Find Your Content - Get Organized

24

Comments

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745

    This is one of my big goals for this year.  Several years ago I got amibtious and started creating custom categories, but that was under the old CMS and the whole thing crashed irritreveably when I upgraded from one version of DS to the next.  The new CMS seems to be much more stable, so I really need to take the plunge. 

  • nicstt said:

    I'd give it a go but for the Database having DRM within it; not interested.

     

    nicstt said:

    I've have to enable stuff (in effect allowing DRM onto my system).

    This is what has put me off it. And will continue to put me off.

    If you've installed 4.9 you already have; the database, as far as I know, has nothing to do directly with the decryption of DRM encumbered content. It (the database) has been around for at least the past two minor versions of DAZ Studio and has primarily been focused on metadata for smart content.

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386

    I'm sort of the cateogry queen. I install and categorize everyhting, including the props. I find that I have too much stuff and frequently I overlook a set of earrings or a watch prop, that I could categorize and use for other characters. 

    Unfortunately, Studio doesn't handle categories too well once you start having volumes of content categorized the way you like it. I find nowdays I need to reset my database fairly frequently including reimporting meta data to get the items to show up in product view.. 

    DAZ software also gets fussy about the order of importation of the USER DATA. 

    I understand it better, and get it to work fairly well, but frequent backups of user data... Makes me think DAZ could handle categorization and organziation so much better.

    Of course most of this wouldn't be neccessary if content categories and naming standards were enforced by a copy editor. So much work is involved because of the lack of copy editor and standards, here and in other communities... It really could be so much better. It is ridiculous that there are typos in product names, content installed in the wrong directories, vanity for characters, making it tough to find the character by their actual name etc. 

     

    And those are exactly the reasons why I hesitate to once again reorganize all the stuff I have. As it is now I work with smart content and the least I can say is that i am not happy: It is hard to get third party products to show up in smart content and obviously some products are specifically made to work in the content manager tab.

    Two things kept me categorizing again:

    1. The categories database goes corrupt more than is acceptable. 
    2. I am not so sure that DAZ will continue to support this method because in a previous version of Studio the new stuff wasn't highlighted anymore when you did a scan for new stuff and without that organizing stuff in the content pane is a real pain and the 'make a category with subfolders' menu didn't work. This is the main reason why I try to use smart content and also because it is the organization method DAZ obviously highlights.

    Nevertheless I think that the next time I get a few days free I will reorganize everything. Once again, sigh.

  • If I decide to use categories, it will be to fix the content library quirks that bug me, and my custom categories will most likely resemble what my idea of what the default DAZ Studio Content Library should look like. I don't need to cross categorize things to the extreme like some do.

  • Serene NightSerene Night Posts: 17,552
    edited January 2017

    I have to organize my stuff, otherwise I spend far too long searching for it. It is self defense really. Although I have been thinking of removing some old content since there is some content I don't use and which looks dated.

    I really would like to categorize from within dim. I'd also like installers to be smarter so for example a bundle which includes expresssions, an outfit with jewelry and standard poses I'd like each of those items categorized by generation and type as well as one package. 

    It doesn't even need to be retroactive. Just start better content organization with new releases.  Really surprised the store is still doing content in the way it does. 

    Also  would love better organization of scene props. Lots of content loads with scenes that can't be used individually because it doesn't have an individual prop... However the props exist. Would love to have access to those without the tedious job of loading and saving them out.

    Yeah I do worry about losing my organization of content. the database does become corrupt frequently. It is frustrating. I do try to backup my use data as well as the entire daz folder occasionally to try to forestall it but it has happened quite a bit this eyar already.

     

    Post edited by Serene Night on
  • RadioactiveLilyRadioactiveLily Posts: 344
    edited January 2017

    This has been really interesting to read and see how others do it, but you'll still have to pry my Windows File Explorer from my cold, dead hands. lol

    I guess it's from years of Poser use that I'm very manual in my runtime organization.  I have everything very heavily subfoldered and organized as well, but I'm physically moving the items and folders to where I want them to be in my library.  Creating shortcuts of footwear from the outfit folder to my footwear master folder is all I've done directly in Studio itself.

