Sunday, April 11, 2010

Poser models ... working like magic in DAZ Studio 3



Poser files ... working like magic in DAZ Studio 3 ...? You're looking at the evidence! The trees above, and a lot of the shrubs and trees below, are actually Poser files...


Nope ... these images have vanished, lost along with one of those accounts like Photobucket or Flickr or something. Dang. I assume they were landscapes (duh), so I'll fill in here with some landscapes from a later time...




And the Poser files work perfectly, if you can just get them installed properly. And what tends to throw you for a loop at first is the installation routine ... or the lack of it...

Shopping exclusively at DAZ, you're spoiled in many ways, because the models come complete with installers: click a button, and shazam! The model is just there and ready to be played with... the downside to this is that a Poser installer has a hernia when trying to install files to DAZ Studio 3, and you wind up with models that really don't work...

And here's the thing of it: they WOULD work, if they were properly installed!!

Now, in the last week or ten days I literally stumbled over Renderosity ... where the models are about half the price of the same items in the DAZ catalog. But there's a catch: they're mostly intended for use with Poser, although they will work in DAZ, if you take responsibility for the installation yourself.

So I did.

And they work. And there's a whole world of things that don't seem to have made it into the DAZ catalog ... and they're considerably cheaper than they'll be if they ever do make it into said DS catalog!

So if you're looking for the way to get Poser models to work in DAZ, here's the trick: Abandon the installer. Seriously. Have it unpack its contents into a specified folder ... one made by YOU, on the desktop, called "Joe's 3D Stuff" or whatever. Mine's called Jade's Junk. Everything unpacks into there, and then the fun begins...

Inside the folder, after the unpacking, you'll find a folder called RUNTIME ... and inside of this is a bunch of other folders with names like GEOMETRIES, LIBRARIES, TEXTURES ...

In the immortal words of The Book, "Don't Panic!" This is exactly what you need, because now you can go into your DAZ folders, match up the folder hierarchy and copy in the new folders of content that just unpacked, or unzipped, out of the Poser installer.

If you use Vista, your DAZ stuff lives here:

C:\users\[user=you]\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio 3\content

...that's where it all is -- carefully sorted into folders with names like (!) GEOMETRIES and LIBRARIES and TEXTURES.

Eureka. Penny dropping. Go through your newly unpacked product folders ... match 'em up with the master lists inside DAZ, and copy over the folders where the files live. And they pop up in DAZ without a hitch.

Well, today I got the Merlin's Medieval Tavern set ... and tomorrow I'm going to install it. Looking forward to this! Vistas of opportunity open up. Renderosity has so much that's new and different -- not to mention a lot more affordable. Some of the most gorgeous things depend on having Photoshop, which I don't have, which makes me sigh a little, but now I know that when a model says, "you must have Poser," this is not strictly true. It basically means, if you don't have poser you won't get an installer. Um ... thanks, guys, I can live without one!

Join me tomorrow for a tour of the medieval tavern...!

Jade, 11 April