Finding Old Dials

bobmale

My hard drive died and I had to reinstall Daz. I am trying to open an old file and it loads without the different dials set on the figure after it tells me a lot of things did not load correctly. I could not install back to the location I did on the previous drive. I want to know if there is a way to get at the values I had on the morph dials so I can rebuild. Or if there is a way to get it to map to all of the new locations. Sadly I did not think I would have to keep text files or screen caps of the dials if I ever had to reinstall.

Richard Haseltine

The absolute location doesn't matter, but the relative location does (the location within a content directory matters - the location of the content directory doesn't matter). Are these custom morphs or morphs from products/freebies?

bobmale

Richard Haseltine said:

The absolute location doesn't matter, but the relative location does (the location within a content directory matters - the location of the content directory doesn't matter). Are these custom morphs or morphs from products/freebies?

These are the basic dials that come with the figures. Though I would also like to get at ones added by other products. All of them have been loaded new and are in place if I start a new figure. Also I hope sorting out these will also help in rebuilding the surfaces such as which Diffuse map was added, colors, etc.

So just for a simple example. Load up Victoria 6 from a render back in September. Find out what number the "Fitness" morph dial was at. See what the Diffuse map was for the Iris. Those kinds of things.

Richard Haseltine

It's possible that when you saved your old files you had nested content directories - there was a content directory inside another content directory, and the Data folder with the morphs was in there. If that was the case DS may have added the extra folder to the relative path, which would then fail on any other system. Can you open one of the .duf files that is failing in a text editor?

bobmale

Richard Haseltine said:

It's possible that when you saved your old files you had nested content directories - there was a content directory inside another content directory, and the Data folder with the morphs was in there. If that was the case DS may have added the extra folder to the relative path, which would then fail on any other system. Can you open one of the .duf files that is failing in a text editor?

Apologies, other work distracted me. I tried to open a few of the DUF files in two text editors and they are all encoded in something other than plain text.

As I've been reinstalling, mostly with the Daz Install Manager, I already have files installing to two similarly named locations for the newest files. Older files are going to a third folder but some of those seem missing from the DIM entirely. Based on past experience I never get everything all in one single place. They break down by generations and I have items back to Victoria 3.

Richard Haseltine

Your files are probably compressed - you can use an archive tool such as 7Zip to uncompress them, or the Batch Convert pane within Daz Studio.

bobmale

Richard Haseltine said:

Your files are probably compressed - you can use an archive tool such as 7Zip to uncompress them, or the Batch Convert pane within Daz Studio.

 

Windows 10 didn't recognise the files as a ZIP when I renamed a DUF to ZIP It said it was empty.. I downloaded 7Zip just to be certain and it similarly cannot open it as a ZIP. I tried Batch Convert in DazStudio but I have no idea where it outputed to if it didn't just overwrite the file. I was using a copy so no harm to my original.

Beyond being a DazStudio format file what is a DUF file? Is it just a bunch pointers to the content and dial settings? Is it a copy of all of the geometries but not how they relate? I don't understand why some scenes will be massive in filesize compared to others if they just point to all of the data elsewhere.

Richard Haseltine

A .duf file is a description of part or all of a scene or item together with pointers to asset files which hold the actual geometry.

To use &Zip to decompress just right-click on the .duf file and select 7-Zip>Extract Here

SpottedKitty

bobmale said:

I don't understand why some scenes will be massive in filesize compared to others if they just point to all of the data elsewhere.

It all depends on whether the bits making up the scene have already been created as proper D|S-format Figure or Prop Assets — if so, the .duf file will mainly consist of pointers to the D|S-format files in the /data/ folder, and texture files in the /Runtime/Textures/ folder, plus settings and values for all the object's Parameters. If anything is an unconverted Poser object, or an old .daz scene file, then there isn't any existing data to point to — the bits and pieces that should be properly saved in the /data/ folder will be partly in the /data/auto_adapted/ folder, and partly bulking up the .duf file. I'm not sure exactly how this works now, a lot has changed from the first D|S versions, in which everything not a texture and not already in native format seems to have been stuffed into the scene file.

mjc1016

SpottedKitty said:

bobmale said:

I don't understand why some scenes will be massive in filesize compared to others if they just point to all of the data elsewhere.

It all depends on whether the bits making up the scene have already been created as proper D|S-format Figure or Prop Assets — if so, the .duf file will mainly consist of pointers to the D|S-format files in the /data/ folder, and texture files in the /Runtime/Textures/ folder, plus settings and values for all the object's Parameters. If anything is an unconverted Poser object, or an old .daz scene file, then there isn't any existing data to point to — the bits and pieces that should be properly saved in the /data/ folder will be partly in the /data/auto_adapted/ folder, and partly bulking up the .duf file. I'm not sure exactly how this works now, a lot has changed from the first D|S versions, in which everything not a texture and not already in native format seems to have been stuffed into the scene file.

Plus don't forget compressed/uncompressed saves...the fact that duf files can be saved in a compressed format also makes a big difference in sizes.

bobmale

I saved everthing to a backup drive in the slightest hope I could get it to reorganise on a new hard drive. If I need to go to different folders than just the one with the DUF file then I can. I have it all.

I realised there is one DUF I could really use rebuilt. A lot of work went into it and I was only about half done. Anything I did now to remake it would be essentially a brand new scene. It would be awesome if I could get it pulled togethter the way it was. I think the oldest things in it were for Genesis.