Hi,

I'm new to both DAZ and Renderosity, so thanks ahead for your patience.

I bought a couple dresses, supported by Genesis 8 / 8.1.

I have DAZ 4.21

I tried unzipping the files and moving them into my DAZ library, no luck.

C: Users/Public/Public Documents/My Daz 3D Library

Documentation

People

Runtime

BTW- that library folder was completely empty!

Any help will be greatly appreciated

Thanks

rp

Is that library linked to DAZStudio?  On my setup, I have links to some Poser runtimes, My Library, and My DAZ 3D Library, all of them visible in DS.

please see

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2916149

Thank you both for reply- I do not have any "Library" or "My Library" folders listed in DS. I click the Content Library tab and there is no Library folder?

Is this the root of my problem?

What are you content directories? Edit>Preferences, go to the Content tab, click Content Directory Manager, expand the options under current so you can see the actual paths used, and take a screen shot to post here.

Thank you for reply!

I followed your suggestion- here's a screen shot.

You need to expand those so the actual paths show, at least Daz Studio Formats and Poser Formats.

Keep in mind that content purchased at sites other than the Daz Store do not (as far as I know) contain metadata, so they don't show up in Smart Content, and you'll have to weed through Content Library to find all the components for that product. With that said, here is how I do it:

1. Wherever your "My DAZ 3D Library" is located, either copy your Renderosity files into there, or (as I do) create a separate folder for 3rd Party Content at the same location. Mine is called "My DAZ 3D 3rd Party Library". Your system may vary, but my libraries are located at C:\Daz 3D\Applications\Data\DAZ 3D

2. Unzip the newly purchased content files somewhere, then click through the unzipped folder until you click INTO the "Content" folder. That location should have folders with names like "Runtime", "Data", "People", "Environments", etc (each product is different). COPY all of those folders into the library folder you are using in #1 above. The COPY function will add the new files to existing folders with the same name, or create the folders if they don't already exist. Then delete the unzipped folders and store your original .zip files in an archive somewhere in case you need them later.

Note: I've never known quite what to do with "Templates" zips, so I just unzip them and copy them into a "Templates" folder that I have in each library folder.

3. As others noted above, you need to make sure (just one time) that Daz Studio knows where to look for your content library(s) in #1 above:

* Click on the "Edit" menu, and select "Preferences". A popup window with many tabs will appear.

* In that popup window, click on the "Content" tab. Then click the "Content Directory Manager" button at the bottom of that tab. Another popup will appear.

* In that popup window, click the little plus (+) symbol next to "DAZ Studio Formats", and it will list out the locations where Daz Studio looks for your content.

* Your library(s) from #1 above should be listed there. If they aren't, then click on the "Daz Studio Formats" line so the "Add" button appears to the left, and use that Add function to add the library(s) where your content is located.

* Do the same thing for "Poser Formats" (if you'll be installing older Poser stuff - some of which is really cool)

* Click on "Accept" to save the updated content locations.

4.If the new product DOES support Smart Content, you need to run the Maintenance before Smart Content will recognize it, when you install things manually. (I do this for everything I install from the Daz Store, and never do this for content purchased elsewhere):

* Click on the Smart Content tab

* Click on the horizontal line "hamburger" with the little arrow, right next to the blue "Login..." button at the top of the pane. Select "Content DB Maintenance" from the drop-down menu. A popup for that will appear.

* In the popup window titled "Content Database Maintenance", click the boxes for "Process Metadata Queue" and "Re-import Metadata", and leave all other boxes unchecked. Then click "Accept". That will open a larger popup window listing your Smart Content items. Click "Accept" on that window and wait for it to finish importing the metadata.

5. If you installed products that don't support Smart Content, click on the Content Library pane. Then right-click on "DAZ Studio Formats" and choose "Refresh". Do that again for the "Poser Formats" line. To be honest, I do it for every line there, since I'm not certain how it works. But after those refreshes your non-Smart Content products will show up on the Content Library. Unfortunately, actually FINDING the components can be a real chore sometimes... Good practice is to search for all the components right after you install it, and note the locations of each component in a text file or spreadsheet so you can easily locate them later.

I know that seems like a lot of tasks, but it becomes muscle memory after a while and it only takes a brief moment to install new content once you get used to it!

No need to restart Daz at this point - you should now see your new products in Smart Content and/or Content Library!

For what it's worth, I demonstrate most or all of this in my YouTube video below, though the video itself is an hour long...

https://youtu.be/j9jr373yeh4

I hope that helps!

Paul

WOW! Thank you so much Paul. Incredibly generous reply.

I ended up copying and dropping all the new folders everywhere until the dress showed up. Absolutely horrible approach on my part but I was desperate! LOL.

The good news is that I can now see My Library tab and Library tabs.

Also, the dress has shown up, can't figure out how to manipulate the roughness etc- but I can see it on her.

BTW This is the dress:  https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/dforce-diamante-mesh-mini-dress-g8f/156574

Trying to lengthen it or I won't be able to use it...so this may be a bust anyway. On top of all of this, I have to bring it into iClone so this is one steep learning curve.

I will walk thru your thoughtful reply and attempt to do this correctly. And watch your video!

Any more advice is greatly appreciated and again, thank you so much!

Red

Hey Red,

You're welcome. I hope it helps! It is difficult to get complete step-by-step answers here sometimes, so maybe that will help others too.

I've never been able to get dForce to work, since that uses about as much computing power and time as an animation, and my (now deceased) Daz laptop was underpowered to begin with. But if you are trying to lengthen the dress, try this:

1. Select the dress

2. Click on the Parameters pane. Look and see if there is an "Actors" entry. That is where you will find available morphs to modify the shape and size to the extent that the vendor made that possible.

Beyond that, you might research the Li Editor and the Geometry Editor. I honestly don't know how those work yet, but they allow manipulations of various kinds.

And in case you didn't know, the Surfaces pane is where you can add other materials/shaders/colors/patterns and such. That is probably where you would deal with the roughness - although that deals with all those maps on the right-hand side that I don't understand!

I don't know whether or how any of those changes would make their way into iClone though From what I hear it can be tricky to get stuff into other programs, and Reallusion is pretty proprietary to begin with.

I do recommend trying to delete out those extra copies of the dress you dropped everywhere :) Then run the Maintenance and/or Refresh as outlined above, and hopefully your database will end up with only one copy of it.

Sorry I can't help more with the specifics, but I'm pretty new at this too, and I've battled hardware problems since the day I started using Daz Studio. So I haven't had a lot of productive time with it yet (except for the renders in my gallery here). Good luck, and have fun!

Paul

Thanks Paul, you're the best!!!

All of your suggestions and advice are greatly appreciated- BTW- loved your Blues Brothers reference in your video:)

I'll keep you posted as I move along, found a wonderful guru, you may enjoy his talks too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7_mkD3-wZQ

Have some fun too!

Red

Great video find Red! Jay has all kinds of useful videos on YouTube. I've learned a lot from them.

Paul