moving folders and files
Prospector
Posts: 54
Can I move stuff around so that all the Exclamation marks are gone and everything is alphabetical ? Also can files be put into different folders so say all V-5 clothes are in same folder (alphabetically) and all her poses are there and textures and so on
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Yes.I wouldn't move anything in the data or geometry folders though. Clothing in Poser format is usually under runtime/figures..., in DS format it's usually under people/(the figure in question)/clothing.
If you have a lot of exclamation marks that sounds as if you have already moved stuff around. It's better to leave the files where they are and either place them in categories or create shortcuts pointing to them in the folder views (Content Library>Whatever Formats).
the exclamation marks and such are from the folders that the originator of the content named them so they would show up first in a list of files. like !Daz or !!Daz or !!!Daz and other sellers of content.. I'd like to remove all that stuff to get everything lined up alphabetically.
No...unfortunately those names are now 'set' in the various parts of the products in question, so without a lot of manual file editing you will break things moving them.
Crap.
Can't there be a way to set the file system so all the same thing goes into same folder for everyone, or made to only accept things for that folder and naming conventions can't include anything but letters so no one can put the number 1 in front of everything, thereby making people have to stay within the naming convention guideline. I have about 10 ways to just put a readme file by putting in or taking out spaces, quotation marks, some sellers that have folders nowhere in the what seems to be somesort of heirachy, like !!Hellfishwho has a folder out by itself in the base of the file tree that seems it should be able to be moved into the main structure.
That's the kind of stuff that you get around by using Categories.
Yes, some of it can be moved, but the whole mess as a rule is difficult to move around, because you are dealing with multiple generations of two different programs that have different requirements as to what can go where.
You should definitely take the advice of mjc1016 over mine...but I've moved everything around a lot and haven't had any issues. For example, I have my people folder setup like "my Daz 3D Library/People/Genesis 3/Male (or Female), to keep the people window uncluttered. I've sorted poses by action (my daz 3d library/people/genesis 2/female/poses/standing, for example). Same thing with clothes. I've basically got the folders setup like smart content, but I don't have to use the smart content pane. It took a long time to setup initially, but it's not so bad when adding new products anymore. I do the same for props and environments (which I've renamed to "sets").
All I move are the actual .dufs and the corresponding .pngs. I leave geometry, textures, and data alone.
I wasn't sure what would happen when I did this, so I backed up the folder My Daz 3D library to an external drive, and basically just experimented. I moved something around, and then refreshed content pane in DS to see if it still loaded in its new location, and it worked so I kept going.
If you do decide to move stuff, it's a huge job.
With newer stuff, it's less of a problem...if it is all in Daz native format. Some of the names indicate that at least some of that content is older/Poser format stuff...and that's where major problems develop.
But even with modern content, problems can crop up if the wrong thing is moved.
Categories bypass all that because the actual files stay put and pointers are created, in a database, to those files.
Yes, this is the vitally important, third-rail-territory thing that must be kept in mind whenever you want to move files. In general, if you can see something in the Content Library tab, it's safe to move it around. This includes scenes and scripts in D|S format, and all the Poser format figures, props, poses etc. visible in the various Poser Runtime library folders.
If you can't see something in the Content Library tab, then you must never, ever, seven times never move it, touch it, or even look at it funny. These are all files that are referenced by other files — the whole business of assembling a scene or loading a figure is a continuous sequence of references from one file to another. The files at the top of the sequence are the ones you click on in the Content Library; they don't have references to them, they contain references to other files. These are the ones you can safely move. If you move anything else, you break the daisy-chain of references and D|S starts coughing up "can't find file" errors.
Incidentally, this means moving files for textures, geometries, etc. "to tidy them up a bit" is pointless as well as 100% likely to break things — you can't see it in the Content Library tab, so why move it?
I guess it's just old school habits. Since I got into computers at the time of the Timex Sinclair 1000, everything has been to make footprint of any program as small as possable, as neat as possable,and as easy to find files as possable. So seeing lots of read me folders strung around the content folder, or dozens of copies of reflection pics strung around, and dozens and dozens of folders with an exclaimation mark or 2 or even 3, make the footprint larger, harder to find files, and is annoying.
But I guess there is nothing to now.
The Read Me variations CAN be dumped into one folder...or even moved to another drive/removed entirely. Nothing really does anything with them.
The reflection maps...unfortunately, they need to stay...if there are 20 of the same thing, in 19 subfolders and 1 in the main texture folder, those 19 others are still needed. Because the presets that call them are looking for them in that particular subfolder. And at one point, even those !!something folders actually made sense. That was to purposefully break alphabetical order to get certain things to load first.