Installing new poses
dragonoake
Posts: 15
I have purchased a bunch of new poses from a 3rd party, and seem to be having issues either installing them, or in finding the files once they are installed
The directions said to copy the "People" folder from the download and paste it into the "People" folder of the Install Manager, then go back and refresh the Manager Queue and enable the "Ready to Install" tab
I did that,, and nothing happened that I can tell
Since the Install Manager, didn't appear to work, I thought I would do it manually,, copying The "People" folder into the "People" folder in My Daz #D Library
If I open This PC > Wndows C: > Daz 3D .> Appications > Data > Daz3D > My Daz 3D Library > People > Genesis 8 Female > Poses, I find four folders:
> Base poses
> Layla
> Z Curvaceous Model
> zoro_d
The Layla folder contains more folders wit the sets of poses, so everything appears to be in order, other than the fact that all the Male poses eneded up in the Genesis 8 Female folder
The problem is that none of the Layla poses are showing up in Daz Studio
How can I fix that?
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Comments
Which third party? Z Curvaceous Model is a daz store product, so if that is in the zip I would worry about the vendor's legitimacy (and zoro_d is also a Daz vendor, though they do sell other items through other stores).
Assuming the product is OK, we need to know what your content directory settings are - Edit>Preferences, go to the Content tab, and click Content Directory Manager, then expand the options under the Current set to show the actual folders used and take a screen shot (e.g. using the Snip and Sketch tool).
You are so tactful Richard, I immediately went "pirate site" in my mind reading the vendors names, LOL
It's from Renderotica and the artist's name is Layla
Not including a link because it's NSW
Here's the screen shot. Does that tell you what you need to know?
If you go to your Content Library and right-click "Daz Studio Formats", you can "Add a Base Directory" pointing to an arbitrary folder in your file system. Just right-click and hit "Refresh" to see any changes you've made.
You can also use File -> Merge to just apply a pose from your hard drive directly onto to your figure.
I have found the poses in question in the Content Library :-D and they do seem to work for the most part, although I will occasionally get a warning that the pose exceeds the limits.
These aren't contornionist poses, by any means, so I'm wondering why that happens
They still don't show up in the Smart Tab, but I think I can live with that now that I know where they are
Do not, however, select a folder that is inside another folder that you have selected. Daz Studio uses "relative paths" when saving - it just records wheer things are within the content directory, not where the content directory is, but if you have one content directory inside another then it may pick the wrong starting point for the relative path.
I think the instructions for the Install Manager downloads folder would have been to place the zip there - Install manager can read properly set up zips from other sources. If you go manually you want to merge the matching folders (e.g. the People folder here) with the matching folder that is already in the content directory (the My Daz 3d Library folder here) - as above, this is a matter of getting the relative paths right (though poses don't usualyl have much in the way of external references, so they are pretty tolerant about placement).
The limits on the daz fiogures do tend to be a bit conservative - it is not unusual to have a pose need to go slightly beyond them.
Smart Content (and Categroies) depend on metadata that specifies all the categories, compatibility and so on - if something iss et up to use Install Manager it will usually have the needed metadata, but if you install manually Daz Studio won't automatically read it. As long as the installation paths are correct you can import correctly set up metadata - open the Content Library option menu (the lined button in the top corner, or right-click the tab) and select Content DB Maintenance, then check the Reimport Metadata option. A second dialogue will open showing what is available for import (most of your Daz content should already be in the database).
my understanding was that I wouldn't need the .dsx files if I wasn't using Install Manager, and I didn't see a good place to put them, so I just skipped over them. Would this explain the lack of metadata?
For 3rd party products from Renderosity, CGBytes, and Renderhub, I have a separate directory setup I simply call "My Library". I extract the .ZIP files from those vendors to that directory making sure it extracts properly to the My Library\data, My Library\People, My Library\Runtime and My Library\Textures as appropriate.
In Content Manager, I have a content directory setup pointing to the "My Library" folder location, and it all reads fine from there.
Which .dsx files? Those are just Daz XML files - they can be in various places serving various purposes (DIM uses two, one to describe each zip - which lives beside the zip - and one for each instalaltion in the Manifest archive folder) while DS uses them for several purposes, including the ones in /Runtime/Support/ which hold the metadata for isntalled products and exported user data - which are read on reimporting metadata, they are not actively used by the database.
The ones that came in addition to the zip files
From the Zip itself, I just copied folder to folder: Copied the Runtime folder from the Zip into the Library's Runtime folder, etc.
The .dsx files that sit alongside the zips, in the same folder, will be rebuilt if they are missing.