Struggling with the new GenesisStarterEssentials files/folders
LeeC2202
Posts: 37
I've not used Poser for a few years now, and I have just reinstalled to have a play with it. Because I have zero income, I am having to work with my previously bought content and anything free (or very cheap) that I can scrabble together. I got Poser 9 a couple of years back, and I have been looking at what I had available in my product library.
So I downloaded the new DSON importer, with a view to using the GenesisStarterEssentials pack that originally came with it and the associated freebies. So after unzipping the main GSE zip file, I am confused (to say the least) with what I am faced with. As a Poser user, I am used to seeing the Runtime folder, with everything stacked beneath that, but I have numerous foldders on the same level, and I have no idea what I need to do with them. I have read that the manifest and supplement files are for the install manager, so that's not a problem, it's just the multitude of folders inside the *content* folder.
I don't have Daz Studio installed because I don't really like the interface, and my Reality plugin is the Poser version. I also don't want that darned content manager background service running all the time. I always install my content manually, purely because I have a set procedure that I go through that is now habit... I also pretty much hate download and install managers. In my product library, the GSE had a *manual* link, but I am just confused by the folder structure in the latest version.
Can anyone offer some simple guidance as to how I should install the GSE content into my Poser runtimes? Everything was straightforward with the .exe installers... and it probably still is to those that have kept up with the changes to files/folders and use Daz Studio.
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Basically, to install manually a DAZ zip you extract it in a temp folder and then you just copy whatever folders you find in the top-level "content" folder and paste it in your content directory, that is to say the folder which hold your "Runtime" folder.
You'll end-up with several folders next to the "Runtime", they are in the correct place. "data" is the one which holds the DS geometry and morph files, the rest of them hold user-facing files, for example the content intended for Genesis will be in sub-folders of "People". The textures are still stored under "Runtime / textures", so they can be shared with the poser version of the same item when it exists.
You can also download DAZ Install Manager (DIM) and let it handle installs instead of doing it manually, it can be used to install to Poser too.
Ah, okay. It's been a while since I've been using Poser, so I was just a bit uncertain about the extra folders. What I might do is to create a new Library and put it all in there, that way, if I mess things up, it won't affect the main installation folders.
Thanks for the help, I know it was a bit of a noob question, I've just forgotten so much about how things work.
Doh... sorry, I had no idea that this had been posted.
I'm not a heavy forum user, and have only just realised that bookmarking a thread gives you notification updates... my apologies for seemingly disappearing without a trace.
This information is very useful, as I am having a complete mare with DSON. For some reason, it keeps choosing my Reality folder as the writable runtime folder (I have the Reality plugin for Luxrender). I'm also trying to use it with two versions of Poser (32-bit and 64-bit, (which it insists on installing the 64-bit version into a Poser Pro 2012 folder, even though I don't have that version)), and whilst it allows you to set a version specific Writable Runtime Folder, it seems the Cache Folder is shared, and I have no idea how much of a conflict that is causing. All I know, is that I spend ages dialing in morphs, suddenly get hit with the "Can't create unimesh geometry" error when I load a stored character, and the morphs get disconnected. For example, I dial the mouth open, the lower set of teeth move, but the jaw remains in position... or the eyes will suddenly stop opening/closing.
I don't have any Genesis bundles yet... can't afford them, which means I am morph building every character that I am hoping to use, so it's frustrating when the morph failure happens, as I haven't found a way to fix it. In older figures, you would just re-apply the morphs of they went missing, but that no longer seems possible.
I might have to look at that export trick you mentioned, because DSON is driving me crazy. I know that's not a good thing to say on the creator's forums, but the amount of documentation almost makes it seem like it was created as a pacifier, but they're not really bothered if it works properly or not. I mean, I had also been having the "Broken breast" bug, and found a thread from 2013 about it.. yet it still exists. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/18725/ I managed to sus that one out myself, but spotted that thread today whilst searching for the broken morphs.
I have now bookmarked this thread, so if you are able to post any more info, I will see the update and respond. Again my apologies, and also my sincere thanks for the info.
You can change the writible runtime folder for the DSON Importer using the script; Scripts>DSON Support>Importer preferences
I've only just discovered which folder it is supposed to point to... I have no idea why it was choosing the Reality folder.
I have just uninstalled and reinstalled and will make some changes based on the new info I have, see how things go from there.
Wow, you really have spent a lot of time working your way through all of this... and presenting it here. I really appreciate the time you are spending, I am going to copy these into a word document, and leave it on my desktop like a DAZ to Poser Bible.
