Need help with Daz Default Paths and HD install problems
xstan
Posts: 37
I am sure this has to be around somewhere, but after a lot of googling I can only find old information that is no longer relevant with the new Daz Central system. Here is my situation:
A couple of years ago I switched my Daz content to an external E:/ drive. I thought I continued to have the actual program still on my main computer and just had the paths point to my E:/ drive. It has all worked exactly as I wanted it to since then. However, I just bought a bigger HD to move my content and work onto. I figured since I was accessing the program via my computer, all I'd have to do is copy my content from my E:/ drive to my F:/ drive, point the directories/download paths to the new drive and be done.
Unfortunately, as soon as I logged into Daz Central, it wanted me to re-install. This made no sense to me as I thought the main program was always on my main HD (not my external one) and therefore Daz Central shouldn't be confused. I wasn't sure what was happening, but I went ahead and tried to install it again figuring it would install to wherever it was set to do so before and all would be well. It got to 64% multiple times and stalled. I then decided I must have been wrong and that the main program was being accessed from the old E:/ drive (it did have a Program Files folder with all of the default Daz Studio files on it, including the .exe) and so I figured it was a directory issue and set the Base Path Location on Daz Central to my new F:/ drive.
That worked, *however* instead of just updating the Program Files folder I had on my other external HD (see bottom for list), it created a new folder called Application with several subfolders and a whole other base default content library. I never had this Applications folder before on my original external hard drive and I do not want it now. I just want the new drive and folders to work exactly the same as they did before.
I have now uninstalled all of my Daz Studio stuff (hoping I don't regret it) from my hard drive and would like to do a fresh install, but I can't find anywhere that just explains where the default Base Path Location should be and Daz Central doesn't seem to have any kind of 'restore to defaults' option. I cannot find anywhere on my hard drive that has an Applications folder like the one Daz downloaded on my F:/ drive when I tried to point it there and I don't want to add more unnecessary Daz folders to my computer than I already have over the years.
TLDR: I would like Daz Studio and it's main components downloaded to my main computer hard drive and to simply have the download paths/content directories point to my F:/ drive. Also I would like to know the default Base Path Location Daz Central uses so I can try setting it back to that and see if that works.
For reference in case it's needed, my original E:/ external HD worked perfectly with only the following folders:
/My Content Library
/Install Manager
/Program Files
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Comments
If you want to customise paths, rather than just set a single root folder, use Install Manager https://www.daz3d.com/get_install_manager/
Is the onyl chnage a new HD, or have you also got a new C: drive? By default the manifests that Install Manager and Daz Central use to track what is installed go on C: so a complete reinstall may have lost those.
Any chance you know what the default paths are? Even the Install Manager has the custom ones I set up via Daz Central (or my older ones) and so I don't know what they should be to try and start fresh.
Here are my current directories and I want to get the default paths for each of them. E:/ was my old drive. F:/ is the new one and any with the F:/ drive are ones I was messing with last night via the Daz Central app trying to get things to work (incl. the one with the Application folder that Daz created, not me). "Expanded Library" is the normal content library. I just renamed it a long time ago.
Right-click on a path and one of the options should be to set it to default.
Thank you! That worked perfectly for the Installation tab, but doesn't seem to be an option under the Application tab. Is there anywhere that just lists which of these paths are needed (since I think some I have may be redundant and unnecessary) and where they should point to by default?
The list in application is either manually populated (in which case delete them or editt hem, there isn't a default) or populated by DIM on installing the application (in which case reinstall).
Thank you for all of your help and your patience, Richard!
For future reference if anyone comes across this thread with a similar issue:
I ended up deleting the duplicates from my Applications tab and rerouting everything else under that tab to C:/Program Files/DAZ3D and whichever build folder it went to (since I wanted the program on my main hard drive). I also removed the two Custom paths on my Installation tab, changed the Program line to my new drive, and changed the Content Path Shortcuts to 'Program'.
The Daz Studio application itself is working fine and I can access my content library from my new drive which were my priorities. I currently don't have any smart content and can't seem to remove all of the old base directories from the list, but both of those are problems I think I can sort out on my own or google to find solutions.
It looks as if several of those paths were manually added, the labels are not the way DIM would set them up, and of course they would then not have the correct properties to work.
Yeah, that was why I was trying to figure out the defaults so I could set the DIM back to how it would have been when freshly installed. Hopefully I got it back close to what it would have been, barring the changes I wanted to make.
Does anybody know what the default path is for this folder? I thought that I would use DIM to install an environment that wasn't showing up in Smart Content. However, I couldn't locate it within DS after using DIM to install it. So I tried changing this to the "My Library" folder that I use for manual installs. I don't know what I was thinking, as I'm not familiar with the inner workings of these things. Now, when I load any of my saved figures, any items that are from Smart Content don't load properly. If I can restore the default path, I'm hoping that it will resolve the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
That's not the configuration for asset files but for the location of your CMS Content Cluster (the Database behind Smart Content). It should not be inside one of your Asset Libraries and definitely not under a location that OneDrive can mess around with.
If you have only changed this in DIM you can find the correct location within Daz Studio: Preferences -> CMS Settings and it is the "Cluster" path.
Thanks for the help. I was able to change it back to correct folder. When I logged into Smart Content, it's now saying that none of my Smart Content products are installed. Is there a way to get around this without having to download all of my products over again? I see that all of my products are installed within the "data" folder, but they're not registering as being installed.
Smart Content is just metadata that is stored in a database (CMS) to help you navigate and find your phsically installed content. As you have changed your CMS path then it's likely that you accidentally created a second database which was populated with the metadata and so this is not present in the other location. To re-populate this you can click on the icon in the top-right corner of the Smart Content tab, select "Content DB Maintenance" from the menu that pops up, check next to "Re-import metadata" and click Accept. This will read all the infomation files in your linked content libraries and eventually give you a list of all your products - they should all be checked by default so click Accept on this new box and then all the metadata for these products will be imported. This may take quite a few minutes depending on your number of products and hardware.
Once again thanks so much! I really need to learn more about the structure of the program as I have some huge gaps in my knowledge of Daz, even though I've been using it for close to four years now. Funny thing is that I inadvertantly fixed a problem that occurred a number of months ago, where all of my non-Daz3D purchases were integrated into Smart Content. By going through that long checklist I was able to weed out just my Daz Store purchases and keep all of the other stuff in Content Library. Cheers!
right-click in the text field and there will be an option to set it to the default.
Thank you!