Looking for help determining proper file paths

mike_42547761

Hey there fine DAZ folks, I’m a professional comic artist with 20 years experience. My website is currently down while I rebuild a new multimedia website which will debut in February. One of the new features will be free resources, such as tutorial videos. Since DAZ is one of the programs use to make comics, I’d like to do a couple tutorial or advice videos featuring the software. I’d like to do a video about creating your own assets and textures, but I myself am not even sure of the proper file path to use. I thought I’d figure it out by installing third party assets from free sites, but it seems like 50% of those I’ve downloaded don’t work because those people don’t know the proper file directories either. I know data and runtime etc should be in the content folder, but not sure if things like readme, people, wardrobe etc should be in the same directory or in runtime etc.

I’d appreciate any help or pointers anyone can give me, and I’m happy to give you a thanks in a video or social media for your help etc. 

What are the best file paths and directories to use?

Is there a file tree graphic or something similar somewhere? If not I’d be happy to create one and make it available for free for others to use, once I know that I have the correct file structure.

Any info you can offer would be great and thanks in advance. 

Again I appreciate any assistance anyone can offer and will be happy to thank or promote you I some way.

Richard Haseltine

The Data and Runtiem folders, and their sub-folders, are critical (you can rearrange stuff in some of the \Runtime\Libraries folders, but not others). The folders with the Daz Studio user-files are less critical - at least if there's no metadata for use in the Content Management System.

mike_42547761

Richard Haseltine said:

The Data and Runtiem folders, and their sub-folders, are critical (you can rearrange stuff in some of the \Runtime\Libraries folders, but not others). The folders with the Daz Studio user-files are less critical - at least if there's no metadata for use in the Content Management System.

That’s what Im trying to clarify. Which folders are on the same level as runtime and data and which ones are meant to be sub folders, eg. props, wardrobe, presets, documentation, textures, etc.

Richard Haseltine

The zip should show that. Textures will usually be a sub-folder of Runtime, Documentation is often a folder at the same level as Data and Runtiem but it rarely has content as such - just the read me and license files from some stores.

DrNewcenstein

Unfortunately, once you get beyond the Runtime folder, opinions vary (there's no accepted standard) on where things should go. Some of the old timers still put material/texture presets in the Pose folder, because that's where Poser used to put them way back when.

And then you have "vanity" folders where the artists feel compelled to put their self-titled folders above the actual content of those folders (Runtime/Textures/Artist/Specific Figure Skins instead of Runtime/Textures/Specific Figure Skin/Artist), which makes things difficult for the end-user who uses multiple figure generations.

And then you have those who simply ignore basic spelling criteria and put their content in "Runtime/Texture" instead of "Runtime/Textures", or "Genesis8 Female" instead of "Genesis 8 Female" creating an unecessary folder chain that causes problems down the line.