Digital Art Zone

How can I organize my “content library” without mucking stuff up?
I like my stuff organized precisely so I can find stuff. I would like to get rid of all useless vendor vanity folders, and have some structure like I do my runtime.  I tried just moving folders around this weekend and it screwed everything up, had to reinstall from scratch.

What you could do is create your own folder tree and use that, save what you use in there without messing with the original files.  I feel your pain here, as I have had to do exactly this with what I have in the Poser libraries.  Organizing stuff occupies a great deal of my time.

You mean like have multiple copies of the same thing? One in the mess, and copy another to an organized directory?

Pretty much, yes.  That was the only solution I could come up with that didn’t mess everything up :(

Highly recommend you take advantage of the Database system within DS and make your own categories layout.  It’s by far the safest route because it doesn’t manipulate the physical objects on the disk only logical pointers.

Look for the “Categorization DS4 crash course” in my sig below.

with the content management?  I can’t.  Mine stopped working…

Well adamr001, I have actually been doing that. It’s very super slow going, as you can not seem to ctrl click multiple folders and move them all at once, but it *seems* to be doing what I need. is there some way to backup the database? I had thought export user data did that, but it doesn’t seem to have done anything at all lol. I am done catagorizing the unnasigned crap, now I am just going through the daz studio formats and make sure everything is catagorized properly.

It was a pain in the ass getting the CMS stuff running, I have to put my comodo firewall into gaming mode, so I will have to disconnect from the net whenever using Daz studio I guess. Not a huge problem.

If you use Categories in DS you can organize things however you like without risk of breaking something.

@ TheKD: Usually your Firewall should have an option to make “Rules” / “Exceptions” for certain Programs, to permit communication for them?!
Without communication between CMS/DB and Studio, Smart Content is useless.

And by moving the Files manually, without adjusting the path information in the .dsx Files, you make the MetaData inserted into CMS useless for Smart Content.

You can find the .dsx files ( if using default ) in:
C:\Users\“your Username”\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\Runtime\Support\
If you open them in a text editor, scroll all the way down, then you’ll see the Path information.

But, if you use DS only, i don’t see any benefit for this extra work. (Moving the Files manually)

You should be able to configure Comodo to allow DS and CMS to use internal ports.

TheKD - 05 February 2013 10:27 AM

I tried just moving folders around this weekend and it screwed everything up, had to reinstall from scratch.

It can be done easily, I’ve done it for years and so have many other people here. But, and it’s a big red but with flashing hazard lights, there are things it’s safe to juggle around any way you please, and there are things that are third-rail territory. Looks like you found that third rail.

Note that if you do this, you will break Smart Content and the Content Management System for anything you change. If you don’t or can’t use the CMS or Smart Content, go ahead. But first, sign this disclaimer: [............................]

/My Library/data/ - This must never be touched — like most of the “don’t touch” locations, the contents of this can’t be seen from inside DAZ|Studio, so the only effect of tidying up in here will be to break your content.

/My Library/ReadMe’s/ - Contains all except the more recent readmes from your installed content. Again, invisible to you, so you can move this somewhere else if you like although you won’t see any effect. But it will be recreated the next time you install something with an included readme.

Any other /My Library/ folders will usually contain scene and script files for your content, and should be safe to move or rename, except…

/My Library/Runtime/ - Contains all your Poser-format files.

/Runtime/Geometries/ and /Textures/ - Exactly the same big flashing “do not touch” as the /data/ folder. They contain files that are referred to by other files, so again, if you move things you break things. And again, they’re invisible to you anyway, so don’t bother.

/Runtime/Support/ - Contain the metadata files for your installed content used by the CMS and Smart Content. If you use this, don’t touch. If not, you can safely ignore this folder.

/Runtime/Libraries/ - Contain the Poser files you can actually see in the Content Library tab (with exceptions).

/Libraries/Camera/, /Character/, /Face/, /Hair/, /Hand/, /Light/, /Materials/, /Pose/, /Props/ - The contents of these folders are generally safe to move or rename. Don’t play around with the folders themselves, or everything in them will become unfindable.

Any other folders in /Runtime/ or /Runtime/Libraries/ will usually contain the raw data files for morphs called up by other clickable files in /Libraries/Pose/ - if you “tidy up” these files that you can’t see anyway, you will break the related content.

I think that’s everything: can anyone see something I missed?