Duf. files problem
So, I still consider myself a new user because I have no idea how to control this damn program at times, aha, anyway, I just had to sort out my smart tab and all of the things I've downloaded are there and all is well... apart from the bases I saved aren't coming up but they are still on my computer and saved and what not but I don't know how to import them back on to Daz 4.6 so they show up in the Smart Content tab again.
Any advice?
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Stuff you save won't show up in smart content unless you build the metadata for it
Is there a link on here to explain how to do that? I have no idea what that is. I really am still pretty new to this whole thing.
I don't use the Smart Content tab in DS, so haven't tried this, but here's a link to a tutorial here on the forum that may be of help -->
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/20018/
There's also a page in the Documentation Center that might also be of help -->
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/packaging/tutorials/adding_metadata/start
Miss B,
You're not the first to write that they don't use smart content. Why not?
As a new user, I have been disappointed and confused whenever I've tried to work with things lacking metadata.
For example, it's awkward trying to find an animal which is listed by it's maker's full title, rather than simply looking for the generic animal name.
Do you customize content with your own folders?
Many of us users were using DAZ Studio long before the DS4.0 days. The Smart Content never existed before a version of DAZ Studio 4+ something. We are accustomed to the older methods of using content that are still the same from those days. Content Library Tab is 100% the same as DAZ Studio 3 or below. I personally find Smart content more confusing in many ways.
I am not an old time DS user. I started with DS 4.5, but I rapidly gave up on smart content and switched to using the content tab.
The basic problems I found with Smart Content:
1) A lot of DAZ V4/M4 content does not have smart content, so it will never show up in smart content.
2) All the content you buy at other stores does not have smart content and will not show up in smart content.
3) When you have large number of products, the organization of Smart Content Becomes unmanageable.
4) Smart content is really not smart enough about what will work with what. You can make lots of products work together even when they were not really designed to work together.
5) What is displayed in the smart content tab depends on what is selected in the scene, and I find that annoying.
All that said, I think Smart Content is a good idea for new users. New users generally don't have very much content that does not have smart content and they don't have so much content that it is unmanageable. The organization of data in Content is strange and in many cases arbitrary. This is 10x worse in the Poser format libraries, but some of the organization of the DAZ libraries seem pretty arbitrary to me. Smart Content hides much of the dis-organization of the content in the libraries, which gives new users a chance to learn slowly about how the content libraries are organized.
The organization of smart content is to some extent fixable. You can create your own categories in Content and your new categories will appear in Smart Content too. I would advise against trying to "fix" the DAZ category organization. I started trying that, but when I installed new products or got updates to older products, it just undid some of my changes to the organization. If you create your own top level category under content and organize things the way you think so you can find things, DAZ will mostly leave that alone. (Only mostly because DAZ sometimes sends out updates moving content in the directory structure. When they do that, the content will disappear from you categories and you need to go back an fix it.)
I have created my own content organization which I used all the time to find content. Maybe 1 time in 100 I'll use it from Smart Content, but most of the time I'm using it from Content.
There are many reasons, for many of us old hands it's because we came from Poser (P4 in my case), and in it you had to manually organize your content otherwise you'd never find anything, as it's Library listed everything in alphabetical order, and every (idiot) vendor wanted their products to show at the top of the list, so you'd end up with lots of folders all with !!!!!!! and the like in the name.
When I moved to DS I just carried on doing the same thing, as it didn't get a database until roughly half way through DS2's life. I had problems with that thing right from the start, it had a runtime search function that would add your content to the database, for me it couldn't find it's own ass with both hands (bug reported) so I had to manually add my runtimes to it, and when the first corruption hit I deleted the DB and went back to folder view, and I've been there ever since.
Don't get me wrong I do know how it works as I've had to set it up for a few of my friends over the years, it's just something that's of little to no use to me.
For most newer users, the serious number of "where's my categories", "WTF happened to my Content" and "why is my Smart Content tab empty" threads will give you all the reasons you need :P
I'm so glad to discover that I'm not the only person who thinks that smart content is dumb and content library is smarter.
I started out with smart content. For all the reasons noted above and a few more besides, I switched to the old fashioned content library. I find it much easier to organise things exactly how I like and, when you've become used to the library structure, it's much, much faster to navigate around.
Cheers,
Alex.