Renderotica

Sympathies Hud, I still get flashbacks and wake up in a cold sweat.

It's a long story and it really does start with once upon a time, but I'll try and keep it short here... if I can.

There are in essence 3 types of content which all need their own library directory structures: Poser format, DAZ Studio format and Connect. Some content is a hybrid of Poser and DS formats which is a pain.

Once upon a time there was just Poser format and all was good... well not quite, it was still easy to get stuff in the wrong place so along came CIM on his white charger to put the world to rights, except not all providers listened to CIM and there was still the old content that had not heard of him. And then DAZ decided to lead everyone off the path and got us all lost...

Back in the present,

The Connect Data path (as shown in Directory Manager) is for stuff down loaded from DAZ via Connect. You can't put stuff in here manually or DS will have a strop.
There is the CMS Cluster Directory also known as "My Library" for manual and CIM installs (CIM will need to be configured if this is not at the default location).

You can put everything into the 'My Library' path but I prefer to have separate directories for Poser and DS format stuff, that way I can see what's what and it makes it easier for me to find stuff on the Content Library tab.
Be aware that manually installed stuff does not show up in Smart Content unless you make it so but that's a whole nuther subject.
The Content Library tab has it's quirks too, it will refuse to show stuff that it thinks is in the wrong format for the folder, another reason I try to keep them separate... and Characters in the directory structure shows up as Figures in the Content Library and the content is organised in completely different ways and... blah... blah... rant.

But anyway,
The folder structures for Poser formats and DAZ Studio formats are slightly different but important for content loaders to find the bits that they need to load everything in correctly. When doing a manual install it is essential to get stuff in the right places.
The confusing thing is the similarity - The Poser format path starts at a "Runtime" folder, the DS format structure has a "Runtime" folder within it. The folder structures (not all sub folders show) is as follows:-

For Poser
 [path]
- Runtime
- - Geometries
- - Libraries
- - Textures

For DS
[path]
- Data
- Documents
- Environments
- People
- Props
- Runtime

'My Library' has a merger of the two so Poser content goes into the Runtime folder within the DS path but it is important that Directory Manager points to the right places for DAZ Studio and Poser formats - The path for Poser Formats must be [path]\Runtime where [path] is the actual path on your hard drive. For DAZ Studio formats it's just [path]\

You can have as many Poser and DS format paths as you like as long as they are correctly registered as the appropriate type in Content Directory Manager.


To manually install content firstly identify what type it is, this will help you find it on the Content Library tab even if you are installing everything to 'My Library'.
If there is a "data" folder in the zip it's DS format, or hybrid - install to a DAZ Studio Formats path.
Otherwise it's Poser - install to a Poser Formats path

It is important that content goes into the right folders in the relevant path as per the structure in the zip and that all content goes into the same folder path. I prefer to manually copy files from the zip to the chosen location to make sure stuff goes in the right place for example \Runtime\Runtime\blah.. probably won't work.
As mentioned above you can have multiple DS and / or Poser format paths but all components for a particular content item must go into the same content path, load scripts will only look within the current path for the bits they need.


As for the somnambulant grey blocks these are summoned from the dark realm if the loader script can't locate the geometry files required to draw the object in the path relative to itself. In Poser format it will be looking in [path]\Runtime\Geometries\ Or if pure DS format in [path]\Data\

It's a common problem I'm sure we have all had much 'fun' with but I hope this helps.

Edited by user Wednesday, September 15, 2021 11:12:29 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: Blake_Stronge

When you pull the files from the rar folder, are you copying the 'Content' folder into the 'My Library' folder. If so, that might be your problem. Try this. Open windows expolrer and navigate to your My Library folder. Download and open the Winrar file of the product you want to install. In winrar, open the first folder, it will possibly be labled 'Content' or 'My Library', but you should come accross a list of folders named 'data' 'runtime' 'people' 'props' etc. Select all of these folders and drag them directly into your 'My Library' folder. Make sure you dont drag them into a sub folder. This should put all the files where Daz can find them. For instance, if you have put the Contents folder inside My Library, Daz is looking for a file in My Lirbray/data/vendor name/product but you may have it in My Library/content/data/vendor name/product hence the grey box and missing texture files.

I had forgotten that one caused me a fair bit of confusion.