Any DS experts in the Central Texas area?
v3rlon_7354dd516e
Posts: 71
DAZ Studio content management is giving me fits. I do not understand why it is (not) working the way it does, and it is frustrating to no end.
I have a fresh install of DS 4.5, and all but just a couple of products are installed courtesy the DIM. I want to be able to go to a category like "people" and find all of the people I have there, select one, and then go get the stuff for that person. This is the whole point of smart content, and I get that. I can't seem to find content that should be compatible in the smart content library and sometimes it doesn't want to join the scene when I DO find it.
I understand how a database works, and am very clear on how that makes file management in a system like this so much more efficient.
What I cannot seem to grasp is how to get the DAZ CMS to do anything. Smart content hair for genesis figures does not show up with genesis figure loaded, and my every attempt to edit the database has proven useless. I read tutorials and watch videos, but it just isn't sinking in, and I would like to sit down with a real person at this point.
So, if you are some kind of expert on this stuff and find yourself inside a triangle of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, drop me a forum PM and hopefully we can work something out.
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Comments
Hello Verton, I don't live in Texas, but I'm confused as to why you are having so much bother.
You don;t need to read tutorials, or understand databases, or do a lot of studying to get Smart Content to work, it does it all itself assuming that the CMS (Content Management Service) is running, which may be your problem. If you are using Windows of any variety, look in the Task Manager to see if the process is running, it is called ContentManagementServer.exe, and it must be running for Smart Content to work.
The new DIM writes the metadata for Smart Content straight into the DB for you, so nothing to do there. Load Genesis, make sure it is selected, and your Smart Content should list what is available to Genesis as shown below.
I'm in Austin. :)
Most of this can be handled remotely anyway though.
Hello Verton, I don't live in Texas, but I'm confused as to why you are having so much bother.
You don;t need to read tutorials, or understand databases, or do a lot of studying to get Smart Content to work, it does it all itself assuming that the CMS (Content Management Service) is running, which may be your problem. If you are using Windows of any variety, look in the Task Manager to see if the process is running, it is called ContentManagementServer.exe, and it must be running for Smart Content to work.
The new DIM writes the metadata for Smart Content straight into the DB for you, so nothing to do there. Load Genesis, make sure it is selected, and your Smart Content should list what is available to Genesis as shown below.
Well, I am on a Mac (but am familiar with what you are talking about). I had to approve the CMS installation/setup when I installed DS. SOME smart content is present, but not all. Since SOME of the smart content is there, one would think that the CMS is running, but most of the hair I have does not, for instance. I seem to be missing something obvious, so I am looking for help.
PM'd
Genesis hair I bought this week that is labeled in the DIM as smart content isn't showing up.
Lady Elf Hair for Genesis right off the top of my head.
I just installed Lady Elf Hair for Genesis with DIM and it did create an entry in the Content Library>Products, but there is actually a slight problem with the metadata. There is no figure compatibility assigned. So if you have Genesis selected and look in the Hair category in either Files or Products in Smart Content it won't show up. If you have nothing selected in the Scene tab then look in either Hair group it shows up.
If you know your way around the Content DB Editor, you can add /Genesis to the Compatibility tab.
Something else I noticed just now, the Smart Content search is case sensitive. If I search for "lady" no lady elf hair, but searching for "Lady", "Lady Elf Hair for Genesis" shows up. Is there a setting to make the Smart Content search case insensitive?
I'll go ahead and submit a Mantis ticket to report the missing (figure) compatibility.
Edit: Mantis ticket 49521 submitted 2/21/2013
Well, good to know I didn't somehow mess up something that should be as brainless as a DIM install because that would be well past embarrassing. :) Thank you for letting me know.
Now I seem to be having this trouble with a lot of products and do not know my way around the DB editor. I can open it for a given product, and click on a lot of tabs, but most of the options are blank/greyed out and not letting me update them. Which takes me back to my original request because a nice sit-down with someone who knows this stuff better than me seems like the way to go in this case. That I am willing to drive some 200 miles in each direction (at these gas prices)! to make that happen should indicate that I am serious about it.
That failing, I will settle for FaceTime or even set up Skype, but that would be a definite second choice. If our admin in Austin would like, we can video the whole thing and make it some kind of tutorial if he has a good location for that.
Even if that one product gets fixed, I have plenty more that isn't even smart content that I would love to get into the system.
To be entirely honest, I don't bother with the actual "smart" part of content. The way I organize my categories precludes any need for that.
Well there is something north of twenty million people in that triangle, or about 7% of the total US population. If NO ONE in that region can help, including a site administrator, that is a pretty serious indictment against how this system is implemented. I mean I can easily understand why a DB is better than pushing files around, so there must be a reason people choose that over smart content. Right out the gate, I wondered about the lack of drag and drop, but is it that bad?
Don't take my statement as an indictment. I don't use Smart Content because I find my system superior for my usage style. Which includes a legacy of using the Categories functionality. Smart content was introduced to help solve a problem that has plagued Poser/DS for a decade. It's still maturing, but it's reasonably robust, just not something I, in particular, have a need for.