    Post edited by RadioactiveLily on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Not everyone needs to be as hyperorganized as I am obviously.  Its nice to have the option.  I will say that the categories have become a lot more stable in the last several months, I am seeing far less corruption.  I don't know that I would be able to work if I wasn't able to organize.  I like have everything at the tips of my fingers though and having items in multiple categories saves me literally hours of time of going through each outfit looking for bits and pieces that go together.  My time to actually make art is pretty limited.  I can be online on the forums, watch tutorials, etc etc from work but I rarely have time to actually put together a scene properly. So for me, being really organized allows me to have more time to make things.

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745
    nicstt said:

    I'd give it a go but for the Database having DRM within it; not interested.

     

    nicstt said:

    I've have to enable stuff (in effect allowing DRM onto my system).

    This is what has put me off it. And will continue to put me off.

    If you've installed 4.9 you already have; the database, as far as I know, has nothing to do directly with the decryption of DRM encumbered content. It (the database) has been around for at least the past two minor versions of DAZ Studio and has primarily been focused on metadata for smart content.

    But the thing is, you never do know where you're safe with DAZ.  I was stunned when I upgraded to DS 4.0 and discovered that the Figure Mixer, which had been one of the last "big" additions to DAZ Studio 3, had been completely dropped and that a huge number of plugins had completely ceased to work.  Meanwhile, other features like Powerpose, remain in the software, but the only updates have come in the form of users creating new templates. It's bad enough when it's a plugin that cost $20 bucks, but when it's a database that you spent dozens of hours creating it's even more painful.  

         

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386
    edited January 2017
    Morana said:

    This has been really interesting to read and see how others do it, but you'll still have to pry my Windows File Explorer from my cold, dead hands. lol

    I guess it's from years of Poser use that I'm very manual in my runtime organization.  I have everything very heavily subfoldered and organized as well, but I'm physically moving the items and folders to where I want them to be in my library.  Creating shortcuts of footwear from the outfit folder to my footwear master folder is all I've done directly in Studio itself.

    And that's why organizing stuff in the content manager tab is a good method: You let your recently bought product install where it wants and then you do a scan for new stuff, you can then make categories from the windows folder structure that appears in the DAZ content folder or any folder you installed your product in (you have to tell Studio the root directories where to look). Categories are virtual links to the windows folders. You can even have several categories pointing to the same windows folder, or create a link for a single item to include it in many categories. You then don't need to bother for product updates, they will overwrite the windows folder structure and your links should normally remain untouched. This probably is the reason why the database gets corrupt so often.

    This also works on a Mac. But it will not help people who use Poser.

    Post edited by Erdehel on
  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745
    edited January 2017

    If I decide to use categories, it will be to fix the content library quirks that bug me, and my custom categories will most likely resemble what my idea of what the default DAZ Studio Content Library should look like. I don't need to cross categorize things to the extreme like some do.

    The first thing that I'll probably do is organize all my scripts and shaders in a way that more intuitive, ie: completely separate folders for 3DL and Iray and things like hair shaders all in one group instead of some in the shaders folder and some scattered throughout the various figures in "people."  After that... gah... I really need to pull all the hair together and put the textures for the older ones together with the matching prop/figures.  Why did anyone ever think that that calling a texture a "pose" was a nifty idea?

    Post edited by Cybersox on
  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232

    Why did anyone ever think that that calling a texture a "pose" was a nifty idea?

    Remember, it's essentially an ancient hack to get around the fact that the newest, shiniest version of Poser (as of 10-15 years ago) didn't have anything like the modern equivalent of a materials preset. Someone discovered that a stripped-down character file could be converted into a pose file and put into the Poses library folder, and allow one-click changing of textures. That ancient hack just never entirely went away, it's persisted through all the versions of Poser since then, and it's also worked in all versions of DAZ|Studio. Even nowadays, many new Poser products are likely to have texture "pose" files as well as (or even instead of) proper Material Room files.

