Reorganizing Contents for Newbies

Philor

First, as it is my first post, thank you for the precious help that can be found on this forum (despite the steep learning curve) and also (of course) thank you to the Daz Studio team for their work.:-)
Well, I have been using Daz Studio (and Poser 2012) for one year now, note I have discarded Poser…. (it is still on my hard drive but rarely used). I think I begin to understand (roughly) how Daz 4.6 (now) works for basic operations. Up to now I have abstained from cluttering the DS forum with my numerous questions, most of the time I manage to find a tutorial or a topic which turns out to be efficient. I am of course cruelly lacking in some areas…. But I understand learning Daz (and all 3d stuff) is a long journey.
Now, and to cut it brief (but it will not be really) my question (for this time). [current config : DS4.6, Win7 64]
I have reached the point where I consider my Daz/poser files are messed up (even it they are functional, it is not elegant at all). As the majority of people (it seems) I have now several hundreds of files with numerous extensions and strange folders denominations so that FINDING stuff is generally a very painful process. Everything is made more difficult by the various (and changing) formats of the data and installation processes. I would say that the following ones are what I managed to identify as regards contents:
- Legacy Daz3 and older in .exe or .zip (mostly poser format)
- Daz4 in .exe with dual files (one for poser [_ps] format one for daz [_ds] and [_trx])
- Strictly poser files from various retailers in .zip with a runtime
- Free poser files from various sources in . rar or .zip, not always very well structured
- The most recent install manager format in .zip and .dsx
There are several interesting threads in this forum providing helpful hints to correctly organize DS contents. Some tutorials and blogs also address this issue (a noteworthy one is http://daz3dstudiolibrary.wordpress.com/). On the other hand video tutorials are not efficient and almost useless for my needs (this is a personal point of view only, maybe because I am not a native speaker). I was inspired by the various discussions when I decided to reorganize my whole DAZ contents at the same time I was upgrading from DS4.5 to 4.6.
I am trying to have everything under control by creating several physical folders doubled by several virtual category folders (using the Content Manager). All my uninstalled files are in a carefully (and constantly growing) organized repository folder from which I unzip and install. Actually I encounter TWO distinct problems.
ONE- Poser format : I want to have one runtime per product (or suite), so I unzip (“install”) the poser files in separate folders. Everything is in a megafolder (Pos46) with subfolders by types/categories (physical here). I would have liked to declare in DS Pos46 megafolder as a poser format “general runtime” in order to have access to the painfully organized subfolders (where the real runtimes are…). But it seems it does not work that way in the content manager, I have to declare each subfolder where there is a runtime as a runtime directory. Afterwards I can easily categorize the new folders but if I take this road I will end with a thousand runtimes directories declared in the poser format “tree” (and these ones horribly unsorted, isn’t it a waste of DB capacity ?). I have read that too many runtime directories could conflict in DS. So is there a way to avoid this “manual” declaration process ? I may have forgotten a crucial step at some point…
TWO-Daz format, regarding “pure daz” files I have some doubts about the definition of that type (it seems that some sold by Daz are in fact poser format with a Daz envelope), I have “forced” the installation of the products to an other megafolder (called PureDaz46) outside My Library with the same structure as my Pos46. Some tests had mixed results, some files (notably lights) require to be placed in My Library (or its declared equivalent : the folder I declared at the 4.6 installation was immediately messy, it works but is not structured the way I want). So is it possible to preserve the integrity of my separate Daz format folders, so that they can be easily categorized ? (in this case no need of runtime directories declaration), if I allow DS to install where it wants I practically lose the product (even the readmes are ambiguous when you do not know the top folder) and all the time is wasted. By the way can one install stuff when DS application is open ?
Sometimes I feel lost…
Thank you for reading, sorry for being verbose, long and probably unclear.
Any suggestion or comment welcome and appreciated.
Philippe

Richard Haseltine

Content sold through the DAZ 3D store may be in Poser format or DAZ Studio format, or usually both.

As for your way of organising, the problem is that both Poser library files and DAZ Studio content make extensive use of relative paths - instead of specifying an exact location on disc, which will obviously vary from user to user and between operating systems, they give the location of the content within the content folder, as :Runtime:Geometries:Product:File.obj or /Data/DAZ 3D/Genesis/file.dsf, and when loading the file the application tries to tack that path on to each path in the Content Directory Manager until it finds a match: when you add an extra folder between the folder listed in the manager and the Runtime or Data folder that fails and the content won't load.

You can reorganise your files, placing all the files relating to a product in a single set of folders instead of having it split across multiple Poser libraries. If you use the right-click menu commands in the Content Library, and then export User data when done, that won't break the categorisation or smart content though it will make installing updates more awkward. To export user data, go to the Content Library pane and click the menu button in the top corner, or right-click the tab, and from the option menu pick Content DB Maintenance and then check Export user data and click Accept.

Although having a lot of folders can slow loading down - because there are more combinations of relative path and listed folders to check for each file - it won't actually break DS. However I would suggest trying to group content - by type, or by the person who created it, or by the figure it's for, or by the genre or period for example - so that you don't have so many folders to work with.

Afterwards I can easily categorize the new folders but if I take this road I will end with a thousand runtimes directories declared in the poser format “tree” (and these ones horribly unsorted, isn’t it a waste of DB capacity ?).

As far as I know, the database is no less efficient when files are split across multiple locations than when they are mixed together, so this at least should not be a concern.

Philor

Richard Haseltine said:

when loading the file the application tries to tack that path on to each path in the Content Directory Manager until it finds a match: when you add an extra folder between the folder listed in the manager and the Runtime or Data folder that fails and the content won't load. .

Thank you for your swift answer Richard. That was exactly what I was afraid of... I simply hoped there was a way to add my structure in the search path. So I am left with the "brutal" option.

Thanks again.