Greetings, yesterday I installed DAZ 4 and then downloaded and installed a bunch of free content from their site, only I either installed DAZ in the wrong place or installed the content into the wrong place(s) (DAZ installers don't automatically direct to the right folder it seems).

Anyhow like a number of people I can't find where it put files.

For example, figures, such as V4: I cannot find where it put the figure, to load it. It is not in the Content Library or "Smart Content" tabs.

I generally installed things into Program Files -> DAZ, but I do not see the files there, even showing hidden files.

I did look through some threads here already where people are having similar frustrations but their problems & solutions don't seem to click with mine.

DS tutorials seem to give conflicting advice: I checked out this content installation tutorial video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2pj4JEatE&feature=related and it says to install content to Libraries -> Documents -> DAZ 3D -> Studio -> Content (in the folder it created when I first installed, it did not create a Content folder; do I have to create one?).

Their Online FAQ for installation, here: http://www.daz3d.com/i/faq/0?id=360 gives a different pathway for installation: c:Program FilesDAZStudioContent

Right now I'm facing having to re-install everything I tried to install last night, and I want to do it correctly this time.

Plz halp! Which is the correct path for installing content and how do you force DAZ to recognize the locations? (Many installations claim they are doing this automatically, with a pop-up, but apparently this is not true).

Thanks in advance for any help. >_<

What OS are you using?  Under Win7 or Vista you should not install content into the Program Files area.  DS4 defaults to putting content in ~DocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy Library (where ~ varies with operating system), and that's the install path you should always use.

Most pre-Genesis content won't show up in Smart Content, but will show up in the Content Library under Poser Formats.  For example, V4 should be in Poser Formats > My Library > Figures > DAZ People.

I'm using Vista.

here we go.

Dump the smart content tab and CMS; that is just my opinion.

The smart content tab is not going to show 99% of your content. It only works with the very newest of content, or content that has microdata.

DAZ does not update installers, the worst thing you can do is let them install to where they want to. Older installers; and if it's free it's old, install to where the content folder was when they were made not to where the my library folder is now. So you could have content installed to 4 or 5 different places on your comp. But consolidating them should be as easy as cut and paste.

The folder DS4 uses is the recently renamed "my libary" folder. I'm sure it doesn't confuse anyone that the old studio content fodler, the one 98% of DAZ installers will be looking to install to, has been changed to my library.

Your content could be in programs x86/DAZ, or programs/DAZ, or my documents/daz3d/studio3/content. Thing to do is find the "content"  folder, cut it out, and paste it to the studio folder with the "my library" folder. You can leave it there, or cut everything out and move it to the my library folder.

DAZ does not update installers, so always besure it is installing to the right folder. Old content will never have microdata so will never be in your smart content tab.  I Have 150gigs of content, I have 6 items in the smart content tab.

To nit-pick, it's metadata, not microdata. No DAZ installer that I am aware of has hard coded paths pointing to anything. The older versions don't show a path (well, unless you let them search out your copy of poser.exe, should you have one) - they start at the root, or possibly in the folder you run them from. The last few generations have stored the last used path (and latterly, the last used Poser and DS paths) in the dzinstall.ini file - and the location in which that is stored has changed a couple of times, which may make installers of different vintages inconsistent in the path they offer.

My bad on the microdata.

Yes, those inconsistencies are why I recomend to never assume an installer is pointing to the right place. Always double check.

And you know I'm no fan of the installers ;)

Thanks tons for the replies, I'm now finding things, though it's still a bit of a search mission because even the stuff DL'd to "My Library" often gets put in strange places (either in the DAZ route or the Poser route; and the two hair files I got so far each got put into different places, for example).

But I suppose that's a common problem and you've got me on the right track now. Thanks. ^_^

I've been running into the same problems. There really needs to be a standardized, across-the-board way to install content in both DAZ and Poser in such a way that people, especially newbies like me and perhaps you too will not have to go through so much frustration & hair pulling.  I use Photoshop and other editing programs, and have for over a decade now, and I don't recall ever having so much frustration whenever I wanted to install new content in PS such as new filters, actions, and plug-ins. A few clicks and no muss, no fuss. It just gets it done. Piece of cake.

But with DAZ, and worse yet, Poser, you try to install something and files for something like a hat, or hair, or a single necklace get scattered all over several different folders and embedded 6-8 folders deep in the deep recesses of one big Runtime folder. And when you try to load something onto your model, you get a "Cannot locate file..." message and trying to move the right files, like .obj files, etc into the correct folder inside 3 or 6 other folders ends up being a giant 3 dimensional puzzle project. So yeah, I've been there.  Plenty! Including the past 24 hours! 

