Now-Crowd Billboards: massive download - part download possible?
manekiNeko
Posts: 1,438
finally, i managed to buy a now-crowd pack. cuz while the idea is brilliant per se, the figures in the packs have a lot of females, which i never use, and i also render mainly asian males, not so much caucasians or aliens etc. so no big need to just buy the packs just in reserve...
also, my tight budget ofc.
anyways, as i wanted to download the Now-Crowd Billboards - Asian School Life in DIM, i almost got a fainting fit: the files are ginormous. EVERY SINGLE PACK OF 12 PARTS!
ok - i know, many snapshots from all possible degrees & angles etc, i know, it's justified/able. but i have no room whatsoever on my hd for all this, no way. not as zips, and even less once unzipped/installed. NE-VER.
and sure thing is, i will ONLY use the male billboards, and never the others. i mean, if it wasn't for the huge size of those files, i would have just not used those i don't like, but now the problem is technical...
so my question: is there a way - before i download (or at least before i install...) - to know which part of 12 contains what, to select what i want downloaded/installed, and does this product actually work with a partial installation?
otherwise i could probably still use the single boards' textures with the billboard-nodes plugin i guess - but still i'd need to know in which zip/part they are. if not, i just bought a product that i can't use due to resource issues...
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Comments
Downloads 10, 11 and 12 are male only; 1,4,5,6,7 and 9 are mixed male and female; while 2,3 and 8 are either all female or couples.
wow, that's detailed ^^ - thanks!
hmm now, can i install only those zips i want and still have the product function correctly? aka metadata/smartpanel, thumbnails, presets, whatever...
If you look at the ReadMe Filelist here: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/55097/file_list you'll see a ist of what's in each file. Note that if you want to use the script (not just use the textures in another way) then you'll need Part 1.
I've not tried a partial installation so am not 100% sure whether the script will work with only some of the texture files.
(Edit to fix some typos)
oh wow, this is useful! i never use the doc center much but maybe i should. thank you ^^
well.. makes a lot of those files to get everything i'd need.. i'll wait until maybe the PA (@RiverSoftArt) gives an opinion.. but if i have to download so many of those zips i wonder, for the 1st time ever since i'm with daz, if i should ask the helpdesk/sales if i can give this product back (i've read a while ago it was possible - i can't use this in its integrity, and probably not even for my needs...). pity, this series of crowd billboards and its system is awesome, but with my resources i'm better served with single billboards from only 1 angle like the few ones that come with the billboard plugin... because while this here has a very low impact on a render scene.. it has a very high impact on my hd :(
EDIT: after all, i asked sales for a refund, see what they say. i'd be better off rendering my own billboard textures, as i intended to do a while ago...
In case this helps, you could keep the product on external drive/separate library.
I really love riversoftsarts bill boards they make fillings scenes with background poeple a breeze . though your right the product is huge download, so I did like worlds edges advice. . I bought a external 1tb hard drive to put all the downloads on i think i paid $20 bucks for a 1TB external passports HHD at wall mart. that way you don't have to store them on the mains drive. I have 4 of the bill boards products so far. they happily all fit on 1 drive
hmm... i might buy another drive - at some point... in the future. no $$, no room, no nothing, and not too keen on complicating my setup. i need a new laptop/PC at some point too, since mine doesn't do dForce (besides that dForce is awesome, many new items use it meanwhile, from clothing to hair to FX, i really feel i'm missing something now) - and with a new machine comes more HD, mine is already well past 6 yrs old so HDs might have almost doubled or sth...
but right now - just for this one billboard product since the others now-crowds don't fill my needs - i won't buy another drive ;)
I bought a 64GB flash drive for $8.45 during a sale. That's where my Now-Crowd collection resides.
i saw some now-crowd packs were in fastgrab today.. and i might have got them - but yeah again, the huge size makes those awesome packs a no-no for me. and buying an xtra ext drive for one series of items, not really.
then i had an idea, for the creator: wouldn't it be an idea to release a (or some) special pack(s) of billboards similar to the insta crowd, with only 1 sight/angle per person/subject - like from the front or whatever - and including a couple of the original now-crowd packs (all aliens/scifi, all asian, all fantasy/medieval... or even all released up to now)?
i mean, the hardest work of setting up the figures+rendering etc has already been done, the slides are already there. it would just mean picking the adequate slides, repackaging the product(s)/zip. kinda like a "best of", "digest".
might be an interesting option for resource-poor peeps like me. cuz there would be a flurry of different slides (72) for the size of 1 normal now-crowd subject...
or am i the only one with an issue?
