[Suggestion] Daz3D user/mode profiles.

JD_Mortal

I am getting to the point where I, once again, have so many items that operating daz is a chore and a half. Especially when adding new items and I have to sit through the lengthy process of it finding new things. (That should be skipping-over all known items, but it is as if it is rebuilding, from scratch, each time.)

There is no way to find items that are too many to fit in the list, unless guessing which ones didn't make it in the clipped lists. (Eg, knowing exact names for a search. Of 3000 items, about half don't show, and never show as you scroll. That stupid list-count limitation is stopping them from being seen.)

My suggestion is this...

Give us the ability to select and set user/modes, with some pre-set ones that can not be changed.

A: Core (Just the default daz setup with NOTHING other than what it comes with, by default.)

B: Base (Only daz items, from the daz store. AKA: Daz-approved.)

C: Generic (Includes all items found, in whatever mess they are in. EG, what we have now.)

D-Z: Would be specific user modes. Beyond the three above, an average user may not have any use for these, except for developing items. These allowing one of the above foundations to be setup as the initial user/mode. With the ability to select what things to include or exclude. Nothing would show-up here, if installed and NOT specifically added to the profile. Those would go to the "C: Generic", and/or "B: Base" profiles.

The greatest purpose for the "A: Core", is for setting-up a user profile for developing any new item. Thus, removing any dependent items from accidentally being included. Also, for debugging and isolating specific issues. Also for potential bug resolving, where items may be suspect of the source of an issue.

The point of "B: Base", as a pre-set, is again, for issues related to non-daz items, and/or for initial setup for a "project", which may only need a few specific "user items", but for license or other reasons, they want to include all potential "daz items". (Which seem to all share similar EULA and restrictions.) Also, so they/we can see which "daz items", that we may want to include in the other profiles, without having to go through thousands of non-daz items.

Each profile A->B->C, being inclusive, so C is not just a duplicate of B with more added. C would be A+B+C's items. Thus, C would not actually have any of B's items in it, but it would read from the B profile to include those items found/used/setup.

So...

If I were working on a project, "Neo-man adventures", I would setup a profile for that project. It would only include any items I am using in the project/profile/user/mode... My project would not be littered and slowed-down with thousands of items I would never use in this project... Like, say, prehistoric or mid-evil stuff, when the project is a theme based on space.

If I were developing, under the name "SilenJoe240", that would be another profile, with only the items I am working on, or including all items I ever made, as desired. I could easily test my item in any other profile by just including it, once setup here, to check for issues, before packing it for use/sale.

Possibly, a special profile "0" {zero}, for debugging or pre-release development. Treating it as a profile, but it would actually just be designated for each specific item being created, or as a WIP. (As opposed to including it in "SilenJoe240", as an item, when it is not yet an item, and may never be one. Thus, being just scrap clutter which is all localized for easy disposal now.)

This can sort-of be done, on a generic level, with just folders. However, not actual profiles to determine which folders to include. (Should also have unique user databases too. Or it just looks like stuff is missing, if a specific folder is hidden or not listed, after finding the item once, in that previously unhidden folder.)

fixmypcmike

Edit > Preferences > Content Library > Content Directory Manager, set up different Content Sets.

JD_Mortal

Thanks for that tip: Fixmypcmike

That only adds more items... But I can see how I might be able to use that as a hack to accomplish some of what I want.

Only works for smart content, to a point... I would have to install everything in new paths, thus uninstall and attempt to move things that were not "installed", into new folders for isolation. But nothing knows what it came from, or what it depends on, and is all scattered around through hundreds of thousands of folders.

For example, this is my "collection".

Using Duplicate Commander 3.2.5448.42011 to find dupes for cross-linking, but this is dangerous due to installs later changing one file, which MAY not be the same for every other matching file. (I revert back to originals before installing new items, after I have mass-hoarded new items in a new folder, before merging them back into this "cross-linked" setup. Something Daz should be managing and doing internally, making all files unique and trimming the fat on all the files. There is a LOT of fat on all this stuff. Over 80GB in reality, on this 438GB collection. But that is not all daz's fault, it is the lack of forced standards and "do whatever, and it will work", so everyone does "whatever", and bulks-up everyone's valuable hard-drive space.)

