Point 3. "...DAZ Studio 4.x Pro..." was really helpful, other ways always brought me to DIM or DAZ Central. This seems to be the official way to offline install DAZ Studio.exe .

JazzyBear said:

So the exact same clearance items are just a $1.99 today... Does daz think this makes us happy? 

The notice says that we cannot use this to lower price of an item that we own but I thought there was an option for refund on sales that happened with the new short. Of time after purchase.

Can someone please enlighten me on the options.

I too am really unhappy about this.  I had a problem AGAIN with the not checking out by 7PM Central losing a streaking day issue.  Someone told me to buy one item in my cart and then put the rest in afterward and I would get my 7th day back.  I did that and it worked so I paid more for one item and got the proper discount on the rest.  This could mess up coming up with the over $25 or $50 deal they have going for Aug. 3 though.  I got lucky and my second order was around $27.  They really should have fixed this a while ago! 

I bought a total of 17 of the clearance items yesterday and now today they are $.50 cheaper.  That does add up.  I didn't expect this or I would have waited to buy.  Not sure if they want to get us to buy less here or what.  Lots of places offer price adjustments if something goes on sale within a certain time of buying an item.  

So I have been repeatedly not happy throughout this sale with the losing a day if I check out later in the day and then this.  I think Daz should do something for those of us that are affected by this if they want us to stay good customers, and I have been a very good customer!  Thanks.

Where does it say anywhere that you have to use DIM or Central to install your products? You have the option to install manually. Go to your product library and download the zip and install it that way. IF you do decide to install manually make sure you uninstall it from DIM and Central. ATM there is probably a conflict.

@Catherine3678ab, The working area of Daz 4.20.x is more different than the one you have.

With Daz Central, it takes care of everything I got, maybe I will leave like that for now.

I will keep experimenting with everything at slow pace, I have some other things to do at the moment.

I have to provide support to my relatives with their mobile devices, it take some time, (but they do not have patience) just imagine if they were about to see a program like Daz, they would be awestruck to what can be done with it, but not venture into that as this requires a lot of patience to achieve the results.

Information Technology (IT) extend to many areas of computing, Graphic Design is something I love most; I am not good with number crunching programs.

In 2013 I downloaded Daz Studio but never used, now that I have the opportunity, I want to explore, learn and achieve some very nice results with this incredible program.

I hope to get the skills and gain more confidence.

Cheers!

@SofaCitizen, what I can't the same results as this one

https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-miki-the-witch-outfit-set-for-genesis-8-females

if you see the pictures, the hairstyle, I have tried unsuccessfully to import to the content creation, if I load it via Daz Central (Open) it will not fit the pose, unless I can try to look into something very similar.

No luck when trying adding the hair in the Smart Content.

No other hair style is closer than that, or I am missing something else.

While Daz Central did all the job installing everything I have, free and paid content, I belive the file size for the application with the installed content at the moment would surpass over 20 GB in size.

The other model not mentioned is "Ronin Warrior Outfit for Genesis 8" the face is almost same as Miki the Witch, in the store there are some more models with the same face as her as well, only the clothing is different.

Thanks for your encouraging words, it's just an experiment, I will look into the settings as Catherine3678ab said.

I think when most people try to do something it takes some time to get accustmed to that and later is like all is coming round and well.

I hope to get there, If I ever gain confidence, I will try to post to the Gallery, don't expect it to be soon because the learning curve is a totally wild journey.

Cheers!

felis said:

Attach your log file, so we can see the full error.

How are you installing content?

where do you find them? Install with the Daz central

Iltimamente installo con DIM e gestisco la libreria con Central più lo store per la ricerca con parole chiave.

Mi trovo bene, Central non sarà il massimo ma dà una bella anteprima degli items senza stare a impazzire col Content Manager.

algovincian said:

L.Grafx_84422e3e84 said:

Richard Haseltine said:

L.Grafx_84422e3e84 said:

jamesramirez6734 said:

Would be great to hear an official update on the status of this project. Think it's safe to say the announcement from last year was premature so it would be professional to dissolve some of the mystery surrounding the situation.

