Environkit-Woodlands install problem on a Mac

psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
edited September 2013 in Carrara Discussion

I just purchased Environkit-Woodlands for Carrara 8.5 Pro (Mac) and I am trying to install it with no success. Since the Daz3DIM does not seem to function well with Carrara, I've dropped other 3rd party products into the Carrara.app manually. However, the file structure for this product is far more complicated than other products I've purchased, and since I'm new to Carrara, I have no idea where the contents of the 5 Environkit folders go since they are all labeled "Dartanbeck." Any guidance would be most appreciated. :-)

TIA!

Jerry

Post edited by psimedia on

Comments

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    psimedia said:
    I just purchased Environkit-Woodlands for Carrara 8.5 Pro (Mac) and I am trying to install it with no success. Since the Daz3DIM does not seem to function well with Carrara, I've dropped other 3rd party products into the Carrara.app manually. However, the file structure for this product is far more complicated than other products I've purchased, and since I'm new to Carrara, I have no idea where the contents of the 5 Environkit folders go since they are all labeled "Dartanbeck." Any guidance would be most appreciated. :-)

    TIA!

    Jerry

    Shouldn't be that complicated. I'll take a look. I beta tested this for him. Of course, he's the expert, so I'll defer to him if he posts before I respond.

    I would also suggest you check any documentation that he included as he went further than most DAZ vendors.

  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited September 2013

    Thanks EP! I did look at his PDF as well as his Youtube videos. My search of this forum also came back negative for his product and installation under OS 10.

    Jerry

    Post edited by psimedia on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Okay. For starters, you'll need to use the Finder to navigate to your Carrara folder.


    When you get there, select the Carrara application icon and right click it (or control click) to bring up the contextual menu.


    Choose, Show Package Contents and open the Contents folder.


    From within the Contents folder, open the MacOS folder.


    The folder structure that' in my version of Woodlands lists four folders: Data, Presets, Read Me's, and Scenes.


    Open the Data folder and drill down till you get to Leaves folder, open it and you'll see a Dartanbeck folder which contains his leaf shapes. Copy the Dartanbeck folder to the Leaves folder contained in the MacOS Data folder.


    The same will go for the Presets. Open the Presets folder in the woodlands directory and copy the Dartanbeck folders within each of the sub folders to their corresponding Preset folders in the MacOS directory. If there's a Preset that Dart has, that you don't have a preset folder for, just copy the entire folder to the Presets directory.

    It's a real PITA to do it this way, and this is big Mac user gripe directed to DAZ. Hopefully they'll get it together and get this out of the application bundle in a future release.

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  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited December 1969

    Wow! That was a lot of much appreciated effort. Unfortunately, my file structure is considerably different. However, I did find a file that that opened when I unzipped the woodlands entitled Manifest.dsx. I had no idea what it was so I opened it with Textmate and it gives the location of where each file (all 55 of them) is to go. It's not directions meant for humans to read, but it is very specific as to the location of each item of Woodlands, including all the texture jpegs and png files.

    Thanks again for your help. That was above and beyond the call of duty.

    Jerry

  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited December 1969

    Actually, there are 108 files to manually place and not 55 files like I originally thought. I'm new to Carrara (I've used Lightwave since its Windows NT days) and if not for this forum, I would have asked for a refund because of this issue. Simply put, this forum ROCKS!

    Jerry

  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited December 1969

    I'm clearly an idiot. As I went to install Woodlands manually, it became evident that it had, indeed, installed itself correctly and everything is available at the bottom menu under "Landscapes." I SWEAR it was not there this morning when I downloaded and installed everything via DAZ3DIM. The only thing I did in the interim is reboot my MP when a different program gave me the spinning pinwheel.

    Thanks again for your efforts.

    Jerry

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Except for the leaves, which must be placed in the appropriate folder in order for Carrara to find them (They must also be in the render nodes as well as any plugins), I could open the scene files from within the un-zipped folder.


    Try this free scene I made if you wish. I saved it locally, so as long as the folder structure remains intact, the few texture maps that I use will be found by Carrara. You can then save any objects you like to wherever you wish.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7370483/Fantasy-terrain1.7.zip

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,326
    edited September 2013

    Wow... I can't believe that you'd have to do that so manually. Really? I have no clue how Mac work, but for Carrara in Windows, a manual installation would be to open the zip, then the "Contents" folder and drag it's contents to the Carrara installation directory. Sorry I didn't see this earlier, but it's obvious to me now that there's no way I'd be able to assist with Mac issues... wow... Thank You EP!!
    EDIT:
    I did try to answer your PM but it's not going through...
    I'm very grateful that evilproducer came in and helped you with this. Whew. Thank you so much, my friend! :coolhmm:

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited December 1969

    Apparently Daz needs to address this issue with Mac. It's kind of a big deal, especially for new users like me.

    Thanks for the PM attempt! No idea why that didn't work either. I guess posting something on the forum is the best practice. ;-)

    Jerry

  • psimediapsimedia Posts: 22
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the link, EP!

    Jerry

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited September 2013

    psimedia said:
    I'm clearly an idiot. As I went to install Woodlands manually, it became evident that it had, indeed, installed itself correctly and everything is available at the bottom menu under "Landscapes." I SWEAR it was not there this morning when I downloaded and installed everything via DAZ3DIM. The only thing I did in the interim is reboot my MP when a different program gave me the spinning pinwheel.

    Thanks again for your efforts.

    Jerry

    That reboot may be the reason the issue is fixed! If Carrara was up and running when you did the install it wouldn't see the new items in the browser as it doesn't check continuously. In my experience, Carrara updates the browser when you start Carrara and when you add something to the browser from within Carrara.

    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • de3ande3an Posts: 915
    edited December 1969

    psimedia said:
    Thanks for the PM attempt! No idea why that didn't work either. I guess posting something on the forum is the best practice. ;-)

    Jerry

    Just for your information, there appears to be two users named "psimedia" on the forum. One of them seems to have never been used.
    The PM probably went to this phantom "psimedia" user.
    You should probably contact DAZ technical support and have this fixed, or you may never be able to receive a PM.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Glad it installed correctly! I wasn't sure how the install worked. If you don't use DIM, then I think you have a .zip file don't you? I'm on C7.2 Pro so I don't know much about all the fancy-schmancy new stuff. ;-)

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