Aug 13, 2016, 14:41 pm
(This post was last modified: Aug 13, 2016, 15:56 pm by Morlock. Edited 18 times in total.)
This is a quick set of guidelines on how to package Daz Studio/Poser torrents for uploading.
First, how to zip (in my experience, products are already zipped fresh from the factory, but in case they aren't): install WinRAR if you haven't already, fire it up, and go to Options>Settings>Integration. Check the "integrate WinRAR into shell" box if it isn't already (should be an option during install), and "Cascaded context menus" if you prefer to keep the sub-items in a single item in your context menu. Close WinRAR, and navigate to the folder containing the content you want to archive. Select it, right-click the selection, click on WinRAR in the context menu, and then click on "Add to archive." You'll get a dialog that can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. The most important option is probably "Archive format," it's found under the general tab, but in my experience, either format is fine, and the details of this dialog are beyond the scope of this guide.
1. The torrent should have a folder containing all of the content.
2. Each product should have a folder containing all of the content.
3. Each product should have at least one image outside of any archives, to make it easy to get a quick look at the product without extracting or opening the archives. It isn't a bad idea to add at least one image to the archive itself, too, just in case. You can drag and drop files onto RAR (and Zip too, I think) archives if you have WinRAR installed (and maybe associated with the formats, not sure about this).
4. If a product archive (zip, rar, etc.) makes a mess when it extracts, put it into its own folder.
5. No nesting archives; extracting an archive should not result in another archive, unless that's the way the product came from the vendor (if you didn't buy the product yourself, assume any nesting archives were put there by someone other than the vendor).
6. No Russian Doll folder structures. Keep the number of folders to the minimum necessary to keep things neat. A single folder inside a single folder, with nothing else, is a pretty consistent sign of unnecessary nesting, unless it's part of the standard Daz Studio or Poser library structure. If you don't know the standard Daz Studio or Poser library structure when you see it, rummage around them until you do.
7. Don't bundle multiple products into archives. Leave them separate, so users can download what they want, and nothing else.
8. Just use common sense. Set up the torrent content, and when you think it's ready, copy everything to another location, and test it out. Extract the archives (I use WinRAR and its "extract here" function almost exclusively; I think 7-Zip has a similar function) and see the results. Is it nice and clean, with no more complexity than necessary? Then it's probably ready to go! Delete the copy and upload the torrent.
9. My personal pet peeve is non-content content stuffed into content directories. E.g., readmes or templates or the like inside of runtime/library/content folders. It's a bit of extra work, but I personally appreciate it when that stuff is put up and out of the runtime/library/content folders, because I delete it; if I need the readme, I can look in the archive for it. This one is something of a judgement call; Daz has settled on a documentation path, so recent content isn't bad in this regard, but as you go back in time and consider all vendors, documentation locations are all over the place. The older stuff creates one hell of a mess if extracted as-authored and thrown into a library (not to mention the hordes of idiots who name their readme "readme.txt," and just throw it into the library so that scads of them will overwrite each other).
I'm probably leaving something out, but that's what came to me off the top of my head. Have fun with the uploading.
Oh, a bit of motivation: uploader errors propagate. One mistake by an uploader is multiplied by the number of people who download the torrent.
For a guide on how to make a good torrent title and description, see here:
Best Practices for Daz3D torrent Titles & Descriptions
P.S., it's not necessary, but if you want to go the extra mile, install the product and kick the tires before you upload it. Artists can be a very sloppy lot. I can't tell you how many times I've had to correct errors in products. The situation has improved dramatically at Daz in recent years (errors are pretty rare with modern Daz content), but older stuff has a lot more problems, particularly non-Daz stuff like Renderosity or RDNA content. One of the most common errors is bad texture references, usually where the artist has mis-named a file or folder. They're often easily fixed. One of the safest ways to do this is to copy the offending textures and rename and/or move them, to avoid breaking any correct references.
First, how to zip (in my experience, products are already zipped fresh from the factory, but in case they aren't): install WinRAR if you haven't already, fire it up, and go to Options>Settings>Integration. Check the "integrate WinRAR into shell" box if it isn't already (should be an option during install), and "Cascaded context menus" if you prefer to keep the sub-items in a single item in your context menu. Close WinRAR, and navigate to the folder containing the content you want to archive. Select it, right-click the selection, click on WinRAR in the context menu, and then click on "Add to archive." You'll get a dialog that can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. The most important option is probably "Archive format," it's found under the general tab, but in my experience, either format is fine, and the details of this dialog are beyond the scope of this guide.
1. The torrent should have a folder containing all of the content.
2. Each product should have a folder containing all of the content.
3. Each product should have at least one image outside of any archives, to make it easy to get a quick look at the product without extracting or opening the archives. It isn't a bad idea to add at least one image to the archive itself, too, just in case. You can drag and drop files onto RAR (and Zip too, I think) archives if you have WinRAR installed (and maybe associated with the formats, not sure about this).
4. If a product archive (zip, rar, etc.) makes a mess when it extracts, put it into its own folder.
5. No nesting archives; extracting an archive should not result in another archive, unless that's the way the product came from the vendor (if you didn't buy the product yourself, assume any nesting archives were put there by someone other than the vendor).
6. No Russian Doll folder structures. Keep the number of folders to the minimum necessary to keep things neat. A single folder inside a single folder, with nothing else, is a pretty consistent sign of unnecessary nesting, unless it's part of the standard Daz Studio or Poser library structure. If you don't know the standard Daz Studio or Poser library structure when you see it, rummage around them until you do.
7. Don't bundle multiple products into archives. Leave them separate, so users can download what they want, and nothing else.
8. Just use common sense. Set up the torrent content, and when you think it's ready, copy everything to another location, and test it out. Extract the archives (I use WinRAR and its "extract here" function almost exclusively; I think 7-Zip has a similar function) and see the results. Is it nice and clean, with no more complexity than necessary? Then it's probably ready to go! Delete the copy and upload the torrent.
9. My personal pet peeve is non-content content stuffed into content directories. E.g., readmes or templates or the like inside of runtime/library/content folders. It's a bit of extra work, but I personally appreciate it when that stuff is put up and out of the runtime/library/content folders, because I delete it; if I need the readme, I can look in the archive for it. This one is something of a judgement call; Daz has settled on a documentation path, so recent content isn't bad in this regard, but as you go back in time and consider all vendors, documentation locations are all over the place. The older stuff creates one hell of a mess if extracted as-authored and thrown into a library (not to mention the hordes of idiots who name their readme "readme.txt," and just throw it into the library so that scads of them will overwrite each other).
I'm probably leaving something out, but that's what came to me off the top of my head. Have fun with the uploading.
Oh, a bit of motivation: uploader errors propagate. One mistake by an uploader is multiplied by the number of people who download the torrent.
For a guide on how to make a good torrent title and description, see here:
Best Practices for Daz3D torrent Titles & Descriptions
P.S., it's not necessary, but if you want to go the extra mile, install the product and kick the tires before you upload it. Artists can be a very sloppy lot. I can't tell you how many times I've had to correct errors in products. The situation has improved dramatically at Daz in recent years (errors are pretty rare with modern Daz content), but older stuff has a lot more problems, particularly non-Daz stuff like Renderosity or RDNA content. One of the most common errors is bad texture references, usually where the artist has mis-named a file or folder. They're often easily fixed. One of the safest ways to do this is to copy the offending textures and rename and/or move them, to avoid breaking any correct references.