That's what gets to me; the lack of communication concerning what or when to expect something. I understand the M1 Mac is/was a new thing at the time but this process has taken so long that even the M1 Mac is now outdated! I've finally given up on the wait and uninstalled the Daz content on my M1 Macbook Air. I have the 256GB version and can't afford to just let gigs of Daz content continue to waste space on my drive for another 2+ years.

But Daz was able to get 4.x.x.x working on M1 machines, which is why they are not pushing for an early release on DS5 as they were - Install manager seems to eb better than Daz Central on the M1 systems, but once you have that and the current Daz Studio you should be able to work.

Yes DIM works much better than Daz Central on my M1 - I have little to no issues installing content and running Daz; it's just the overall lack of performance from Daz not being optimized to run on the M1. When I first purchased the M1 (which I admittedly jumped the gun on) I was kinda expecting iray/filament to work 'out of the box' and just expected better overall. For the extent of the wait for Daz 5 my solution was to export my Daz scenes to Blender - seeing as it is better optimized for rendering on M1 than Daz. But even that has it's own hiccups and issues in which I'm not as proficient in the Blender program, so I slowly lost interest.

You may want to adjust your expectations a bit more as although Iray will utilize CPUs, it's designed and optimzed to use Cuda specifically (only Nvidia GPU). DS5 won't change this fact.

Probably not, but at least it will be native ARM code and not translated x86-64 code.  :-)

Halcon Bluesky said:

@SofaCitizen, I downloading the content to Hard Drive at the moment, later when I have all together, I will transfer to an external Hard Drive.

Which method have you used to install your content, downloading the zip files or getting the Daz Connect Offline Package and Offline Authorization File?

These will have to be used with Install Manager?

Daz Connect or Daz Central.

I have downloaded the Manual install I believe, besides that there are some files that are Install Manager Ready, do I have to download these?

For what I see at the moment is like an alphabet Soup.

I will get some zzz to clear my mid and get more energized.

Firstly, yes, get your sleep this is always very important!

For all my content purchased from the DAZ store I always use DAZ Install Manager (DIM) - so niether Daz Connect nor Daz Central.  So, for example, after making a purchase I ignore the blue "Download & Install Daz Central" button and click "View invoice" instead. On that page I click the green "Download & Install" button under where it says "Download this entire order". This opens up DIM on my mac and after a little pause to read the configuration it gives me a list of all the purchased items and so I can click the "Select All" button and click the button to have it do all the work for me.

On the Invoice page, if you look down the list you may see that if yoiu have any Bundles then these have no Green "Download & Install" button under the "Install Manager Ready*" column. However, from what I can see this does not matter since a "Bundle" technically doesn't have anything to download - they are just "Groups" of other products. In my experience, providing DIM is not actively running when you click the Green button for the entire order, then all the products within the Bundle will still be installed. It's not the end of the world if you did have it open at the time - you can either go into the bundle and install those items manually or a better option is just to restart DIM and it will find them and list them for install.

As Catherine said above, there are other things like "Templates" that do not come down automatically but I think you should not worry about those as I believe they are only needed if you plan to create custom textures for the products. Maybe that's something you might want to do at some point but best to get comfortable with the main features first.  Also, I have a different process for purchases from other stores but that is a discussion for another day.

Again, this is just what I do - it might not be the most ideal way of doing things and it certainly won't be best for everyone but it works for me. I don't want to put you off using Daz Central as that could quite easily be a better solution for you but I don't have the experience with it to comment. However, I would probably advise that you don't try the manual method - you kinda have to know a bit more about what you are doing and where things need to go in order to do that properly and also seems like unnecessary work when there are auto-installers available.

