Missing "data" files / Tidying Daz Library/Data/ files

stitlown

In the course of lots of experimentation, I've ended up giving various assets I've made or changed a range of names / name variants / misspellings which have all been faithfully written into my Daz Library/Data/ files.

I'd like to tidy all this up, in some cases completely renaming the "author" name or the "asset" name.

I know from bitter experience I can't just rename or move stuff, or else scenes / subscenes will be broken and report "missing files" upon opening.

So, questions ...

1. Is there an easy way or a straighforward workflow to jump into existing, but poorly/ wrongly/changewanted names for assets and rename them so that when the scene reopens it uses the tidied names AND in the data file, the assets are written in with the tidied author and asset names?

2. Is there an easy way to find all the geometry references for an asset so I can see where it is using /data/ files?

3. If I do cause a break and an opening scene reports missing files, is there any way to re-import the damaged asset from its new named home? [by way of example, if texture files on surfaces get renamed, there is a dialogue on scene opening that allows you to re-specify the texture file location of textures that can no longer be found].

As always, thanks in advance for any hints and help. Lx

JD_Mortal

1: No

2: Yes, open the file with a text editor. (Uncompress it, if it looks like gibberish as text. It would be just a standard text file within a zip file. Though, "easy to read", may not be true, it is easy to do.)

3: I know that Daz will complain about missing files and sometimes give you an option to locate them. However, I am unsure if that actually "fixes the items" for anything other than that specific scene you load. Your log-file will indicate incorrectly named items with warnings, but there will be no option to do anything about it. Well, you can manually hunt down and locate everything and fix it, every time you get the errors. (See step 2, but add editing paths/filenames within the open files to that step.)

The sad fact of the matter is this...

A: Don't make the problem, to begin with. (Hard to do, when experimenting. Guilty here too.)

B: Fix the problem as soon as you can, once you have standards, follow them. This will include going through everything that you think is worth "gold", and painting it "gold", with your naming standards. Even if it involves making a whole new item, using the assets you originally used, keeping both the new and old versions for your "files". (Which helps in copyright issues anyways, should something arise.)

C: Keep in mind, that none of it matters, in the end, as long as it functions.

D: Um, you can't change the "Author", unless you don't intend to sell it in the Daz store. The store is tied to your user-name, and you can not publish under another "Author", unless you own that account. However, if you are not going to publish here, I'd honestly avoid that whole "Arthor" situation, as it will/may conflict with an actual "Author", who legally owns that title, later on, or now. (Reffering to where daz places creations, by default, which is in a folder of your "Login name", which is, subsiquently also, your "Author name". EG, your "Author name", as it would be seen in the "Daz Store", would be "stitlown", and mine would be, "JD_Mortal". (If I knew that, I wouldn't have made this name for the account. But, that is how it was explained to me, to be the way it works. If you want a better Author name, you need a new account with that name, which would leave you needing to buy everything for the other account, as items are tied to account names too, for some strange reason. They refused to "change my name", when I asked if that was an option. I didn't try, but it may also be impossible to create another account with the same physical user information, as you, "Already have an account", and would only be able to "login or delete the account" and all "purchased items" obviously.)

 

P.S. Currently, at the moment, I am fixing issues related to new creations of others, for Gen8 models, because there is one type-o in the Gen8 female model files and the rest are type-os in the creators files. (All of which are filling my logs with errors and making the models take 3+ minutes to load, when they should load in seconds. Because they manually renamed everything, just as you described, instead of just taking the time to make them "gold" to begin with, or after teh fact, from the tarnished files.) I feel your frustration.

It is literally something like this... "\data\..\..\eCTRLEyesClosed.dsa?#ECTRLEyesClosed" (The second "E" should be "e". Just like 99.99999% of all the other functions, but that one type-o, breaks anything that tries to modify "eCTRLEyesClosed.dsa", because everyone, including Daz, assumes the function to call it, is "eCTRL..." not "ECTRL..." Case sensitive where it is totally irrelevant, but pertinant to be used. {rolls-eyes} It becomes a catch-22... Fix it, and nothing that was "made to work with the error", will work. Leave it alone, and you end-up having to remember that "issue", and fix it in every new item that tries to use the standards, which were ignored or subject to human error.)

mindsong

I believe Dimension 3D (D3D?) has some editor products that let you do this kind of thing in a very logical way - kind of like making changes in a spreadsheet.

see https://www.daz3d.com/dimension3d and maybe look at the DSF toolbox, or DSON editor? He had a morph organizer here at DAZ but it seems it's no longer sold here. Maybe at rendo?

I also thought IronMan13 or SickleYield also had an organizer product that had the ability to tidy up, colorize, and otherwise manage these kinds of underlying assets (rather than the usual content managers), but I can't find anything like what I'm remembering in the store. Anyone else have a better memory? Maybe Zev0 or Draagonstorm? They do cool tools like this too.

RE: JD_Mortal's sage advice - as long as humans are involved, this is our world... heh. I wish you well in your efforts!

cheers,

--ms

stitlown

Thanks guys. Not so pretty news. Apologies JD_M if I've used wrong labels. Somehow I'm about 7 different what I thought were "authors" in my /data/, none being stitlown. I'll investigate Mindsong's suggestion + also see what other intelligence emerges. I take up JD_M's chant "Go for Gold". Cheers, Lx

Robinson

You probably won't have the patience for the way I organise my library.  I have the Daz library and then I make my own separate library.  I create folders in it with the structure I want and then copy the thumbs from the Daz library into it.  I have found with experience that moving things around in the Daz folder isn't a good idea, so I've effectively got a mirror of it, just with my own structure.  You don't need to copy stuff from data, texture, etc. folders.  Only the thumbs from in the main Daz folder (copy/paste in the folder browser UI).   It only contains the things I use as well, which cuts down a lot of the flotsam that tends to accumulate in the main library.

 

JD_Mortal

The hard way of doing it... is by entering the files which Daz has created, and manually changing things. (Leads to more headache and errors than you will potentially want to deal with.)

The easy way of doing it... just create that "new" item, "public and publish ready", from all of the pieces which you used to create the test items. Cross your "t's" and dot your "i's", everywhere. With the hard way, you'll be crossing your eyes and drooling on your t-shirts all night long, hunting down data in all your files to edit.

stitlown

Mindsong's pointer to D3D's scripts looks like it has merit.  I'm trying to figure how much overlap there is between a couple of those scripts (and waiting for a suitable sale - haha). On "paper" one, at least, looks pretty much exaclty what I need - and possibly an easy workflow - open a file; oh-oh problems; close file; edit out problems; re-open (hopefully with no oh-oh); Yay! Cheers. Lx