I now have about 12 things wich Studio can not locate. I'm NOT able to find out where to put them. I'm VERY frustrated about this.

Can you post a screenshot of your Content Directory Manager (Edit>Preferences>Directories>Content Directory Manager, expand all 3 categories)?

I took this issue over to the DAZ Forums [url=http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=3210047#3210047]here[/url] and tried to get help there too but apparently my issue isn't very common and while people there have tried to help too I haven't been able to fix the problem.

They advised me on the directories issue (a screenshot of what I had is available at that link, which included content in program files, which was apparently a bad thing).

At the end of this post is a screenshot of what the Content Directory Manager looks like now.

Further information on what steps have been taken to try to solve this problem is at the DAZ Forum link mentioned above; rather than reproduce everything here I'll just repost the most recent post I just made:

"Thanks for all the help and patience.

Ok well I removed those, I uninstalled Poser which I'm not really using anyhow, completely uninstalled DAZ and all content again, deleted the DAZ content folder in My Documents, and re-installed.

But I'm still getting the same issues and I wonder if it is because even after uninstalling and re-installing, the new installation seems to "remember" past installations; it doesn't seem to be a clean install.

This is probably a basic dumb noob question but how do I get a completely clean re-installation? (And could this be the source of these problems?)

Note again it's not just a few items that aren't fitting/conforming properly and it is even items made by DAZ for V4 such as Basicwear.

I submitted a ticket to DAZ support on this problem two days ago too but I haven't received a response yet. I might have to call support but I have family visiting for Christmas so I'm having a hard time finding time to be on the phone "for sure" for a longish time, so I'm still hoping some wise and knowledgeable person here might know what's going on and how to fix it.

Thanks again and sorry for being such a bother, especially with an issue that apparently isn't that common."

remove the second one from the studio format

and the first one from the poser format

try this- create an empty folder on your desktop and call it temp content or something.

run all installer to this folder for item

then open the folder-what do you see?

runtime - is poser content(this will be found inside the ds content folder)

content- is studio stuff

open your documents/dazstudio4/my library folder

and then just drag and drop to actually install your download.

do this for each item - then you won't loose it inside your computer.

Ok thanks; I think I've fixed my content database issues. Hopefully it will be stable.

Can anyone direct me to a good tutorial for fitting/adjusting clothing?

Hi all    I'm very new at this program....and I'm still a bit confused on where things go when they are unzipped...so if I understand this correctly, unzip in a temp desktop folder then into C:UsersRalynneDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy Library and just drag things into that?  What happens if there's already a folder with the same name, will I lose the information within the first folder? Or should those instances be handled manually?  I did try to unzip a bunch of other things, and when I went to look for them they didn't seem to be anywhere...which is annoying...  Any suggestions would be appreciated :)

Thanx  :D

When it merges a folder you don't lose anything that's already in a folder.

If there are duplicate files in a folder it will warn you and ask you if you want to over-write them with the new file, save both (in which case it will give them different names, one the original name and one named original(2)), or not move the file(s).

Usually - almost always, except for meaningless files like "License" or "readme," a file with the same name and the same size is actually the same file so move all and over-write everything.

For this program there are often tons of files so just click the button in the lower left corner that says "do this for all files" if that happens. 95%+ of the time, if you're installing completely new (for you) content, there won't be any file duplications anyway.

Makes sense....but I'm still not seeing the things...learning curves suck!

Hoping that I get this figured out... :)  Thank you for the info, I will try that.

Where are you looking for things? Under what menus? And where are you putting them?

One of the things I had to learn was to make sure everything went into the right folders in Documents - > DAZ3D -> Studio -> My Library and make sure nothing at all went anywhere else, such as in program directories.

I've been using:  C:UsersRalynneDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy Library and from there putting things into the relevant sub-directories...  Within the program Content Library may show something, but when I try to use it, it doesn't load...and nothing shows up in the Smart Library it doesn't show much other than what was preloaded... The biggest problem is the hair files...I can handle the crappy preload clothes....but the hair!  It'll show in Content Library, but won't load it and I'm not sure why...