  • Erdehel said:
    The categories database goes corrupt more than is acceptable.

    Are you uisng PostgreSQL or still on Valentina? Valentina was very prone to corruption, which was a major rason for the switch to PostgreSQL.

  • ... a huge number of plugins had completely ceased to work.

    All DS 3..x plug-ins ceased to work in DS 4.0 - unless the author updated them. That's why Daz has kept the minimum SDK stable since 4.5 (which was the non-beta debut of 4, as I recall), and kept it stable throughout the DS 3.x cycle.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714
    nicstt said:

    I'd give it a go but for the Database having DRM within it; not interested.

     

    nicstt said:

    I've have to enable stuff (in effect allowing DRM onto my system).

    This is what has put me off it. And will continue to put me off.

    If you've installed 4.9 you already have; the database, as far as I know, has nothing to do directly with the decryption of DRM encumbered content. It (the database) has been around for at least the past two minor versions of DAZ Studio and has primarily been focused on metadata for smart content.

    not if you uninstall SQL.

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745
    ... a huge number of plugins had completely ceased to work.

    All DS 3..x plug-ins ceased to work in DS 4.0 - unless the author updated them. That's why Daz has kept the minimum SDK stable since 4.5 (which was the non-beta debut of 4, as I recall), and kept it stable throughout the DS 3.x cycle.

    Which is why I think it's fair to say that that all bets are off the table when it comes to DS 5.0.      

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386
    Erdehel said:
    The categories database goes corrupt more than is acceptable.

    Are you uisng PostgreSQL or still on Valentina? Valentina was very prone to corruption, which was a major rason for the switch to PostgreSQL.

     

    I am using PostgreSQL almost from the first day it was available. But just so you know switching from Valentina to PostgreSQL made me loose my categories :)
  • OstadanOstadan Posts: 1,123

    I'm on Mac, and sometimes resort to the Unix "find" command to find things by name in the content library.  It actually works pretty well.

  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745
    Ostadan said:

    I'm on Mac, and sometimes resort to the Unix "find" command to find things by name in the content library.  It actually works pretty well.

    I use DIM, so for DAZ products the easiest way to find something is often to search for part of the name in the installed folder and then hitting "show installed files."  For everything else there's P3DO.  

  • nicstt said:
    nicstt said:

    I'd give it a go but for the Database having DRM within it; not interested.

     

    nicstt said:

    I've have to enable stuff (in effect allowing DRM onto my system).

    This is what has put me off it. And will continue to put me off.

    If you've installed 4.9 you already have; the database, as far as I know, has nothing to do directly with the decryption of DRM encumbered content. It (the database) has been around for at least the past two minor versions of DAZ Studio and has primarily been focused on metadata for smart content.

    not if you uninstall SQL.

    The database isn't what communicates with the DAZ servers to authenticate your ownership of the encrypted content.

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,666

    I spent like 2 weeks doing this, then my DB got all corrupt or something and stopped working. Went back to doing it manually the old fashioned way. Kind of a pain, but at least it's one and done.

  • Divamakeup - Thanks for this thread!  I actually like the way the folders break down in MyDaz3d Library content.  But, I am wanting to do the custom categories.  My main reason is that like others, I bought enough content in the past few months to triple my previous stuff.  I have tons of stuff that I haven't yet tried out, simply because I forgot that I even bought it.  A major problem is the way that PAs name their products.  The alphabetical title doesn't necessarily remind you of what the actual product is.  Also, I like the idea of pooling all conforming content like hair and clothing, because most of what I have will work with any figure.  Although, it can be difficult to go backwards from G3 to G2.  But, I'm using G3 most of the time anyway.  So, I like that idea of "dresses," "shoes," etc.  For instance, I own the texture, "Blinded by Light," that is for the "Zenia" outfit.  But, I guess when "Blinded by Light" was created, addon textures didn't automatically get loaded in the original product's materials folder.  I actually had to do a search on Daz for "Blinded by Light" to remember what it went to.

