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I prefer video tutorials. I have dyslexia and reading a big manual is a bit hard. I can manage a few pages just fine and retain it but any more than that and it's frustrating. Most manuals aren't a few pages long so videos are best for me.
+1
I know many learn more by watching but I will only watch a video if pressing random buttons fails to work - ReadMe is better as I can easily find & read the part that addresses what I am stuck on & ignore the rest :)
Table of content / Indexing is possible with e.g. Camtasia but few use it it seems. Technically search (using keywords) is possible too but I don't know if there's any software that support it.
Way back when I was working tech support for several companies (including a government agency), I coined the term, 'RTGDI', which means essentially the same as 'RTFM', except that it satisfies the Law of Fives.
I prefer a readme too, and the #1 thing I want to see documented is the path(s) where the files are stored, especially if there are supplementary guides, tutorial instructions, or a tutorial video. I'll watch a video, sure. But that's not the first thing I'm looking for.
The very next thing I need is to know how to engage the product in practice. Step-by-step please, just in case I'm having a stupid-day.
Perhaps a sensible position on this is that content that is "tricky" to use should come with instructions (like assembling an Ikea flat-pack), and most of the stuff that is simply "plug and play" doesn't need it. And that seems to be precicely where we are right now.
Ah, the "Law of Fives", a follower of a revered ancient religion of the '60s.
I just purchased items that apparently came from Runtime DNA. Neither had a readme. Nor does it appear there is metadata. Instead of using Studio, I've spent half an hour trying to figure out where my purchases are. This is exceedingly frustrating.
One is:
30475
http://www.daz3d.com/gear-cybernet-for-michael-4
the other is
30441
http://www.daz3d.com/gearheadset-for-michael-4
A readme to tell me where they are located would take a few seconds and would prevent me from returning items too frustratingly packaged to use.
If you're using install manager, you can right click the product in the installed tab and select "show installed files" and it will bring up a list of all the files associated with the product.
That's why all sensible people do manual installs of content. And why Daz Connect isn't exactly the flavor of the month.
Oh, I dunno, I consider myself pretty sensible and I don't do manual installs unless I can help it. =-)
Thanks! I forgot about that. Very helpful.
The problem is that the auto installs have files nested within folders within other folders and nothing is easy find in a logical way. Vendors love to have their stuff within folders named after themselves. Ego trip. So finding the stuff you actually want to use is a nightmare.
I agree, naming conventions need to be standardized for folder locations.
If I had to do manual installs, I'd quit DAZ. It just wouldn't be fun, and in fact it would be too much like work.
That's why the catalog was created, but it makes organization way too "manual."
I agree, the folder names need to be standardized, and nothing should be put for sale in the store until it meets those requirements.
Then you should explain to Serene Night how it's fun looking for files installed like a dog's dinner.
No ego trip; it's how DAZ Studio built content is done. And if you know the vendor's name, you can do a search in Windows Explorer for that to find all the places that vendor's content is placed in whatever location you use as your DAZ content library.
Okay, I don't know what that means.
Both of those products had Read Me files at RDNA (I'm looking at them now). The old RDNA Read Me's contained render settings, file paths, and usage tips (among other sections). DAZ is apparently stripping them out during the conversion, which makes me sad. Those Read Me's were pretty useful. Neither of those products had metadata because they were originally (and I think still are) Poser products (which will take tweaking to use in Studio according to the old Read Me's). Is DAZ adding metadata to the acquired products (because I honestly don't know)?
I own a number of former Rdna products ported to studio. They all at least have products so I can look them up in my content library. Since they aren't even searchable by name and studio's search is pretty poor finding them the library is impossible unless you know the file path which can be determined by the install directory.
i liked one of items. Fitting the other manually to gen 3 proved too challenging for me so I am returning one. Autofit destroyed adjustment morphs and the shape of one item. Textures were easy enough to adjust to Iray.
Not to derail the point of this thread, but as a newbie, if you simply manually unzip the files according to the nested folder hierarchy already setup by the vendor, doesn't that generate the same result as using DIM?
The part I don't understand about manually installing/categorizing content is how Daz Studio knows where to find the various inter-related files if you install them according to your own preferred hierarchy. I've seen that you can right-click on a file in the Content Library and choose "Categorize..." but it's not clear whether that moves content around on my disk or if it simply creates an alias. If I re-categorize a figure, do I need to further recategorize related files (materials, shapes, etc.)? To keep content together, should you categorize an entire folder, like a G3F character folder? Right-clicking on such a folder does provide the option to create a new category from the folder, but that doesn't seem to be the same as putting the entire character folder into a new folder alongside other character folders. For example, if I wanted to group characters based on ethnicity or animals based on mammals vs. reptiles, I don't understand how to do that and am concerned about screwing up my content library through blind experimentation.
If someone can help demystify installing/categorizing according to user-specified locations or point me to a thread explaining the process I would be most grateful as I often have difficulty finding installed content based on where I expect it should be (typically, I end up using the Info tab in DIM to locate content, but even that isn't ideal).
When you install manually, you simply install it into an existing known content folder, or add a new one to the list that Studio knows about (there some downsides with having multiple runtimes though.). No need to move any files anywhere IF they are packaged that way, although different vendors package them differently so realistically you will have to move some files around, although 99% of the time it's just all files up one folder.
When you create custom categories, you aren't changing the files on disk, just moving around the pointers to those files.
DIM installation isn't the same as manual installation. For example, DIM is able to determine whether or not there are updates for a product downloaded and installed via DIM (which it can't do if you manually install it). DIM also cannot install anything that wasn't designed for it, like products from other sites. Also there are products with packaging errors which cannot be installed correctly by DIM (until they are fixed), wheras when you manually install it you CAN unzip or move files around yourself if you know how to fix it.
What's a "readme"??
Joking, although I have only looked at one a few times since I started using DS, so for me they are pretty much useless and I even delete readme/documentation folders when doing manual installs that contain readmes since it's just clutter to me, BUT I do realize that other users rely on them, so I have no problems with them being included.
You can have the most comprehensive manual possible and you'll still find some joker that thinks he's found an unfixed problem with your product that needs fixed yesterday before your reputation gets ruined, because he refuses to "read the fine manual/read the gosh darn instructions" (yes, I know what the acronyms really mean, but those meanings aren't family friendly ;) ).
The Content Library pane#'s search box has two modes - database and filename. Database is the default, but if you click the cylinder icon next to the search box you can switch to filename.
I like a read-me file that, if nothing else, at least tells me where the product just installed to. I've had products that I actually had to explore the zipped file to find where things are.
I'd suggest the simple solution of including the readmes in the downloads of the products. Then you don't have to go searching for the all the time and the time-consuming and dreary work to cut and past it into text-files. Because personally I can't do without readme's because that's very often the only way for me to find things.
Thanks Richard! I didn't know about this. I learn something new everyday I guess.
Ditto. Everyone always points to "You can find it online", but that's no good on a day when you or the site might be having internet difficulties...