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Ok so looking at your screenshots I realized I had never even opened up Studio to see what the file structure was. I was astonished to see that I actually have 2 different places where my Daz content is at, I have a 'My Library' folder that I referred to in my prior posts, and I also have a 'My DAZ 3D Library' as well, and it's in a completely different location; it doesn't have all the same stuff that's in the 'My Library' location, but this is probably because I almost always manually install my stuff to 'My Library', and I'm guessing that the DIM must have installed some stuff to 'My DAZ 3D Library' instead.
I opened Studio and navigated to the Genesis2Female inside of 'My DAZ 3D Library'. I found that if I hovered my mouse over the icon, that after a moment a pop up appeared that shows the filepath. For me it was:
c:/Users/Public/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/People/Genesis 2 Female
This might be useful to you to find out where exactly in the world on your computer that Genesis2F is really at.
I went back into carrara, and used the 'Add Folder' function to add that 'My DAZ 3D Library' since I never had it in my content before. I then loaded up Genesis2F from that location and it loaded ok. I went to my stock G2F poses that were in that location and for the first time I was able to apply a pose position from .duf successfully to my G2F (up til now it has always caused G2F to lock up). I also was able to load a mat pose for a character texture set onto the G2F as well (another thing that before now always caused G2F to lock up with 'an error has occurred') So learning about this whole different location for Daz content has been very useful for me personally, as up til now I was unable to load premade poses onto my G2F or premade texture sets (well I build my own carrara shaders for textures anyway, so that 2nd part wasn't an big deal, and I mostly pose G2F myself anyway, but still useful to be able to do it).
I don't know if any of this is useful for you since it sounds like you've already got the right folder loaded in Carrara, but maybe not, might be worth drilling down in Studio to where the G2F lives and hovering the mouse over her icon to see what the real filepath is, and then ensure the right folder is loaded into the content tab for use.
When I got my new puter, did a total fresh install of everything Daz and left DIM to do it. Haven't looked back since - everything is right where its supposed to be, no loading problems and it all works as advertised :)
I tried to do that. Had nothing but trouble because DIM (or the product updates?) keeps trying to put things on my C: drive even though I very clearly and thoroughly set D: for all destinations. Furthermore, I have a devil of a time getting the shaders to load properly. It is just a fact of life now to budget time to reload textures.
I do really like the DIM though because I can use it to find the files that Carrara loses track of. :)
That's exactly what I've done, let DIM put stuff were it wants to. And that's where Poser, Studio and Cararra all find it. But, Cararra crashes when I attempt to load any of that content from that location whereas Poser and Studio are able to grab that stuff and load it flawlessly. So I'm reasonably certain that this is some sort of corruption of the CMS in my Cararra installation. I've tried a clean re installation of Cararra a couple of days ago and it failed to resolve the issue. So I'm at a loss. I might just have to wait until DAZ releases a service update to support PostGre for Cararra.
I had this problem when I started using Carrara also. The solution for me was to uninstall postgre sql completely. Get rid of postgre sql, make sure you're running Valentina. Studio still works fine for me too, even though I don't use it anymore. I'm pretty sure I used DIM to uninstall...
I've seen the New beta version of Carrara is supposed to support postgre sql, but I don't use betas. I've been a test subject for product developers enough times in my life. I'll wait till they put out something stable enough to call an official release, and maybe then I'll even wait a bit more to see how it does, before changing from something that works.
And Jonstark I can't help but wonder if maybe this has something to do with your trouble loading aniblocks?
When your content library is working correctly if you go to the content tab in the browser, by default, you should see three folders. My DAZ 3D Library Runtime, My Library, and My Daz 3D Library.
My Daz 3D Library Runtime is your poser content
My Library is your place to save your own presets
My Daz 3D Library is your Daz content
This is from the postgre sql faq in the daz help center
Q: Who should NOT install PostgreSQL CMS?
A: 2 groups of people should not install PostgreSQL CMS:
--Carrara 8.5 users: the current version of C 8.5 will only use the Valentina CMS.
--Zone Alarm users: Zone Alarm has a long history of not playing well with PostgreSQL, which has never been fixed.
Thanks for the info on the settings and locations. Appreciate it. I thought the most recent Beta was to integrate Studio's cms with Carrara's smart content. Could be wrong, but in any case I only installed the first Beta so I could get duplicate with symmetry fixed, and have generally avoided anything smart content related.
Well there ya have it. Cararra only shows "My DAZ 3D Library Runtime" not the other two in my installation. I have tried multiple times using all the options available under the black button on the right to search for additional content and Cararra keeps insisting that it has added everything on my C drive. So does the DIM. All the compatible content I've purchased and downloaded using it is grayed out. Can't reinstall it. Gawd I have so much content acquired over the last 8 or so years I've been using 3D software. Do I really need to create another folder and install everything I need and use in it as well in order to make this work? I mean two folders, each containing multiple gigs of identical data? Seriously, something is really, really wrong about that. I realize that DAZ is more focused on Windows users for their software and content but seriously, that vast majority of graphics professionals I know (I'm one of them) use Macs. Devoting a little more engineering gray matter to OSX users would make sense.
I am a windows user so I can't say anything about it being a mac issue. But what I can say is that I had what sounds like the same issue when I first installed carrara. I didn't have the 3 folders in my content tab, I had 2, I could load M4/V4, but I couldn't load Genesis or Genesis 2, I would get asked to select a valid runtime, and no matter what I chose it didn't work. I could not add a runtime in the file/folder menu. The solution for me was to uninstall postgresql cms. It took about a whole 5 minutes to unistall, start valentina, and reboot. Then all 3 folders were there and I haven't had a problem loading content since.