It's funny (not in a ha ha sense), but some of the things you are describing, are probably the result of things I have seen in the many years I worked in the software industry. Someone has an idea, the person they report to agrees, but neither of them can quite see beyond that, to foresee the consequences of the idea. It's a very easy trap to fall into, and very common. The result, as you have noticed, is some inappropriate morphs potentially ending up on characters that probably shouldn't have them. I wonder if that's something unique to Daz though, I don't think Poser works like that?!?
I must confess, I kind of like the idea of the per-character UV sets. Whilst shared textures seems good on the surface, it means that you can't fully exploit the mesh, without compromising the texture to a degree. You also can't adapt a mesh, without being constrained by the texture you will use to map it. So in that sense, it opens up a bit more control, but restricts a bit of versatility... the proverbial swings and roundabouts. If ever I create new textures, I tend to adapt the ones for the character in question, rather than pull in ones from a different character. I will then apply them to the model, and store that in the library under my own headings. I tend to create personas, build them as a figure, and store them for use later.
Your last line reminds me of the one thing I have always hated about these programmes, and that is the inability of creators to manage their content into the correct locations. I had to spend an age going through Figures, Props, Poses and Hair folders in Poser, just to find out where all the hair was stored in my library. It says Hair for goodness sake, if you're making hair, put it where it belongs... not you of course, the creators. It's the same for mat sets too, they might be in Materials, but they might be in Poses. I can only imagine that these people keep their shoes in the sock draw, and have their wigs on coat hangers in the wardrobe.
It's going to be a while before I can buy any real Daz content. For now, I have to manage with the old stuff I have, and the characters I can manage to dial in from the Base figures. Hopefully, when I do get round to getting some, I won't need to fumble around the folders that often, but if I do, at least I will have a better understanding of where things belong. I have been playing with building morphs targets in Blender, so that's another way I can expand my content... I could do with winning a competition to have lots of free figures from the Daz store... or the lottery, that'd do it.
But again... thank you.
The so-called ego-folders are there to avoid the problem of having hundreds of folders in the Data folder itself, one for each product, as happened with the old .daz format. Grouping by Author is done by the Asset save dialogue (the same for the grouping by author in the Morphs folder). It also makes it easier for creators, both PAs and end-users saving their own assets, to find and package or back-up their content. Within each Author folder there will be a folder for each product.
Having the morph parameters (but not the deltas) load with the figure makes for a simpler user experience - no need to find and inject morphs in another library - though I agree that trimming rarely used morphs (by removing or simply by setting them to hidden) is a sensible idea, especially for Poser users.
The Projection Morphs folder is used in conjunction with the Morphs folder in the auto-generation of morphs. It is possible to create a projection morph that differs from the actual morph (in the morphs folder) that will be used for projected morphs in clothing. For example, a muscle morph with lots of cut detail could have a smoothed-out projection, to produce a more natural appearance in clothing that lacked a custom morph.
As for the UV sets, DAZ and various PAs have explained why these are created - they allow the maps to be made for the custom shape with no stretching, where using the default maps on a figure with a markedly different shape would compress some areas of the map and stretch others. Opinions may differ on how useful this is, but the reasoning is not secret.
Had you not customised your installation by moving files around this would not have been an issue, as long as you had the Stephanie 5 character of course. It is a good idea not to move files unless you know what they are for - with luck this thread will help others in that respect.
That was exactly why I like the idea... even a simple eye width difference (i.e. distance between the eyes) either stretches the nose bridge part of the texture, or compresses it. If you like to do close-up portrait shots, this is an important factor. It makes sense, but as I mentioned, it does affect the versatility of the textures... I prefer textures that accurately match the model, rather than ones that just happen to line up correctly, so this is a good point, for me anyway.
Here's an example of how UV sets can distort across two models using the same UV set. On the left is the basic V4 model, on the right, is Aiko 4. You can see that the black circle is not the same shape on both figures, because they are using the same UV sets. I mean, it's not a circle on either image, but UVs are rarely uniform. The more difference there is between the source UV set, and the destination mesh, the greater the distortion. It is a real issue, it just bothers some people less than others... me, it can drive me crazy sometimes.
I was mainly a 2D artist, so I kinda got very susceptible to even the slightest variations in shape from the original. That's why, in a case where I would be putting a design onto a figure, I would create a test grid overlay, render out the area of the figure where the design was going to go, and then create a unique texture to take into account the distortions, that would only be used on that mesh. A unique UV set just means a bit less work needing to be done with regards to distortion compensation... theoretically. It's just a nice thing to have.
Edit: Having just read Richard's post below, I'm guessing the issue you were referring to was the weight mapping, not the UV sets. Sorry for the confusion.
