( a few hours later...)

I downloaded the fantasy hatchet, tested it on a library copy, added it to the main library, and it WORKED!!! Extreme yay! Thanks! :)

This was really... amazingly difficult to figure out. Literally EVERY other source used a different method of getting content into the DAZ library, many of which didn't make any sense at all.

Hey all, thanks for all the answers! :) I will work on this today (the billing for the family business also has to get done, so it might take a while, but I wanted to make sure that everyone who responded knew that I did see this.)

"I guess I am not sure with what you mean by "pulled Poser files into the Poser directory in each individual folder"?

I'm not going to claim that this is a good way, but there are times when I have separately taken each folder associated with a separate section for an item and individually taken it into that section. This is by having 2 windows open, one for the desktop folder where I originally unzipped it, and one for the Poser directory. Each individual folder is then taken into its section of the directory. Nothing is merged-- the folder just goes in as a new folder so that it's with all the others. The obj file folder to geometry, the texture folder to Textures, the pose folder to Poses, etc etc etc.

This is a very time-consuming way to get items into a Poser runtime, but it does work, and it means that there's no chance of getting anything into the wrong folder or losing track of where it is. I see EXACTLY where each folder and file is going. I'm not exactly recommending that anyone do this, because there's obviously a much easier way, and it's all very OCD. But what I meant was that at this point, I would do the same type of thing in Daz for each and every individual third party item if I had to.

Well, I feel your pain..., ;) but does anybody actually know? If I could even get an idea of what the file structure is supposed to be, that could help. Here's what I mean. I have sometimes actually gone down to the root level and separated out and pulled Poser files into the Poser directory in each individual folder. Can I do the same thing in Daz?

For AinesRealm taxi, for example, here's where they are in Poser:

• in geometries: folder of mtl and obj files
• in character: cr2 file and little png file
• in textures: all the different maps

Could I go to Daz3D libraries-- runtime-- libraries-- and then do the same thing there, pulling out individual folders and putting them in the correct larger folder (camera, character, face, hair, etc)? Even though there has got to be an easier way to install third party content, at this point, I'd be happy with that!!!

I am completely losing my mind from this. Nothing seems to make any sense at all in the file structure. I can't begin to figure out how to get files into Daz!@!!!! For the love of GOD what is going on with the file structure... maybe I should just start another thread...

Thank you SO much for answering!! NO, it is not fixed at all, and I have no idea where to go for help on this one. Do you mean that the head might be locked? I checked, and it wasn't... nothing is locked. PLEASE, if you have any other ideas, I really need to fix this.Or if you've ever seen this question addressed anywhere... I can't find any information on it. You will have my eternal gratitude. :)

Ha! I found a solution!! I finally upgraded to PP 2014. Well, it was A solution, anyway...

It's all rendering fine now. :)

Update:

I reinstalled Flash with the latest version...

The Nov 2013 IE11 patch was already installed...

DL and installed the latest Nvidia graphics card driver...

Nothing. Renders are still dropping out after SSS. :(

Well, maybe I AM nuts... I've been working a lot... maybe it took place in another dimension... but I'm telling y'all, I do remember it. O.o.

What Poser is basically stuck on now is rendering SSS and then hanging up on adding objects. Sometimes it'll make it all the way to rendering, but it never actually happens. Eventually, the process stops with figures rendered only in SSS as ghostly gray/black images.

Anyway! Here's some more info. I uninstalled IE 11 according to directions I found and restarted the computer, but it didn't go anywhere. >:[ I was hoping it would go back to 10, but it seems to be stuck on 11.So THEN I disabled it as a Windows feature, which was another piece of advice. I'll let everyone know if it works or not!!!

Quote - Why would firefox affect Poser?

I don't know, and it's insane. But a couple of versions ago, that's exactly what it did. Everyone had the same experience... come on, somebody else has to remember this! I'm not nuts! Well... at least not because of that. ;)

I hope so. And I hope I'm wrong. I don't want to be right. I hope you're right instead. I wouldn't call it "hilarious," because it would be very sad if the worst did happen. There's nothing funny about businesses going under. But I've laid out the reasons it could happen. Everyone is free to do their own research, and I hope they do, and I encourage them to. But I would hold off laughing for now, until another year or so has passed. In the meantime, we all have to make decisions about where our time and energy is going to go, using the best information we have. Sarcasm won't help that effort.

Quote - Here is a list of vendors and people involved in the Dawn project for those who have not had a chance to go through the now 24 pages of posts at the free stuff forum...

(snippety snip. Long, long, long list.)

I just finished spending two years researching a company before deciding to invest in it. (Not relevant which it is or anything, but the point is...) I learned the entire life story of the CEO, CFO, chief science officer, etc etc etc... history of the company... history of their research... anyway, it took two years.

Looking at that list, it takes two MINUTES to decide that if Daz were a public company, I would never even think about buying stock in it. Seeing that entire list, I'm even more convinced than before. I would run far, FAR away, and advise everyone else to do the same. It's not about the figures, but in the end, it would turn out the same way as if it were. V6 may be great, for all I know, but I don't think that people should invest in something that has a very good chance of being totally unsupported by the parent company within a year (along with everything else.) It's sad, but investors have to think about themselves, their time, their money, their energy, and their artistic effort.

Quote - One bit you may have missed - Poser has been passed around to quite a few companies (and at least 3 continents) over the years. How it survived the dot-bust I'll never guess.