    Is there a way of cross referencing?  So, if I see a pair of hunting boots, it will show me the title of the outfit that it originally went with?  I know that many clothing items have titles that tell you the outfit, but not all...Some clothing parts just say "boots" or "dress."

    Anyway, good idea for a thread. :)

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    edited January 2017

    Divamakeup - Thanks for this thread!  I actually like the way the folders break down in MyDaz3d Library content.  But, I am wanting to do the custom categories.  My main reason is that like others, I bought enough content in the past few months to triple my previous stuff.  I have tons of stuff that I haven't yet tried out, simply because I forgot that I even bought it.  A major problem is the way that PAs name their products.  The alphabetical title doesn't necessarily remind you of what the actual product is.  Also, I like the idea of pooling all conforming content like hair and clothing, because most of what I have will work with any figure.  Although, it can be difficult to go backwards from G3 to G2.  But, I'm using G3 most of the time anyway.  So, I like that idea of "dresses," "shoes," etc.  For instance, I own the texture, "Blinded by Light," that is for the "Zenia" outfit.  But, I guess when "Blinded by Light" was created, addon textures didn't automatically get loaded in the original product's materials folder.  I actually had to do a search on Daz for "Blinded by Light" to remember what it went to.

    Is there a way of cross referencing?  So, if I see a pair of hunting boots, it will show me the title of the outfit that it originally went with?  I know that many clothing items have titles that tell you the outfit, but not all...Some clothing parts just say "boots" or "dress."

    Anyway, good idea for a thread. :)

    Sadly the only way to cross reference is if you do it yourself in the custom categories once you track it down.  Although if you go to your products list here on Daz in your account you type in the name of the texture you are looking at and follow the link to the store page and it should tell you what outfit is needed for those textures

    Post edited by IceDragonArt on
  • Divamakeup - Thanks for this thread!  I actually like the way the folders break down in MyDaz3d Library content.  But, I am wanting to do the custom categories.  My main reason is that like others, I bought enough content in the past few months to triple my previous stuff.  I have tons of stuff that I haven't yet tried out, simply because I forgot that I even bought it.  A major problem is the way that PAs name their products.  The alphabetical title doesn't necessarily remind you of what the actual product is.  Also, I like the idea of pooling all conforming content like hair and clothing, because most of what I have will work with any figure.  Although, it can be difficult to go backwards from G3 to G2.  But, I'm using G3 most of the time anyway.  So, I like that idea of "dresses," "shoes," etc.  For instance, I own the texture, "Blinded by Light," that is for the "Zenia" outfit.  But, I guess when "Blinded by Light" was created, addon textures didn't automatically get loaded in the original product's materials folder.  I actually had to do a search on Daz for "Blinded by Light" to remember what it went to.

    Is there a way of cross referencing?  So, if I see a pair of hunting boots, it will show me the title of the outfit that it originally went with?  I know that many clothing items have titles that tell you the outfit, but not all...Some clothing parts just say "boots" or "dress."

    Anyway, good idea for a thread. :)

    Sadly the only way to cross reference is if you do it yourself in the custom categories once you track it down.  Although if you go to your products list here on Daz in your account you type in the name of the texture you are looking at and follow the link to the store page and it should tell you what outfit is needed for those textures

    It depends what sort of cross-refrencing you want. There should, for items with proper metadata, be options to "Explore Target..." (things with which the item is compatible) and "Explore Add-Ons..." (add-ons for the item) in the right-click menu. There's also "Explore product..." which will show all of the items that belong to the same product.

