I'm new to Daz Studio (using 4.6). While trying the Genesis 3 characters, I've installed the content by hand. The figures load - Genesis 3 Male and Female, Michael 7 - but there are no material presets for anything in the surface tab.

Where can I find those presets?

How can I enable them?

How do I install content so the presets appear?

First off, you are 3 builds back. You should upgrade to at least 4.9.2.70

Your terminology is a little confusing. The Surface tab shows what materials are attached to a figure or object. It does not have any presets. For Genesis 3 figures, material presets are located in Content library under either materials or characters.

You should consider using the DAZ Install Manager to install content. When configured properly , all your content should be available and it makes it easy to have multiple runtimes.

My Content Library looks like this.

Just as a small note to add to what Medzinator has written.

The surface tab does have a Presets panel also and relies on correct categorisation of each asset to display Material and Shader presets from within the Surfaces Tab.

Razor42 posted at 7:51AM Fri, 06 January 2017 - #4294283

Just as a small note to add to what Medzinator has written.

The surface tab does have a Presets panel also and relies on correct categorisation of each asset to display Material and Shader presets from within the Surfaces Tab.

This is absolutely correct.

It is like the Smart Content tab. Note you also should have a surface selected. :)

As already pointed out. 4.6 is really old. Please update for the bug fixes, if for nothing else.

Can you even use Genesis 3 in 4.6?

jestmart posted at 9:15PM Fri, 06 January 2017 - #4294549

Can you even use Genesis 3 in 4.6?

Sort of. IIRC, it has been a while.

I was confused. I was using 4.8. I was talking about materials - they're in the materials folder.

Genesis 3 Materials are located in /People/Genesis 3 Female/Materials. To apply a material preset select the Genesis 3 Figure in the scene then locate the required material preset in either smart content or the content library tab and double click the preset.

If you are talking about files in /runtime/libraries/Materials they are Poser Material files and not fully compatible with DS. Apparently PZ2 is more compatible than MT5, which will not work at all. But expect that any Poser Material if compatible will need some work in DS, especially if rendering in Iray

Also Material presets are configured for Specific surface names so a rock material preset will only work on that specific rock with the correct surface names and will not apply to any other item. A Shader preset will apply to any surface selected in the surface tab.