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One annoying thing I have found in my time here is the repeated zipping of files for shared items. I'm sure many people are like me and get multiple items at once and then install them into Daz. Many, MANY times I find I download the zips, highlight a number of them, and right-click extract here. Only to end up with more zips of the same name with one character different, or a folder of the same name and inside, you guessed it another zip file. OF THE SAME NAME AS THE ORIGINAL ZIP! For those that don't know, zipping a zip file again gains a size reduction so insignificant that it isn't worth the time spent to zip it let alone extract it as well. Now this rant doesn't apply to stuff that is a bundle of zips to make it one quick easy download just the single items. Sorting stuff to install is time-consuming enough with the obnoxious artists out there, who can't put the mats in a folder structure to the same material folder as the item they made it for. And instead have to make a separate folder structure under their screen name.
rant over just needed to vent a little.
Vendors can never be trusted to do things the same way twice.
That is one of the reasons I gave up on automated installs & went to manual.:/
.. vendors putting the content inside their vendor name folder is one of the greatest gripes I have.. and coming up a close second is splitting the content into multiple zip files (1, 2, 3, ..) each having a Documentation folder inside (I never extract the Documentation folder into my Library)..
.. it may be time consuming, but I normally install one content at a time (even if I download a lot) and I never extract them directly to my library.. I extract the content to a Temp folder and then do a bit of clean up on the vendor folders..
Genesis 8 Female/Characters/My/Stupid/Vendor/Name/Content will become
Genesis 8 Female/Characters/Content.. and then I put that in my Library.. and also zip that up for next time.... a bit time consuming, but rewarding.. 🙂
I do the same especially for versus clothing mats from renderosity. but even worse is get a zip named IM3532532535, extract a folder named IM3532532535-item name, to open it and find another zip named IM3532532535 to extract giving Content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Characters/My/Stupid/Vendor/Name/Content
@darksoul1978 .. you don't need to extract a zip to get the content.. you can just open the zip inside the zip.. and once you've reached the end.. extract the content..
@Gladson1976 If you read the post I extract MULTIPLE at a time usually 10 to 15 at a time. The point is to save time not make it ten times longer to accomplish the same task.
10 to 15 times is crazy. I've never seen that. The only time I would do it if I have multiple files.
@Gladson1976 this is also what I do, and your point about vendor folder names is why I always manually install everything. At least we don't have the old Poser .exe files anymore 😒.
@darksoul1978 .. gotcha.. 🙂
.. and as I said.. "it may be time consuming, but I normally install one content at a time (even if I download a lot)" 😀
@frank22 .. don't get me started about Poser.. 😀When I share older Poser stuff I always run the .exe (after scanning) extract the folders, and zip them into a new package to share.
Rendo will always have the textures as a separate zip, they just do.IF I have a batch of downloads, like the others I make a temp folder, there I let al the zips unpack in a separate folder. I have e few more "temp" folders where I do a quick shift in chars, clothes etc There I unzip al files in one go, make a " !Content folder, where I put al the files, The it is a matter of putting the proper folders in there. ( IN my libs I have separate clothes G8, Poses, et "main libs" which are subdivided as needed. It is a Universal system, so all the folders have a Uniform frame. I use that naming in the !Content folder as well, so when finished I can import the new stuff in the proper folders,
The " setups" folder with al the zips is organised in a similair fashion as the libraries for easy findings, plus if I ever have to instal again, I got all the things together, so need be, all the clothes files can be extracted in one go.
It is a bit time consuming I admit, but it works great
I made a print screen, and see I still have some clutter in this particulair folder....
Organising will always be a thing I guess 🙂@darksoul1978 et al
As @gladson1976 said: ".. it may be time consuming, but I normally install one content at a time (even if I download a lot) and I never extract them directly to my library.. I extract the content to a Temp folder and then do a bit of clean up on the vendor folders.."
IMHO this is the only way to go. As @eelgoo stated there is no adhered-to standard from vendors (or sharers in any cases of third party alterations). I've never found a foolproof way of batch-installing multiple assets manually which may differ greatly. The "saving time" part is always defeated by messed up install locations in the runtime and all elsewhere. I, for one, always double-open to check inside an asset's zip and see its contents, unzip to a temp folder, and alter or even re-zip as necessary if preferred file locations are not as desired. Doing this preserves locations properly and doesn't have items in weird library locales in DS. To me, that's worth doing things individually.
What I do is semi-automated installs.
Things that are unmovable (i.e. Data/Textures folders) get installed with DIM (so they can be removed fast too, just in case), and the rest needs to be installed manually.
Vendors make way too much mess of things (especially texture expansions for clothing from Renderosity), or some even put their products over half a dozen folders all over the place!
As @eelgoo says, vendors are not reliable at always using the same installation paths twice (well, some do...but most of the time they change things over time).
Okay, the Vendor thing is a whole other can of worms and we've gone off topic. What my complaint is, is NOT a vendor thing but an uploader thing. I'll show you what I mean.
https://imgur.com/gallery/SoYsIni
here is the start of todays unzipping I just downloadedhttps://imgur.com/gallery/aXBaVvE
now as you see in the process after moving the IM000xxxx.zip files I got immediately to the IM folder I unzipped my others to get more IM000xxxx.zip files and folders.https://imgur.com/gallery/geKR2ex
and inside the folder yet another IM000xxxx.zip file.Before finding this site I spent a LOT more than I care to admit on the ol DAZ site over the past 4 years. So I know how they hand out those files there when you download them. if you manually download a file you get IM000xxxx.zip open it and it's a content folder manifest and supplement. not a zip with a bunch of other stuff as well as the IM000xxxx.zip
these are done on the uploader end. SYmerfolk for G9 for example is it really necessary to take the IM000xxxx.zip and a picture, put them in a folder, and then zip the folder? Just upload the original zip. It's less work for everybody involved that way.
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