My Daz 3D Library

* Thumbs.db deleted, several thousand from other users computers. (Useless windows XP and win7 left-overs.)

* Read-me and other documents removed. Several hundred thousands of duplicate and redundant files, unrelated to anything 3D. (Including redundant and dead web-links and icons and repeated license info, 2GB there.)

Size: 436 GB (468,412,690,238 bytes)
Size on disk: 438 GB (470,582,534,144 bytes)
Contains 1,107,341 Files, 94,227 Folders <-(Note, I do not have 94,000 items... only about 20,000... Total waste of file structure. No wonder the DB is choking, just trying to remember the locations of all the dir, is 90% of the database.)

Duplicates found: 254,552
In unique sets: 87,006
Space wasted: 9.95 GB

This is just actual bit-per-bit comparison "duplicates", not including the various images, which are exact duplicates as "PNG", "BMP", "TIFF", "JPG" (within 99%), "JPEG" (within 99%), "GIF", where the header info changes, making the files not duplicates, but the actual images are, as colors inside. Also not counting the images that are a solid color, where a material attribute of that same color could be used, instead of an actual solid color image. Not sure what prompts that poor decision to be done, except old auto-converted objects that people didn't actually make. There are a lot of those too. (Another thing daz should be checking internally, and unlinking the redundant image file, before allowing it to be uploaded. (Same with unused images that are just lingering around in the folders, with no file that ever uses that old image. Possibly just remnant test images by the original creator, wasting space.)

Funny how there are thousands of 0Byte and 1Byte and 2Byte...3...4...5 files, which are just dead placeholders, but they don't consume 0bytes, and 5 bytes on disk, but 1K per file, which windows just doesn't "count" as space consumed for all files under 1K. (So, that "wasted space value is off by a LOT on estimation, due to the way windows reports this false information. Actual calculations for this data is over 15GB, when the cross-linking is complete.)

But none of that will be fixed by this suggestion. It was only mentioned because that is the additional issue I am dealing with, in relation to the desire to isolate, by users/projects, the individual project items.

For developers, it could help to do that too. However, the issue of no real standards, and daz not managing the acutal content, or even checking content... is the other half of the issue. As it stands, Daz just places my creations wherever, and I have to hunt all the placed items down, before moving them to where they NEED to go, instead of where Daz just places them, when you create things. Again, thus the "user/modes"... All my stuff in my single folder. Not scattered among ???? directory, in ???? drive location or ???? "My Daz Stuff", which I now have five split locations, due to my drives constantly running out of space. (I know, I need a new drive. Working on that. But then I need to back-up all this data too, and constantly expand and merge it, to save space.)

JD_Mortal

Sort-of related, but not directly...

Got to thinking about all the <1K files, being so abundant... Then remembered that turning-on "Drive compression", reduces those all into one lum-sum file-sets...

Results of turning-on drive compression...

405GB reduced down to 303GB (My largest set of data. Everything except the "data" folder.) Took 28 hours to complete, on a SSD.

76GB reduced down to 39GB (The actual "data" folder, located on another drive.) Took 9 hours to complete, on a SSD.

Total space saved, at the cost of slower loading-times... 481GB (Previous) - 342GB (New) = 139GB of wasted space recovered.

My other drive is still working (not an SSD)... This has reduced the impact of junk, more than actually cross-linking the junk itself. Not sure if I will get much more space-saving with cross-linking. However, this has left me with some room to play.

Normally, it is not worth turning-on, as the gains are NEVER this great, compared to the impact of being a lot slower. Here, it is worth the loss, until I can get a 4TB setup for those items. (This did not work on my texture archives, as they are all large files. Gains were less than 2% and speed was reduced by 275% for reading/writing.)