Serious issues with content. DS says texturees are missing (they're not) duf files, hard crashes.
StratDragon
Posts: 3,249
so I removed links to legacy libraries on rotational drives to try and troubleshoot some slowdowns and for whatever reason now I can't create a new figure and apply textures.
if I load a scene I made before things started freakling out they load fine, no errors about missing textures (and also missing .duf files), it's only when I add new figures.
all my content is on my c drive, I don't want the install manager to screw any more up, I just want everything to point to one content folder on the C drive and use that. I've paid for content, I'd like to use it if thats still possible.
here are my current paths
here's the error
and heres' the location of the files it cant find, which appear to be the path DS says it cant find it in
Now it's crashing when I manually point the interface to the path the location of the textures when I'm prompted in DS.
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Comments
You don't show the full path to the missign file, but there is enough to see that it has an excess "Content" folder - probably the result of manually unzipping the DIM downloads rather than using DIM to install.
I prefer manual install, should I reinstall with DIM or can I completly wipe out these paths in DS and start over?
some of these models are from rendo and they are having the same issue.
You don't need to reinstall with DIM, simply to put files in the right folder for DS: your content path goes to Documents/Studio, which means the "runtime", "data", "people" and other main folders should be directly in the "studio" folder.
Right now you have a "content" folder between "studio" and "runtime", so it won't work properly => you need to take everything inside the content folder and move it up one level so it's directly in "Studio".
You probably have the same kind of problem with your renderosity products, there's an extra folder in the install path which messes with DS search for referenced items.
As Richard said, that probably comes from the fact that you unzipped the product files directly to your Studio folder when installing manually.
The structure of DAZ zips includes that "content" folder due to the way DIM works, but you shouldn't keep it when installing. And Rendo zips often have a top-level folder with the product name or a "my library" folder included.
So when installing manually you need to extract the zip to a temp folder first, then move the actual product files to your content directory without the extra top-level folder.
I'm more comfortable with a manual install, I don't like the manager but it was impossible to install the beta without it, and thats when the issues began.
I have shortcuts in my favorites that I can drag the folder structure of a zip file into the data, support or textures and let Windows 7 manage the migrations so while I've seen the Rendo folder structure I'm not using it.
I'd like to consolidate everything to my users folder, not the public one or anyone else, just centralize it there
there's a folder
C:/Users/Public/Public Documents/DAZ 3D
Appears to be my downloads from Install manager and manifest files
It's 5+GB and I dont need it. I keep all my installers on a 4TB rotational dirve thats backed up to another 4TB drive so can I delete this folder if I'm not planning on using Install Manager?
theres a folder
C:/Users/Jimmy/Applications/64-bit/DAZ 3D/DAZStudio 4
Which appears to be DS 4.12 the general release, I'm not using this version, the beta utilizes my GPU night and day over the general release
Can I get rid of this?
theres a folder
C:/Users/Jimmy/Applications/Data/DAZ 3D
inside there are 5 folders: Content Database, DAZStudio4 Public Build Temp, DASZStudio4 Temp, InstallManager, and My DAZ 3D Library
Can I delete these or consolidate with my "C/Users/Jimmy/My Documents/Studio", or do I need to do it the other way around ? or should I not consolidate?
First, don't delete any of the default folder locations or contents.
Deleting these folders/files can potentially cause all sorts of problems.
Also, some content will not work if it's not in the default locations. It's massively hit or miss on what content will or won't work properly.
You can uninstall DS 4.xx if you only intend on using the beta. It shouldn't cause any issues with the beta.
I wouldn't recommend this as it may make trouble shooting issues in the beta a bit harder.
The DIM directory, you may want to keep the manifest files that are created in there, when you download content, so you can check for updates for the assets.
You don't need to keep the assets themselves in the folder, so you can delete them out. Sort by File type(click on the column header in explorer) then just select the Zip files.
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Manually installing content.
For the most part, it doesn't matter where you install content to, as long as it's mapped in CDM(Content Directory Manager)
The Data and Runtime folders have a bit of a restriction though.
For these two folders, they should NEVER be in a lower folder than the parent folder, nor should they be directly mapped.
That is, if you just extract a DIM zip, you map the 'Content' folder, not the folder it's extracted to.(see "map this" image, below)
If a mapped path includes Data or Runtime, you need to delete/edit that from the CDM and map one folder up. Note:delete does not delete the folder it only deletes the reference in the CDM file.
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User facing files
The other folder(s) are the user facing files, that is the stuff we click on to load assets/scripts/etc.
These can be placed anywhere, as long as it's mapped, with a few exceptions.
Smart content is the big one. It has a tendency to get a bit stuck on stupid if things aren't in the default locations. Mostly it just won't show the items in Smart content.
Some assets also have 'resource' folders that if the path to them is not in the default layout, it will result in errors.
These folders may or may not be labeled 'resource', that's just the type of folder it is. They are usually a sub folder of the user facing files folder.
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Quick and dirty method.
1. Open the zip(winrar, 7zip, etc)
2. Open the 'Content' directory(may also be named my library, my daz library, my daz3d library or various and sundry other names) within the zip.
3. CTRL+A to select the Data, Runtime and any other folders contained there in.
4. Drag and drop to your primary mapped directory. By default this is c:\users\Public\Documents\My Daz 3d Library.
If you are installing more than a couple assets, you may want to use a temp directory to copy to and extract in, then drag the folders to the mapped library.
Note: there are several different "default" directories, depending on how many different versions of DS you may have had installed and how some content was installed and when it was installed, and if it's been updated at some point to the current libraries.
The default may be, My library, My Daz library, My Daz3d library(current as of 4-12-2020).