What Is In A Scene File?

Lord_Ashes

I am developing my scenes on my home workstation which by today's standards is fairly old. I may have access to a much more powerful server for rendering but not for the actual development. This means, as far as I can tell, that I will need to install DAZ Studio on the server (not an issue) and any contents that I have taken out of the Content Library (not an issue).

I am guessing that Scene files don't actually include the objects and texture inside them, correct? They are just a collection of references for the objects and define their parameters for each key frame, correct?

If so, I am guessing that anything that came from the Content Library probably has a relative reference with respect to the Content Library folder so that if the DAZ Studio installation is on a different drive than the source, the scene will still work. Am I correct?

However, what about models and their textures which were imported using the Import but were not actually placed in the Content Library folder? Would the scene file have absolute references to the OBJ files and the texture files?

I am asking this question because a lot of the objects in my current scene were added this way (i.e. not placed in the DAZ Studio Content Library). If the scene file has absolute paths to the files this could pose a problem when moving it to the server because while my workstation has a C and D drive, the server may not. In such a case the D drive (on the server) may be a physical optical drive in which case it would be more difficult for me to make my models and textures available on that drive.

If this is the case then I see two options:

1. Place the models and texture in the Content Library so that they get a relative reference (assuming my above assumptions are correct)
2. Create a mapped drive with an unused drive letter (such as Y:) and import them from that drive. Then create a similar mapped drive on the server.

Any comments?

fixmypcmike

All content folders are treated as one big folder by DAZ Studio, so the geometry/texture/morph data doesn't have to be in the same content folder as the scene.

If it is necessary to reference files outside the content folders then absolute paths are used

Lord_Ashes

So the easiest way to make custom content (i.e. scenes with custom models) transferable to other computers is to place them and load them from the Content Library because then the reference is to the Content Library and not an absolute directory (which would include drive).

Thanks for the info.