I'm thinking you're right Jason, though I haven't had a chance to test yet. After I added the 'My DAZ 3D Library' folder to my content, for the first time ever I was actually able to apply pre-made poses to my Genesis and Genesis2 figures without the Genesis crashing, and also for the first time I was able to apply different mat textures to my Genesis and Genesis2.
I was able to load and pose Genesis and Genesis2 from the other folder ('My Library') before now, but I had to do the posing of them myself, and when I wanted to change character textures it was a matter of going into Carrara's texture room and changing each shader by hand, navigating to the runtime folder that had the textures, etc. I change all my character textures anyway to be optimized for Carrara, so that wasn't a big deal, and I don't even have that many premade poses for Genesis and Genesis2 (unlike the thousands and ten thousands of poses I've got for V4/M4), so it wasn't like I couldn't use Genesis and Genesis2 before, it was just that .duf pose and .duf mat files would 'crash' my genesis (not Carrara itself) so that Genesis would go back into a t pose and be immovable, and I would have to strip the Genesis out of the scene and reload.
Now that I'm loading Genesis/Genesis2 from the right 'place' suddenly I can also use pre-made poses and .duf mat textures. I've got to think it's not a coincidence, so next I need to test aniblocks, but just haven't had a chance yet...
I did that. In fact I ripped out everything Cararra - PostGre et al. I scoured my HD and removed everything related to both. And yet, when I re installed Cararra and tried to load any content not natively included with the Cararra installation, I crash. Instantly. Fatally. IDK... maybe I missed something. But I've been a Mac user for years and I know where to look for stuff left behind by uninstallers. There are far fewer of them less deeply buried than there are in Windows and much easier to find and remove but there are still artifacts. I'm pretty sure I got them all.
Thanks for all the suggestions and help. I think I finally got it fixed this afternoon by using the DIM to uninstall almost everything Studio and Cararra related and then reinstalling them using the DIM only this time I was extremely careful not to allow DIM to install any instance of Postgre. Now all of my DAZ content shows up under the content tab in Cararra, it seems to be structured properly and I can load Gen2 figures and props without issue. I didn't know anything about Postgre the first time I installed Cararra but it was on the download and install list so I just let DIM put it in. This seems to have corrupted my Cararra app to the point of catastrophic proportions. Why DAZ would include Postgre with the list of files downloaded and to install baffles me considering they know Postgre won't work with Cararra. Woulda saved me a lot of frustration, pain, trouble and aggravation if it wasn't there.
This discussion really helped me learn about Cararra's content parameters. I would have learned it anyway but it would have taken months of trial and error and probably a lot of lost work as well. Now it's on to the video tutorials that I bought from DAZ to learn how to use this software.
Awesome help guys. Thanks for taking the time to help me figure this out.
Crashworship, very happy to hear it finally went into place and is working, I just wish we could have been more help to solve this earlier, but hopefully the thread will be of use to other Mac users who start to run into the same wall.
And actually like I mentioned before, this thread ended up having a very real benefit to me; I never realized before that I was loading my Genesis stuff from the wrong location. Now Genesis and Genesis2 are behaving a lot more stably, with less 'finicky-ness' :)
The PostGRETHINGY will work if you have the Carrara public beta. Here's a thread about it: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/48629/
That being said, that version of Carrara is a beta, with all that implies. If you really want it, from what I have read, you need to file a support ticket with customer service, although that may have changed...
Anyway, I'm really glad you were able to get things working finally. Now the fun stuff begins! Don't be afraid to ask how to do things if you need help, or just a pointer or two. Carrara has lots of features that aren't even touched on in the promo materials, and you may be amazed at what you can do.
Naw. I've had more than enough headaches over this to wanna take on being a test rat. I'll wait for the release of the final.
Now if I could just figure out why adding skin materials in Cararra turns my V6 characters black...
RE: the skin shaders - most likely you are applying a preset designed for the Daz Studio shader system. You will need to make some adjustments for use in Carrara, especially if the Studio preset uses subsurface scattering (SSS). But, the good news is that once you figure it out, you can save the shader to your Carrara shader browser for further use - and Carrara has a very powerful shader system IMHO.
Your purchase of Carrara should have come with a genesis or G2 shader designed for use with Carrara. I'm not sure which ones, but check in your browser tray (the tab at the bottom of the screen will have subtabs for the sequencer and the content browser). The content browser has a tab near the left side for shaders. There should be one for the base genesis / genesis 2 figures or Michael 5 or Victoria 6 or... whatever, but I don't remember which ones.
You can buy Carrara-specific skin shaders from Ringomonfort, a big supporter of Carrara here.
http://www.daz3d.com/ringomonfort
To start, I'd recommend opening either the default Carrara-specific skin shader (or better yet one of Ringo's) and examining the shader tree to see how the shader is put together. Then adjust to get the specific look you want to achieve. Then you can make your own easily.
(BTW - just to be more annoying, I've had trouble with Carrara losing file references to some of the texture maps that I use in my shaders. Not catastrophic, but I have to reload the texture map sometimes - only since installing the Beta - aaargh!)
So I also remember this issue from before I removed postgre, I could only load things from certain places. I'm running windows 7 ultimate 64 bit. After removing postgre I load all my content from the smart content tab, under products, everything is there all nicely alphabetized.
I don't think this issue was anything to do with Mac vs Windows, it's about postgresql and carrara.
So glad to hear you're up and running crashworship!