You have said that you are downloading the content and then planning to transfer to an External Drive?  I think you should not do that until you understand a bit more how things are linked together.  Firstly, I think this will confuse whichever installer that you use - certainly it will for DIM as it saves the exact install path in the Manifest configuration files. I know that when I did this to move my assets from my Mac to my network storage I had to update the new path every place it was listed in thousands of config files to ensure that things did not get duplicated or broken when doing updates.

In addition to the issues with installation, if you have DAZ assets in a new place you will need to tell DAZ that they exist. To do that you need to go into the Content Library tab, right-click on "DAZ Studio Formats" and select "Add Library". It is important here that the folder you select must be the one that DIRECTLY contains the installed products folder structure - e.g. "data", "Runtime", etc.

So, perhaps it's best that you do not move files onto your external drive until you are a bit more familiar with things?

@SofaCitizen, I downloading the content to Hard Drive at the moment, later when I have all together, I will transfer to an external Hard Drive.

Which method have you used to install your content, downloading the zip files or getting the Daz Connect Offline Package and Offline Authorization File?

These will have to be used with Install Manager?

Daz Connect or Daz Central.

I have downloaded the Manual install I believe, besides that there are some files that are Install Manager Ready, do I have to download these?

For what I see at the moment is like an alphabet Soup.

I will get some zzz to clear my mid and get more energized.

Ok grazie proverò a seguire il tuo consiglio.

Anch'io ritengo Central un fallimento. A questo punto avrebbero dovuto migliorare il DIM invece di abbandonarlo in un angolo isolato.

Halcon Bluesky said:

@sofaCitizen, how do you go with the software?

You said you have a long way to go as me.

Do you think Install Manager is the way to go?

I wonder how do I use the templates if there are some included with the products I bought .

If Daz Studio is for the brave, or those trying their best luck, a better tutorial approach is needed to overcome the pitfalls when using the program for the uninitiated.

The video approach is half backed, the pieces of the jigsaw must fit together and get a better understanding of what has to be done.

Well, what works for me may not work for you. We all are unique and have different skills, experience and situations. Install Manager works for me - it's not as "pretty" as Daz Central but then I don't need it to be. I can easily see and set the configuration and it downloads my purchases fine when I checkout. I have the space to download & install all the purchases I have made so I don't need an installer to have thumbnails. Obviously that won't be the same for everyone and since I didn't use it much in the beginning it may very well have advantages over DIM that I am not aware of.  If you have managed to install your purchases with Daz Central then it probably makes sence to just keep using that.

For me, Daz3D doesn't seem over-complicated - that's not to say that I understand many of the exact features exactly - but that it uses user interface components in a way that makes sense to me. My main learning path is more along the lines of getting to grips with the techniques of 3D modelling, composition and lighting - so it's more my lack of skills and experience holding me back rather than the software.  Compare that to something like Blender where I have looked at a few tutorials and tried to do a few things and have just given up for now since that is software which is currently over my head.

Again, I would suggest you give the Youtube approach another try. There are a few people out there who have done tutorials and walkthroughs for beginners. I probably watched a good day or two's worth of videos before even attempting my first proper beginner renders.

Cornelius said:

Ciao ragazzi! Ho una domanda: ma è possibile installare DAZ Studio senza usare il DAZ Central?

Certo, puoi installarlo manualmente e tramite il DIM.

Ti consiglio di usare il DIM, permette un controllo maggiore sulle installazioni rispetto a Central e Connect e hai subito sott'occhio tutto quello che ti serve. Inoltre alla prima installazione ti dice cosa manca e ti aiuta ad installare tutte le componenti necessarie.

Central, secondo il mio modesto parere è una atrocità. Connect è utile solo in rari casi, io ce l'ho "disattivo" e lo adopero solo quando è strettamente necessario.

Ciao ragazzi! Ho una domanda: ma è possibile installare DAZ Studio senza usare il DAZ Central?

Halcon Bluesky said:

@Catherine3678ab, thank you very much for the examples for the "Bra and Panty Lingerie Set for Genesis 3"

I will try to work with that and see how it goes.

