PerttiA said:

It all started with Poser and while the idea of Poser categorization has probably sounded logical at the start, when one had gathered significant amount of assets, it quicly lost the luster... First you were digging for hours for the base geometry, then you did the same for textures for that geometry and started pulling your hairs out if the texture you were looking for, was made by someone else than the one who created the original geometry
When they came up with Mat Poses (material poses), that were actually 'textures' but placed within poses, the content library had become ones worst nightmare and was one of the reasons I took a 5 year break from even touching 3D modelling. Came back to DS 4.8 and found the content library structure much more logical and faster to use, although one can still see the Poser's legacy on some creators organization of the files, when they throw stuff that should be kept together all over the place.

The huge number of creators with their own ideas together with beginning creators that are still looking for the idea, counts for a portion of the mess as well
DAZ has not enforced standards for the folder structure for the User Facing files as they feel what the creator has decided, is the creators choice, apart from adhering to rules within 'Data* and 'Runtime' folders that need to be created correctly for the product to work.

The good thing with DS is, that apart from 'Data', 'Runtime' and to keep it safe 'Scripts', one can organize the library to please one own preferences... With two catches... If a product uses scripts to load assets, like the UltraScenery, all the files must be kept in their original folders for it to work (better create a content library of it's own) and the other catch is that if one moves the files within the folders used for 'User Facing files', one can't use DIM of DAZ Central to uninstall them anymore.

I install all the content manually, because it lets me place the 'User Facing files' to the location, where I think it should be and when this is done at the time of installation, it doesn't take much more time, but saves a LOT of time, when one doesn't have to hunt down products in a jungle of vanity folders and stuff that's obviously located in a wrong place. There's a house, should it be in Environments\Architecture, Props or even Poses? - Where one finds it, is anybody's guess if left where the creator thought it should be.

Wrote this earlier; https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7635596/#Comment_7635596

 

 

I use custom categories to organise my content. I use DIM to install Studio content and I don't move it so DIM can update it. DIM can automatically find what products have been updated and apply the updates.

Custom categries take a bit of time to set up but once I had categorised everything already installed I just have to categorise new stuff as I install it. They also have the advantage that content can be in more than one category without being installed more than once. For example, I have a lot of clothes that are categorised both under historical and fantasy, some Sci Fi vehicles categorised under both air and space vehicles if I think they look OK in both types of scene.

It all started with Poser and while the idea of Poser categorization has probably sounded logical at the start, when one had gathered significant amount of assets, it quicly lost the luster... First you were digging for hours for the base geometry, then you did the same for textures for that geometry and started pulling your hairs out if the texture you were looking for, was made by someone else than the one who created the original geometry
When they came up with Mat Poses (material poses), that were actually 'textures' but placed within poses, the content library had become ones worst nightmare and was one of the reasons I took a 5 year break from even touching 3D modelling. Came back to DS 4.8 and found the content library structure much more logical and faster to use, although one can still see the Poser's legacy on some creators organization of the files, when they throw stuff that should be kept together all over the place.

The huge number of creators with their own ideas together with beginning creators that are still looking for the idea, counts for a portion of the mess as well
DAZ has not enforced standards for the folder structure for the User Facing files as they feel what the creator has decided, is the creators choice, apart from adhering to rules within 'Data* and 'Runtime' folders that need to be created correctly for the product to work.

The good thing with DS is, that apart from 'Data', 'Runtime' and to keep it safe 'Scripts', one can organize the library to please one own preferences... With two catches... If a product uses scripts to load assets, like the UltraScenery, all the files must be kept in their original folders for it to work (better create a content library of it's own) and the other catch is that if one moves the files within the folders used for 'User Facing files', one can't use DIM of DAZ Central to uninstall them anymore.

I install all the content manually, because it lets me place the 'User Facing files' to the location, where I think it should be and when this is done at the time of installation, it doesn't take much more time, but saves a LOT of time, when one doesn't have to hunt down products in a jungle of vanity folders and stuff that's obviously located in a wrong place. There's a house, should it be in Environments\Architecture, Props or even Poses? - Where one finds it, is anybody's guess if left where the creator thought it should be.

Wrote this earlier; https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7635596/#Comment_7635596

martin_bourassa said:

I have the same problem. If someone has an answer, it would be greatly appireciated.

Didn't manage to fix it. But someone suggested to just get rid of Daz Central and install Daz3D through the shop rather than through Daz Central. Maybe that's the way to go?

