Shaders not showing up.
Kaji
Posts: 21
I had purchased some of the DP shaders but they are not showing up in the browser at all, despite DIM saying they are installed. When I look at the file structure, this is what I see, the folder structure and the list in Carrara do not match.
What do I do to get Carrara to pick up those folders?
Voila_Capture-2014-03-16_05-35-00_PM.jpg
1105 x 936 - 184K
Comments
One way would be to manually add the folder. Select the tab for the Shader Browser, then select the little black icon on the top right side of the Browser window and then choose Add Folder. A little dialogue will pop up and ask you what type they are. Just select the appropriate choice.
I don't have DIM or C8.5, or this product, so I don't know why they're not showing up under "Skin."
I had found the posts on that after I had typed up this thread, so my apologies. However, if one is using DIM, shouldn't it automagically add the files into Carrara? How would one know to add the content (other than it is missing afterwards)?
I also cannot do that trick because they are inside the Carrara app package on the Mac. Aside from moving them manually into Skin and messing up DIM, is there any other way to do it?
If I go by the top finder window in the screen shot, it looks as if you could drag and drop the DP Victoria Six folder under Skin-->Genesis 2 Female so that it resides at the same level as the other DP shader Folders in your lower screen shot. To have it show up in the Browser, you will need to quit Carrara and relaunch it, so that the Browser gets refreshed.
As to why DIM didn't put it where it was supposed to go, I don't know.
To access the contents of the Carrara application package, I created an alias that resides in my Carrara 7 (that's my version) folder. Works well for things that don't install correctly like custom leaves. Also, the Add folder option works because selecting the alias with the Open dialogue gives me access to the innards of the app package.
I had found this: https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/entries/22530930-Native-Content-in-Carrara-8-5-Mac
But I am not using the old version referenced in the article. It's still installing it inside the Carrara.app package. Lovely :(
Easy work around is to make an alias of either the Mac OS folder in the App package and place it in your Carrara folder, or make an alias of the Presets folder and place it in the applications folder. It just depends on how high a level yout wish to start. There is also the possibility of moving it out of the app package and placing it where you wish manually.
Yeah, I will probably end up moving the files, but I had hoped to have it taken care of by the install manager. It's kind of pointless if I have to it manually :)
Thanks for the help though.
There very well could be a way to get DIM to do it properly, but I don't have it, so I can only suggest non-DIM workarounds. Sorry about that.
I tried DIM, but due to the bad economy and other financial set-backs, I'm still using Carrara 7.2 Pro on a PPC G5. DIM is either 32 bit or 64 bit Intel Mac compatible only, so DLing turned out to be a waste of time. I could use Carrara 8.1 (or whatever it is) but I suspect C8.5 is also not PPC compatible.
If it is like it set up for Studio, the location the DIM installs to and the location the standalone installers install to are not the same...so you have to tell Studio to use both locations, in order to see everything. You can configure the DIM to use existing locations, but it is not recommended.
There are several reasons for this, among them, the DIM is not 'aware' of things it didn't install...so updates and uninstalls can/are problematic. So the recommendation is to keep the default behavior of two locations...one for manually installed items and one for the DIM.
I use DIM for everything since they introduced it. My legacy Poser and pre-DIM content is in another location. I misread the help desk article, the installed content is supposed to be inside the Carrara.app file on a Mac. Why Carrara does not pick up items after install is beyond me. As evilproducer had said, I ended up creating an alias to add the shader folders manually.
This reminds me of the old Poser days where I had to manually rename all the folders because people had the bright idea of putting either their names on the folders, or calling them things that aren't related to what they are.
Right. That's where it's really kind of nice that Carrara doesn't automatically add folders. Not all content creators use the same conventions, which can quickly make a mess of things.
So when you're new to adding content to the Browser like this, it feels cumbersome. But in the end, it actually becomes second-nature, and makes for a fine setup.
Be careful about moving folders around, as DIM will lose the ability to update the files - the result being another installation of the product that must be moved like you did the first time. Again, no big deal if you've come up with a solid system for yourself that you understand and can easily work with.
For simplicity sake on the DP Shaders account, I simply added my entire Shaders folder (the one where Ringo's DP Shader files got installed to by DIM) to my browser, the way evilproducer explains above. Now all products that get installed to the shader folder are accessible via my Shaders list in the Shaders tab of the browser. Works great!
I really like all of the cool possibilities that those DP Shaders have added to my workflow! ;)