The most confusing part when using Daz Studio is with the tutorials the interactive one and those that are found on YouTube, with the interactive one at least you are guided with arrows and squares in the menus, in the other side of the coin the Videos do not focus in a close-up take when trying to do the tasks.

I tried to follow up with the basics, then something went wrong, the hair style, (it seems there is nothing else than short hair and no availibility of medium to long hair)

Then, I tired to change the hair color and neither the skin tone, I can't get it right!

I wish I can get up and running the program and adquire the skills needed to create or work with some of the items available in the shop.

Just to be safe, I can't spend like crazy without getting some results, if there is any free item that gets my attention, I will try to get that and explore the way how I can use it within Daz Studio.

Otherwise, I would be satisfied If did learn something with the necessary skills and conquer all obstacles for the ultimate feat (I am really far to get there).

Some of the items I bought, I love 'em.

I want to render the way I want.

Now, I am not sure if I keep the Daz Central and all the installed contents the way is installed or I do uninstall and install it via Install Manager?

With this I would have to download all the content and save it on my Hard Drive for safekeeping.

What do you suggest me to do?

 @ Halcon Bluesky You're welcome.

Making interactive tutorials has its own challenges and therefore we tend to leave that method for the Company ;-)  And for everybody there are at times some useful freebies to be found here. Free 3D Models

Somewhere in the forums there is a thread specifically for free hairs that are available. I would have put links here but the forum requests keep going 504.

Many people have many products so in their tutorials these will show.  If you have installed all the essential starter packs they contain some clothing, hair and props.

Before "spending like crazy" -- do become a Daz+ member first, the prices then are much better. Plus we get a monthly, and weekly free products.

Also, plan your purchases. If you find, for example, that you have no long hair and you want a long hair, then put a long hair on your shopping list. There are like, hundreds of hairs available and any model normally only wears one at a time ;-)  ALSO, we can make hair in D/S too :-) Nice Strand based hair.

What I like to do is put possible purchases on my Wishlist ... then wait for them to go on sale. In October there is usually a BIG sale and many items spend a day at $1.99. Hopefully this trend will continue.

If you have installed all the products, that's fine, doesn't matter how they were installed as long as you can find them in the program! I have had nothing to do with Daz Central. If it has stored backup files on your computer or not I do not know. For the day to day purchase backups, you can always go into your Product Library and download the zip folders and just save them to a destination of your choice.

Um, no, in the long run you do not want to store backup files on your hard drive, many of us have invested [a small fortune] for external hard drives, several T in size ;-)

From watching some threads in the forum, I think if you start downloading content using both DIM and Daz Centrale you may run into problems, and confusion city.

If you ever manage to  "conquer all obstacles for the ultimate feat", please write a tutorial on it lol ... There is a lot to learn, so be patient and kind to yourself, you will get there ;-)

Again, going from what several have done in the past, do NOT panic and start uninstalling, reinstalling, repeat, everytime something does not go as expected. That is seldom the solution for any problem. After you have tried loading G3F and her undies there, that is the basic pattern for how most clothing and hair products load, and how to change their materials.

Now the way mesh products are sold, many do not supply different mat options aside from the main one. It is very nice when they do. For many mesh products there are support products for Textures. A "texture" product does not come with the 3D model, it provides material options for the main product [which should be listed on the Store's Product Page as a required product].

eta: Actually there is a sale on today as well for items under $3 :-)

@Catherine3678ab, thank you very much for the examples for the "Bra and Panty Lingerie Set for Genesis 3"

I will try to work with that and see how it goes.

The most confusing part when using Daz Studio is with the tutorials the interactive one and those that are found on YouTube, with the interactive one at least you are guided with arrows and squares in the menus, in the other side of the coin the Videos do not focus in a close-up take when trying to do the tasks.

I tried to follow up with the basics, then something went wrong, the hair style, (it seems there is nothing else than short hair and no availibility of medium to long hair)

Then, I tired to change the hair color and neither the skin tone, I can't get it right!