Users are not expected to do anything of the kind - while I agree that knowing how the behind-the-scenes stuff is structured and being able to adjust it or fix it at need is a highly desirable skill, it isn't actually formally necessary - people can and do use the applications and content without. If you need the location of the files within the Data folder that can be obtained from the File List linked from the readme (on any TriAx content - some older items still lack their readme pages). The only people expected to do anything in the Data folder are those creating content -for their own use or for sale/gift - for whom the split by author will be a boon.
I agree with you in respect to Poser-format files - in DS format the materials usually are placed in the folder of the item they go with, though not always in the Materials sub-folder. Sticking to the Poser library structure, especially when some people still like to have the materials available in the Pose library so they can be applied without going to the Material Room, does lead to some scatering but I would again agree that everything should be gethered in a single sub-folder for the product with folders within that for the different material sets. Where the guidelines are ignored it may be worth submitting a bug report - even if it has to wait until there's a more substantial update it at least puts the request in the system.
I'm not sure what you mean in respect to the rigging - both Poser and DS (with TriAx) use a separate weight-map for each axis, though Poser did not originally use maps for as many things as DS does. TriAx actually came first and Poser's weight-mapping came later (and by the accounts I saw at the time, from the Poser devs/managers, the addition of per-axis mapping was incorporated as one of their responses to the information DAZ supplied about Genesis/TriAx rigging).
That would be a bug - have you reported it? If not, please do; if you have, please let me have the ticket number.
I apologise for diverting your discussion - there were a couple of issues that I thought needed clarification but it did take rather a long post to do that (and now another, so i suppose that needs to be a double apology).
Can you name some of the products that are mispackaged? I don't have many Genesis 2 products, but I've got a whole lot of Genesis 1 products, and I routinely check all the zips before installing, because I'm OCD about that. I've found (and bug reported, and gotten fixed) lots of packaging errors, but I have never seen .cm2, .cr2, .hr2, .lt2, or .pp2 files in the pose folder. I have seen poses and materials in a subfolder of the folder where the .cr2/.hr2/.pp2 they apply to are, which I think is an improvement (only for Genesis items, because those require P9+ which allows this flexibility). I could see .hd2 or .fc2 files in the Pose folder, because most people would think of them as a kind of pose, although I don't recall seeing that often.
I'm starting to think that I asked a bad question. I didn't mean to stir up this much trouble amongst people.
No, the question was good - the rest of us have tot ake responsibility for the way it span out of control.
This is a very interesting discussion yet I have not seen any action on it since 8/6 and tonite is 8/24 will this be continuing?? If so when as I am having the same issue putting DAZ content into Poser...
ssgbryan you mentioned you were going to be adding additional info on the People folder post with screenshots yet nothing has appeared. Has this thread been continued elsewhere - if so please direct me to where it has gone - otherwise when do you plan to continue?
Thanks for the great info so far...
Just to add from my perspective. I am finding that the brief novelty of coming back to Poser has already worn off. I had hoped to do more on the animation side, but had forgotten how much of a pain animating in Poser was. I was hoping to use it as a kind of therapy to help me deal with my problems, but I find it is doing quite the opposite, so I'm going to leave it alone.
So I offer thanks for the information that has been posted, it helped a lot, but I don't really have any need for further information with regards to Genesis and Poser. If any of the contributors wish to add further info for the benefit of others, then I will say that it is entirely up to them.
DAZ Studio is a disaster in my personal experience. I agree with ssgbryan on folders with the creator's name. Who remembers who created what model especially when we have tons of items. The entire library structure in DS makes no sense, is confusing, and there's hardly any way to differentiate between a Material or a Character because everything is lumped together. I have discovered trying to customize it is a waste of time because DIM will just update the library putting back what I just changed so I now have two. I don't use DIM anymore because it dumps copies of my purchased items on my hard drive. I save purchased items to a specific folder so it can be backed up.
Another problem is everything ends in DUF. When trying to convert DAZ files for use in Poser, there doesn't seem to be any difference between a Pose file and a Material file. The QA people don't know the difference either because they put both in the Materials folder. At least with Poser extensions we know what we're working with.
I'm exporting all Genesis content from DAZ Studio into Poser. Some of it may not be convertible because some Pose files with the DSON converter don't work properly (such as the Darius character). In one instance it creates two figures instead of changing the texture. Another problem that slipped past DAZ QA. I run the converted files through Netherworks Studios' Creator's ToyBox to clean up the mess that DSON importer leaves behind and find external references to files that don't exist.
I just bought Bellatrix for Geni 2 here, and I had to look at the Poser CF file list to figure out how to load it; there's no character preset, so I have to load Genesis 2, then load poses to get the shape and mats. Plus these poses are under 'Genesis 2 Female' instead of 'DAZ Genesis 2 Female", so they aren't with everything else. Not a .mc6 file in sight..
However, this type of nonsense isn't unique to DAZ...
Can you bug report this?