Is DIM the protagonist now? What about Central?
almahiedra
Posts: 1,352
in The Commons
What happened to DAZ Central? It’s simple curiosity, I really don’t need it, the last time I installed it made a mess, but it was the first thing that was shown when someone new wanted to install DS and now DIM is again occupying that place.
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Dunno... after experiecing quite a few problems with DC, I never use it.
I think Daz Central got off to such a bad start, many people were afraid to even try it. After hearing the horror stories, I steered clear and stayed with DIM. I think DIM is king again. DIM has been updated a lot lately. I thought I read a post in the forum from an admin (probably Richard) that said Daz Central was going away and that some of the features were being incorporated into DIM, but I can't find that message now, so I might be imagining things, or it is wishful thinking.
DS is the king, DIM is the queen. The king cannot live well without the queen.
I started using Daz in the summer of 2021. I've used Daz Central from the beginning and still use it virtually exclusively, basically trouble-free. Back in my early days, I read a lot of horror stories in the forums about DIM and steered clear of using it on a daily basis. I have configuration set up there and use it on a special case-by-case basis for certain cleanup tasks, but generally never go in there.
DAZ Central is like New Coke. No one asked for it, very few were impressed by it when they tried it, and the resultant negative publicity seems to have torpedoed it. Which is fine by me. The sad thing is that an improved version of DIM integrating some of the DC features would have probably been welcomed as an upgrade, but DAZ instead failed to learn from the sound rejection that DAZ Connect received, then compounded the error by making it so that DAZ Central couldn't even be used concurrently with the proven tech that everyone was perfectly happy with.
Trying to make foolproof applications is bound to fail since the fools are geniuses in finding ways to break the application and in getting it to do things it was not supposed to do. The one thing Daz Central had going for it was that it wasn't installing stuff to the folders where MS wants everybody to save their stuff.
One big part of the problems is lack of communication from Daz together with poor instructions. Experienced users and 'nerds' don't need them as they are doing things their own way anyways, but it does confuse those users that Daz is clearly trying to lure in. Examples can be found in countless of posts with people asking "Where can I download Daz Studio?" because when they try the obvious way, they were taken to a page to download Daz Central and now Daz Install Manager... Where indeed can one download Daz Studio, the download page says nothing about downloading Daz Studio.
There are also countless of pages on the Internet, where one can get some amazing piece of software for free... One just needs to install the downloader first and soon one finds ones bank account on the red - Does Daz want to be associated with that kind of 'services'?
Also, New Coke wasn't actually unpopular; customers (especially in the South) were just infuriated about the original Coke being taken off the market. New Coke existed alongside Coca-Cola Classic from 1985 to 2002.
We have an ancient poetry from Han dyansty: 煢煢白兔, 東走西顧, 衣不如新, 人不如故。I haven't seen a great English version of it yet... but the implied meaning is almost the same.
In my case the passage of DAZ Central through my system left a mess that I couldn't fix at all, and at the time damaged the database of things that I had already installed to the point that I could not load anything on the scene. I really don’t have much appreciation for DAZ Central and I think it should have been warned to experienced users that this was not compatible with custom installations.
In the case of connect I like the idea that each product is in a separate folder, but I stop using it because it doesn't support third-party products in its folder system and also constantly displayed product updates that clearly had nothing new, as freebies of PAs. It seemed like I was never going to finish installing things.
You're right ~ and DIM is good enough, at least it's never damaged my cms. Connect is a tricky thing, it ever always wrongly updated the metadata that I'd already corrected, so I let it go...
DazCentral had problems on recent Macs too, which likely contributed to the focus switching back to DIM.
I use DIM to install and DazCentral For visual search of products if I can not remember the name.
That was what I was told, yes, and I don't think the post has been changed (certainly not by me - but good luck fidning anything specific I may have posted among the flood).
What do you mean by concurrently? Both used the same path settings (if you opened the options in Daz Central having srt them in DIM it would say paths managed by Daz Install Manager) and the same system of Manifest files for recording what they had installed. They couldn't both log in at the same time, since they were using exactly the same base code and only one version of the application may run at one time, but they could be used sequentially if desired 9e.g. to instal things that Daz Cenrtal would not handle, such as betas, while using Central for the content).
Actually, it took exactly 77 days for Coca Cola to do an about face on New Coke, though attempts to co-sell it with the quickly released Coke Classic ran through 2002, so I think it would be more accurate to say that the market was divided into those who hated New Coke and those who really didn't care. Subsequently, as documented in the books THE REAL COKE: THE REAL STORY and THE REAL THING: TRUTH AND POWER AT THE COCA COLA COMPANY, it came out that one of the real reasons for the release of New Coke was that it was part of a complex series of legal manuevers to get Coca Cola out of a contract with distributors and bottlers that specified that Coca Cola syrup had to be made with cane sugar, which was far more expensive than the corn syrup used to sweeten New Coke. Being "New Coke" instead of the original Coke worked as a loophole to legally get the company around that contract, but once it became clear that the cheaper to produce drink wasn't flying, CC turned around and released Coke Classic... which was actually another side-step, as despite the name, ClaSSic wasn't the original formula either as it also uses corn syrup. This is why there's now a thriving market in the U.S. for Kosher and Mexican bottled Coca Cola, as those versions still use the original cane sugar formula.
