Monday, I was grabbing my fortnightly freebies from Daz 3D Studio and decided to do a little shopping through the freebies on Renderosity as well. I realized that I have yet to share with you how I do my testing to make sure only products that work end up in my "good" Runtimes.

I hit upon my personal method awhile back and shared some of it when I talked about organizing my third-party content on Daz 3D, because while the company itself is brilliant in filing away its own content into your folders, third-party content is much more hit-and-miss, especially when dealing with Poser users.

Today, I'm building on what I did last time.

(Some of my female test models... included for interest only.)

Organize Your Runtimes

Organize your Daz 3D Studio Third-Party Content first and foremost. This is vital because everything I'm doing now builds on your tidy set of Runtimes.

(BTW, you really want a separate Runtime for each and every base model you have... What I mean by base is: Genesis 8 gets one Runtime - no matter how many characters you have... I have one for Victoria 4.2, but Aiko 4's stuff gets put there too... I shared one for Genesis and Genesis 2, but I probably should have split those as well.)

The only thing I don't like about the way that Daz does the Runtime folders is that you can't drag/drop them into a different order. You can delete them from Daz and re-add them in the desired order...

So, here is my current list of Runtimes in Daz.

Yes, you really do want all your Runtime directories under both Daz and Poser Formats. Including your Test Runtime. (This is really important!)

Now, let's get to the fun part of testing your content!

Testing Content

This is what your Test Runtime is for...

At the end of my folders in my Daz Documents folder, I have forced several folders to be last alphabetically. They are fairly self-explanatory. zzzDrop is where all my brand new content goes. I pull it out of downloads and drop it in there. I unzip the content into its own folder and throw the original zip file into that new folder - just to keep things tidy.

Here is what I'm working with.

I unzip from the bottom because then the resulting folder goes just below the text file in this case... So, it's easy to find. But I'm going to drop down further and find something to put on Victoria of Genesis (because I have my scene of test ladies open right now.)...

Poser Format Test/Install

Here is my first test piece.

So, the first thing I notice is that this is a Poser file. I only realized this week that Poser sets always start with a single Runtime file rather than a group of files in the top set. (ReadMe's don't count - and that zip is the original.) Sometimes, a Materials folder is there as well, then I copy them both - but the main point is that it looks very different from Daz format (as I'll show you in a bit.)

I paste the test product into my zzTest folder.

Now, I go to Daz and go down to my Poser formats zzTest Runtime, right click and select "refresh".

Now, I see my test product... I will test it on a fresh Victoria 4.2 in my ladies' test scene - where I have all my female models loaded so I can test efficiently.

I see I chose a morph to test rather than clothing, lol. Let's see if it works.

And...

Yep. It worked. So, now I go back to my zzTest folder and move the new Runtime folder into the Victoria 4.2 Runtime... like so.

So, now it's ready to use in my Vic_Aiko_4.2 Runtime.

Finally, I send the whole folder from zzzdrop to zzzzz_installed so that I have the intact file folder just in case I mess things up. (You can have that folder organized too so that it's easier to find things in the future.)

Now, let's see if I can find something for Genesis...

Daz Format Test/Install

Here we are... First clue was the "My Library" directory that some artists leave in... I open that and I have Data, People and Runtime. Daz folders! I copy/paste those into my zzTest folder, then refresh that Runtime (in the Daz section)...

I select my Genesis character and put the sword in her hand. Yep, it works. I also test materials - which also work as expected.

Like before, I then take the folders from my zzTest folder and put them in the appropriate Genesis Runtime folder for future use - and put the original folder (as downloaded) from zzDrop into zzzzz_installed so that I have it if I need it again.

Other bits...

Oh, I also have a folder for zzzz_not_working - just in case it's my fault I can't get it working... And learning the difference between Daz and Poser formats was one of those things... A folder structured for Poser won't work in the Daz formats and vice versa. They worked once I tried them in the correct format!

Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit. My next project is to get all my goodies installed properly and then see if I can manage to zip up an entire runtime and give it to @jamerussell to use on his DAZ... That's a bit of a final test, I guess, to know that I'm somewhat competent with this.

See you next time!

All work done by myself on: Photoscape, Gimp, Krita, and/or Daz 3D Studio

Past A'mara Books tutorials:

Map Development for Alacantis (on GIMP), part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover image for Acting the Part
Cover image for Brighid's Blood (part of the update).
Cover image for Birth of the Neví, part 1, part 2
Map Development for Velantia, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Map Development for Kranisis, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Cover Image for Name of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6
Beginning with Daz 3D Studio - my cover image for Mind of the Neví: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, changes
Cover image for Game of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3
Cover image for Pawn of the Neví, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5
Cover image for Freyja's Fire, part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 , part 5

Lori Svensen
author/designer at A'mara Books
photographer/graphic artist for Viking Visual
(Buy my work at RedBubble, TeePublic, PicFair and DeviantArt.)
verified author on Goodreads
(Buy my books at Books2Read and at LBRY)
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