What is a dsx file?
Wahil
Posts: 307
And where does it go?
When opening a zip file, I have:
ZIP folder
... I. CONTENT folder (with README folder and RUNTIME folder)
.. 2. MANIFEST.dsx
In my destination area with the CONTENT folder, I also have the following folders: Bin, Displays, Plugins, Resources, Shaders, Docs, Scripts, and Temp. A few Uninstall files and a couple of dll files. But I don't see any dsx files here or in any of the folders.
Is the dsx file important? Necessary?
Running Daz Studio 3 on Windows XP
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You shouldn't place content in the application folder. The .dsx file is used by the DAZ Install Manager to place the files from the zip and to spot updates - if you are installing manually you don't need it. In general a .dsx file will be a DAZ file in XML format - you will find several in the AppData folders for DS, storing settings and layouts, for example and others in the \Runtime\Support folder with a product's metadata..
Thanks for the answer to the dsx question.
A couple of people also previously mentioned not placing content in the application folder, but that seems to be the only place I can find my Runtime.
I read Jaderail’s thread, " Installing ZIP Files for DS3 & DS4 Tutorial "
For him, the path was User>My Documents>DAZ 3D > Studio3 > Content > RUNTIME
I tried to follow that, but the only place I could find my RUNTIME was:
START > My Computer > C > Program File > DAZ > Studio > content > RUNTIME
The attached screen shot is what I see when I’m in my C drive.
If I go into Documents and Setting I have (All Users, “my user id”, Owner)
…. All Users has Desktop, Favorites, Shared Documents, Start Menu, and a DAT file. (Shared Documents has Shared Music, Shared Pictures, and Shared Video)
…. “my user id” has Desktop, Favorites, My Documents,Start Menu, WINDOWS.
(My Documents has Downloads, My Music, My Pictures, and My Video)
…. Owner has My Documents and a DAT file. (My Documents has My Pictures)
If anyone can point me in the right direction to properly installing content in the right place, I’d appreciated it.
Although installing it in the wrong place works, at least once before. ;-P
Also I'm installing older content for A3 and there are files in the library labeled P4 and PP which I assume means Poser 4 and Poser Pro. Do I need both versions installed for the content to work in Daz Studio 3?
You can simply create a new content folder where you like - the default is \DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library in your documents folder, or My DAZ 3D Library in the Public Documents folder, and then add it as a content directory for DAZ Studio - Edit>Preferences>Directories, click Add and seelct the folder you want to use then install your content to that.
Now that's something i can do. :cheese:
By the way, thank you Jaderail for taking out the time to make that tutorial. By going through the folders and subfolders on my computer, I was able to see how I can reorganize how contents appear in Daz Studio so everything is not all disorganized in Figures and Poses.
Having DS1 install shpudn't make any difference.
As for content well the only place where you do not install to is Program Files but if daz Studio 3 is install outside Program files then it is ok to have your content with the application.
As for where your content gets installed to then you have full control of that to when you install the program. You should always take note why stuff gets installed to it is a basic principle of using a computer.
I have all my DS2, DS3 and DS4.6 content installed to a USB HDD just to show you can install the content whereever you want, just not inside Program files. :)
Actually having a previous version will make a difference - if there's already a content directory the installer won't create a new one, as far as I recall (possibly going from an older version to 3, not sure about that now).
I had one content folder for DS2 and when I installed DS3A it made another one inside the App folder which was outside Program Files.
As far as I can tell (and my best guess) a
.dsx
looks like a D|S xml file - ds: daz studio, x: xml
I played with some layout files, they loaded nicely into Microsoft Visual Studio, allowing me to manipulate them there and the changes showed up in the D|S interface.
Actually, this seems to be a pretty quick way of fiddling with layouts.
(I'll explain further if anyone is interested)
So do we need the .dsx files or not? I just did an Omnidisk Sweeper for my mac and saw the Install Manager Folder was as massive as My Daz Library. I do not insall anything Manually. I already deleted a load of .zip files and freed up 20GB.
To be honest, I find the whole file and folders system on Daz very confusing as i have a few My Daz Libraries and things are quite messy. Is there a tutorial on how to consolidate your entire library into one place and it not mess things up?
If you've deleted the zips you can delete the matching .dsx files from the Downloads folder. Do not, however, delete the .dsx files from the Manifests folder or DIM will lose track of what it has installed.
I know that sometime in the past I deleted some of these to reclaim space and DS no longer recognized them as installed, so I had to redownload them for them to work. Not sure which of these were responsible.
In a different effort to save space, I want to remove some assets that have been manually installed that aren't being used and take up lots of space. My guess is those dsx files in the Manifest folder are what I need to remove something through DIM. ?
Yes. the .dsx files in the ManifestFiles folder tell DIM what exactly was installed where, so it can uninstall them. If you installed it manually and want to remove it with DIM, there's a feature you can use to do that.
Could you elaborate about this feature? I haven't tried yet, but I figured if I simply put the dsx files in the Manifest folder the assets would show up in DIM and then could be easily uninstalled.
The .dsx file in the Downloads folder and the one in the ManifestFiles folder are not the same. When DIM installs something it takes the .dsx file in the Downloads folder, the manifest.dsx and supplement.dsx from the .zip, and the information on where it installed each file and puts it all in a new .dsx file in the ManifestFiles folder. So just copying the .dsx file from Downloads to ManifestFiles will mae DIM think it installed the product, but it won't have the information needed to uninstall.
To uninstall a product using DIM that was manually installed:
1) Install the product again with DIM
2) In DIM, go to Settings > Advanced Settings > Installation; at the bottom is a list of your content folders and their paths.
3) Right-click on the content folder path you used and choose "Fix Installed File Registry".
4) Now uninstall the product with DIM,
Notes: The reason you need to do it this way is because if DIM finds a file that already exists when it tries to install it, DIM assumes it's from another product that uses the same file. It creates a file named "InstallManagerFileRegister.json" in that content folder listing all the files that are installed by multiple products and the number of products that need each file, so when you uninstall one product it knows there are other products that need the file. "Fix Installed File Registry" rewrites that .json file using only the information in the ManifestFiles .dsx files, so it won't count files that were installed manually as a separate product. There will be a bunch of error messages in the log which you can ignore -- since it only applies to content, ,dsx files for software and plugins get written to the log as errors.
Excellent, thank you!