Content issue (again) - did you miss me?

spearcarrier

First, I want to apologize to the wonderful people who were trying to help me get my render cameras to cooperate with depth o field. I never got it to work and hit a spate of mean commissions that took me away from things like forums, and then I lost the thread... and yeah. This is the first time I've been back since then. But I never forgot your help, even if we never got anywhere with getting things to work.

Now, plain and simple I'm still using Daz3 because of the library/content/really-hate-the-interface issue. Yep, true to my word I haven't switched. In fact because its not available on the internet anywhere I've got it backed up on several disks. But I decided to see if there was a new Daz out and lo, there was Daz 4.5. This was yesterday. I installed it

Now I'm going to start off with a positive note. The content is improved, and I can do things like categorize. Okay. This is good and makes me *want* to work with Daz 4.5 where I didn't want to before. I do like the program so far. It's nice. Positive note done. Everything said after this is just me being myself: I'm not angry, not ranting, just being crazy me and it's a darn shame I gotta include a disclaimer before starting a conversation. What is this world coming to.

I'm still hitting the same old problem that chased me away the last time, although not to the same degree.

1. Most (instead of none) of my content doesn't show up. I know this is a metadata issue... but... is there nothing that can be done? Yes, most of my data is stuff I've had on disks for year as I collected here and there - and we're talking thousands of things. A good deal of them are free content from ShareCG and other places. Time is money, ya know? And I work for myself. I simply can't edit each one's metadata piece by piece, even using the stupid manager. Some of the items, I don't even know their names anymore in order TO use such a program I couldn't get to work to bring things in one by one. And going through all those folders and files in the runtime one by one and trying to remember what goes where and why it's what it is? Give me a break. This reliance on metadata and essentially breaking things in half is irresponsible programming. *foams at the mouth*

GIVE ME COOKIE! -_-

2. I have scores and scores of empty folders. I use category view, because that's the only way I'm going to find what little does show up. Is there also no way to tell DAZ to hide empty folders?

I've looked for answers to these problems and the most I could find was a brief note from an administrator who said to move items from their folders to just under the viewed folder - which means... Daz only reads one folder into the content database??? I think?? If so, WTH?!! Please tell me I misunderstood that, because doing that would 1. half my drive space if I copied instead of moved things and 2. give me continuous "we can't find this item" messages when I try to use *anything*. Not to mention all of the subfolders of those subfolders I'd have to move. Too much of a mess.

I also told Daz4.5 to bring in old categorizations from 3. Oh, it did... some. And then renamed things according to what it felt I should have and just undid all of my categorization work.

So... although Daz4.5 has potential it's still chasing me away back to the old technology. Cuz look... I just spent 8 hours trying to find content to make a simple scene. 8 hours. To do something quick to see how Genesis played. 8 wasted hours of my time. 8. Count them. Let me translate. I just lost $100. So for the sake of my sanity and bills I *have* to stick with what works.... and wonder why on earth when Daz 4 was first being written these important navigation issues were thrown out of the window.

But to try to end on a positive note: well, if these important issues can be easily solved you'll have me praising the saints for a better program. *I might even write a song . I'll name it the 3D render that almost wasn't. They'll be having t.v. specials featuring my song.*

So far I see that everything else is real nice in it. It's just... I can't work under these conditions.... I hope someone has a solution... please... *whimper*

I love you?

JimmyC_2009

If you are using DAZ Studio 4.5, the use the Content Library if you want to see all of your installed content. It does not rely on Metadata at all. The CL is divided into DAZ Studio Formats (Genesis and accesories), and Poser Formats (all other DAZ 3D Models, v4, m4 etc.etc.)

If you cannot see the CL pane, go to Window > Tabs > Content Library, and you can dock it anywhere you like. Not all contetn has Metadata, and stuff from ShareCG or other sites definitely will not. All content is installed by default into the My Library folder, including Poser content, and the path you give to the installer should end with the My Library folder in all cases.

Content Library will always show all of your content, assuming that it is installed correctly. Does that help any.

adamr001

1. Metadata isn't required to use categories. A category IS a piece of metadata though. How's that for confusing? Basically, the only way you're every REALLY going to have complete and utter confidence in finding everything is to start clean and categorize as you go. I've done that a grand total of four times over the years since I've been using DAZ Studio (with categories). Each time my system got cleaner and more efficient. However, it still *requires YOU* to categorize everything. You'll never get all the freebie makers of yore to go back and add metadata to their stuff. Metadata is a solution to the problem that has existed for years, but like any real fix it takes effort.

