Runtime Re-org
Sci Fi Funk
Posts: 1,198
Hi,
It cannot be put off any longer. I need a run-time re-org.
Hopefully this thread might be of interest to you. It's a bit like a record collector going from (say) Artist Alphabetical to Year.
MY SET UP
So far then, my (poser) runtime has been organised by genre/era, So I have Ancient, Medieval, Wild West, Victorian, Contemporary and Sci Fi. I split each item out into these main folders for character, pose etc. It took a while to get it toegether and it worked well whilst I darted between one film script and general rendering. You might recall my sci fi funk animations, which aired up until halfway through the film.
I now have 7 film scripts written or in the process of writing. It's important that they are being developed simultaneously, or at least that none are released until they are all in 2nd draft. This is because they all have links with each other.
So back to the runtime. It's now even more complex becuase I have to dart between DAZ and Carrara until each DAZ set is converted to Carrara. If I were a robot I'd do everything in sequence, but I'm not, I'm an artist and we all know how important it is to act when the mistress called inspiration comes a knockin'.
So I have decided to organise both DAZ and CARRARA folders into the 7 films, plus a generic folder. I'm about to start. I do hope the generic isn't too large. That would mean that I've spent money just because I liked the model and it has no practical use.
I guess it would make sense to further break down by scene as each scene is written. This is going to take a lot of discipline. Also this approach means I'm going to have duplicate entries where a model is used in more than one film.
HOW ABOUT YOU?
Do you stick with the default run-time setup?
Did you go chronological like me?
Do you have another way of organising your self or do you like to "roam free".
I am getting in a mess again, here's the benefit of going through this discipline - YOU MIGHT SAVE YOURSELF AN UN-NESSESSARY PURCHASE. This isn't an issue if money is not a problem and you like to spend on 3d regardless, but I have set goals for my hobby / ambition.
Any thoughts welcome. Think of me, to quote Capt Lawrence Oates: "I'm going now, I may be some time" .....
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Comments
I had to do a reinstall last year. I don't know if this makes sense or not.
I install as much of my Daz store content as I can through DIM to custom directories. Then when I'm looking for stuff, I use DIM to figure out where its files are installed. I install freebies, other stores, and custom content away from Daz store content as much as possible. I divide my content into Poser CR2 compatible (which includes Daz through V4/M4) and Daz DUF compatible (Daz since Genesis). Poser CR2 are in Runtimes while Daz DUF are in Content. I have more categories for Poser Runtimes than for Daz DUF content.
I have installed my content in the following Content and Runtime categories. In general, my content is divided by where I acquired it, or by the fiugre the content is compatible for.
Content DUFs
- Daz3D Store Content (pretty much everything after introduction of genesis)
- 3rd Party Content (genesis and later compatible from Renderosity, sharecg, etc)
- My Custom Content (anything I make for genesis and later)
Runtimes
- Daz Store Runtime General (lots of older figures like Gramps and Star, along with older props and sets in CR2 and PP2 format)
- Daz Store Runtime Generation 4 (V4/M4/Aiko 4/Kids 4/etc etc) NOTE - this includes the figures, conforming clothing, MAT texture files, and pose sets - excludes most contemporaneous props and sets
- Daz Store Runtime Generation 3 (V3/M3/SP3/David3/The Freak, The Girl/etc etc)
- Daz Store Runtime Generation 2 (V2/M2/ etc etc)
- Poser Program Runtime (whichever version of Poser I have that is the latest)
- Content Paradise Runtime (content that came with old versions of Poser or that I bought in the old CP store)
- Renderosity Runtime General
- RDNA Runtime (purchased from old RuntimeDNA and not transferred to Daz store)
- Other Runtime General (sharecg, etc, etc)
@Diomede Thanks very much for sharing your setup. Whichever way you go about it - it's still a complex endevor!
Thanks for reminding me about the pre-post Genesis split. Up until now I've been working with M3/V3, M4/V4 with a little M2, but that's going to be impossible moving forward, so yes I will borrow your idea pre/post genesis to further sub-divide. Thanks. :)
I can't bring myself to use the auto-installers, so everything gets manually installed to a temp directory. Then I see what is where, change the directories and move it to the main content folder tree.
Interesting you split out DAZ items from Renerosity, Content Paradise etc.
i never use defaults.
i keep the carrara default native content by itself. i make another folder 'CA Lib' for sets i buy. doing the same for shaders. i keep scenes separate from the presets. i keep the texture jpgs with a set in the same folder with the set. no keeping a separate runtime/textures folder.
for the native content i add them to browser tray, specifiying the type, brushes, etc
for daz and poser, i seperate them into runtimes divided into hair and fashion.
