Daz Install Manager, concerns with defaults and resricted configurability.

neverstoplearning

Some opinions from a 40+ year retired corporate veteran PC nerd and OCD detail freak.

Daz3D is great, I am starting to get used to it. I am trying to keep my brain working, and Daz3D helps me do that.

DAZ Install Manager has the default/recommended destination folder for content set to "C:\Users\Public\Documents\My Daz3d Library".  This is not a good location. Very few people who have personal or exclusive use of a PC ever go to Users/Public for anything.  It's too "far away" from a folder navigation point of view, especially as a great deal of software still does not implement the Windows "Quick Access" capability.

This recommended detination also apparently cannot be removed or changed as far as I can see.  This is unreasonable. I want to put My Daz3d Content on another drive, and when I created a new entry in the DIM settings, "J:\3DSoftware\Daz3D\DIMContent", and thought I had "selected" it, and uninstalled everything, and installed it again, hoping it would go in my newly defined location, it was put in users\public as before, as if I had done nothing. I fiddled with the settings and was unable to delete c:\users\public... or push it "down the stack".

Daz3D content is NOT Documents, it is Data, so it should NOT be in Documents at all.

Ideally I would like to be able to separate free/included/base content from stuff I have paid for, and I can't seem to find a way to do that.

namffuak

Very configurable, just not obviously so. As another 40+ year sysadmin/sysprog, I don't do defaults if I can avoid it.

Click on the gear icon, top right, for the settings menu.

Click on the 'Downloads' tab and set your preferred download directory - I use G:/dim-download on my laptop (it's a usb drive); then scroll through the data types to select what you actually want to see as available downloads - DAZ Studio 4.5+, Install Manager, General, Software, Plugin, Windows (either or both bit levels) are probably what you'll want. Include Public Build if you want to be able to get the Studio beta(s) when they come out.

Now the 'Installation' tab. Pick the 64-bit and 32-bit directories you want to install Studio to. Be aware that the final path for the install will be "<32-bit>/DAZ 3D/Studio4" and "<64-bit>/DAZ 3D/Studio4" I'm using C:/bits-32 and C:/bits-64 on the laptop. Now, to add an installation directory - click on the '+' bottom left, pick a label, and browse to the path you want. Again, on the laptop, I'm using gen5 (label) and E:/s4stuff/gen5 (path). Once you have that path defined you can click on the default path definition and the '-' button bottom left to delete it. I also have a 'general' path E:/general (most tutorials are 'general' data type).

You only need to worry about the 'Applications' tab if you have Photoshop, Hexagon, or Zbrush - this is where you tell DIM where they live.

When you're done, click on 'Accept' and DIM is set -- but you need to tell Studio about the changes.

Fire up Studio and select 'work offline' and then Edit -> Preferences -> Content and click on 'Content Directory Manager' at the bottom.

Click the '+' by DAZ Studio Formats to expand the list, then click on 'DAZ Studio Formats' itself; this gives you the option to Add a directory. Click the 'Add' button and browse to your DIM installation directory (in my case above, E:\s4stuff\gen5 - in DAZ terminology, gen5 is a 'content' directory). This will put the directory at the bottom of the list; you'll want to move it to the top - click on it and use the move button. You can add non-DIM directories here as well; I have an E:/s4stuff/3rd-party that I dump things not from DAZ into.

Repeat the above for the Poser Formats group, as some of the items DIM installs (older items, for the most part) are Poser format and will be found by this directory path.

 

Hope this helps a bit. Oh - and when you're in DIM, make sure you click on the 'show details' box, bottom right, on the Ready to Install tab - among other things, this will show you where DIM is about to install things - and that is a drop-down box you can use to select the proper directory if you have multiples defined.

 

neverstoplearning

Thank you namffuak, I would never have known that was what the minus button was for.

Wow, those are some arcane UI design choices!  I did a fair amount of Windows UI programming in C 20+ years ago, and would never have dreamed of implementing the DIM functionality in the way it is. Why didn't they use the easy way: Select and then RMB->Delete?

namffuak

DAZ supports Mac as well as Windows, so that plays into things at times; they use the QT 4.5+ toolkit for gui programming and that also adds the opportunity for oddness.

Two more things you should know but are probably not worth changing.

