Content Library--Looking for a specific kind of content
Uthgard
Posts: 878
So, lets say I am working on a scene and I say "Hey, this character shouldn't be bald!", when presented with such an uncommon occurrence, I have the following options: 1) Select said alopecic character, go to the Smart Content tab and see what manner of virtual wigs pop up (with the limitation that I will only get to see the hairs of the corresponding generation) 2) Go to Categories (with the limitation that hair without meta data won't show up at all) or 3) Write "hair" in the Content Library search bar and... wade through 7,849 results that try to tell me that a hair fit is super relevant to my current interests. So, the question is, is there any way, when looking for content, to specify that you only want props, wardrobe, materials or, well, hair to show up? That would be mighty convenient (and probably super easy to do and I am just being dense). Thanks.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I haven't gone down that road myself, but many users organize their content into categories that make sense to them and allows them to locate content more quickly.
Yeah, and sometimes I kick myself for not doing that when I started collecting content, but nowadays, just thinking about categorizing everything makes me... well, not shiver. Shivering implies some kind of muscle movement, and my anxiety attack won't be that lenient.
I am asking about wardrobe, hair etc because the green text is already appearing on the pics, and I am guessing that has something to do with the way Daz reads content, so it shouldn't be that hard to specify in a search that only content with said markers should show up. Well, I am guessing it shouldn't be, for all I know, a Dante's tourist tour may be required (Come for the vistas! Stay because there is no hope of escape from eternal damnation!),
How do they organize their content?
One runtime for v4 hair, another runtime for V4 characters..... something like that..... ?
I ask that because when I tried to arrange like that it would not work for me.
How do you organize?
Thanks.
Some people use multiple content folders, some people create their own Categories in a system that makes sense for them.
Well, you could always drill down through the Content Library hierarchy, searching every figure in the 'People' folder to find what you're looking for; which is to say, something that might work for the figure you're using, trusting Auto-Fit to do the heavy lifting for you. That's what I've had to do on a number of occasions, and as you can probably guess, it ain't a whole hell of a lot of fun.
I use both DAZ Studio and Poser, occasionally Bryce, and even Carrara every once in a blue moon (oh, yeah -- and iClone, can't forget that one!), and I have the same problem you are facing, to wit: "Where the hell is what I need!?" Only my problem is several orders of magnitude worse.
I've been acquiring 3D content for a little over ten years now, and it is scattered across about a dozen different content libraries, depending on the application -- and I have absolutely no clue where at least half of it is! (Hell, I don't even know what half of it is!) After the latest archival backup of my system, I found that I now have a skosh under 600 gigabytes of content, and I am unable to use most of it, simply because I don't know where to go to load it! (Or, in many cases, that I even have it in the first place!) This is compounded by the fact that a sizeable percentage of it is free crap that I hoovered from Rendo, ShareCG, RDNA, and several other sites, in addition to everything I had purchased from, well, everywhere -- and I lost the original installers for all of it when I tripped over the signal cable to my external hard disk and sent it crashing (in more ways than one) to the floor. So even though the content is not technically 'lost' (it's still in the runtimes), it is no longer 'recoverable', because: a) I no longer have the original installers; and b) I no longer really know what I actually have.
Clearly, something had to be done.
I ended up embarking upon what is turning out to be the most nightmarish software-development project I have ever undertaken: an application built to locate and catalog my entire inventory of content for all of my 3D applications. One of the first features I designed into it was a system of "tags" for describing everything installed on my system: what it is (figure/character, prop, hair, scene, expression, texture, pose set, yada-yada); what figure it was made for, if any; genre (fantasy, sci-fi, period, contemporary, usw.); host application (DAZ Studio, Poser, whatever).... The tags are free-form, and totally arbitrary; I can create and assign any number of tags, to any item, at any level in the hierarchy, be it product, library (figures, props, poses, hair, etc.), or specific files or file types. The idea is that if, say, I need to find some interesting hair for a particular Genesis 2 Male character that I'm using in DAZ Studio, I can enter the search criteria (hair, Genesis 2 Male, DAZ Studio (because, you know, Auto-Fit), and anything else you might care to throw in), the search would return all of the hair objects for Genesis 2 Male and below for which DAZ Studio's Auto-Fit might conceivably be able to conform to my figure, and whose tags met whatever other search criteria I might have added. And then proceed to tell me exactly where -- which runtime library, which directory, which file -- every one of them is physically located. And show me pictures of it, so I can say, 'Yeah, that's what I'm after!'. Pretty cool, eh?
The application is about 80% complete: the database is built; the stored procedures are coded; the windows and dialogs are laid out, coded and, for the most part, styled; navigation is pretty well fleshed out; and the data-access classes are written and unit-tested. The part I'm working on now are the routines that actually search my libraries and identify what's out there, for the purpose of populating the database -- and this is the part that has me pulling out what little hair I have left! As in, just how far down the directory tree do I really need to go?
Why am I doing this? Because I have a crap-load of content, and I need to be using it! I got it for a reason (and at the time, I thought it was a good reason). Only now, years later, I just forgot where I put it!
My Daz content library was automatically ordered for character related content as follows: people> genesis 2 female > hair. Or > characters. Or > clothing. And so forth for each base.