Hair actor missing

Zoon3d

Hi all. I'm fairly new to Daz3d software having made the switch from Poser. I've recently had a problem with using hair preset poses - I'm using Cailin hair for Genesis 3 here as an example but the same applies to other hair. Downloaded the hair and installed manually. Added hair to the scene, attempted to load preset pose for hair but nothing happened. On selecting the hair and looking at Parameters tab, I noticed the Actor for the hair was missing. Downloading via Install manager corrected the problem, and Actor present in Parameters tab. However, I don't like to use Install manager as I want to decide where to place my files.... so the question is, why does manual installation seem to cause a problem and is there anything I can do to resolve it?

Richard Haseltine

What do you mean - that there was no Actor group in the Parameters pane? I didn't think that would be dependent on the Content Management System

Zoon3d

Yes Richard, the parameters pane was not showing an Actor entry, just General then Display

Richard Haseltine

Noit sure why that would happen - non-Daz items, which don't even have a DIM/Connect option, are geenrally correctly grouped in my experience.

Lindsey

Missing the "Actor" group in the Parameter pane for the hair is an indication the DATA folder which contains the morphs for the hair were not found.

The installer files are in three folders.

data
people
runtime

You don't say where you manually placed the files, but if you see the Caitlan hair, you need to put the data folder in the same folder where you installed the people folder

 

Zoon3d

Hi Lindsey. When manually adding the files, I have added them to the same folder. I can see them when I search for them, but the application can't seem to find them unless I use Install manager, I have reinstalled Daz3d, run Process Metadata and Re-Import metadata in Content Database Maintenance

 

Lindsey

Check the DAZ Content Manager settings in Preferences.

Edit>Preferences>Content>Content Directory Manager
Expand the DAZ Studio Formats

The FOLDER you placed the data, runtime, people folder into needs to be listed. If it's not showing, add it. 

Select DAZ Studio Formats, right click select "Add a base directory" and add that folder.

Restart DAZ Studio and see if your manually content can now be found.

If the folder path is listed, then post back with the folder you placed the data, runtime and people folder, and a picture of your Content Directory Manager>DAZ Studio Formats base folder (directory) paths.

Lindsey

If you don't like where DIM installs content, and alternative is to install with DAZ Connect.  The each product installs into it's own folder in a single folder.  The product is added to the Smart Content tab. It doesn't install anything into the traditional DAZ Studio Format content library.

A feature was added to DAZ Studio 4.9 to allow you to create short cuts (with metadata) from the Smart Content pane into your DAZ Studio Format content library.  You can place the short cuts into any folder layout of your choosing. You can even reorgainize the short cuts using your computer's OS without breaking metadata.

Here's a brief post of the process.  This is my preferred method of installing products purchased from DAZ3D.

There are a few products that cannot be installed with DAZ Connect, mostly pre-Genesis people. You'll have to manually install or use DIM.

Zoon3d

Thanks for your advice Lindsey, but what I'd really like to do is understand how manually installing the files to the correct location prevents the Hair presets from working

Lindsey

As a general rule, you should be putting the three folders supplied with the Cailin Hair (people/data/runtime) in a "base directory" and have that "base directory" mapped in Content Directory Manager under Daz Studio Formats.