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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.Daz 3D is part of
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DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Sounds also nice downloadwise. But what I really wanted to know is, if a download contains DS and Poser related stuff, will it install only the things I need or will it be like in the past that it will install everything inside?
For example, I got the Victoria 4 figure when it was still available for free. When I installed the package I had some files twice, .pzs's for Poser and .dsb's for DS for the same poses and skin textures. As a DS user I don't need the .pz2's, all they do is causing confusion in the Content Tab for a newbie I was (and still am :)) and wasting drivespace.
Will I be able to tell DIM that it shall only install the DS files and leave the Poser ones alone if a download contains both formats?
That would be a clever DIM I'd get on my system without second thought. :)
No, right now it installs everything in the .zip, so if the .zip hasn't been split down to that level, IM doesn't know which files are truly needed.
What about content outside of DAZ? They don't all have installers like DAZ does so how is that affected? Do you just put them in the new location?
Content from other stores or freebies will need to be installed manually or using a third-party tool, as before.
WTF?
1 Have just installed the InstallManager, and it's put folders with .ini files and whatnot in my Public/Documents without asking. Nor can I see any waywithin the installer to change that. That is seriously NOT cool. I have and want NOTHING in my Public/ folders, and no program should force itself in there. This is monstrous behaviour: completely unnacceptable. Those .ini files should be in an AppData, and NO program shoudl insist on being having folders and files in a location like that. But it appears the only way i could move it is with hacking the .ini files in a text editor and maybe the Registry, but that would then screw up updating the software. This is not not not NOT acceptable at all.
Is this going to be changed before the final release? If yes, I'll uninstall now and wait for the version that installs itself in an acceptable way. If no, then I'll forget all about using this program ever right now.
2 I am NOT going to use the supplied default location to install content to, for one thing because it is again in Public, and I have and allow nothing there. I see that I can change the location, but ...
WHY am I not supposed to carry on using my current DAZ 3D/Studio/My Library? I already have several runtimes of Poser content, a Studio 2/Content and a Studio 3/Content alongside Studio/My Library. That's quite enough, as well as being heavily organized (and I don't use the content manager or the Smart Content tab). I simplyu do not want yet another library folder. But in the docs and the vids about the InstallManager it keeps saying 'we strongly advise you not to use a current library'. There's even that ridiculous video on using tthe Installmanager with existing content where he goes through showing you how to change the install location to the previous My Library, but on the last dialogue in the process then just says 'but you shouldn't use that' and cancels with no further explanation. If there;s a good reason not to it should be explained; and if it's a good reason, why make a video showing how to do it but just end saying you shouldn't with no explanation. Quite ridiculous.
So, again - WHY should one not use it with the existing Ds 4/4.5 My Library as the install location? What , precisely is the drawback?
3 And as for uninstalling hundreds and hundreds of DAZ products bought and installed over 8 or nine years, most installed without uninstallers, and many customized in both location and content since install ... you have to be joking.
But I suppose the cosh held over the head by DAZ is that this is the only solution that's going to be offered the the appalling current problems over the display of the account item list on the site with it being unsearchable and with no indication of updates to products even though all the .dsf/.duf content seems to have been updating at least twice a month since DS4.5 came out. The whole situation is ridiculous: as ridiculous as a website change that was at least two whole orders of magnitude more screwed up than any other I have ever seen, and even after a whole year still hasn't managed the rather simple thing of HAVING THE EXPIRY DATE OF SALES ON PRODUCTS SHOWN ON THE PRODUCT PAGES IN THE STORE.
You know, I'va had the distinct impression over the last two years that nobody amongst the actual decision makers at DAZ is also a user of their products - and certainly not someone who has been a user, assembling several hundred gigs of content from a variety of sources, over several years. Or they just wouldn't have been treating existing users the way they have. Either that, or they have been having a competition amongst themselves as to who could come up with the idea or method that would drive away the biggest number of existing customers.
Now, again:
1 Will the program be changed before public (non-beta) release to allow the user to select where it will put its own folders and files rather than insisiting on Pubic/Documents?
2 WHY is it not a good idea to install to a pre-exisiting DS4/4.5 My Library? What would be the consequences of doing so?
It's funny how, with all the prescription medicine I'm on, I spend most of my time drifting numbly, and out of everything in the world, only DAZ manages to make me incandescently angry ... repeatedly.
