsewhere", but honestly freebies will pretty much always be a mess. If you have space and use DIM I definitely recommend a separate library for purchased content. DIM makes it WAY easy to install Daz3D content. Now I only go into my freebies library when there's something specific I know I downloaded that I want to use. I know it's a pain in the bottom to set up a separate library but it's best to do it now when it's actually manageable than wait a year or two (and after you have way more content than you do now) and end up kicking yourself for not creating separate libraries before accumulating much more content. 

Spending time now setting up a separate library can save you a huge headache later, imo. :)

NorthOf45

I process all non-DIM products through Content Package Assist. First, I manually install to a separate clean folder, test it, package it, clean up, then install with DIM (using a dummy offline-only account) into a different library, unless it has to be in the main library.

Taoz

I don't really see the problem with missing files (other than it's annoying), DS will tell you if a product is missing files when you try to load it and then you can just reinstall it to fix it? 

As for non-DAZ content, I guess the problem may be if it overwrites other installed content because of folder/file name conflicts, or if it has a bad file structure.

Personally I'm working on a zip uninstaller - you select a zip file and then it checks if the files in the zip are installed in yourt runtime.  It can also find them if they've been moved after installation, but that takes a while as it needs to scan the whole runtime.  Uninstall also removes any empty folders after files have been removed.