Folders for gardens, fantastical creatures, iconics, sff, decor, food. i save poses in a folder labeled '!' specially in poser to not mix em with textures. Dinosaurs, Dragons, Rooms. I give Nishift3D its own folder. i saved all the nightshift to carrara, kibaretto.aiko3, all my terai yuki, wacky models has its own folder
@Mystiarra Sounds like a good system. We share some similarities, but your idea to keep the texture jpgs in the same folder as the set saves time hunting around. I do the same (sometimes - he he - I am not as disciplined - they also find their way back to the original folder as well).
Might need to do this as well. My sci fi had everyone bald to save time, but the new stuff spans different periods in history.
Finally I also use the ! system to seperate poses out!
Thanks for sharing.
I also keep partial Carrara scenes and related objects that I build from scratch, or that incorporate purchased/free content, on an external hard drive. It is easy to get the folder to appear under your Scenes or Objects tab in Carrara if you want them to. Just remember if you turn the external off (which I do as it does not sleep), to turn it back on before firing up Carrara. I now keep all my large scenes on the external and they just appear when I open Carrara as Open Recents. Or I can click on the file on the external drive. I am so afraid of having another crash (this time it could be the Quadro card who knows) that I don't want to go through rebuilding everything ever again.
I separate out my Runtimes similar to Diomede, with a bit of Misty thrown in. I used to add custom textures to the model's texture folder, but last crash I lost too many custom textures for characters. So I do as she does now. My people are all kitbashed anyways.
Not sure if this is what you're asking, but ...
I keep the runtimes for each individual product in its own folder, in one big honkin' Poser directory on an external drive (backed up twice). 333 GB, about 4800 Poser Format Products. The title of each product folder is whatever the seller gave it, plus keywords added by me for search with Windows Explorer. I also send myself an email for the product page for each item, so I can search with Gmail and get to the product page with images quickly.
I add the product I need for a particular project to Carrara's browser. I save the Carrara projects with the "Save All Internally" option.
If anyody sees a problem with this, don't tell me.
product pages disappear. biguanna is gone.
Thank you all for your input.
@SileneUK - I too keep my runtime on an external drive. I backup after each major addition. A major addition is occuring now, hence the need to re-org.
@Steve K - Save all internally - me too - lost bits and pieces of a scene in the early days - life is too short to go hunting.
@Mystiarra - They do. This becomes ever more apparent when you decide to go through your entire runtime, as I am doing now. Lots of missing product pages, but the download files remain downloadable at least.
If you save internally, then how does that work if you want to change a texture? I just use local... and my locals are now in a folder for the project that contains all the objects/models used. Doesn't it bloat the file and affect loading/saving time?
If there's a way to sort this.... I'm interested.
I'm not sure I understand the question. With the file loaded, I can change any texture.
Yes, "Save All Internally" will give bigger files and longer load times, but with huge SS drives now ~affordable, it doesn't seem to be much of a factor. My fastest machine has dual 2TB SSD's, one is for bootable backup with Casper from Future Systems Solutions.
Plus if I want to use another machine, e.g. while VUE is rendering an animation on the fastest machine, its easier.
So when you go to the shader room and look at the path under the thumbnail of the texture, does it refer back to the runtime/texture file where it came from originally (whether stock or of your own creation)? I thought for some reason once embedded internally into a Carrara file, which is saved then closed, it 'disappeared' into embedding land. And that was a place hard to find.
OK, I see your question, but I'm not sure and not on a machine to test it at the moment. I think I can usually recognize the texture's source, either the "Texture" folder from the purchased product (in its own Product folder as I mentioned earlier) or something from my own collection of textures. Sometimes it takes a little to locate it with Windows Explorer but usually not a major problem. Then in some cases I open the "original" texture in Photoshop, make my changes and save to the same folder with my initials in the file name. Then replace the image/texture with my version.
In any case, I am able to change to any other texture by loading any new texture/image. I don't have to know where the current texture came from.
A good question, I had not thought much about it before. But I still think "Save All Internally" is a good option for my purposes.
yeah the Octane textures have this no user facing file issue
I have wanted to edit some and you cannot
even applying it to a normal Carrara shader and saving it
I just use save local as well, because I love hunting down missing textures from files I saved years ago
now where did I put that backup drive....... hmmmm
2TB SSD's ??!! **faint thud**
"American data storage company Nimbus Data is one firm that holds the world record for the biggest SSD, which comes with a storage capacity of a whopping 100TB.Jul 9, 2020"
@Steve K I could do with one of those!
So I've completed looking through my purchases. 1487 items in total. (EDIT probably another 200+ from other places).
Somewhat embarrasingly 951 of those fall into my "generic" category, i.e. not specifically for use in a film. However about half that number are clothes, hair, skin etc which unless are specficially used I keep in the generic folder as it tells me if I used it then it will be a debut appearance.
Also how many of us have M1,M2, V1,V2 (V3?) assets that will probably never see the light of day?
Given this ugly revelation, could be time to rebuild the runtimes from scratch, 1 runtime per film. Much more portable and could live with the rest of the film files (scenes etc) in the same (non-100TB) backup!