I wish I can get up and running the program and adquire the skills needed to create or work with some of the items available in the shop.

Just to be safe, I can't spend like crazy without getting some results, if there is any free item that gets my attention, I will try to get that and explore the way how I can use it within Daz Studio.

Otherwise, I would be satisfied If did learn something with the necessary skills and conquer all obstacles for the ultimate feat (I am really far to get there).

Some of the items I bought, I love 'em.

I want to render the way I want.

Now, I am not sure if I keep the Daz Central and all the installed contents the way is installed or I do uninstall and install it via Install Manager?

With this I would have to download all the content and save it on my Hard Drive for safekeeping.

What do you suggest me to do?

vwrangler said:

frank0314 said:

vwrangler said:

NorthOf45 said:

I can sympathize, I had some perplexing results early in the promotion myself. A few things to consider:

-I suspect that the expiry time for the streak count is 00:00 UTC (also supported by a couple other users), which for you in NZ is 10:00 AM. Your streak will drop by one if you do not buy something by then. Not exactly sure when the timer starts, but I know I was stuck losing a day of the streak every day if I purchased later in the evening (after 8:00PM EDT for me). Make a purchase, streak goes up, next day, streak goes down again after a certain time.

I think I can confirm that the streak count expires at 00:00 UTC time. I put a bunch of stuff in my cart a couple hours past midnight Daz time, and at that point, my streak was, miraculously, at six days and 12% (after having been stuck at 5% for a couple days). I wasn't able to check out at that point, went and did a few other things for the rest of the day, and just came back to it, and the cart is at 10% and five days. It's still more than two hours until Daz midnight, so store rollover has nothing to do with when the streak resets down ... but it only goes to the next level UP at Daz midnight. There's a four hour gap where the streak is essentially taking no real notice of what you do.

What baffles me is why Daz set anything to do anything at UTC midnight. They haven't before, and there's no huge benefit to anyone to doing it now.

This isn't suppose to be the behavior. It is not suppose to effect the discount until Daz midnight. I reported it.

Well, for what it's worth, it happened again today. I put two things in the cart just past Daz midnight, and the meter said I was on Day 7 and 14% discount. Came back to the cart at 7:59pm Central/6:59 pm Daz/Mountain Daylight time, and it says that it's Day 6 and 12% discount. I'm guessing that the coding has been set in such a way that this isn't fixable and It's resetting at UTC midnight no matter what. Basically, if you don't check out by 5:59PM Daz/Mountain Daylight time/6:59pm Central/7:59pm Eastern/4:59pm Pacific, you will lose a day. (Also, this means that it's ignoring up to 7 hours of cart activity in the continental US, depending on where in the country you live, not just the four hours I mentioned earlier, which is REALLY impressive. Moreover, because the percentages don't increase until Daz midnight, the people outside the continent are losing this time on the front end of the sale hours, so it's basically whacking everyone everywhere.)

This is what I am experiencing also.  

alan bard newcomer said:

I don't have a clue on central but with Dim you can go in and set up what drive you want to use. 
this is basically a three drive setup. 
---
picture one ... you tell DIM where the downloads go ( I use a different drive than the C drive or the Data drive (a usb exteral is cheap and a good back up so you never have to download them again)
where the programs are installed, etc. There is a line that says "Content Base Path" which in this picture says G/15 Bard ... this is okay because this field always shows the current install path. 
---M
picture 2... basic DIM interface note in the lower corner the tick box for Show Details (one in the other corner says Delete Package after Install --- only use that if you have llmited space like only one drive)
picture 3 shows interface with the details showing
where it currently says Recommended DAZ stutio folder .. that puts everything on the C drive 
But its a drop down menu and once you open it you can add your own folder on another drive 
Like the one in the first picture G/15 Bard which installs any content checked for installation on the G drive in a folder named 15 Bard. 
You can create a folder on your D drive .. My daz or whatever. 
---
I install core items like genesis starter stuff and scripts and collections of just morphs to the recommended folder which is now about 20g
The rest I install to other folders.  the other folders or your single one are added to the content library using the drop down menu up in the corner of the content window to add them as base directorys
the first level of your content library would then have two folders. my daz library and meduannas folder similiar to the last image. although I have always sorted my stuff into folders to use as directories 
---
C drive program and important files, D drive your installed/data drive, E another drive you download your installer files on, and another drive letter doesn't matter at this point but you copy/clone your D drive all your installed files on to it. If your D drive ever dies you pull it out of the system and use the computer management tools to reset the drive letter on your backup drive to D and you're ready to go in about 5 minutes even if you lost your original data drive. 
 

