Files and Where To Put Them - Manual Install

DannisWrites

Folks, 

I am writing a tutorial on how to unpack and deal with 3rd Party content. In researching this, there are a lot of YouTube vids, but the documentation in DAZ at the Help Desk seems to be a bit out of date.

I'd like your feedback on this first installment on How to Deal With Archive Files. This tutorial is going to be for the good folks in the New Users Forum. My style of learning is, throw it all at me and I'll catch what I can, and I'd rather read than watch a vid so I don't have to keep stopping the vid. I want to know why. There's plenty of that, so if you find it boring, I'd rather it be boring than leave something out that someone might want to know. So, here goes!

Part One: Zip Files and How to Unpack Them - 3rd Party Files 

 

Third Party is anything not sold or given with an automatic installer.

 DAZ has the DIM. You can also install stuff from inside DAZ, if it came from the DAZ store. Poser used to have its own installer, and I think it will again, soon. 

 But many of the freebie sites don't have an installer, such as ShareCG, Renderosity, TurboSquid, etc.

 Some folks don't like the installers and prefer to do this themselves. You might want to learn how to do this without installers, because there are lots of sites with cool things to use in your scenes, and many of those sites have some freebies!

 

 So, here is my guide to installing files manually. I am assuming you never did this before, in case you didn't. I learned from a lot of different tutorials, including an excellent tutorial from the Poser World site on how to install old content that doesn't come with a Runtime folder in Poser. So, those of you who know more, please be patient with me. There might be something you didn't already know here. I am writing this guide because I wanted to know more about how to make DAZ and Poser find my files. Content Manager in DAZ found about 20,000 items in my personal content folder!

 

 What are files, anyway? We use them anytime we boot up our computers, but we have a vague idea of what they are and what they do. The key to which software opens a file is in that little extension at the end, the .txt, .jpg, .obj, .duf, .blend, etc. A file is simply a list of instructions for a computer to follow. Even a plain text ReadMe file has instructions for the computer to use to display the text in your default language [default is simply what happens when you don't make a choice]. When you set your computer up, you told it what language you want to read on the screen. It has a bunch of fonts installed, those different styles of letters that we can change in a word processor. 

 

 A word processor is a program to write pretty text files and is mainly used to write with, for longer files. So if your text file has a .rtf or .doc or .odt, you need to open your fave word processor to read it and you can make changes in the document to make it even prettier, like add a picture or graphic. Can't do that in a text program like Notepad, except for emotes like :).

 

 Now I'll talk about files that store other files in them. Containers. The simplest of these is a directory or folder. You can put many files in a folder. But, if you want to move a bunch of files around, a folder may be too big to move quickly, from one machine to another. When you download a model from the Internet, basically, you tell your computer, I want this set of files. It talks to the computer on the website and says 'can I please have this file? Yes, that one there!'

 The other computer says, 'Why, sure! I have it right here. I'll have to send it piecemeal, but you can assemble it back like it is now, right?'

 Your computer says, 'yes, I'm ready! I'll catch all the bits as you send them.'

 Okay, so this happens very fast. The website computer sends a chain of info called bits, which taken together, are data, and this is sent in packets. Now, you don't need to know this, but that's why downloads take so long. The more bits, which make up the file size, the longer it takes. The archive file is a folder that's been squashed to take up less space. There is still the same number of bits, but the empty space between them is made smaller.

 Your computer catches all the bits and checks to make sure it has them all while it's downloading. Then it saves the archive file, the squashed file that we might call a zip, and puts it where you tell it to on your computers' storage place. It might be a hard drive, an SSD [solid state drive], and these can be inside the computer or outside on an external drive. The computer doesn't care where that storage place is, it just needs to know that 'hey, I have storage, and there's where it is. I have a path to it.' Think of a directory path like branches on a tree. To get to that leaf [a file], I have to climb from the roots [root directory like c:\, d:\, f:\] to a branch, to a smaller branch, to the leaf. A branch is a subdirectory, a folder you get to from another folder. If you turn the tree upside down, you're going from the root down the branches to the leaf. You can call the branches what you want, and name each leaf what you want, so you can find them again. You can get the tree to grow another branch [make a subdirectory or subfolder] and move leaves onto it.