Not sure if I mess up any of added files if I attempt a re-installation though

Had some time on my hands...

Base folder

Base Folder for a content library can reside just about anywhere, but not recomended to place it on the same drive with the OS (Space will eventually run out and it is the most likely drive to corrupt files due to the constant activities of the OS, also worst drive for any rescue operations).

The name of the base folder can be just about anything, default folder names have been 'Content', 'My Library', 'My Daz 3D Library' or whatever if you have given the folder a name by yourself. DS doesn't care what the name of the folder is, as long as the folder is set as a content folder in 'Content Directory Manager'

Within the installation (Zip) files, this folder is named 'Content', which was used as the name of the base folder in ancient times.

It is also better to keep the path to the base folder as short as possible, preferably put it straight into root of the drive where you want to put it, for example 'D:\My DAZ3D Library'

Inside the base folder, there are a number of sub-folders, the most important ones for DS are 'Data' and 'Runtime'

‘Data’ folder

'Data' folder contains the geometry of the characters, environments, props, whatever (=assets) together with the information on how the morphs are changing the assets they are meant for (=morph deltas)

In general, one should not move any files under the 'Data' folder, nor make any corrections to misspelled names of files/folders or delete anything inside the 'Data' folder or the sub-folders in there.

If changes are made inside the 'Data' folder or it's sub-folders, it can cause the assets to load as gray cubes because they can't find the needed geometry information anymore.

‘Runtime’ folder

'Runtime' is a remnant of ancient times, it is the base folder for Poser content, but still holds two important sub-folders for DS as well, these folders are 'Support' and 'Textures'

'Support' folder contains the metadata and thumbnails for assets that are installed by DAZ Install Manager (DIM), DAZ Central or Manual Installation. One should not make changes inside this folder.

'Textures' folder contains all the textures and maps for the assets that are installed by DAZ Install Manager (DIM), DAZ Central or Manual Installation. Any manual changes inside this folder or it's sub-folders can cause assets not finding their textures anymore.
The ‘Textures’ folder is sometimes misspelled, I have seen it spelled Texture, Texutre, Texturen. One should not correct these misspellings, as the same errors are most likely written inside the files that load the assets into DS with their textures.

“Scripts” folder

The ‘Scripts’ folder contains the scripts one has installed by DAZ Install Manager (DIM), DAZ Central or Manual Installation. One should not make manual changes inside this folder as that can render the scripts non functional. 

The rest of the folders contain what is called ‘User facing files’, which are used to load assets into a DS scene, these files can be seen in the ‘Content Library’ inside DS, under ‘DAZ Studio Formats’ with the same folder structure that can be seen with the Windows Explorer on the drive they are installed in.

With two exeptions, the names of the 'User Facing files' and folders and their locations can be changed as long as the files and folders are not moved outside the base folder of the Content Library or into the ‘Data’ or ‘Runtime’ folders as those folders have a special meaning and are hidden within the ‘Content Library’ inside DS.

The two exeptions for renaming/moving the user facing files/folders are when those files are called by scripts (for example the UtraScenery files) or one wants to preserve the possibility to uninstall assets with the DIM or DAZ Central.

Attached also instructions for manual installation, which will help in understanding how DS knows about where to find the assets and how one can help DS to find them

I'm running Monterey (MacOS 12.4) There is no "Green Install button" for Hexagon 2.5. I used Daz Central which usually works well for other things.

Richard Haseltine said:

Really, Daz is looking at ways to automate the process so I would wait a bit before grabbing licenses you don't have an immediate need for. This has been posted earlier in the thread.

The problem is that "looking at" and "doing something" are two entirely different things.  AFAIK, there's been no published statement from DAZ to even indicate that it's a matter of real priority at Taffy Central.      

I have seen that icon as a user-created category - not sure what it's doing sitting in that corner tho.

When I had similar issues I had to specifically uninstall (from within Daz Studio) and also remove the products. As far as I understand it, if Daz Connect believe it has installed a product then it will override anything that DIM or Daz Central tells it. I have purged the folder now and this might need some translating as I was using a Mac but within my user's Documents folder was "DAZ 3D/Studio/My Daz Connect Library/data/cloud" - in here I think were two folders: "meta" which I am not sure about but looks to be a thumbnail cache some a companion json file and another folder which appeared to contain config for products which Daz Connect had installed. I went through each of those and uninstalled & removed them and then deleted that folder (hence I don't remember what it was called). Then I reinstalled them all using DIM which did appear to make those products behave as expected.

