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Gee, that's too bad IMO! Thanks.
I guess a list of "older products that may install funny" is in order. If only to save scarce hair/gray hair for new users. Or add a "readme2.txt" file to the installation packages or the "Additional Resources" button.
I may have had a similar problem today. After realizing that Nerd 3D apparently had "hidden" shaders or shaders that I didn't know about, I tried this here mountain scene with "Easy Environments Top Of The World". Notice how my rock surface is pretty rough when rendered (left side, viewed in Paint Shop) vs. the way the scene looks in DAZ Studio.
I just tried Nerd 3D's cave system, this time with the shaders that I didn't know about before, and the significantly better results reminded me of the rock texture on the right side.
I guess I'm at a bit of a loss, at least for now, when a product has additional resources that aren't readily apparent.
Thanks again, Roman
The preview, which is what you are seeing in DS, will not show displacement. It will also usually use downsampled versions of the textures. It will as a result look markedly different from the final render in cases where one or both of thsoe has a significant effect.
It's worth noting that those ZIP files have everything stored in a Content root directory, but when DIM extracts it, it extracts the contents, not the Content folder itself. So, if you are manually extracting those zips directly into your target runtime(s), you could be breaking some paths that are hard coded to look at the WHATEVER directory at the very root of your runtime (instead of first looking inside Content). I know I have at least one character that never can find anything because it is actually looking for that Content directory, and I move the contents out to the parent directory where I figured they belonged and broke the files. And, because they are really old files, they are those weird encrypted .dssomething files that I can't open with a text editor to fix.
I completely understand the OPs irritation, but once I realized the convenience of DIM, I just let it build a single monster runtime for my DS content. Then, I went and cleaned up the directories, moving all the older bits and pieces nicely together under a single home. I am very happy that most products are doing that already these days, but it can be a real pain to find new stuff if it strays from the directories that I've cleaned up already. I'd say the biggest complaint I have now, is that when a product gets updated, I end up having multiple copies, and I heve to spend some time moving stuff around once again, which is annoying. But, it's still a lot easier than those h
Gee, content directories, root directories, runtimes, target runtimes... it's real confusing. Add to this the branching and splitting that seems to be happening (with Poser CR2's and material files and the like) between "DAZ Library" and "Poser Library" and pretty soon you're lost in space.
You mean there are shaders that don't do as much as other shaders? In this particular instance what I saw in the preview of "Top Of The World" resembled the very smooth rock in Nerd's old cave system, which is the "rock" I've rendered the most. But when I load the finished render into Paint Shop say, the supposed-to-be-gray (?) rock surface looks more like shiny coal or railroad ballast. No biggie, just wondering what is going on — and it all started when some "shaders" popped up in the list on a new Win7 64-bit installation of DS 4.8 that I did with DIM.
FWIW I tried on of the Nerd3D Cave System shaders on a piece of rock, and oh yeah, the limestone took on a very "wet look", protoplasmic flow sort of effect, still gray like shiny patent leather or very wet toothpaste or oil paint.
I think I can live with the textures on the "precipice" on the right above. I arrived at those after some fiddling, possibly I mixed some other "rock*.jpg" items on my hard drive, and I increased the texture size to 4096 x 4096 pixels.
Here's a detail of the "wet look" cave stones.
Sorry, didn't intend to derail the thread; I merely wanted to mention what happened to me, eg. DIM appeared to properly install some models, with actually came with resources that I had been unaware of. For two years.
You should be able to open them within Studio's Script Editor...
It is possible you are falling victim to the virtualization feature in Windows described here?
If a user is not logged on as "Administrator" when installing content manually, the files get put in the Windows virtual store and not in the actual install location, then DAZ Studio won't find them.
Windows 8 users can commonly experiance this issue.
DIM would be nice if they took time to think ahead and organize things. Unfortunately I never know where to find anything.
You can always look in the associated zip file to see the organization.
Or right-click on the product in DIM and choose "Show Installed Files".
I agree. Organization, however, is a HUGE deal, and everybody approaches things differently; making for a long process. At my job, testing and bugfixing can take up 50 to 75% of the time for a project. The actual coding is often less 15% or less. But any project which hasn't benefitted from a 25% effort during the design phase, including the establishing of policies, procedures, and most importantly, organization and naming conventions, is virtually assured to fail.
I just wish the nomenclature were better.
"Characters", "Actors", "Figures", and "People" are all too similar to have real meaning in the context of the library. Likewise, "Clothing", "Wardrobe", and "Props" can have way too much overlap. Poser legacy conventions were even WORSE, and trying to adhere to them today is akin to sailing a ship with a broken mainmast.
We really need a better and CONSISTENT way, so that "Figures" means the same thing for Poser, DAZ Studio, Modo, Sculptris, Vue, and everybody else in the world, and "Figures" cannot possibly be confused with "Actors" or "People". A published codification would be best, similar to style sheets, or the AMA writing style. We're just too afraid to jettison the baggage of the past, and that is holding us back from really being successful.
There is no rhyme or reason to where the files are placed. Some are placed under the creator's name. Some are placed in categories such as environment, others are not. It's like the creators don't have any sort of guidelines.