Runtime Organization

Lotharen

Greetings everyone! I took advantage of todays sale to stock up on so much V4/M4 items that I got a nose bleed shopping - heck at 90% off how could I pass it up. My question is - now that I have way more 3D content than I ever thought I would own - what is the best way to organize the runtimes?

I've been considering letting the install manager just DL them to its default directory and just linking that, of should I take a more hands on approach?

What do you vets out there do to keep your runtimes nice, neat and managable?

Thanks in advance!

3DAGE

You can use the download manager (DIM) to install into different runtime folders if you want to,. or onto different drives,.

Studio has a "categories" area,. where users who feel the need to, can re-organize products in their own way,. (without actually moving any real files)

"Categories" are displayed in Smart content in Carrara.

Don't install a bunch of stuff you're not using regularly,. everything is available online,. so you don;t have to download and install everything in your product library

(you can also download everything and archive it on an external drive) if you really wanted to.

use DIM to install, and un-install products you need to use, when you need to use them.

Lotharen

So if I organize it into catagories in Studio, Carrara will pick that up and use my organized catagories from Studio?

Just making sure I understood that correctly.

Dartanbeck

Lotharen said:

So if I organize it into catagories in Studio, Carrara will pick that up and use my organized catagories from Studio?

Just making sure I understood that correctly.

Nope. It won't.

Inside DIM, we can set up different "Runtime" directories, making it nice and easy to organize our content. Then, when you have a pile of stuff to dowload/install, you select everything that goes into the same directory, select that location from the dropdown (once you have them set up, they show up in a nice, convenient drop-down) and then start the queue! ;)

In the Settings window, select the "Installation" tab and use the "+" to add new locations. These locations don't have to already exist, they'll become a proper runtime folder upon installation.

 

After we have our various locations set, when we run DIM, make sure that "Show Details" (bottom of the DIM window) is checked. I like to have it checked in both the Download tab and the Install tab.

 

Example:

I've just bought a whole pile of things for V4 and now I want to download and instal them. I fire up DIM, select all of the V4 content in my Downloads tab, use the drop-down under Show Details and select my "V4" directory, and Start the Queue

 

Lotharen

Dartanbeck said:

Lotharen said:

So if I organize it into catagories in Studio, Carrara will pick that up and use my organized catagories from Studio?

Just making sure I understood that correctly.

Nope. It won't.

Inside DIM, we can set up different "Runtime" directories, making it nice and easy to organize our content. Then, when you have a pile of stuff to dowload/install, you select everything that goes into the same directory, select that location from the dropdown (once you have them set up, they show up in a nice, convenient drop-down) and then start the queue! ;)

In the Settings window, select the "Installation" tab and use the "+" to add new locations. These locations don't have to already exist, they'll become a proper runtime folder upon installation.

 

After we have our various locations set, when we run DIM, make sure that "Show Details" (bottom of the DIM window) is checked. I like to have it checked in both the Download tab and the Install tab.

 

Example:

I've just bought a whole pile of things for V4 and now I want to download and instal them. I fire up DIM, select all of the V4 content in my Downloads tab, use the drop-down under Show Details and select my "V4" directory, and Start the Queue

 

 

@dartanbeck

I never knew you could do that! Thanks so much Dartanbeck. Now to decide how I want to catagorize it all.

Something similar to what you have perhaps:

Animals
Dragons
Environments
M4
V4
Vehicles
Props
Gen2
Gen3

Am I missing anything?

 

BrianP21361

@Dartanbeck

 

I understand how to do it in DIM, but what's the benefit in Carrara. Can you post a screen shot of what it looks like inide of Carrara?

Thanks.

chickenman

The benifit depends on how you load your content in Carrara.

You have two options.

Content tab - still layed out in a poser runtime format so you have to know where things are located.

Smart Content tab - It is not as defined as Studio's as progress due to lack of updates. It does work but not as efficiently. THis relies on the Database that DIM creates and Use studio to do DB maintenance.