Thank you for your more elaborate answer to my issue. (to all others with similar less elaborate answers, thanks to you too for answering)
I have tried these things, but it just doesn't work! All... this fiddling with paths just doesn't go over well with my PC, the software or a combination.
I had these issues (with installing to different drives) from when the new update/version released (which I am not sure when happened. Some time since last I used it and now)
that heavily changed the UI/UIX, ...and it seems until another overhaul comes ...I just can't use DAZ Studio.
Here is to hoping development of the software goes faster, to make it usable for me again.

PerttiA said:

The installer inside DS is DAZ Connect, not DAZ Central.

DAZ Central is the installer offered when one clicks at the "Download Studio" menu, and it is simplified version of DIM (DAZ Install Manager)

The problems with content are usually caused by logging in to DS and letting DAZ Connect within DS to install stuff, when the content has already been installed using DAZ Central, DIM or manual installation.

Yeah, I think I mixed up those two give their similar names. I have double-checked and it was the stuff in "My Daz Connect Library:data:cloud" folder that I had gone through and cleaned up as it was causing me issues. So I will retract my comments regarding Daz Central and apologise for misidentifying that as the culprit.

Maybe I will have another look at Daz Central again when I am feeling brave :)

SofaCitizen said:

Yeah, as I don't use it I can't comment but I imagine that if you use ONLY Daz Central then you'll probably be ok - it's just the mix-and-match that gets things in a muddle. I started using DIM over Daz Central as I first installed Daz on my Mac and I read something about Daz Central not being as well supported on OSX (whether that was right or wrong I don't know for sure). Then when I moved to also using a Windows machine that install got itself into a bit of a mess due to Daz Central. This was probably all because I was doing something wrong but I now have a setup that seems to work so I don't want to change it incase I break it again.

You said you couldn't find the stuff that Daz Central installed - I assume you know that there are two tabs in Daz where you can look for these? Daz Central should add your installed content to both. The Content Library will give you more of a "Filesystem" view where you can find stuff based on where it's been installed, in addition to a Product view where you can find installed content alphabetically. There is also a Categories list which I haven't looked into directly but appears to just be another way to look at the Smart Content. In the Smart Content you can find stuff by the metadata categorisation. This has two tabs at the top for Files and Products which changes whether the items listed are the grouped Products that you have purchased or all the separate items (materials, props etc) that the products contain. A few things to note here is that some products do not have complete metadata and so will show up in the "Lost and found" section at the top, the search bar only seems to work with complete words (atleast for me it does) and so to find the 1920s items these would show up if you searched for "boudoir" but not if you searched for "bou". There is also the "Filter by Content" tick box that limits the items to only things that have been defined as compatible with the item you have selected in the scene.  So therefore if you cannot see something you can try unchecking the filter, clearing the searchbox and clicking "All Products" in the Smart Content tab and this should show everything.

I too have a long way to go but the more we practice the better we become and the software will become less daunting :)

The installer inside DS is DAZ Connect, not DAZ Central.

DAZ Central is the installer offered when one clicks at the "Download Studio" menu, and it is simplified version of DIM (DAZ Install Manager)

The problems with content are usually caused by logging in to DS and letting DAZ Connect within DS to install stuff, when the content has already been installed using DAZ Central, DIM or manual installation.