2. Goes back to effort. You're either looking at the default categories (which are fixed and alterable) or empty categories that you can simply right click on and select "delete" and they'll go away.

I created a freebie just the other day that's a Categories *layout* for DAZ Studio. It's pretty much a trimmed down version of what I use. It does NOT categorize your content for you. It just gives you a good, organized, time tested layout of categories to use. Find it here -> http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15192/

spearcarrier

Hey you two: you're awesome for even responding. So let me dive right on in here.

I'm going to download the freebie and see if it works! However, it's not the default categories that I'm asking about here It's the fact that things aren't showing up. Period. And yes, of course they're installed properly. There are official DAZ things not showing that were installed properly. Some are/were fresh installs. If things would *just show up* I could make an effort to categorize them. So you see it's not the effort. It's the fact I'm missing some very important items: the things to categorize. It's like Adam trying to name animals that aren't there.

I am using category view. That's kind of why I mentioned category view in my initial post. Things are not all showing up in category view. For example, I bought Queen of Hearts and the V4 Fantasy collar today. (I have some freebie meshes for both and they were on sale. Woo hoo!) I installed them clean. Never had them before. QoH shows up. Fantasy Collar not so much, although I was presented with a nice empty folder for it. Kind of makes me wish I'd never wasted my money, really. It's not likely to happen again anytime soon unless the content is strictly Daz3 compatible.

In fact I'm getting a lot of empty folders where in Daz3 I get the folder AND it's content within.

I could delete those literally hundreds of folders one by one... but.. we're talking hundreds.... but I'm going to take it that from your reply the "hide empty folders" function is no more. Which is a sad, sad shame. There are too many folders in that program to want to keep futzing with it, and my hand's health can't handle one by one deletion. Now, being able to select more than one and delete? I'd consider it. But that's not possible either.

This has nothing to do with avoiding effort. This has everything to do with not having time for the unwanted and very unasked for burden that wasn't happening in 3 - which as many DAZ users would know it took a lot of effort to categorize things in it as well. But it found things TO categorize them at least, and hide empty folders so I could see what I would otherwise be missing.

So at least one of my questions has been answered. It looks like my other issue, which remains outstanding from the last time I tried to go to Daz4, remains. So until this is solved I"ll just go back to Daz 3. HOpefully someone somewhere has a solution. I hope.

adamr001

Okay,

Inside of DAZ Studio, on the Content Library tab, click the little icon that looks like a bunch of horizontal lines (this is the context menu icon), select "Content Directory Manager" and then expand all the little + symbols and take a screenshot. Post that here and we'll take a look and see if we can get you sorted out.

spearcarrier

LOL.. or I could just tell you that I put my content in one folder and one folder only: K:/DAZ - which as I recall was an issue you helped me with over a year ago. (BTW I still love your icon.) I also meticulously pick into it after every install to make sure there aren't any extra runtime folders, as that sometimes can happen if you're not careful.

Here's the screenshot. I hope you have good news for me. :-)

adamr001

Okay, that doesn't seem to be an issue and it looks like you've got a lot of Content in there.

The thing that's probably catching is allowing DAZ Studio to install the default metadata. If you're doing this, then items that have metadata get categorized by default in the Default\ category subset and don't show up in scans for you to manually categorize. You have two options:

1) Don't let DS do the default metadata import
2) go to the Products view, find your product and manually categorize from there.

If you opt for Option 1, then using Scan Known Directories for Files on the Content Library context menu will place newly installed items in the Default\Unassigned category where you can manually categorize them. Once that's done you can do Content Library > Context Menu > Content DB Maintenance > Re-import Metadata to get the "Default" metadata as well.

Can you find your missing content in the products folder?

spearcarrier

Okay I think this is where my limited knowledge fails me. I got lost at "context menu". So this is what I've done repeatedly so far:

Scanned known directories
Migrate Old Content Database
Poked around in the Default area slowly recategorizing things

And Daz 4.5 seems to be scanning things pretty find upon load: it found a couple of newly installed things last time I booted up. Just not the content I'm looking for. (Much like those pesky droids.)

I don't mind things going into default: it's not different than things going into the Unassigned folder as far as I'm concerned.

So.. how do I get to this context menu option?

spearcarrier

I feel kinda silly. I was assuming "these are DAZ files" and didn't think to look under the POSER section. I found some of the other missing files. I can't say for sure it's all there but it's going to take me a while to know for sure.