I had to know. Collins Translator gave me:
The white rabbit is not as good as new, and the person is not as good as the old.
I lucked out, by the time fake Coca-Cola came out, I had been sickend off of Coke forever by a series of sugar glucose tests that were cola flavored. Think 1 lb sugar in a cola bottle of saline and you have to drink it in 15 minutes, without throwing up. I can't stand the smell of Coke now and I used to be addicted.
Back to Daz Central, I was one of the fools who tried it when it came out and it borked my runtime so bad I had to start over from scratch. Evil, just evil.
I think there may be issues mixing the install options. Aside from specific one-off uninstall-reinstall circumstances that I use DIM for - most of which were needed to clean up some garbage caused by mistakenly letting DazConnect touch this current computer - I only use Daz Central. I've built two art computers from scratch as I've upgraded, installing thousands of assets with Daz Central, and have not had a problem.
Ask DAZ what they think concurrently means as I'm directly quoting them. The following is straight from DAZ's own info page introducing DAZ Central : "
Things you might be wondering about:
Can I still use the Daz Install Manager (DIM)?
Absolutely! DazCentral is to offer another Content Manager to users who may not have as much experience with the DIM, or are unfamiliar with the DIM’s processes. DazCentral and DIM cannot currently run at the same time.
Can I use both DazCentral and the DIM?
You can certainly do so, but not concurrently. DazCentral will not only detect what content is installed through DIM, but also automatically read and install to that path.
END QUOTE
Now, my interpretation of that at the time was that we can use DIM to install things that DC can't, but that you would have to use DAZ Central for everything else... which feels backward as one would think that the newer product should be able to install all of the things that the earlier one did if the new one is meant to be a replacement. And if you click the provided DAZ Central page link for clarification, it actually takes you to the info page for DIM instead. >-< Not sure if there ever was a DAZ Central page that offered more info and it's been pulled, or it's just DAZ not bothering to follow up on documentation again.
Also, excuse me if I'm wrong, but isn't Central written for Qt 5 whereas DIM is Qt 4, and if so, can they actually be using the same base code? My source on that was this nice little article
They meant what I said, and what they say in the paragraph above - not at the same time. You can run them consecutively, however - close one and open the other.
Yes, they use the same code base - but at compile time they call different versions of the Qt libraries, and as necessary have conditional blocks for the Qt calls to make sure the right one is used - however the logic code, the stuff that is unique to their role, is the same.
That said, the article was not written by the devs and is not wholly correct in some respects as a result.
But is Daz Central over for good? I'm going to install Daz in my new computer and I can't even find it to download...
Yes.
You mean it isn't showing as available to install (or installed) in Install manager, or that you can't access DIM itself?
Search your product library here on the site, you'll find it listed as Daz Studio 4.x pro, the manual download and install is always the best way.
Especially as W10 is ultra paranoid and W11 is even worse, and as the CMS is built with virus like protocals it means you really need to install DS as admin otherwise the CMS can get blocked from running.
Don't try to run the installaer or the application "As administrator" (which is not the same as using an admin account) as it is likely to cause issues even if it works. If DIM Helper neds permission you will be asked whether to allow it (as long as you have UAC on).
No. Don't worry. I managed to install it perfectly using DIM. I was just curious because, when I started using Daz, I installed it using Daz Central (I still have it on my laptop), and, since I never made a clear install using DIM and thought Daz Central quite straightforward, I looked for it. But everything worked fine and, honestly, I can live without it because, lately, I was only using DIM. The only curious thing is that, on my laptop, when Daz was updated to 4.22, when I updated it through DIM, the interface was blank... I had to install it again using Daz Central (which, the last time I opened it, probably when 4.22 was released, was still working). But, on my desktop which will be my main machine (I use the laptop mostly for character creation), everything went fine and Daz is fully operational (and probably better installed, since, on my laptop, it was my first, and I moved it from drive C to D along with the database, so, though also operational, I don't think it's the best installed Daz...). I don't think Daz Central it ever showed as available to install in DIM... When I used it, it was downloaded directly when I clicked the "Download Studio" button on this site (and, now it shows DIM).
A blank interface usually means Daz Studio was still runing, possibly in the process of shutting down in the background and so not shwoing on the taskbar, when the new version was isntalled. uninstaling and reinstalling fixes that, it doesn't matter which method is used.
Protagonist is a Great word for DIM! It's such a Hero!
Thanks, but, again, everything was already fixed. I just did the update in Daz Central and it started to work again. It took me only a few minutes to find the solution.
I was just pointing out, for your informtation, that the issue was installing while DS was runing - it had nothing to do with the method used, reinstalling with DIM would also have worked.
I never update Daz or any other software while it's running... Not a good practice...
Daz Studio may stay runing for a while, doing clean-up, after it has gone from the Task Bar - would you have checked Task Manager to see that it had finished?