PerttiA said:

McGyver said:

Complaint...

Tower Fans... I kinda hate these things now... these are those sideways linear blowers that are quickly replacing regular bladed fans everywhere.

A while ago I replaced a bunch of old dying bladed fans with these things because linear blowers are generally more effective and efficient than regular fans with blades... but now I'm kinda realizing these things suck... they are weaker, seem to die sooner, are too low to the ground, have stupid controls, and are stupidly hard to aim.

They are probably great for cooling off dachshunds, really short people or if you like to lay on the floor or crawl around mostly... the tallest one I have can just about cool my belly button if I scooch down a bit otherwise it's pretty useless.

The solution I suppose would be to replace them with regular old bladed pedestal fans... you know, fans with propeller type blades, but now those things are usually around $50 because they have to include remote controls on them now... and there are no more decent cheap ones anymore, ones without remotes are generally garbage quality that appear to be practically disposable quality.

Thats probably more of a "me" complaint, but we don't have central A/C because the house is too old and it would be pretty expensive to cool, even with the more modern through the wall units... but still, it's annoying because it's hot and it's hard to get good airflow going with these things.

Also living in an older house (80 years) and had several bladed fans before, but they didn't help. Now I'm using a blower (250 watts) that's meant for construction sites to draw air from the colder side of the house and blowing it into the room on the other side.
In addition to making the air move, it helps to keep the temperature about 3-5 degrees Celsius lower than it would be without it.

I have an 8000BTU A/C upstairs in the bedroom set to 70F(21C).  Some of the air comes down the open stairway(I have baffles that help keep most of the cool air near the floor, up there so that the A/C doesn't run continuously)  The temperature downstairs stays about 77F(25C). 

The downstairs is served by a twin-fan window unit exausting from the bathroom, and personal fans pointed at my lab area and at my recliner as needed.  The temperature downstairs stays about 77F(25C) warm but tolerable if you use the fans and run around nearly naked(ah ha, an advantage to Covid isolation).

However, recently I discovered that the fan exhausting from the bathroom, sucks cold air from the neighbor's half of the house through the furnace's cold air return ducts.

And yes, one of my fans is a tower unit, I love it, because it's pointed at my recliner so the air doesn't need to get very high.

However, neither of us pay for electricity, it's included in our rent agreement because we only have one meter.

McGyver said:

Complaint...

Tower Fans... I kinda hate these things now... these are those sideways linear blowers that are quickly replacing regular bladed fans everywhere.

A while ago I replaced a bunch of old dying bladed fans with these things because linear blowers are generally more effective and efficient than regular fans with blades... but now I'm kinda realizing these things suck... they are weaker, seem to die sooner, are too low to the ground, have stupid controls, and are stupidly hard to aim.

They are probably great for cooling off dachshunds, really short people or if you like to lay on the floor or crawl around mostly... the tallest one I have can just about cool my belly button if I scooch down a bit otherwise it's pretty useless.

The solution I suppose would be to replace them with regular old bladed pedestal fans... you know, fans with propeller type blades, but now those things are usually around $50 because they have to include remote controls on them now... and there are no more decent cheap ones anymore, ones without remotes are generally garbage quality that appear to be practically disposable quality.

Thats probably more of a "me" complaint, but we don't have central A/C because the house is too old and it would be pretty expensive to cool, even with the more modern through the wall units... but still, it's annoying because it's hot and it's hard to get good airflow going with these things.

Also living in an older house (80 years) and had several bladed fans before, but they didn't help. Now I'm using a blower (250 watts) that's meant for construction sites to draw air from the colder side of the house and blowing it into the room on the other side.
In addition to making the air move, it helps to keep the temperature about 3-5 degrees Celsius lower than it would be without it.

McGyver said:

Complaint...

Tower Fans... I kinda hate these things now... these are those sideways linear blowers that are quickly replacing regular bladed fans everywhere.

A while ago I replaced a bunch of old dying bladed fans with these things because linear blowers are generally more effective and efficient than regular fans with blades... but now I'm kinda realizing these things suck... they are weaker, seem to die sooner, are too low to the ground, have stupid controls, and are stupidly hard to aim.

They are probably great for cooling off dachshunds, really short people or if you like to lay on the floor or crawl around mostly... the tallest one I have can just about cool my belly button if I scooch down a bit otherwise it's pretty useless.

