Content Installed on Seperate Drives Not Found?

Harbadix

Hi, I'm havign a problem with content installed on a seperate drive not being found by when trying to load (textures mostly).

On my desktop PC I have always had my content library on seperate drives with no adverse problems but now I have started working on a laptop (with limited internal space) I have the content library for that stored on a seperate drive. Rather than a plug in external drive I am using a cloud drive located in my home that can be connected to via wifi from any location but I'm having troube with some (not all) content. Some content will load fine with all materials etc while other content asks to locate missing files. Locating and loading missing files isnt an issue as such but the problem is if I save a character etc with these items when I load that character again at a future time I have to manually search for the missing files again (and even in some cases an item of clothing will not load at.

On my desktop PC with different drives I have not had this issue, only with this cloud drive on my laptop. Is there a way to make Studio always look for the installed conent on this drive as it does with the other drives on my desktop? I have searched around for help in forums etc but only find discussions on using the install manager etc but I like to do things manually so I know how they work.

Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

cgidesign

I have no solution but only an idea for debugging:

• Copy a scene with the issue to e.g. your desktop
• Use 7zip (or another decompressing software that supports gzip) and decrompress the duf file
• Open the decompressed file in a text editor (e.g. Notepad++)
• This way you can check what DS has written into its scene regarding the location of the scene items

Maybe that helps to track down the issue.

 

General hint:

I had a lot of issues with DS and storage on a NAS when paths are set as network urls (e.g. \\NAS-NAME\Content\...)

DS does not support this. It only works with mapped directories. But even with mapped directories there can be issues. They arise when the local user who has started DS does not have all required rights on the NAS (or the cloud). Maybe you are missing "write" permission on some of your files or folders?

Harbadix

hmmm interesting.

The issue isnt with specific scenes its with certain sets of content. For example I have several G8F characters purchased from Daz, I have installed them manually all withthe corrected paths etc but some of them will load without an error message saying it cant find files but other products will give the error message. Some products load fine while others dont even tho they are all installed into the correct folders on my drive. The easiest way to think of it is its as iff some product tell Studio to look EVERYWHERE for file componants while other products tell Studio to look only in a specific location.

If everything asked for the files to be located I could get my head round that and find a solution, its the fact that some do and some dont that has me scratching my head

cgidesign

You can open an item files as well if they are of the type *.duf - some are compressed by the creator, some are not. If they are not compressed just open them in any text editor directly. At least this might give you an idea what could be the issue.

Interesting are those lines beginning with "url" :

Those are pointers to e.g. textures files, geometry data etc. This way you can cross check if the ressource requested in the duf file is really at the right location.

Example:

Vase furniture item from LauriS. In the scene subset duf file which loads the vase there is a pointer to the geometry file:

"scene" : {
    "nodes" : [
        {
            "id" : "VicVase1",
            "url" : "/data/LaurieS/Victorian%20Decor%201/Victorian%20Vase%201/VicVase1.dsf#VicVase1"