1. Now I am confused. I downloaded some of the free products offered yesterday to see what would happen. Some of them appeared in the installer. Some did not. In particular the following did not:
Millennium Big Cat LE
Millennium Horse LE
Anime Star Fighter
For Anime Star Fighter the following were added to my available downloads (now My Downloadable Products):
A3 Base
Mech Girl A3
Mitusi Hair
Stinger
None of them appeared. In addition, these Anime Star Fighter related ones are old products that have been offered many times. I probably have them installed somewhere else. I did not recall anything with the name Anime Star Fighter, though. It appears you have to uninstall previously downloaded products, before reinstalling them with DIM. Given my stuff is installed in several places and the uninstallers have been put in several places, how do you manage old stuff easily.
Importantly, how do you know what will work and what not. When DIM would be most useful is when you get a large bundle that often includes old products. DIM loses much of its attraction if you have to go back manually and check each and every available download for whether it worked or not. And also there is the problem of whether something was downloaded before.
Does this mean DIM will never be able to manage some of the older content?
2. In addition, this morning I have an additional available download in DIM, Basicwear Unimesh fits. (The above was all done yesterday.). I have no idea what that is associated with. I may or may not have already installed it. I have several Basicwear things. I don't see it in the available downloads either.
Can someone explain what is happening and what you have to know to use DIM blindly.
3. In addition I still have the question about what to do with Genesis Starter Essentials and about the errors in the log. See my previous posts for more information.
Thanks.
I had the same issue. Several of the free items did not appear in the download manager even though they showed up on the download page.
Not everything is converted yet. Just be be sure make sure you have all the boxes checked off on your filtering. If you don't have them all checked off some of your downloads will be hidden
@DavidGB:
1. Use a directory junction to redirect the folder anywhere you'd like it. There were O/S limitations (on the Mac) that kept some of that stuff from being customizable.
2. Install anywhere you please. There's nothing forcing you to use the default directory.
3. It took me all of overnight to reinstall nearly 4000 items (almost my entire DAZ history) and it was done unattended.
So what happened with the ones not converted yet?
I'm waiting for them to appear in the DIM. There have been several so far today, including two that were updates.
So what happened with the ones not converted yet?
When they are available they will automatically show up in your downloads section of DIM
When they are available they will automatically show up in your downloads section of DIM
So even if some get lost, this seems like a desirable thing to do. How did you go about it? Uinstalling like in the video would be extremely time consuming. It seems like you could just start from scratch, do what you did, then remove all your old directories from the content manager and add the new one. I assume you didn't have trouble with Genesis Starter Essentials and that things still basically work? (Though I assume you haven't checked all 4000 products ;-) )
If all your items are in one runtime it's easy. Point and go. You may end up with a few duplicates (I did and I cleaned them up manually by comparing file dates).
If you've got multiple runtimes, well, that's a little harder but still doable. In that scenario:
Download everything but do not have it automatically install.
Select by using the filter feature, large groups of matching contents. E.g., Filter for "Hair" if you have a hair runtime. Batch install all hair at once. Filter for "V4" or "Victoria 4" etc.
It's not as fast as the single runtime re-install (which is what I did on my Mac), but it works.
What exactly means re-installing all content? Does it make a copy of my existing runtime or does it need the installers?
In order for the DAZ Install Manager to *know* you've installed something *AND* where that install is, it needs to re-preform the installation. Since the format it understands requires the new ZIP file layout, it also has to be redownloaded.
This is the elephant in the room as far as I'm concerned, although there are others. I know a lot of people here have acclaimed DIM as the best thing to happen to D|S, and I agree it does seem to be excellent for beginners or people who don't have a huge amount of content, or rely heavily on categories and/or the CMS. But how many old hands here have heavily customised content, whether just to make sense of the many weird and wonderful places things are put, or to make things work better with their workflow? I don't use and don't need categories, the CMS, Smart Content, etc, and the vast majority of my content isn't as installed. Using the DIM will mean reverting to default everything, which would bring me (and how many others?) to a screeching halt. Constantly saying "try it, you'll like it" doesn't help.
One thing just occurred to me — we're all being pushed (and pushed, and pushed...) to install and totally convert our entire content libraries to be under the control of... a beta program?
No way.