The solution I suppose would be to replace them with regular old bladed pedestal fans... you know, fans with propeller type blades, but now those things are usually around $50 because they have to include remote controls on them now... and there are no more decent cheap ones anymore, ones without remotes are generally garbage quality that appear to be practically disposable quality.

Thats probably more of a "me" complaint, but we don't have central A/C because the house is too old and it would be pretty expensive to cool, even with the more modern through the wall units... but still, it's annoying because it's hot and it's hard to get good airflow going with these things.

Have you checked out WindMachines?  Floor fan, but large, and you can tilt it all the way to pointing straight up.   https://www.google.com/search?q=wind+machine+fan+walmart&oq=windmachin&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0i10i512l4j0i512l3j0i10i512j0i512.7708j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 

Dana

Complaint...

Tower Fans... I kinda hate these things now... these are those sideways linear blowers that are quickly replacing regular bladed fans everywhere.

A while ago I replaced a bunch of old dying bladed fans with these things because linear blowers are generally more effective and efficient than regular fans with blades... but now I'm kinda realizing these things suck... they are weaker, seem to die sooner, are too low to the ground, have stupid controls, and are stupidly hard to aim.

They are probably great for cooling off dachshunds, really short people or if you like to lay on the floor or crawl around mostly... the tallest one I have can just about cool my belly button if I scooch down a bit otherwise it's pretty useless.

The solution I suppose would be to replace them with regular old bladed pedestal fans... you know, fans with propeller type blades, but now those things are usually around $50 because they have to include remote controls on them now... and there are no more decent cheap ones anymore, ones without remotes are generally garbage quality that appear to be practically disposable quality.

Thats probably more of a "me" complaint, but we don't have central A/C because the house is too old and it would be pretty expensive to cool, even with the more modern through the wall units... but still, it's annoying because it's hot and it's hard to get good airflow going with these things.

Hello,

I didn't use daz since last time I've updated blender to V 3.0.1, last night I tryed to export a new charachter from daz to blender using the bridge but : 

When I go to scripts > bridge > blender / I click on blender (normally a new window with settings should appear), but in my case nothing happens.

I tryed to uninstall daz central, uninstall the bridge, uninstall Daz Studio and install em' again but nothing works..... I'm going crazy.. 

Does someone knows what is happening with my bridge ? 

Thank you very much. 

Axel 

@SofaCitizen, well is not like I want to replicate all the content the same way as it was created. with the only exemption of Miki, I don't know if I have fallen in love with her face.

When I made a rendering, almost got it right.

Maybe, I will try teaking the images in one way to another.

Also I noticed a great improvement in the way Daz Studio works and all the content is organized via Install Manager.

When installing via Daz Central, the software makess an arbitrary selection of Daz folder in the root directory, it would read C:\Daz in Windows (either 10 or 11) with Install Manager it goes into Program Files for  most of the content and Program Files x86 for Hexagon.

I did not modify the install destination, just left it to do the default.

It was great to see the install routine being done with user interaction, wich files to install, newer first or older first.

I will work through and see how it goes, I believe this is much better approach and should be kept that way.

Offline work is good, under online connection, at the top of the main page are some options panel to choose and work with.

I remember you said it would create some confusion if using Daz Central, this turns out to be true.

Cheers!

Hi Richard,

I believe I used Daz Install Manager to install Daz, because Daz Central won't work.
But I am not 100% sure. But, I am currently running Daz Studio with no problems.
If there actually is an installation issue, is it possible for me to reinstall Daz Studio without losing all my files?
Also, does Daz automatically come installed with GoZ?

Richard, I really appreciate your help on this. I have had a tech ticket in for the last 24 days
and the responses are always days late and half answered. I'm not trying to trash talk the
Help Desk, but they have not been helpful with this matter. I also think this could be solved quickly.

Please keep me posted. I appreciate your help.

Eric

JonnyRay said:

Well, it happened. The drive where I store all my DAZ Installer files failed. My library was still okay, but DIM and Daz Central both thought that NONE of my 8519 packages had been installed. I tried a few things, but in the end, I just had to re-download everything (exceeding my ISP bandwidth for the month; so that's going to be a costly mistake)
----I thought my K drive was gone a week ago... (turned out the data plug had popped loose) but 99% of the package files are also on the one of the 12TB backups. 
At a 100g limit per month I could never rebuild those from scratch. Not to mention all the other 3d that would be much more complex. 
Actually time to figure out how to finance another fresh backup drive.... 8TB seem to be about $150.. or the cost of a couple daz bundles. 
should back up *in my case" all my daz libraries and install files. 
But thanks for the headup went and checked the manifest folder and decided to copy all 450m off to another drive.. and then thought "might as well just copy the entire Install Manager folder out of documents. Whoops 37GB ... okay apparently Dim was putting package files there for a while ... so went to copy them to the K drive with all the rest and apparently I did that already ... so I will now gain 36 gigs on the C drive. 
---
without those files... the Daz 3d folder in documents was down to 1G so just backed the entire folder