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386
    edited March 2017

    I decided to give categorization another try. I immediately ran into an unexpected problem: In the content library tab I see the "Categories". These "Categories have a sub-category called "!Default" just like in DivaMakeUp's images. And that is all I see under "Categories".

    When I right-click on "Categories" I get a sub menu with "Create a sub-category..." and when I choose that, I get a popup asking me to "enter the name for the new category". And here begins the trouble: if I enter here a category name such as "People" and hit Ok then I get an error message saying "Unable to create container: People". If I enter a category name such as "!Animals" it will work as the popup disappears but "!Animals don't show up under "Categories". I'm quite certain I get an error because the sub-categories I want already exist, but why don't they show up? I searched every menu and I see nothing that could prevent them to show up.

    I am using DAZ Studio 4.9.3.166 and a PostGreSQL database.

    Any ideas of what I'm doing wrong?

    Post edited by Erdehel on
  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    Thats really strange.  Can you post a couple of screenshots?  I am on my way to take the dog to the vet but will be happy to try and help you figure it out when I get back.

     

  • IvyIvy Posts: 7,133

    Wow Diva, that makes my brain hurt looking at all that organization, LOL

    I install everything manually which allows me to know where everything is. Anything more would be more work than I would like, LOL.

    I agree I use custom install too.  I also use 4 different hard drives for content.   so I like to use windows search of my content folders when i need to find a specific item . plus windows search results will give me all the information about a file i am searching for  such as texture maps, geometry files,  models & props & their file locations.. its fast and i can narrow & fine tune my search for items quickly if i know roughly the name of the item i am looking for. plus using windows search for my content folder.  saves a ton of time when asset gathering for animation projects,. because I can drag and drop my animation assets into a project folder on an separated external hard drive.  I can do this just using the data linking of the asset to your project folders with out having to keep going back finding the items when i need to re use items for scenes over and over, it saves a ton of time in that asspect as well. plus data linking using windows search is a great way to set up RIB  for batch rendering.

    I was once like Diva and used custom categories I had them all neat and organized was almost anal how it was set up/  until the day daz introduced studio 4.9 &  daz connect and the content management system went out the windows....lol man for some reason that totally screwed that all up in a heart beat I had 2 custom catogories and a bunch of other issues... grief what i mess..lol ....  after that I started doing my organization the same way the autodesk software does by using windows search of my content folders its so much faster & accurate. plus now I have the Devil only cares if daz messes around with trying to reorganize our content libraries it won't effect windows search of content folders

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386
    edited March 2017

    Thats really strange.  Can you post a couple of screenshots?  I am on my way to take the dog to the vet but will be happy to try and help you figure it out when I get back.

     

     

    Here you go in 4 steps. After clicking on the "ok" button I go back to step one. If i type something like "fdshhfdkjfgqdlsk" as sub-category name I go from Step 3 to step 1.

    Erdehel cat1.jpg
    513 x 544 - 37K
    Erdehel cat2.jpg
    513 x 544 - 43K
    Erdehel cat3.jpg
    513 x 544 - 62K
    Erdehel cat4.jpg
    513 x 544 - 57K
    Post edited by Erdehel on
  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 8,745
    Erdehel said:

    Thats really strange.  Can you post a couple of screenshots?  I am on my way to take the dog to the vet but will be happy to try and help you figure it out when I get back.

     

     

    Here you go.

    I wonder if in this case the issue is that you're duplicating a category that already exists inside the default folder, given that there's already a "People" sub-cat under Figures. 

  • ErdehelErdehel Posts: 386
    Erdehel said:

    Thats really strange.  Can you post a couple of screenshots?  I am on my way to take the dog to the vet but will be happy to try and help you figure it out when I get back.

     

     

    Here you go.

    I wonder if in this case the issue is that you're duplicating a category that already exists inside the default folder, given that there's already a "People" sub-cat under Figures. 

     

    I am pretty sure that is the problem but why don't I see the already existing categories? If I don't see them I can't categorize.
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