A recent crash ruined my careful Daz|Studio content library sorting. after the dust (and language) cleared I found out about a lovely free backup script for your content library – entirely too late of course!

This however, provides me with the ideal chance to re-install everything properly from scratch, clear out things I don’t like any more and to tidy it all up. you don’t have to of course, but when you get a runtime as big as mine it makes sense to do a periodic tidy at times.

in fact, as I went through everything I found I had three iterations of the entire program on my computer! so.. I’ve done a complete re-install, I’ve cleared my content and will completely re-install that as well (sigh). all this is just in time to install my brand new content from the sales! (soo much content…)

I thought I might also take this opportunity to write about sorting your daz content for ease of use.

your Runtime is where your 3d content is stored on your computer. it has it’s own sorting system which, mostly, goes according to plan. some people have several runtimes to keep their content separate. or keep them on separate hard drives for portability and protection. I used to have one large one, with this new install I will be running one for my paid content, one for my free content and a special one for the content I beta test (as a ninja – shhhh!). but I don’t recommend you have anything so complicated to start out with.

if you are using the Daz installers they will give you nice prompts and install where you tell them, or to their default location in applications/dazStudio/content. if you buy from Renderosity, or download freebies, you will get a .zip file with your content. the .zip files will have all the directories and everything laid out, but you will need to merge them together (or you will overwrite your existing content!!). in winzip I believe it’s automatic, however with a mac it’s actually not the default. I recommend you use stuffit to extract your .zip files on a mac. if you enter into the preferences and go to destination you can select the merge option there. I found this out the hard way which is why I’m telling you now! after that it’s just a simple matter of dropping the file onto stuffit and telling it to decompress the files in your content library. (you are fine if you just select content – I created a shortcut to make it faster – sometimes it will expand with a different structure, but, if you use the content manager then it won’t matter, it will still work.

to put it all together, and sort it in the content manager I highly recommend this guide I created a quick video to show how I do it but it’s being pretty buggy on me and I’ve got a lot on my plate atm – I’ll see about getting it together soon!

Some of you may be asking, what does this have to do with creating art? I know all about expanding archives and sorting.. well, as I have very recently found out, if you don’t have a well sorted runtime or content library then you spend more time trying to find your content than you do making art- and by the time you do find it, the inspiration is gone… if you have it at your fingertips, like a well organized studio, you have more time for creating art!