 

 

 1. When you download a freebie, you will get a .zip, .rar, .7z, or another kind of archive file, most of the time.

 

 2. Occasionally, you will get just the files, such as .obj, .txt, pz3, etc, without them being in an archive.

 

 3. Just the files, you can skip down to Where To Put Files [in a later post]. If they're not in folders, you might have to create some.

 

 4. Dealing With Archive Files

 Common Formats

 Archive files, or zips, are compressed files. They take up less room, which is great for downloading and storing. To use them, you need an unpacking utility, a kind of software. Windows has a built-in one for unpacking one zip at a time. But, if you have a lot of them, you need one like 7Zip for Windows, which is free, or WinZip, which costs; there are many different ones both paid and free to choose from. I use 7Zip so I'll use it as an example. When you install it, you have 7 Zip on your right-click menu. You just pick 7 Zip and choose Extract to \[name], which creates a directory with that name in the directory where your zip is. I strongly suggest unzipping in a small directory or a new one. Drag your files into this new one until you finish with this batch of zip files. This way it's easy to correct mistakes in the paths. Drag stray ReadMe's to a folder where you want to keep them. Drag the Textures where *you* keep the folder. Add the Artist name folder if needed to any directories missed. Do think about issues with that like, what if this item is a texture for someone else's creation? That's a valid reason for an artist folder name to be 'missing' from a clothing item file, but there should be an artist name folder, then the item name folder.

 

 Why?

 I'll give my reasons: 1. Artists deserve for you to know their names. If you are using their item, wouldn't they love to see your render with their hard work on display? Their contact info will be in their readme, if they included one. That's food for thought.

      2. Artists often, not always, release their items under the same license. This is very relevant for me because I do commercial renders: Book Covers. If my cover turns out well, it helps to sell one of my stories. I absolutely need to be sure the item can be used in a commercial render.

  

  3. The artist's name helps me find the readme. This is important, not only for licensing, but to locate the files that come with the product, and see any instructions on how to make it look good in a render. There are often good tips in readme's that are useful generally. I want to learn all I can.

  

  4. If I keep that artist's name handy, I might remember to look them up online. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to an artist's website and found treasure! Great tutorials, similar products, possible freebies, etc.

  

 If you see any of these in your Downloads folder [or where you usually download files to], depending on your browser, something went wrong when you downloaded your archive file:

 CRDOWNLOAD (.crdownload) – partly complete Google Chrome download

OPDOWNLOAD (.opdownload) – partly complete Opera download

PART (.part) – partly complete Mozilla Firefox or Transmission download

PARTIAL (.partial) – partly complete Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge download

These Cannot Be Unpacked. You'll have to download them again.

 

 Ok, on to unpack your zips that did download correctly. In Windows 10, you right-click the file and your context menu comes up. You can see where Windows wants to unpack them. If this is ok, it should be the same folder you clicked in. I usually unpack everything into the same directory the archive files are in. You will still have your archive file. Windows will make a new copy of the archive that you can drag where you want it.

 

 5. Dealing with a LOT of archive files. If you download a bunch of stuff, you might not want to do them one at a time. I use a software called 7Zip, which is free, for this. I highlight all of my archive files, which I saved into a new directory for the purpose. I usually name this file after the site I got them from. 

 

 6. While the files are happily unpacking, each to its own subdirectory, I can do other things while it's running, like start inspecting the unpacked folders. Isn't this convenient?

 

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Did you learn anything new or was it really tooth-pullingly boring?

Does it explain archive files in plain terms or is it confusing?

Did I leave out anything a new user might need to know?

Also, how do I translate this for Apple users? I'd like to include Apple stuff, but I haven't worked with Apple machines since 1990, lol. Those of you in the Apple camp, where do you look online for useful info? I know where to go for reputable opinions on PC's but don't have a clue about good sources for Apple. For PC's I like PC Magazine, ZDNet, Microsoft, and the like. I know I can go on the Apple site, and I do when I need to know about my iPad, but honestly, it's a labyrinth and I don't know which machines or operating systems people use nowadays there. Any advice appreciated. No substitute for experience :)