Digital Art Zone

I’ve just re-installed DS 4.5 Pro and a bunch of purchased products on a fresh Windows installation, and I’ve got a couple of missing image (or something) triangles under the products view in the smart content tab for the following thins:

Toon Amy Accessories (1.2)
Benjamin for M5 (1.3)
Victoria 5 Elite Texture Valerie (1.1)

When clicking on them they seem to list all the things belonging to them just fine, it’s just that the thumbnail is missing as far as I can see. (Perhaps other things as well, not sure at this stage…)

I’ve tried uninstalling an re-installing these, as well as performing a full database reset and metadata re-import. Neither seemed to help. I’ve also checked and a thumbnail image is present in the support folder (listed under the SupportAssets in the XML). Though I’m not sure this is the one it’s supposed to be using or not…

In fact what I’m mostly interested in is to learn how one can track down what’s wrong, what is missing, what it is it is looking for etc. as I’d really like to get a deeper understanding of the whole metadata structure/system…

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

bjavor - 01 December 2012 09:01 AM

When clicking on them they seem to list all the things belonging to them just fine, it’s just that the thumbnail is missing as far as I can see. (Perhaps other things as well, not sure at this stage…)

A missing or misnamed thumbnail will throw a yellow triangle at ya. I’ve even had yellow triangles on some unidentified error in a jpeg, it opened fine in any image viewer, but Studio had problems with it. After opening and resaving in an image-editor that was fixed.

bjavor - 01 December 2012 09:01 AM

In fact what I’m mostly interested in is to learn how one can track down what’s wrong, what is missing, what it is it is looking for etc. as I’d really like to get a deeper understanding of the whole metadata structure/system…

Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Me too, there must be a way to see what exactly the error is, but i haven’t found it (yet ) 
If anyone knows, please share the knowledge…

Well, I almost thought that I’ve found the solution, but it did not seem to help :(

I’ve found mistakes in the metadata (dsx) file for each of the 3 products (located under runtime\support):

As far as I can see the metadata usually declares the 3 files (dsa,dsx,jpg) located in the support folder as a <SupportAsset> in the XML…

For Benjamin the file names for these contained a double underscore (__) while the actual files only used single ones.
For Amy the declarations where completely missing.
For Valerie they contained “V5” instead of the actual “Victoria_5”.

I’ve corrected all of these, reset the database and re-imported the metadata… And nothing changed… :(

On a somewhat related note:

I’ve discovered the log file under the Help/Troubleshooting menu…
I see there a _lot_ of warnings/errors. Many of these are somehow related to the Genesis Evolution morphs and start with “Could not find target property for formula”...

I’ve just installed everything and before installing I’ve downloaded the latest versions for DAZ so I don’t think I did something to them… Are these errors normal or do they indicate some real problem with my installation?

bjavor - 01 December 2012 09:01 AM

I’ve just re-installed DS 4.5 Pro and a bunch of purchased products on a fresh Windows installation, and I’ve got a couple of missing image (or something) triangles under the products view in the smart content tab for the following thins:

Toon Amy Accessories (1.2)
Benjamin for M5 (1.3)
Victoria 5 Elite Texture Valerie (1.1)

When clicking on them they seem to list all the things belonging to them just fine, it’s just that the thumbnail is missing as far as I can see.

I can confirm that the same behavior also is true in my Smart Content Tab for
Benjamin for M5
Victoria 5 Elite Texture Valerie

For me it also happens for

Four Arms for Genesis
Equestrian Props
Knightly Barding
Urban Future 4 Psy District

- - -

The strange part is indeed that normally successful ways to quickly fix this do not work:

- Check if the Thumbnail image in Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support has the same name as the .dsa and .dsx files
- Check if the Thumbnail image has the aspect ratio 114x148
- Check if the Thumbnail image is smaler than 35kb
- Check if the Product Name is the same as the image, the .dsa and the .dsx file
- Download the product preview image from the store page and create a new thumbnail image in the proper aspect ratio, file size and name and place it in Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support .

None of those steps did solve the issue for the products in question. All this seems to have been set up correctly. To me it is a mystery why some product thumbnails are not showing up for quite a few products lately.

Temp Fix: Delete the Product, the .dsa and .dsx files and create a new Product

What solved the problem for me was to delete the old product and create a new one with same information as the original one:

Please only try to do that if you allready have a firm grip about metadata, the Content DB Editor and the Product Library.
If you mess the steps up you will end up having not only a missing thumbnail but the whole product not showing up anymore in smart content.

- Note the exact name of the original product as it appears in the Content Library Tab / Product Library / Content DB Editor
- Note the the store ID as it is written in the Token field in Content Library Tab / Product Library / Content DB Editor
- Delete the product from the Content Tab / Product Library by right clicking on the product folder and selecting delete
- Delete the .dsa and .dsx files of the product in Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support
- Go to the Content Library Tab and in the DAZ Studio or Poser Libary select the highest level folder were product assets are located. Right Click the Folder select “Create Product” and enter the Product Name.
- Repeat the last step if assets of the product can also be found in different folders. This is mostly the case for products containing Gen5 and Gen4 content that are spread over different folders in the DAZ Studio Library and the Poser Library
- In the Content Library Tab / Product Library / Content DB Editor enter the Product Name
- In the Content Library Tab / Product Library / Content DB Editor select the Store. DAZ 3D for all products purchased at DAZ3D.
- In the Content Library Tab / Product Library / Content DB Editor enter the product id number in the Token field.
- If Auto-Export is checked the new .dsa and .dsx files will automatically be saved in Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support

Change categories to force updated product thumbnail images to appear

Now all that is left to do is to force DS4.5 to update the thumbnail image by loading it. To do that it is enough to quickly select a different category in the smart content tab.
For example if the missing thumbnails was from a product in the materials category select the Enviroments category so the product is cleared from the view then click the Materials category again and it is there.

