problem installing 3rd party and free content

joehntr3

At first when I saw this site and finally had a computer that would handle it I was very happy. Being disabled (not mentally) lol I finally had something that I could fill all of the empty time with. But I am having so much trouble loading and/or finding free and 3rd party content (once it has been loaded). Almost to the point of dropping the whole Idea. Could really use some help - have gone through tutorials one after the other and watched youtube how to's and followed step by step and still content not working like it shows. :(

JimmyC_2009

I take it you are using DAZ Studio?

If so, have you downloaded and installed all of the free content that comes with DAZ Studio, like Genesis Starter Essentials, Genesis 2 Starter Essentials and Default Lights and Shaders for DAZ Studio?

Did you install the content using DIM (DAZ Install Manager), that is by far the easiest way to do it.

If you have your content installed, and can't find it, do you have your libraries set up properly in the Content Directory Manager?

If it is third party free content, can you describe (or give a link to the item) what problems you are having?

joehntr3

Yes have all of the Daz content from the install and have no problem with it. but downloaded a bunch of things from ShareCG for daz studio making sure I had requirements met and still not able to get them to work this for example. http://www.sharecg.com/v/72992/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Genesis-2-Animalistic-Morphs

R25S

The example you give must meet some requirements:

To make these morphs work you need the following morphs for Genesis (2):

-Genesis (2) Female Starter Kit
-Genesis Female (2) Head and Body Morphs http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-female-morphs-bundle
- Creature Creator Morphs http://www.daz3d.com/creature-creator-for-genesis-2-female-s or this http://www.daz3d.com/creature-creator-hd-for-genesis-2-female-s

Do you have the required Morphs?

Most Morphs are found in the Shaping Tap in the Editor

Whitehart Creative Arts 3-D (fionathegood)

You need to install free content manually. I have found a lot of free content says copy the runtime to your runtime, but that never works for me. Here is my process:

You need to find where Daz content files are on your computer. An easy way to find out is to go to the textures tab on any product, and find a map... diffuse map is most common. Hover over it, and it will tell you the directory file pathway...

The default pathways is:

C-> Users-> Public> Public Documents-> My Daz 3D Library

You need to open those folders in exactly that order to get to the right place... do not be distracted by things in other places that may say enticing things like "Daz" or "program files". Daz is in about 3 places on your computer for different parts, and the only one you WANT for installing content is this set of folders at the end of that pathway.

Once you get to Daz 3D Library, you will notice several folders which will match some of the folders in your unzipped free content folder. There are 2 types of content you can use, Daz, and Poser. I happen to think the Poser stuff is easier to install!

Poser first...
Lets say you get a free bunny bob made by EasterFairy. Maybe you are going to get other stuff made my EasterFairy later. You downloaded a zip folder and unzipped it and dont know what to do next.. SO... There will be a folder in BunnyBobs content folders called "runtime". In it may be 2 or 3 folders such as "textures" "libraries" or "geometries". If you open each of these folders, you may see either "EasterFairy" or "BunnyBob". What you do is copy the Easterfairy of bunnybob folder from his litttle folder called textures, to the texture folder that follows the C-> pathway above. To do so, you select the Bunnybob folder, select the texture folder in your C:directory pathway where you want it to go, and hit "copy to". (I use "copy to" instead of "move to" because if I put something in the wrong place, it wont get "lost"!

When you open the "libraries" folder, however, you wont see the creator or product name... you will see perhaps one or more folders that looks like a place to put stuff. Open these folders one at a time and follow the same proces. DO you see the content creators name? If not, open the next folder and keep track of the path, because you want to follow the same path in your C: directory. So...inside the libraries folder, you will see"props" or "pose" or other things. If your bunnybob folder has poses, open it and see "EasterFairy". Assuming you dont have any other content by EasterFairy, click on the EasterFairy folder and copy it to the poses. Do the same for each folder in libraries, each folder with a content creator name in the whole folder full of folders. One product might have poses, props, material, geometries, and other things, while another may have only one.

Now..maybe you have a lot of freebies by the same person, like mostdigitalcreations freebies. The first time you install one of his products, you will create the mostdigitalcreations folder. The next time that you have one of his products, instead of copying the whole mostdigitalcreations folder, go one more lyer of folder deep. Open the mostdigitalcreations folder in the c:directory AND in your freebie folder, and copy, in mostdigitalcreations case, the bunnybob folder, or whatever it happens to be, to the content creators file in your directory. Bunnybob might be a folder, because there might be maps for different parts of him, or it might be a single item. What matters is that it has the item name to content creators folder.

This was for the poser format...but the same process works for daz, the folder system is just deeper. You may see "data", "figures" or "people, for example. The biggest pain in the butt one is people... if it is clothing for a gen2 character, for example, you have to follow people-> Genesis2Female->Clothing->Artist name. Its just a lot of folders to open to get where you want.

Other people will say you can just copy runtime to runtime, but that assumes that the person who packaged up the content knew what they were doing. Since it is free content, and a lot of time made by people who are testing things out, I find it is less frustrating to do it by hand.

Now... to find your content, once you have loaded it, is another challenge. The "Smart Content" pane? Just ignore that. It only lists content loaded through the Daz installer, and that only accounts for about 10% of my product library. Learn to use your content folder instead. Your content folder has all the same folders as the pathways you followed to load stuff. . Did you get a Wilmap dress? Go to characters, genesis 2, clothing, Wilmap, and tadaaa, theres your dress. OR if you know the exact name of the product you can do a search in the content tab. A caveat to this is that it will pull up all the content with that name.. you have to load the geometry, before you load the texture, and then any transparency maps to add to the texture (in the case of Wilmaps stuff)

I hope this helps. It is a little overwhelming at first, but after doing it a few times it will become second nature. I suggest the freebie contest... it will give you a LOT of practice in loading free content!

Also... develope an organization system for everything you download so you can find it again. If you have a props folder, and in it, a decor folder, keep a simple notepad list of the url, the content creators name, and the product name in that folder. This way if a file is lost or broken, or you have a bad link, you can look for replacements, I keep the zip and unzipped versions of everything too in case I mess something up. Some people go so far as to have excel spreadsheets of their content, with categories for free and paid...

Hope this helps!

SickleYield

I have a tutorial for installing third party content:

http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Installing-Content-in-DAZ-Studio-508155677