Thanks for your help and I feel really bad for wasting your time!

spearcarrier

Okay back again, hopefully with my last question.

yep, I found a bunch of content in the poser section. Most of it contains DAZ files but whatever.
My issue.
I right click on stuff trying to categorize and the program essentially stares at me like I'm an idiot.

So how do I get this stuff so I can actually FIND anything? Some of my favorite things are in that mess up there. :-(

adamr001

If you right-click on a folder, there's an option "Create Category From" that allows you to make the whole folder a category or you can click on the individual pieces (and/or use CTRL key to multi-select) and categorize individual items.

adamr001

I don't know if this will help you or not, but here's how I categorize, as I install, every single item I install... One a time. :)

http://youtu.be/79Rpt_ll3qE

spearcarrier

Hi there! Man, you really are life saver. So now I have things going and it looks like I won't have to go back to 3 just yet. As you know I have a *lot* of content so doing things one at a time is not really an option because everything is a mess! But I've been futzing around and I finally just highlighted the big parts in the top folders and told them all to become subcategories in the category section so I can drag and drop and move at my leisure as I find as opposed to the cluster.

Installing things only one at a time, though... I still have several thousand items that I have to reinstall from my computer crash that happened over a year ago. That's how much stuff I have. I install a bunch here and there, I've been doing it for a year, sometimes I have to ignore DAZ for a month or so, and I *still* have a lot of stuff. So you can imagine how installing things one at a time isn't an option here. Also, on a conversational note, I find the program to be very inefficient to not be set up for mass install users. I know most users probably only buy one item here or one item there, but when I buy I sometimes buy more than three. So that's still a lot.

I just did a test and after everything was moved, I installed another one of my pieces to see how it would be found. It wasn't. I couldn't find it to categorize it. I had to run the script to find items in known folders twice, and then it was found. Very nice that the path was highlighted blue for me to follow but I've noticed that the "new" content folders are not always highlighted. This can be a serious problem not just for me.

Also, one last issue I hope. I've installed Poke away, like, five times. It's not showing up in my Genesis dial. I also reinstalled Genesis twice and had to reinstall DAZ last night because using the categorization management feature broke things and I'm not likely to ever try it again. :-) But how on earth do I get poke away to work at least?

Thank you again for your help. I"m so glad we're getting somewhere this time. I am but a poor circus traveler, and there might a village nearby.

adamr001

For what it is worth I have over half a terabyte of Content. :) (That's more than 500GB. ;) ) Been doing this since 06 or so. :)

Poke-away should show up on the Parameters pane, as it's own group. It's not under Actor with the rest of the morphs. It's listed as "X_Away"

spearcarrier

Okay you have about as much content as I do... do you also work 3 jobs and depend on having the content in order for at least one of them on occasion? ;-) Muwahahaha. I can't wait for the day my comic makes it big and this isn't such an issue.

But you know, the sad irony here is content management is why I switched from Poser to DAZ 3. Back then I only used the figures to make poses to draw from - although I collected content when I found it because I figured I'd need it someday. That's where a lot of my stuff comes from, those days when I didn't understand the file order at *all*. Or what an obj file was in the first place. =^-^= Content management encouraged me to start learning more about 3D renders. I still have a long way to go, though. A looong way. In many aspects of it I'm still at novice level after all these years.

Alas, no poke away where it should be. Since the program refuses to install if it doesn't find Genesis where it should be, I guess that means it's installing correctly every time? But it's just plain not showing up. Maybe there's a setting in preferences I need to do? I can't find any answers to my problem. Just people posting that they have this problem and then posting they figured it out, thanks anyway, with no solution in between.

I'll attach a screenshot of what I see. Maybe you'll see something I don't?

Richard Haseltine

The Kimono, if that's the dynamic one, does not fit to Genesis - you need to have Genesis zeroed in frame 0, then go to a later frame and apply your pose, then go back to frame zero and run an animated drape. Some items, mostly loose-fitting ones, have to be treated that way as the auto-rigger doesn't work with them.

spearcarrier

I actually got the kimono to fit before, I just didn't feel like futzing with it. My point was the lack of poke away... and thought how nice it woudl be if I'd stick Genesis in the first thing I could find. :-)

spearcarrier

Oh - and re-reading your advice... I have no idea what you're talking about! I'm sorry! I'm going to print this and look into it when I get another moment to do so,though. It looks like a handy process considering.

I'll jus tstart another thread for the poke away problem, because I can worry about kimonos later.