HOW ABOUT YOU?
How many purchases? We had 4800 from Steve K.
How many purchases go unused?
How many items now out-dated.
It's an eye-opener. For example I've got 4 rain tools. ** DOH! **
Nimbus?? like the quidditch brooms? nimbus 9,000
I still use my old assets especially M3 and V3
use V2 and M2 sometimes too
@WendyLuvsCatz ok - actually to be fair I find a low-rez M2 to be very useful for additional "cheap" characters, if no lorenzo or lorrreta will do.
I recently polypainted a bunch of rendered on tposed Genesis 8 in iray second skins using spotlight projection in Zbrush on my M2's
OK so this was D|S Filament but certainly can use them in Carrara too
To clarify, that is from all Poser stores, a lot from DAZ but in recent years much more from other places. And of course lots more other formats - VUE, Carrara, Lightwave, OBJ, ...
Probaly quite a few ... so far. I stll search on keywords that I've added to each product folder when I need something for a particular project. And I still get inspired by a long ago purchase that I've forgotten when I'm browsing a seller's store wide sales.
I think they almost all work in Carrara, so may still be needed for that 48 Hour Film contest when I draw that really weird genre - Subculture? Fish Out Of Water?
@WendyLuvsCatz - wow. Looks good. That's a lot of work to use an M2, do you choose to do that becuase of the lighter resource use with an M2? Or is it you have a large collection of M2 clothing? (So worth continuing with them).
@Steve K - Ah ok, inc other formats. Yes I have bought many obj files from all sorts of places in the past. I still think DAZ is the best value though for quality x amount of content (particularly for sets/scenes), so I mainly buy from here. re: unused, this is why going through all my purchases has been a worthwhile excercise. I've improved the size and scale of some sets now (particularly going through my victorian era items). Very happy - and it didn't cost anything more.
re: working in carrara. This is why I crave poser format. Such a shame those stonemason sets need a lot of work to bring in, but worth it.
GOOD LUCK in the 48 Hour Film contest. I enjoy your animations and I hope you post your final entry on here for all to see.
mainly because it was DAZ studio and it runs out of RAM (have 32GB on that PC too) if I use too many genesis + figures
I wondered as much. Ah good so V2/M2 lives on. Actually I shall be constructing some medieval scenes soon and DAVID also comes in handy there with some legacy stuff if you recall.
Here's mine:
Daz Install Manager - Installing Custom Poser Runtimes
Basic walkthrough of designing your own custom runtime structure
I must say, my "Environs" runtime has grown out of control. I like your categories od Medieval and such... might have to redo mine a bit too!
What I love about using DIM, I can go through and selectively check things I want to move, and run the queue, uninstalling them. Select them again in Downloads, add the new location (check "Show Details") and run that queue - Done!
Dartan - I remember when you first made that thread - for anyone new to Carrara I recommend Dartan's detailed look at runtime set up.
It's a living growing database and sometimes a certain tree/folder/root grows much bigger than it used to requiring a re-think on how to organise.This is where I am now.
Right on!
It often feels good to... when it's all done and organized anew.
When I first started collection Mechs and Robots, I didn't have a category for them so I tossed them in with Vehicles. I still find myself looking for them in Vehicles before remembering that I have a Robots section Right There!!! LOL
My "Environs" encompasses anything from interiors to exteriors - any kind of setting to put my characters in. Well, furniture goes with houses and apartments, which are in Environs. Hmm... better put luggage in there too. It kind of makes it easy for me to find stuff since it's all in one big shopping mall, but I think a good old fashioned reorganization might just be in order!
Since I love using DIM to create and manage these things, I made a separate runtime called Rendo for all of my Renderosiity wares that are not related to a specific character. But when I buy stuff for V4 I put it in her category, and so far I still keep all of my DUF items installed in the default My Daz 3D Library. I may just break that up one day, but I kinda like the way that is so far - even though now it's another one of those huge shopping malls! ;)
Hey Steve, it's Really Great to see you again! Sorry I'm so quiet these days - nose to the grindstone as long as I'm awake, sort of thing. I'm going to try to make a better effort to sneak in here a lot more often. It bugs me to miss these cool conversations we have about some of the finest software ever created... Ever!!!
So one thing I need to do ASAP is to go back and fix the links in my Sci Fi Funk posts to the new video locations. So cool to have those back! Bravo, and Thanks!!!
I've got some pretty fun stuff coming myself that I can't wait to show you. I think you'll get a kick out of what I've been writing/putting together! :)
Rock Funk on my friend!
Yes, I understand, and numerous aspects of don't products don't work. My recent gripe (voiced for the first time here), is: As far as I can tell, the new "8.1 Face Controls" cannot be used on my e.g. V4,Gen,Gen2,Gen3 characters. I thought it was just the mesh being bent in various ways. Why can't it be used for all of them (just like my mesh grabber)?