Old Poser stuff - Does it work in DAZ?
cherpenbeck
Posts: 1,413
in The Commons
I have bought several old items for M3 (just because they looked interesting, and I do own M3 as well). Now I realzend that they are Poser stuff, no mention of Studio at all, just Poser and the bridges. Do these old Poser clothing items work in DAZStudio?
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Absolutely. The software compatibility for older Poser stuff has been neglected since the store was updated almost a year ago. They are in Poser format, and work just fine in DAZ Studio. Of course, there is usually no metadata to speak of, so no Smart Content. There are some that have .pmd's for morphs and .mt5 material presets that will not work in Studio.
Most poser items will work fine in DS, with a bit of work on the materials, if you load them from the "poser formats" section of the "content library" tab.
Exceptions are:
With care and attention to the shaders, the V3 generation can look much better than it ever did. However, the use of new software doesn't help with joint limitations.
The character on the phone is a V3 based character wearing V3 clothing. The other two are G8F.
Regards,
Richard.
Thanks a lot, to all of you!
As far as I am aware, just dropping Poser content into your DAZ content folder does not work. I'm pretty sure that for DAZ to "see" your poser content library that the folder has to be named Runtime. I seem to recall trying to do that (linking to folder names other than runtime) with my various Poser version libraries and it was a no go.
At any rate, you shouldn't have problems minus that list Posted above.
If you just are using M3 and have the desired figure morph shape built into your clothing and plan to use 3Delight then nothing extra is needed.
Keep in mind, you can add that uber shader that comes with DAZ Studio to convert those textures to IRAY. There is also a 3delight to IRAY converter out there. You can also throw whatever shaders on them just as you would with a product made for DAZ Studio.
Don't forget you can also convert those things to Triax or General Weight mapping so you can fit differnt M3 shapes not built into your clothing or use them on the genesis generations if you have the clone products or read up on clothing conversions. There are also converters. Be aware some of that generation 3 clothing can blow apart at the seams if too much smoothing is applied...assuming you convert to weight mapping or triax.
I link my hefty poser runtimes to DS in the content library and most work just fine right out of the box.
Well, that is good to know for future reference. I guess I must went too deep and dumped the contents without the runtime folder itself...so dumped the runtime folder contents into the contents folder instead of just tossing in the whole runtime folder.
Wrong and misleading information
I'm at work at the moment, ill get back to this when I'm back home.
The content directory (e.g. My Library or My Daz 3d LibrarY) should contain the Runtime folder, for Poser content and for textures/metadata for all content, and the /Data and user-facing folders for Daz Studio content. Theer should not be a Content folder inside the content directory, and there should not be one content directory - of any format - nested inside another (it confuses the creation of relative paths in the saved files, potentially making them unportable)
Daz Studio libraries have a Runtime folder in them which contains the Poser content. The .zip files that Daz supply for Poser content also have a Runtime folder at the top level so if you unzip them into your library directory it puts everything into the right place. Most installers I've found from other sources have the same layout and work the same. Go to the Content Library tab in Daz Studio and look at Poser Formats, you will see your library shown there.
Poser content normally has figures, clothes and other poseable stuff under Figures and static props under Props but this isn't a hard and fast rule. The Pose section often contains a lot of material settings that are done as pose files. The Materials section was a later additiion to Poser and not all Poser materials work in Daz Studio. If they don't work, or if Studio just shows an empty folder in Materials then look for an alternative in Pose, a lot of Poser content has both.
** oops - wrong ** Daz installers have the runtime inside a directory called Content, you have to take the Runtime out and put into your library. The installlers from a certain other site usually have runtime at the top level.
Hi Richard, thanks for the input. To clear any confusion (in case there is ) I do not create a new "Content" or "Runtime" folder in DS, as they are already there.
For "Poser format" items bought from DAZ, they install (I use DIM) and work just fine in DS by itself. No work needed.
For older Poser format items bought from other stores, as they have no DS installer, I just copy the content from each folder in the item zip file to the corresponding folder in DS with the same name, ie Light to Light, Pose to Pose, Character to Character etc. No folders created. So far that works for me. I know it possibly is not the smartest way to do but to me that possibly is a relatively safe way. Please let me know if I did anything incorrectly, thank you
If you have /My DAZ Library/Content/ then either that's the result of manual installations (the zips have a Content folder, for organisation to keep content separate from plug-ins for example) or a packaging error. If you have /My DAZ Library/Content/Data/ or /My DAZ Library/Content/Runtime/ and you have the Content folder selected as a content directory then you risk getting bad relative paths; if you have those folders and don't have the Content folder set as a content directory then the files will not be found.
It does not matter whether the product is DAZ Studio Format or Poser Format, the zip files for DIM all havr a top level "Content" folder. If you just extract the entire zip to your library you will have that extra "Content" folder and don't want that. I don't understand how your library is working if you have been doing this.
Ok, to make it simple and to avoid any cloudflare problems, I wrote this with Libre Office and took a screenshot of it.
Edit: Didn't go into deeper folder structures, as that is not necessary - The folder structures will be correct automatically, no matter if it is a DS product or a Poser product.
I have somewhere around 20,000 Poser format items currently in my library and I've rarely had any trouble using them in DAZ Studio (except, as noted above, Dynamic hair, Lights, some materials like shaders, and figures that are rigged specifically with weight maps for the later editions of Poser.) Really, .obj files tend to be more problematic, and once you've converted surfaces to Iray, a lot of them can look quite amazing.
Yes, whatever the structure or the contents of the Zip, just locate the level that has the 'Runtime' folder (do not venture inside of it), select every folder (or the one and only 'Runtime' folder) on that level and extract them to the root folder of your Content Library.
If you want the ultimate in flexibility, make your own DIM packages, for any sort of content, even those "Other Import Formats". As long as you respect the proper folder structures, you can have the ability to install and uninstall at will. A few minutes with something like Content Package Assist could save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run. They look just like any other DIM package. You can have prefixes other than IM, to help separate different stores, and you can add the thumbnails like any other product. For the OCD in everyone...
Cool, thanks PerttiA.
@Pixel8ted maybe you would like to take a look at PerttiA's awesome tutorial above before pouring your Poser library into DS.