This is the elephant in the room as far as I'm concerned, although there are others. I know a lot of people here have acclaimed DIM as the best thing to happen to D|S, and I agree it does seem to be excellent for beginners or people who don't have a huge amount of content, or rely heavily on categories and/or the CMS. But how many old hands here have heavily customised content, whether just to make sense of the many weird and wonderful places things are put, or to make things work better with their workflow? I don't use and don't need categories, the CMS, Smart Content, etc, and the vast majority of my content isn't as installed. Using the DIM will mean reverting to default everything, which would bring me (and how many others?) to a screeching halt. Constantly saying "try it, you'll like it" doesn't help.
One thing just occurred to me — we're all being pushed (and pushed, and pushed...) to install and totally convert our entire content libraries to be under the control of... a beta program?
No way.
I think for those of us who have the situations you mention, the real use of this is to download things. And I don't honestly think it SHOULD be necessary. Because the current downloading is such a disaster zone with things completely unorganized and with no way to quickly sort out what really needs downloading or has been updated, I feel we're kind of being forced into using the DIM to at least download content.
I am thrilled that installers are now just zips, but would rather have been able to just download the zips in the same way we used to download the exes on the old site. However, I am going to redownload everything in the zip format with DIM and make sure it thinks they're still in the official download folder I've set. Then at least it will tell me to redownload things that are actually updates (since you have to install things to be told they are really updates), I have no intention of using DIM (beta or not) to install or convert anything. I move and rename practically everything in my Poser Runtime. While I started off with DS4 using smart content, I'm finding it a pain in the rear since pretty much only things from Daz use it so I'll be moving stuff around in my DS Runtime as well......
You will, once Install Manager is available to everyone (except for products that are still being converted to zips, of course). Given that with Install Manager I can click one box and download everything (or select a subset of everything using regular expressions, and have them removed from the download list automatically once they've been downloaded) as opposed to having to:
1) click a link for each individual product to reset it,
2) click a download link for each file,
3) manually keep track of any downloads that failed,
4) manually keep track of what I've downloaded and what I haven't, and
5) not be automatically shown when something has been updated,
there's no way I'd do it that way, even if I wasn't going to use DIM to install them.
You will, once Install Manager is available to everyone (except for products that are still being converted to zips, of course). Given that with Install Manager I can click one box and download everything (or select a subset of everything using regular expressions, and have them removed from the download list automatically once they've been downloaded) as opposed to having to:
1) click a link for each individual product to reset it,
2) click a download link for each file,
3) manually keep track of any downloads that failed,
4) manually keep track of what I've downloaded and what I haven't, and
5) not be automatically shown when something has been updated,
there's no way I'd do it that way, even if I wasn't going to use DIM to install them.
I understand your points, but it just seems to me that they could have changed the way the download links work on the site, too. If I could see all of the products I've purchased on one page like we did on the old site, instead of only 50 at a time, and had a check box next to it so I could select the things I want to download, and then again have all the download options on one page, it would be a heck of a lot easier. The stupid software they chose to run the site apparently doesn't allow things to work right in so many ways, and this is just one. Interestingly, I have no problems downloading things at RDNA or Renderosity or even CP,. Works just fine without a program to do it. If something's updated, I get *gasp* an email from the site or vendor telling me it's been updated. Novel concept....
I'm using the DIM but it's frankly a pain because I have to change the way I normally do things in order to use it and create a bunch of phony files to trick DIM into thinking they're still in a folder and let me know what they are. All I'm saying is that if we want to be able to download things in a reasonable way, we are pretty much being forced into using the DIM. I'd rather it just be an alternate option to another reasonable way of downloading and tracking things.
Ack... nah! I don't even have enough space on my HDs to manage such an act. Redownloading everything? OMG, no way! I stay with my hand styled runtime or does this tool allow specific placing? Like I want hair mat files as a subfolder of the matching hair folder? Or does it install into custom folders like Vehicles, Grass, Stone, Temples if they exist in the main Props category for example?
Although I'm generally happy with DIM now, as its making life much easier having spent a day or do reorganizing my content, I still, (after trying all your advice about resetting, rescanning, restarting etc. the CM) have exactly 2 copies of all my characters??
I figured it out: The DIM had installed .dsf files as well as .duf of all my stuff, Once I deleted them All was well again.
For those who are JUST using DIM to simplfy the zip downloading, and do not plan to install them using it, or who want to eliminate their old exe files from their computer and get the zips with DIM, a few things I did that might be useful.
DIM insists that you keep the .dsx and .zip files in the same folder they were downloaded to. The .dsx file is tiny so that's not a big deal. By the way, you can open those with a text editor.