The last time I used Poser, it came from Curious Labs. (So that gives y'all some idea of just how long it's been!;) I so wish I hadn't waited that long to pick it up again... but that's another topic. There is something about the business model that must be working, or it wouldn't have survived everything that it has. I honestly think that just being a public company can go a long way... thinking of other examples, but they're not exactly what you'd call relevant here.

lmackenzie, you may have made some points worth exploring, and you're actually kind of touching on what I meant with the V4 thing...  but is it really necessary to call posters a howling partisan mob? Do we have to read that we're "holy warriors bitching" as you make your points? How does that help a discussion? How does it contribute to making people willing to hear what you have to say? It might be a lot more helpful to be less inflammatory.

That having been said, have the point and click people (and there's NOTHING wrong with that motivation!) been happy with Genesis and especially the latest update variants? If it were possible to really find out what the sales figures were, my guess is no. There will always be anecdotes and individual cases, but anecdotes are not data. And if we could see the data, I believe that the answer would be no. That's a big part of the reason why I think that Dawn could please everybody and bring about a real change. The opportunity is there. 

Quote -  

I think you are very right from a business point of view. DAZ manouvering smacks of something burning under their feet to hit a big one, or else. They havent hit a big one since V4, and thats a long time. Content sales frm her are no longer sufficient to support the store AND software development. 

My take is that daz has been overextended for a while and the investors ae looking for returns on the capital already, and getting tired of returns way below the projected. You know there have been investors, daz had press releases about it, not so much in poserdom, but elsewhere. Daz was piositioning themselves for serioys expansions, but none of them caught on beyond the aveage market percentage capture. (Dynamic clothing, gaming marketplace, bryce, cararra and hexagon, genesis... are the ones I cam recall off the top of my head)

:)

Warning-- long post, but I think that it addresses some real issues.

Here's the way that I look at it, and I think that it goes to the very heart of the title of this thread. I don't know enough to evaluate Gen 1 or 2 from an artistic/technical standpoint (I really respect those who do.) But let's look at the issues of characters and products like investors, because we ARE investing our time and money.Stick with me here... ;)

We have no way of knowing how well any of the Gen figures did in the marketplace (although I do think it's telling that the explosion of free content just hasn't happened, relative to V4.) This is because a private company does not release sales figures or finances to anyone-- not the SEC, not a government body, not the public, nobody. Now, private companies have to seek private investors, as BadKitteh noted above. They can't raise public capital by selling stock. The problem is that if anything goes wrong with raising capital in this way, it can be devastating. This type of company usually relies on a relatively very small group of people-- founders and others who are passionate about the products and the mission. If any of these people branch out and create competing products... and if we can infer the parent company's reaction from the fact that they're not allowing public discussion of that event... that does not usually mean good news for a private company. 

So whether or not Gen 2 is a dud from an artistic and content POV will need to be decided by others. V6 could be the greatest figure in all of history; the problem is the business decisions behind her. I can't justify "investing" in any of the Gen figures for that reason. If anything goes wrong with the parent company... aside from whether or not they can reorganize under Ch 11 or 13 (Chapter 7-- forget it!!), there would be a lot of fallout from the psychological effect of the debacle on users.

From that POV, although we don't have any idea how Dawn will work out, she's a much better bet right out of the gate. She is being created by people whom everyone in the know likes and respects. A lot of respected people are already jumping on board for content creation. She won't be platform dependent; aside from technical issues, that makes her more likable and more comforting after all of the negative feelings stirred up by DSON. Negativity between users of the two platforms could really be smoothed down.

Ultimately, no matter how much trolling may exist, most people need to feel like part of a community that is generating solutions.  Dawn is generating a lot of excitement in that area, and that feeling of purpose and  camaraderie is supported because of the time, place, and psychological space that she fits into. I also think she'll be very good. :)

So, on balance, I do think that V6 is a dud if we look at her as a potential investment of our time and energy, even leaving out any artistic considerations. I'd go with Dawn.

Quote - > Quote - Okay, let's try ShareCG... (typety type)

Three pages. And I don't see anything for Gen2 yet.

LOL. Gen2 has only been out a couple of days.

But you have to admit... it's true! ;) Yep, it's probably still a little too early to expect that. BUT... Gen1 has been out for two years, as we all know. I really do not want to disrespect anyone, but 102 is more than 3. Pages and pages and pages of immediate results on a Google search for V4 is more than having to dig and dig and dig for free Genesis content. It doesn't mean there's none. It means there isn't as much. I really respect everyone here, but I have to stand by what I wrote.

I'm not an expert on any of this, trust me... I just came back to Poser almost exactly two months ago; I've used PS and other Adobe CS stuff for a long time. I've done a lot of photography, but I'm not a good enough draftsperson to just use physical media, I TOTALLY admit. Frank Frazetti I am not! But business models and marketplace behavior... THOSE, I do know more about. I'm sad about the way things are going, because I've seen it before, I've seen the ultimate results, and I'm afraid that I now see the writing on the wall. That having been said, it has nothing to do with the software or the products, and I think that these would continue to be available and possibly improved in a Chap. 11 or 13 situation. I'm excited about the future of 3D, and I hope that users continue to get together and share ideas and work. I've learned so much from these boards in such a short time. :)

I hope I'm wrong. About what I'm thinking may happen over the next year, I mean. I don't want to be right at all.

That's all I'll say.

(But my record is that I do tend to be right about predicting these kinds of things...)

Anyway. As basically an end user, or a specific type of end user who really just needs a few figures and clothes and hair and simple morphs that I can use for post-production purposes, I'm sticking with V4.2. It doesn't make sense to go any other way right now. (But I will LOVE playing with Dawn! ;)