Well, it happened. The drive where I store all my DAZ Installer files failed. My library was still okay, but DIM and Daz Central both thought that NONE of my 8519 packages had been installed. I tried a few things, but in the end, I just had to re-download everything (exceeding my ISP bandwidth for the month; so that's going to be a costly mistake).

To try to head this off from happening again in the future, I wrote a simple Windows PowerShell script to backup my Manifests. My plan is to run this after each new content install. I chose to date/time stamp the archive just on the off case that one of the manifests were to get individually corrupted and I wanted to recover a specific file.

To use this...

1. Create the folder where you want the backup files to go
2. Find where DAZ Install Manager is putting it's Manifests
   1. Open DIM
   2. Advanced Settings
   3. Installation Tab
   4. Manifest Archive
3. Copy the code below and paste it into a new text file in Notepad
4. Modify the variables in the first two lines to indicate where your DIM Manifests are stored and where you want the backup files to go
5. Save the file as a PS1. For example, I saved it on my desktop as "DIMManifestArchive.ps1"
6. To run it, right-click on the file and choose "Run with PowerShell"

$DIMManifests = "E:\Daz3D\InstallManager\ManifestFiles"

$BackupFolder = "C:\DAZManifests"

$now = Get-Date

$archive = $BackupFolder + "\ManifestFiles_" + $now.tostring("yyyyMMdd-HHmm") + ".zip"

Compress-Archive -Path $DIMManifests -DestinationPath $archive

KnightTek said:

Lee,

Support found out that on my account, the individual items (jacket, pants, sneakers and shirt) were missing so they added them. I was able to install them finally via DAZ Central. I hope you are contacted very soon!

~KnightTek

Excellent!! I'm thrilled that you have gotten the outfit installed.  That's great news. :)

I'll be checking my Support Requests page often today to see when it's my turn in the queue.

Thanks so very, very much for sharing the good news, KnightTek! :)

Lee

Complaint and non-complaint:   Gave the New and Improved  DAZ-to-C4D  Bridge a try,  installing it was a breeze (The last version wasn't. InstallManager/Central was of no help and things had to be done by hand and the script inside D|S wouldn't load on its own so it had to be opened up by hand every time I launched the program)  and then went to test a handful of models at random, ranging from 'old' to 'somewhat old' to 'Dragon 3'.

Results were somewhat mixed but the process was *mostly* smoother than it had been in the past.  I hadn't tried any human figurines yet, which the past Bridges were either uncomplaint with or absolutely said HECC NO to when I tried to use it with.

There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when things worked and when they didn't though.  The usual weighting issues were present on most models except the Dragon 3, which ironically was the only one to have the joint axes be universally directed in the same fashion (A long standing bug with the Bridge and a massive pain, but not as bad as the weighting issues)  and only half of the models imported with Morphs despite selecting them before hand.  Only two attempts at multi-part exports were attempted - one refused to do so, the other came in just fine. 

So,  progress but also not progress - but steps are being made and that makes me happi.  If they can keep being made then I'd be very, very happy!

Lee,

Support found out that on my account, the individual items (jacket, pants, sneakers and shirt) were missing so they added them. I was able to install them finally via DAZ Central. I hope you are contacted very soon!

~KnightTek

daveso said:

what are the download speeds into the Boost servers? I have 600mb upload speed ...well, it varies but normally over 500mb. I tried a lcoud service for file saving but their upload speed was capped at 25mb so it still took a century. 

@daveso The maximum non-datacenter speed reported so far is 800Mbs from home offices in Central US and England to the Boost for Daz servers.  So your speeds should be more than sufficient.  However, we've learned that upload times can vary and perception is reality.  We've found that the major influencers on upload time are the size of final render package (+assets, textures, shaders etc), and the effective bandwidth of the connection route from your PC to the Boost for Daz servers currently centrally-located in Chicago.  Here's more detail from our knowledge base on things that may impact Boost for Daz upload times. Let us know if you any more questions. Thank you!