However, the zips are another matter - they're huge and maybe you either don't want to keep them on the hard drive and prefer to burn them to cd or dvd, and/or move them elsewhere and/or rename them. I figured out that DIM doesn't care if the file is actually there, just a file with that name.
So, you can just create an new, empty zip file (in Windows, right click and pick new/compressed (zipped) folder).
Move the original zip file to another folder.
Copy the file name from that original zip to your fake one.
Now your download folder only has a bunch of 1 kb files.
edit - By the way, apparently the date of the dsx file tells DIM WHEN you downloaded it and it will use that to tell you if there's an update. It doesn't look like you have to actually install the files at all to have DIM say there are updates.
I tested this by moving just the dsx files to another folder and reopening DIM - it alerted that they were updates AND put new dsx files into the folder. I closed and opened DIM and it still said there were updates to those files. I closed DIM, moved the original ones back to the folder (replacing the ones DIM just put there) and then reopened DIM. It no longer said there were updates.
.
There seems to be a persistent belief that DIM has to be used. DIM is NOT mandatory for anyone. If you don't want to use it, then don't even download it. Just ignore it and any mention of DIM in the forums. Continue on your merry old way and forget about it.
The problem is that the OLD way (ie from the old forums) doesn't exist any more and there are issues that are not and likely will not be changed with the current way (as I mentioned a few posts ago).
Again, I quite happily had DIM overwrite an existing install base. I had about a dozen things that ended up with duplicates because they'd moved but it took all of 20 minutes to correct.
Then I guess I don't understand what the OLD way is. We've had the new forums almost a year now.
I just manually downloaded Eastern Beauty from my Downloadable Products. It was an exe file and I put it on my external drive with my other exes. Then I custom installed it to My Library. No problems.
From what Spooky said earlier I believe that it the zip's CRC (or similar) key that is used to identify updates, a number derived from the data in the file, not the timestamp. You don't have to keep the zips, but you do need them (or the manifests generated by installing) to get update notifications.
It looks to me like you don't have to re-download. In the Installed tab there is a button to Uninstall and a pull-right menu to Delete the Installer. These seem to be different operations. Uninstall uninstalls the content but leaves the installer (the item goes to Ready to Install). Deleting the installer leaves the content, but if you then uninstall the content, the item goes to Ready to Download (and has to be downloaded again).
Bottom line is that you can move things around and reorganize them fairly conveniently just using DIM.
This is based on experimentation, not documentation. I could always have made a mistake. ;-)
So far I like it, have lots of content in different places, and am not a beginner. I'm in the process of reinstalling everything from scratch using DIM as Adam did. I think that will be a good thing compared to the mess that has accumulated over the years. Some things, like my own content or 3rd-party content, will have to be done manually, of course. If you have manually moved files and directories in your content, it won't reproduce that, also of course. I've never done that much.
Exactly what I want to know. The video is ambiguous. I've watched it three times. I think the guy is saying that NO, Mac users at least cannot install to the ~Documents/DAZ3D/Studio/My Library location because the DIM can ONLY install to an EMPTY FOLDER.
What I'd like is a DIM (a future release, I hope) that will offer to read the content installed in ~Documents/DAZ3D/Studio/My Library [Macintosh] and, hopefully, would let me specify what content I wanted read, such as "Genesis."
Obviously, I'd have to be logged in to the DAZ3D site at the same time. Fine. Then, I'd like the DIM to show me which files are newer than the ones I have. (The app would have to be able to check my account on the DADZ3D site in order to do this. ) The updated files may solve the Duplicate ID errors. If the DIM cold not uninstall the files I have on my computer, along with the metadata, OK. But, I'd like the DIM to be able to specify which files I should uninstall.
Next, if the DIM could not download and install the updated files to my ~Documents/DAZ3D/Studio/My Library location, I'd like it to at least be able to download the files. Then, I could install them.
I know the present DIM is limited to only being able to handle files it downloads and, also, files which it then installs. If I were to just download with the DIM, but install by myself, the DIM would not be able to keep track of those files. (At least, that's my understanding thus far.)
I think this is unnecessarily primitive. I'm not trying to offend anyone who worked hard on the DIM. But, what I'm saying is that a new DIM needs to be written, one which can read the files on my computer, check with my account at DAZ3D, and indicate whenever there are updated files. Then, if all it can handle at that point is the download, not the installation, I'll be satisfied. And, like some others, no, I do not want to have to install new files to the /Users/Shared folder [Macintosh].