The product image previews are really updated live while DS4.5 is running. You can experiment around with that by cut and pasting an image from Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support to any other folder. The prevew image will be gone.
Paste the image back to Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support and the product image will be there again as soon as you switch back and forth between a few categories as described.

The real cause for the problem needs to be looked into

The described workaround probably is too much effort to ask for from standard DS4.5 users.

At first glance the missing thumbnail image does not seem to be a huge deal. Nevertheless the more products one has installed the more important thumbnails become to help one remember what the product is about. If the trend that more and more products are not showing the thumbnails properly is rising as it has in the last weeks this will be getting very annoying.

It would be appreciated if someone in the DAZ team could have a look into why this missing thumbnail issue seems to be happening more often lately.

To me the cause of this is really a mystery because all the things that normaly cause thumbnails to not be displayed correctly seem to be in order.

bjavor - 02 December 2012 05:40 AM

Well, I almost thought that I’ve found the solution, but it did not seem to help :(

I’ve found mistakes in the metadata (dsx) file for each of the 3 products (located under runtime\support):

As far as I can see the metadata usually declares the 3 files (dsa,dsx,jpg) located in the support folder as a <SupportAsset> in the XML…

For Benjamin the file names for these contained a double underscore (__) while the actual files only used single ones.
For Amy the declarations where completely missing.
For Valerie they contained “V5” instead of the actual “Victoria_5”.

I’ve corrected all of these, reset the database and re-imported the metadata… And nothing changed… :(

After correcting and reimporting it should be fixed, although sometimes I’ve had to reimport a couple of times. When it didn’t get fixed, invariably I found I had made a typo somewhere, so be extra special careful and quadruple check all your changes to the DSX. Any tiny little error will not fix the problem.

Also please file bug reports. The more metadata bug reports we file, the more likely (hopefully) DAZ will properly QA the products before being released. I strongly suspect metadata is not part of the QA process at the moment, based on the frequency and scale of errors coming through.

Unfortunately I no longer have any Triangle Icon errors so I can not confirm this but I’m pretty sure those are DataBase errors and not errors in the files them self’s. I think I right Clicked one and Picked some thing like Remove Duplicate Instances. Or an option close to that. I was fixed right up and never edited a single file.

cridgit - 02 December 2012 10:35 AM

Also please file bug reports. The more metadata bug reports we file, the more likely (hopefully) DAZ will properly QA the products before being released. I strongly suspect metadata is not part of the QA process at the moment, based on the frequency and scale of errors coming through.

To me the question is:

Is DAZ aware of the problems that many products are released with sometimes minor, sometimes larger flaws in regards to metadata.
To me at seems at the moment they are somewhat in over their head. Converting products to the new DSON file format and then dealing with the metadata just seems to much.

Are bug reports concerning metadata even taken serious anymore?

Last year I took the time to file a bug report for every single metadata issue I encounter.
At first they were resovled very quick in under a weeks time.
Then I noticed that fewer and fewer of my reports got any attention.
Then during summer there was a mass resolve of bug report tickets.
They were just closed with the notice that if someone considers the issues were not resolved they should file a new ticket.
About half of the issues were not resolved at all.

To me this all looked very much that DAZ just deceided that they do not have the manpower to deal with all that backlog.

To me it seems that there are just to few people working in QA. And properly checking metadata seems not to be a concern.
To me as reporter of metadata errors I got the impression that my reports seem to be considered as annoying instead of as helpful.

From that experience I just stopped reporting. For me it is now the quicker solution to just fix the issues myself.

- - -

Are products being released in full awareness that the metadata is not complete because of time pressure?

Sometimes it even seems that products are being released without any metadata just because there is not enough time.
Example:

There is an addon released for the Leather Jacket for Genesis.
The original product was converted to DSON and new installers released but the metadata for the .duf files of the product were not set up at all while the metadata of the material files was there.
To me this all seems the released of the updated files was rushed so the DSON files could be ready for the planned release of the product add on.

- - -

I agree that more and new customers should file reports for metadata errors. If always the same few people report I get the impression that the reports are not taken serious. So other people should step up and report those errors they encounter.

I tried reporting problems through a support ticket, but was told to set up a bug report account. I tried to set up a bug report account and it wouldn’t work correctly (I think the store was having problems at the same time I tried setting up the account). I have encountered numerous errors with Metadata. Some items do not show up, some items double up. Actors are labeled as Props and Props labeled as Actors. It is a complete mess. One of the biggest problems I have noticed other than there being no Metadata at all is getting 2 files for everything. I have noticed there is a difference between the two, one being a DAZ file and the other being a DUF file, but there is no distinction between the two. There are named the same and are in the same location. The only way you can tell the difference is if you hover over them. I agree there is definitely no QC or whoever is doing QC must be checking to make sure the EXE works, but not how it loads in the program. I can just imagine how things are going to be when the Install Manager is available, but not really ready.