External runtimes

believable3D

This is probably a common question, but I'm not finding answers by searching the forums.

One of the reasons why I went to Poser over Daz many years ago was that I wasn't a fan of DS's content handling, but I kind of like to give it another shot. However, what I really want to do is use a number of external runtimes. Following related but not identical advice in another thread, I used the Install Manager application to get DS to recognize external runtimes. Well, at least Install Manager itself recognizes them, but I can't find the content anywhere in the DS app itself. Is what I'm trying to do even possible?

Leana

Adding them in DIM is not enough, you need to tell DS where to find them too.

Go to Edit > Preferences and select "Content" tab, then "Content directory manager" button. You'll see the list of DS and Poser format directories registered in DS, add your external content directories there. 
You should then see the content in the "content library" tab.

JOdel

Yeah, you need to map where you put things in the content manager.

External runtimes is what I use, and it works very nicely. My runtimes are on a seperate hard drive, as well. But I designed my setup before DIM was around, and never adopted it, or connect. Someone else could probably tell you how to do it using DIM, but I'm not the person to ask about that.

If you are using Poser content in Studio (either older content or newer) the Geometry files need to stay in their geometry folder, inside a Runtime folder, and the texture files need to stay in their texture folders, also inside a Runtime folder. Pretty much everything else can be grouped or collected into any order of grouped folder tht makes sense to you, since those are basically just the thumbnails and the links that the thumbnails use to load the geometries and textures.

For Studio content it's the data files in the content/data folder that needs to be where the vendor put them, and the texture files in the Runtime/texture/(product or vendor name) folder path as arranged in the downloaded product files. Again, the other folders are mostly the thumbnails and links for loading them. 

Sometimes you get things that are all intended to be used together like the UltraScenery collections which have components built by more than one vendor, those thumbnails probably all need to be stored at least into the same collection (Environments/Landscapes, I think it is).

But pretty much anything that's a thumbnail and link can be organized however it makes the most sense to you. Once you do that, if it isn't how the automated instalation methods want it arranged, you may find yourself committed to manually installing things where you want to be able to find them.