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Saving a new prop difficulties

wraith29Awraith29A Posts: 2
edited December 1969 in New Users

Hello everybody! :)

Maybe this question answered countless times, but I couldn't find the appropriate forum topic for the difficulty I encountered below.

I have created a new prop, which contains two groups of two textured planes, each with transparency maps. The texture files are stored as TIFFs in a separate directory. Then, I proceeded to save it as a File->Save As->Support Asset->Figure/Prop Asset, filled in the necessary text fields, metadata, etc. When I want to use it on different scene, however, only one group loaded, without any subnodes and textures.

I searched for tutorials for creating props, but even after completing their steps, the same result happens. As a last resort, I exported it as a Scene Subset, and while it works in some kind of extent, it is only a workaround of the problem.

What is the correct way saving such geometry as a prop? What I miss in the exporting process? What is the main problem here?

Thanks for the replies :)

Comments

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,613
    edited December 1969

    What is insufficient about saving as a scene subset? What i it you want to do that needs it to be a support asset?

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    edited December 1969

    feketeeg said:
    The texture files are stored as TIFFs in a separate directory.

    Where is this separate directory? And do you mean this is a separate location from where you have the transparency maps? This is vitally important; one of the most common mistakes people make in beginning to create freebies is to set everything up so that the textures can only be found in a folder on their own computer. Did you use a subfolder of the Textures folder in your Content location?
  • wraith29Awraith29A Posts: 2
    edited December 1969

    fixmypcmike said:
    What is insufficient about saving as a scene subset? What i it you want to do that needs it to be a support asset?
    Only a matter a of convinece, for instance, adding them to the specific part of the hierarchy instantly, and without any tweaking. And I want to learn how make it in the proper way.

    Where is this separate directory? And do you mean this is a separate location from where you have the transparency maps? This is vitally important; one of the most common mistakes people make in beginning to create freebies is to set everything up so that the textures can only be found in a folder on their own computer. Did you use a subfolder of the Textures folder in your Content location?


    They are stored outside of the DAZ library. All the textures and TMs are in the same folder. This Textures folder nowhere mentioned – can you tell me the how to set up the paths for the new textures properly?

    This "prop" is only for personal usage.

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    edited December 1969

    Placing the textures outside of the Content location is part of the same problem.

    (Incidentally, the Textures folder is inside the Runtime folder, which must always be directly inside your Content Library folder, i.e. not inside another level of folders.)

    The glitch comes from the way file paths are stored in all D|S files that refer to other files — mainly textures, but almost any file path reference can be affected by this. If you store the referred files in a mapped Content Library location, then D|S knows to look for it in there. This means that all the path needs to contain is the file location relative to the Content folder. This is why you can open a D|S materials preset and see a path such as:

    /Runtime/Textures//<productname>/texture.jpg

    All that matters is that the location inside the Content Library is set out; D|S knows where the Content Library is, so everything in the path before /Runtime/ is not needed. This means that you can safely move your Content Library to another location, another hard drive on your computer, or even another computer altogether, without worrying about breaking these file paths and making your content awkward to use. (This is fixable, but it can get a bit fiddly.)

    The problem comes when these file paths lead to somewhere outside the Content Library — D|S doesn't know where this is, so it puts the entire folder path into the file reference, an absolute path listing all the folders as they exist right now on your computer. This has absolutely no flexibility, and will work on no other computer except yours. It's especially a problem in different language systems, since the names of basic system folders, e.g. My Documents, is different in many non-English systems. You can't move the item to another computer, or even give it to someone else for testing, unless exactly the same folders are created in the other computer. You can do this if you want, but it's considered a major nuisance, since if you follow the Content Library location system, none of it is necessary.

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