Quote - I've been using:  C:UsersRalynneDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy Library and from there putting things into the relevant sub-directories...  Within the program Content Library may show something, but when I try to use it, it doesn't load...and nothing shows up in the Smart Library it doesn't show much other than what was preloaded... The biggest problem is the hair files...I can handle the crappy preload clothes....but the hair!  It'll show in Content Library, but won't load it and I'm not sure why...

i had the same problem but i figured it out mostly....

when you buy something like a hair, first make sure that what you bought is actually the hair figure and not just an extension of it (ie, hair style or colors)

After you install it, be sure to look at the readme file at the end, that is where they will tell you where the files are.  Basically, I would goto "Poser Format"->My Library->Figures in the content library UI and look for the actual hair to click on to add to the model.  Then once that is done, goto "Poser Format"->My Library->Pose directory and try to find the mats for it. Of course some quarky merchants lilke to put their stuff in different directories like "Materials" etc, so you may have to check them if you can't find anything.

I almost never look in the "Daz3d Format" directories unless I bought something made only for Daz3d. 

Hope that helps

What do you mean by

Quote - I've been using:  C:UsersRalynneDocumentsDAZ 3DStudioMy Library and from there putting things into the relevant sub-directories... 

? If you put things from zips or installers into sub-folders of My Library they will be likely to break with missing file errors.

Porphyrogenitus, I'm a new user like yourself and I had the same confusion. Let me see if I can make this easy. This is what I've found and how I've worked with it.

The new Daz3D Studio 4 has a new file structure. If you are using Windows 7 or Vista, you'll find the storage files in your My Documents folder. The path is:

C:usersusernameMy DocumentsDaz3DMy Library

In older versions and in Poser, My Library USED to be Content. With Runtime as one of it's subfolders. So:

Here's a common situation:

You have downloaded an older Poser or Daz3D based file from a 3d party site, (Renderosity, for example) for say V4, hair for instance, and it came in a .zip format.

When you unzip the file into a temp folder you'll see either a "content" folder or a "runtime" folder. If is says "content" you can mentally substitute the words "my library" which is the new folder in Daz3D 4 that has been renamed from the older "content" folder. All you need to do then is to open the "content" folder and copy the contents (not the folder itself) into your

C:usersusernameMy DocumentsDaz3dStudio folder. Ideally, the file structure is already set up and the files SHOULD go into the proper subfolders. Operative word here being, should.

It will ask you if you want to merge the data. You say yes. All of that content will show up, in the program, under the Poser files not Daz3D.

If you copy the folder itself to that directory, you'll wind up with a "contents" subfolder which shouldn't be there. If there one already, open it and move the contents to the parent directory "My Library."

If you see a 'Runtime" folder, all you need to do is copy that to your

C:usersusernameMy DocumentsDaz3dStudioMy Library folder because Runtime is a subfolder of My Library. That content, also, will show up in the program as Poser files.

Here's where the difficulty comes in, especially with hair files. Sometimes there are three parts, the cap, the hair itself and the textures. Unfortunately, they all show up in different areas. The cap will usually show up under the Props tab for some gawdawful reason. Hair SHOULD show up either in the Hair tab or Poses tab. Why hair shows up in Poses is completely beyond me, but it does. Or it could show up a s a subfolder of V4 which is in the People tab. This is where most of the confusion is, because apparently, different creators use different file structures in their archives.

And you'll probably find the textures either in Poses again, or in Materials. Or even possibly as a subfolder of V4.

The problem isn't necessarily wth either Poser or Daz3d. Often, it's the creator of the custom content that determines where it shows up by the file structure they used when it was made.

IF you want to take the time, you CAN, using Content Manager, assign each piece of custom content to a category and use that tab which will make finding items you use a lot, much simpler.

If my explanation is incorrect, I welcome any of you veterans to correct me.  Or to point me to a more effective filing system.

(this is weird, apparently this editor doesn't like the backslash.)

Thanks for the help; my file-organization problems are (mostly) solved now and I'm reorganizing things somewhat. ^_^

On Hair: In Poser, if you load a new item from the Hair library it will replace any current item from the Hair library attached to the current figure - so if there need to be multiple parts the extras (such as ribbons or a skullcap) get put in the Props library. Hair may also be in the Figure library if is has multiple bones - the hair library is a special kind of props library, though some people did move their figure hair to it by changing the file extension. The Pose library is used for all kinds of settings - including material settings (the actual Material library wasn't added until Poser 5, and didn't support files to change all settings of a single item until Poser 6). So there is logic, if you know how older versions of Poser work.

I guess that's one of the problems with being a newbie - we don't know these things :p