In Studio, edit -> preferences and then the CMS tab will show you where the Postgress database is - and you can move it if you want. I have in excess of 7,000 products installed and it only takes up 1.7 GB. I left it on the C: drive on my main system - a 500 GB SSD - for the access speed. Backup of this database is done by, in Studio, using the option menu (that little block with the triangle and lines) in the upper corner of either the Content or Smart Content tabs to select Content DB Maintenance and then Export User Data. This writes a UserData<digit>.dsx file to the first defined Studio format directory's runtime/support subdirectory - and this is what you back up.

Also, DIM creates an installation manifest file for each product it installs. This lives in C:/Users/Public/Public Documents/DAZ 3D/InstallManager/ManifestFiles and is how DIM tracks what is installed. Again, on my system this hasn't exceeded 100 MB yet, so I've just left it there.

FeralFey

I'm glad that namffuak spoke up, 'cause I was also going to say that you can easily customize where DIM installs your content. I have all my content installed on an external hard drive on my laptop and therefore I need to have DIM install stuff there. Also as a content creator, I have to have some working directories set up as well (to prevent cross-contamination of products, and to help me find my working files faster. It's also good for organizing my runtimes by themes, or by figure, or however I like). I can set DIM up, as namffuak laid out, to install to anyone of my directories. 

ShelLuser

45+ years here :P  But yeah, Daz Studio is about the most flexible and customizable piece of software there is, almost nothing is carved out in stone. Both the software and data locations (I have my data in c:\users\peter\documents\daz but my two libraries (Daz & Daz Connect) in d:\media\. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Pretty much everything about the Daz Studio interface can be customized. The interface and several panels themselves, but also the contents (thinking about the categories in the smart content pane).

But yeah, it takes getting used to.

Paul Butera

namffuak said:

Very configurable, just not obviously so. As another 40+ year sysadmin/sysprog, I don't do defaults if I can avoid it.

Click on the gear icon, top right, for the settings menu.

Click on the 'Downloads' tab and set your preferred download directory - I use G:/dim-download on my laptop (it's a usb drive); then scroll through the data types to select what you actually want to see as available downloads - DAZ Studio 4.5+, Install Manager, General, Software, Plugin, Windows (either or both bit levels) are probably what you'll want. Include Public Build if you want to be able to get the Studio beta(s) when they come out.

Now the 'Installation' tab. Pick the 64-bit and 32-bit directories you want to install Studio to. Be aware that the final path for the install will be "<32-bit>/DAZ 3D/Studio4" and "<64-bit>/DAZ 3D/Studio4" I'm using C:/bits-32 and C:/bits-64 on the laptop. Now, to add an installation directory - click on the '+' bottom left, pick a label, and browse to the path you want. Again, on the laptop, I'm using gen5 (lebel) and E:/s4stuff/gen5 (path). Once you have that path defined you can click on the default path definition and the '-' button bottom left to delete it. I also have a 'general' path E:/general (most tutorials are 'general' data type).

You only need to worry about the 'Applications' tab if you have Photoshop, Hexagon, or Zbrush - this is where you tell DIM where they live.

When you're done, click on 'Accept' and DIM is set -- but you need to tell Studio about the changes.

Fire up Studio and select 'work offline' and then Edit -> Preferences -> Content and click on 'Content Directory Manager' at the bottom.

Click the '+' by DAZ Studio Formats to expand the list, then click on 'DAZ Studio Formats' itself; this gives you the option to Add a directory. Click the 'Add' button and browse to your DIM installation directory (in my case above, E:\s4stuff\gen5 - in DAZ terminology, gen5 is a 'content' directory). This will put the directory at the bottom of the list; you'll want to move it to the top - click on it and use the move button. You can add non-DIM directories here as well; I have an E:/s4stuff/3rd-party that I dump things not from DAZ into.

Repeat the above for the Poser Formats group, as some of the items DIM installs (older items, for the most part) are Poser format and will be found by this directory path.

 

Hope this helps a bit. Oh - and when you're in DIM, make sure you click on the 'show details' box, bottom right, on the Ready to Install tab - among other things, this will show you where DIM is about to install things - and that is a drop-down box you can use to select the proper directory if you have multiples defined.

Thanks so much. I have been struggling with this for weeks and was wondering why I upgraded my computer. 

 

 

Paul Butera

Thanks so much. I have been struggling with this for weeks and was wondering why I upgraded my computer.