I know quite a bit about how it works and how to manage the database.
Also keep in mind that although I'm listed as an "Administrator" I am NOT a DAZ employee. I'm an unpaid volunteer. :) Only those who have "DAZ" in their name are actual DAZ employees (and not all of those, though usually when we moderators/admins see them we fix that ;) )
As it currently works, Smart Content would be better re-named "Annoying Content". I started with DS4.0 and I like the concept of Smart Content. It just doesn't work as well as intended. The thing is, DAZ could go a long way toward making it more functional just by simply providing an option to have it search for related assets only when the user instructs it to (e.g. by providing a don't-search-until-I want-you-to-otherwise-stay-where-you-are button). This would seem to be a fairly simple mod. As it stands, I often use the Smart Content tab in order to identify a particular product but then have to have it "Show in Content Library" in order to avoid extreme frustration with it.
I have a lot of content organized by category (categorization that works for me) and put into the database via the Content DB Editor. The 3rd-party DB subsystem appears to be quite robust, actually. I was fearful the performance would seriously degrade under the weight of lots of content. Knock on wood, it appears to handle it quite well.
The issue I see is the UI built on top of this subsystem. Early on, I was not even aware of the Content DB editing system until I read a tutorial put out on ShareCG. The thing is workable, but it is not straightforward. It takes a fair amount of practice to get proficient at entering/modifying stuff. Yeah, many reading this will shrug it off claiming "I don't have any problem with it". Well, after using it for a year and half, I can also navigate around fairly well now. But it took quite a bit of time and still takes a lot longer than it should. As with many other facets of DS, I had to discover several shortcuts through experimentation because they are not documented. There are probably several others that are hidden in there somewhere.
Adam mentioned drag and drop. That would help a lot. In my view, it has a long way to go in order to truly be considered user friendly.
I am well aware of the problem that "plagued Poser/DS users for a decade." It is one of the reasons I haven't used Poser/DS more often. I thought with this attempt, I would try to break my previous habits and use the application like the coders intended. Maybe then, it wouldn't be so freaking excruciating trying to find and keep track of content.
Only, the system that they put in place just isn't easy for me to figure out, and I am usually the one that solves computer problems for people. Now I come here and ask for a bit of help to set it up, and you can see how far I am getting.
You're right. Content management is like a giant anchor that drags down the people trying to use this software. Even for the people who do find a way to work around it, how much better off would they be if they didn't have to? Now, if the DB editor was easy to work, most users would be happy to adopt it. The fact that they, and even you, aren't should tell you something.
Perhaps I am now completely jaded but I don't hold out much hope of DAZ providing you with help. The focus at DAZ is making sure there is plenty of content for you to buy and then making sure that the content can be easily distributed to your machine. They rely heavily on the user community to fill the gaps most of us have come to expect software providers to fill.
Documentation for one thing. Another example, the Autofit in DS never worked properly since Genesis. Instead of fixing the defect internally (which I am confident they could have done), they are now selling us a fix developed by a published artist. And it is now rapidly closing on two years after the release of 4.0. In my case, I have not bought any Gen3-4 shoes from DAZ in a long time because of this defect. Did DAZ think that a fix would deter the sales of content for its' flagship product Genesis?
I have Poser Pro 2012 but I decided to hitch my horse to Genesis when I started out. I don't really know how Smith Micro operates. But hardly a day goes by that I don't think about moving on. Since the mission is to sell content, I doubt DAZ gives a hoot which software package that content is paired with. My opinion, but looking at the trend, it would appear that DAZ is intent on unloading its' 1st-party software involvement. Does the cost of development outweigh the benefit derived from content sold?
I typed something a bit longer, but the internet ate it for some reason.
When I say "smart content" I mean the whole of DB based content management in DAZ Studio 4. That seems to be incorrect, but in this context perhaps you can better understand my frustration. I create categories and populate them, but some stuff doesn't show up in the new home (Mil Dragon, Mil Dragon 2, Eastern Dragon, Sub Dragon, Wyvern all play nice, but Mil Dragon LE won't go. Materials go but poses don't, and stuff like that).
Now to me, the workflow that would be intuitive to me, and indeed the one that I believe is supposed to happen using the DB system, would be that there is some big box of actors where I could selct "Genesis" from. Once selcted, either through smart content or categories, I could go to a big box of clothes that fit Genesis, and then look for dresses instead of browing through titles like "Genesis MFD" and "Summer fun for genesis/V4/S4/A4" and "LBDress for Gen/a4/s4/v4" especially when the search feature is case sensitive. I swear the raw system is like using a blender for a filing cabinet, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how we as a community let this evolve like it did.
So, I would still very much like to sit down with someone reasonably close to Austin who can help me understand how to make the "blender for a filing cabinet" work like I the authors of DAZ Studio intend. I do not want 30 different runtimes or the like. I want to run DS and DIM together using system defaults.
This doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so is there anyone able and willing to help remotely?