I don’t use them but do they work with connect?
that way you only get what you need
If you don't have the space then buy them cheap and leave them on the server until you have the storage, no need to download them right away.
might be quite a while until i have "the storage"... i have no room at home (not even mentioning the finances to afford it) for a fixed ext hd (just an old one i occasionally get out of the cupboard for backups). just a tiny makeshift pc table with a thin drawer to stuff my laptop when i'm not using it. my whole flat is full of cats and cat stuff, i have next to nothing in human furniture apart from our mattresses, a bedside table and said "pc table", plus a batch of plastic boxes with all my stuff (well hidden in wall cupboards). and nothing worth anything is standing/lying around, it'd immediately get shredded, peed on, thrown on the floor, somehow demolished.
getting out the new "daz storage" hd (if i had the $$) and install it i dunno even where every time i spontaneously wanna use some flat persona, no thx, it'd totally break my flow... so the next big storage will come with a new laptop - and i barely have enough $$ to feed ourselves, with the occasional 3D candy, the only pleasure i can afford from time to time. unless i get big bucks somehow - fat chance - no new laptop (which suxx cuz i can't do dforce with this one here)...
plus since i don't use females at all, and mainly asian males, the only pack i'd be interested in would be that asian school one, there are enough guys to make it worth it - so buying some special storage just for that 1 pack, nope. it would have to be on my laptop hd. no idea how long before i can buy one, and until then, this crowd pack will be for sale a few times again ^^
but about your comment generally, it's actually what i do with stuff i got for free or cheap, like (pc+) freebies i just got cuz they were practically thrown at me but i'm not even really super interested however i might use them at some point, or textures for stuff i don't have yet, or cool that i'm definitely not using atm stuff taking a lot of room - i leave it on the server ^^
ManekiNeko, would you be able to get a second hand HDD for free or a few dollars from someone getting rid of an old PC?
You may only need a few hundred Giga bytes for what you need, and old drives often just get thrown out.
not where i live, no. from an already not so huge city i moved (against my will actually, but hey hard to be pickish with 15 meoows...) in a small village where there is just.. nothing. *please someone shoot me*.
and the population is well, accordingly not on the forefront of electronic luxury, part are farmers... my nearest neighbors look like the folks in a guarded community, just probably older and their houses are old/country-ish.
then, getting it online from some 2nd hand site, nope either. sending this type of electronic device per post doesn't guarantee it's still working when it comes - taken i wasn't ripped off in the 1st place with a defective thing. and then this kind of deal works usually through paypal, which i don't have nor want.
and here, nobody "throws out" old electronic stuff, lol - the garbage point is super reglemented, you can't even put out your trash on sundays.
there are 2nd hand shops specialized in electric/onic stuff in a town 25 miles away, but i don't go often (no car, no $$ for train fares), but usually in those 2nd hand stores of all kinds, when you browse their stocks you see everything you don't need... and find nothing you'd need. until you need something you saw recently, and for sure when you go back to the shop, the item is long gone ~ lol.
also, there is a reason why old drives get thrown out, i guess ^^
anyways, as i said, i have next to no room for my personal things. there are few cupboards, and i'm already fighting to get in all my stuff. and leaving it where it should be to be of practical use - next to my laptop, not gonna search boxes in cupboards every time i need a flat person in a scene - is absolutely not possible. my makeshift pc table can just offer shelter to my laptop, mouse, cable and tablet.
so the solution is simple for me: as it is, i can't use now-crowd. the only alternative i might be interested in would be the one i suggested here. ideally, a male-only mixed pack with 1-angle dudes from all packs up to now. short, a male insta-now-crowd ^^
I just downloaded two sets that were in Fast Grab, Zombie Apocalypse and Droids. One had 8? separate downloads and the other 11?, I think, each was around 1GB in size and could be downloaded separately rather than in one lot using DIM. I have no idea what was in each download so I don't know if they are separated into sets for each character or not.
someone above told me there's a list of the contents in every zip, look at this comment here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4705196/#Comment_4705196