creating metadata for non-daz products.....working out what mat is what?

jakiblue

Is there ANY way that will make creating metadata for non-daz products any QUICKER, when you have to assign a 'type' to a mat in the Content DB editor? If the file does NOT have '3dl' or 'iray' in the name???? 

I have a product that has 30 3delight mats and 30 iray mats, and the file names are the same. In the editor, when assigning a type - IE preset -> materials -> 3delight OR preset -> materials -> MDL, I am doing them one by one because I cannot differentiate which is which. There HAS to be a better way, right???

cridgit

Redacted

jakiblue

I didn't know about selecting hte content type column header, thanks for that bit!

I did finally figure out a way to do it last night - if i go to "content db editor" while i am looking at that particular folder in DS, it brings up those assets ONLY and i can set the stuff for them, accept and then go back to a different folder and do the same thing. I can do that for each folder so I'm actually looking at JUST the files that are there.

I agree with you tho about Smart Content categorization not being fully thought through. When I have a product that has multiple folders, I create a category for the product, then create sub categories for each thing. So i can expand the product in smart content and see all the different categories. (Not sure if that makes sense?) It makes non-daz products htat are large, very easy to work out in Smart Content. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be done with DAZ products, and so many large products are really difficult to work out in SC.  

cridgit said:

The files are usually ordered consistently, so click one file and look at its path to determine which type it is (they should be in different paths). Then you select every other one - as long as you select all files in the same path, the path field will show unchanged but if you accidentally select one from a different path, the path field goes blank signalling you made an error.

When you've selected all of one type and set the metadata, then click on the Content Type column header and it will re-sort all the files which do not yet have types, then you can easily SHIFT-select all of them in one go and set their metadata type.

You'll have a bigger problem seeing which is which in Smart Content, as somebody didn't think through the Smart Content categorization issue when coming up with multiple material types. We've had this problem all along with PZ2, MC5, MC6, DSA, DUF but until now we could always tell them apart by extension. With both 3DL and Iray mats having the same extension we're flummoxed.

 

 

jakiblue

jakiblue said:

I didn't know about selecting hte content type column header, thanks for that bit!

 

cridgit said:

The files are usually ordered consistently, so click one file and look at its path to determine which type it is (they should be in different paths). Then you select every other one - as long as you select all files in the same path, the path field will show unchanged but if you accidentally select one from a different path, the path field goes blank signalling you made an error.

When you've selected all of one type and set the metadata, then click on the Content Type column header and it will re-sort all the files which do not yet have types, then you can easily SHIFT-select all of them in one go and set their metadata type.

You'll have a bigger problem seeing which is which in Smart Content, as somebody didn't think through the Smart Content categorization issue when coming up with multiple material types. We've had this problem all along with PZ2, MC5, MC6, DSA, DUF but until now we could always tell them apart by extension. With both 3DL and Iray mats having the same extension we're flummoxed.