Many of my items are not installed by DIM
Ron Knights
Posts: 2,070
I just noticed this by accident. I had recently reinstalled all my DAZ content via DIM.
When I had used my old DAZ installation, I saved some characters in a folder outside of the folders created within DIM. That allows me to easily copy those characters to a new drive, etc.
Suddenly many characters or clothing items did not show up in my newly installed content created by DIM.
Two Items I've seen so far are Noel for M4 and the Santa character and beard for Genesis 3.
I see a potential pattern in that these files get installed under a "content" folder which is no longer used.
I'm really concerned here. I don't know how to discover the full extent of this problem unless I try to load every single purchase item into DAZ Studio.
Do I need to manually install 20+ years worth of content manually?
I have some pressing personal concerns that would make this into a nightmare.
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Comments
You could simply add the unused content along with your current content folder in content manager in Daz Studio?
So we have software that is supposed to keep track of our purchases and install them.
But we can't trust the software (DIM).
So I have to go through every single item I've bought in the past 20+ years to make sure everything is installed.
What a needless waste.
Err, I don't exactly understand. Daz Studio is pretty reliable but you do have to configure it. The alternative, which would be to thwart your privacy and scan your whole computer willy nilly to try to figure out what is a content folder, would still require configuration so that you can exclude certain content folders. You don't have to scan every product that you have but you do have to tell Daz Studio what content folders you are using. If you are explaining something else, it is my mistake but it sounds like minor effort and only a minute or two to point Daz Studio to the excluded folder to add it to the content folders that you are using. If you are nervous, you can then test by opening up two or three random products to see if the newly added orphan content folder is correctly configured so ihn total we are talking seven minutes of work. DIM and Daz Studio do keep very good track of these locations once they are properly configured. One thing that may require configuration is if you move content to a new drive and some rather particular hard disk crashes. Your drives and content locations have internal names that you never see but are important for computers to know which are independent of the name that you give the drive or folder. Fortunately, it is trivial to reconfigure in Content Manager.
If I understand you correctly, I have some tools which can scan your content and create a list of what has been installed by DIM and what has not. It will only work for products purchased at DAZ however (and possibly other products converted to DIM installer format, if you know which these are).
But actually, what does DIM say? If all your products have been installed by DIM, they should all be listed on the "Installed" tab in DIM. If some haven't, they'll be listed on the "Ready to download" or "Ready to install" tabs.
I only have DAZ products in my collection.
Whenever I put together a character or scene from the DIM-installed, files, I save it in a whole different directory folder. That works because of DAZ's use of relative file paths.
However things went wrong after I did a whole new install of products, again using DIM.
Suddenly many of the previously installed items were no longer found.
Does DIM listing it to be installed?
And if you know where it is, which path is it then compared to the path where you have your content?
OK, then I misunderstood what you said. But it's hard to tell what's going on without some info about install paths etc.. DIM is very reliable, if you always install to the same library path you shouldn't run into any problems with scenes not being able to find the content, no matter where the scene files are located.
It does sound strange though if it's only some of the content that DS can't find. Is all your content actually installed - do you see anything listed on the "Ready to download" or "Ready to install" tabs in DIM?
I like to divide my installation into categories:
"Gen4" is for everything before Genesis (Michael 1, Michael 2, etc).
Genesis is for all Genesis characters
Scenes, etc.
Whenever I "put together" a character (hair, clothes, etc.) I save it to a new folder structure (Ron's Characters, for example.) That way I always have that work for later.
I've been doing some digging into the situation. I get inconsistent results. I had reinstalled everything again.
I did a search for Noel for M4. He didn't show up in my installation. I searched my Product Library purchases. He didn't show up today. But he showed up yesterday. I downloaded him directly!
I searched my collection of files. I found him. He was downloaded 8 years ago!
So maybe we reach different servers depending on when we use DIM. Maybe DAZ's Product Library is inconsistent?
Is the Content folder inside another content directory or separate? If it is separate you can just add it to the list of Poser Format content directories (right-click on the Poser Formats header) though you should note that any additional ExP morphs need to be in the same content directory as the base. If the Content folder is a sub-folder of the main content directory then you would need to integrate it, either by uninstalling or reinstalling or (if you are using Windows and don't mind losing the ability to uninstall) just cut the folders inside the Content folder and paste them into the main content directory, where they wil merge with those already present.
So here we go again: fixing a problem that DAZ created. Why don't they just fix the originals and save us the extra work?
Mixing install methods is not recommended, and if you had a "Content" folder it sounds as if you just manually unzipped without looking at the structure (the Content folder is in the DIM Zips because a given zip may contain more than one type of data, requirinf diffrent base paths for installation). If you had used one of the supported installation methods consistently you would not, the odd mis-configured package aside, have had these issues.
Richard, please give me some credit here. As previously stated, I used DIM exclusively to install all the content.
I think someone needs to look over the content before they assume I made a mistake.
It sounds like I'll need to take some more of my valuable time to provide proof of these mistakes made by DAZ.
I'm already finding new problems. None of the "major generation 4 figures" will load in DAZ Studio. That includes Victoria 4, Kids 4, Michael 4, Freak 4. I get the following error.
I think DAZ should hire me for Quality Control.
Sorry, I misread your post. So the Content folder is inside the actual content directory (e.g. My Daz 3D Library)?
The error in the last post means that the ExP creation tools have not been run or that the installation is off, relative to the figure you loaded (unlikely if it is the base Michael 4). You either need to manually run /Runtime/Libraries/!Daz/DzCreateExPFiles-m4.bat to build the reference files 9and rrun it every time you add or remove ExP morph sets or characters) or you need to install the PowerLoader components so that DS will build the needed files on load each time.
Richard those errors are for the base Michael 4, Victoria 4, etc.
I ran the "bat" files you mentioned, and the problem still exists.
** Edited to add***
I just used DIM to uninstall and reinstall the M4 (etc) files. They work now.