Does anyone have visual rep of the what the Daz File system is supposed to look like? See Attachment
serialchiller09
Posts: 25
In the article,
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-export-directory-tree-folder-windows/
(You guessed it) the author broke down how to export a file tree. I work in automation so Im familiar with file systems but I cannot find much documentation on the subject for Daz. If there is a document out there like the one attached it would save new members like myself a lot of time. Please don't respond to this threat with, "It's up to you", or that it can be done a million ways. All I want is one willing person to show me the way they have their system set up. Or just a baseline example that I can use for reference. Thank you to all, much obliged.
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Comments
What do you want to know about it?
While there are some standards in place... you know the problem with standards I trust? Everyone wants to make & share their own!
But the real problem here is that this question doesn't make much sense for Daz Studio, what are you trying to do? Because, yes, we have standards where to store things like clothing, hair props, etc. Pysical locations like: "People/Genesis 8 Female/Characters/Ahumet". Or "Props/Dragon Fire/Materials/Ball". Of course this is only hinting at assets that use the Daz format. There's also this thing as Poser formatting, now you're looking at physical locations like "Runtime/Geometries" or "Runtime/Textures" whereas the actual library will be categorized as: "Cameras, Figures, Props, Scenes, etc.".
It is mainly for this reason why Daz Studio set up the smart contents pane which gives you a fully categorized & optionally filtered way to access your assets.
The only time you'd be mucking around the library itself would be when using the content library pane, but as I hinted at... then the whole thing depends on context.
But normally you wouldn't be bothering yourself with the physical location of your assets.
Where are the data and runtime folders supposed to be? When I downloaded 3rd party content the creators had them stored in various folders. Also the manifest files and why Im able to see them in my library when I've read they're supposed to be elsewhere(like where?). Thanks, guys, I appreciate yall taking the time to help me out.
Basically, I've got my Daz content spread out everywhere between my desktops, NAS, and various hard disks so yea, I've pretty much run amuck, and now its time to organize.
Data and Runtime should be directly inside the folder listed as DS content directory.
When manually installing content, there are sometimes folders like "My library" or "content" or with the name of the vendor or product or whatever at the top-level in the zip. You do not need those folders in your install.
So unzip to a temp directory first, then look for the base folders like Runtime, data, People... in the extracted folders. Take all the folders at the same level as those, and paste them inside your DS content directory, so that "data" folder merges with the existing one, same for Runtime, People, ... and so on.
The Manifest.dsx and Supplement.dsx are only used by the installers. if installing manually, one doesn't need them.
I have attached instructions for manual installation, maybe that helps in understanding how it works.
In general, the Data folder is for geometry, runtime/textures is for textures and runtime/support is for metadata. Files in these folders need to go where the creator has put them, but I have seen for example freebees where creators have not followed even these rules.
There is one rule that must be followed if one wants to have a product working. If the product is a character or a morph for Daz base figure, the morph files need to be put in the morph folder for that character, which for Genesis 8 Female is "...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female\Morphs\", that is the folder that G8F is looking for morphs when loaded into a scene.
Otherwise "It's up to you"
If the assets are bought from DAZ store, one uses the installers to install them and 'Smart' Content to load them into the scene, it is better not to move stuff from where the installer put them - They may not follow the general 'rules' in where they are placed and quite often it makes finding them in Content Library a pain in the behind, but one gets the benefit of using the installer to uninstall them easily.
If one is leaning towards old school ways, using manual installation and using Content Library to load stuff into the scene, apart from what is under Data and Runtime folders, everything else can be moved* around and arranged according to ones own logic.
*The exception being products using scripts that load other parts of products, for example Ultra Scenery.
This is just 1 of many drives I have my content strewn about. Would you guys recommend starting over? Every time I get it somewhat organized my one drive (which was the original location) will write over all the progress I've made.
You're a good friend, and I'd like to shake your virtual hand. And thank you, everyone!
The example you used about the morphs was a goodn seeing as how I've been placing one Id purchased just about every place known to my network to no avail. Bought it about a month ago!
Also love the bill gates quote hahaha.
I'm not touching One Drive, that is the invention of the horned one himself...
But, I do see one obvious mistake within your content library.
You have 'Content' folder under your 'My Daz 3D Library" folder. The 'Content' folder inside the Zip files is an alias for 'My Daz 3D Library', because the base folder of the content library can have whatever name, depending on when the folder was originally created, by which installer or it may have been created and named by the user.
You need to move everything inside the 'Content' folder to 'My Daz 3D Library'
Talking about the horned one... Do not log in to DazStudio, or you will find yourself wondering about another one of his inventions, Daz Connect that uses completely different location to install content and messing up ones previous installations.
Set the Startup preferences in DS as in the attached sample.
There should only be one data folder in your dazstudio "Content" or "MyLibrary" directory.
what you posted does look cluttered, and likely causes certain morphs and scripts not to work properly.
As a general rule, freebies are notorious for messed up file structures that don't follow well established file structures that are a requirement of store submitted content.
That's not necessarily true, it heavily depends on context.
(edit)
It seems I overlooked something, you were talking about the physical folder within the library; I was under the impression that you meant the actual content library itself. Doh, my bad. Seems I can't remove my post so figured I'd explain myself instead. Sorry for the possible confusion.
Others already commented but because of my mess up...
What I would recommend is keeping 3 libraries around. So 3 folders within the Content Library manager. First the folders that get created & used by default: your main Daz Studio library (be sure to use both Daz & Poser formats), and then your own personal library where you'd save your own work; project files and other preset files (poses, character, light, etc.).
Next... add a dedicated folder for your "3rd party contents"; so the stuff you download from various websites. Then only use that folder to unpack those archives into. As mentioned above you need to keep the main structure in mind.
Daz formats can be recognized by folders like "Figures", "People", "Poses", "Textures" and "Data" but also sometimes 'Runtime' just to make it a bit harder.
Poser formats then can be recognized by the main Runtime folder which often contains one or more of the following sub-folders: "Geometries", "Libraries" and "Textures". Of course there is no hard set standard here and many artists use folders of their own as well. But even so: they all involve these ones.
There's also Daz Connect to keep in mind but I would ignore this for now. It's basically another way to install some of your official assets but its implementation is a bit confusing and can even easily lead to installing the same assets multiple times!
You can set all of this up using the 'Content Directory Manager' which you can access either by pressing F2 and then clicking this option in the Content tab, or right click on the content library pane and select it from there. Keep in mind that you can sometimes discover a bit of overlap between asset formats as well. Some artists provide Poser assets and have their Daz entries reference those, resulting in you being able to find the same kind of asset in both "format locations". When in doubt focus on the Daz contents first, but you usually want to leave the Poser assets alone as well.
Hope that this could still give you some ideas and impressions.
If doing the default installation, letting the installer use default locations, everything is installed on C-drive, which is a bad idea to start with, made even worse when the locations are specified inside folders that One Drive is haunting.
The Content Library should be created/installed on any other drive but C