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I went in and manually reorganized everything pulling out the vanity folders and store links.
I have stuff divided by theme so all environments with military theme are in a single folder. I also put props in there. I also have all sci-fi environments and props together. All robots go into a folder and all food has its own folder.
all weapons are categorized by type.
I divided poses by theme as well. It makes stuff easier to find but subverts dazs innate categorization and makes that unusable.
i used to make my own categories but that takes too much time and the database would become corrupted rendering it unusable. I wish I could categorize with dim. Say designate weapons as going in the weapons folder.
If you use manual install, which I vastly prefer, just comb through the user-facing folders and make any adjustments you want. When you copy the folder structure over to your runtime everything will then go into the proper place, and you'll know where to find things (mostly).
A popular freebies author uses Wardrobe instead of Clothing. I won't complain because his stuff is free (and good). I just take the time to rename the folder before I move it over.
I hate the generalized "Preset" folders some vendors use that relate to the main item -- a "Preset" for materials? Any why are materials for a specific character in the Materials folder? It should be a sub-folder off the character's folder. The old separated Poser-style directories of Character, Materials, Pose and so on doesn't have to be carried over to Daz, which allows any kind of content in any folder. As a result of this holdover, I'm always moving user-facing folders so they make more sense to me as an artist.
It's important not to mess with non-user-facing files. Especially don't touch anything in the Data and Runtime/Textures folders.
I'm with Peter; I've set up fairly sophisticated sub-folders by type. I find it's often easier to pre-categorize these before manually merging over.
Just found "Level 19" in Environments. Not sure it is an issue though since it is bundled with DS.
This is a result of many different problems coming together.
First, there's usually multiple categories that a set can fit in. An outdoor prop set with a terrain piece and lots of plants, for example, could go under Props, Environments, or Landscapes. Or under trees, plants, or rocks. Or under a theme, like fantasy, modern, or outdoors. Or if you make a building, but it also includes landscapes, do you put that under Architecture or Landscapes? You can only pick one category, and that sometimes forces some strange choices.
Second, as noted earlier, there's a lot of carry over from the old Poser days. Some PAs have been doing this for 20 years now, and old habits are hard to break. And lots of those old ways of organization are no longer relevant.
Third, each PA has their own idea of organization. Some want their PA name front and center. Some want to split up the content of a set across multiple categories and folders. Some want to keep them together for convenience. And this organization is never going to line up with what people use DS for... if you're focused on character art, you'll probably want all character stuff organized differently from environment or props or lighting presets. And if you prefer environments, you'll probably want those organized different from the person who wants to do character art.
Fourth, PAs change their structure over time to try and improve organization. When I first started, I was putting things under "EArkham" because I'd seen other PAs use their names and thought it was the correct way. Over time though I've started focusing sets without a PA folder, because it's just easier to see what you have going into a category that way than having to drill down into a PA subfolder.
So it's not being done on purpose. It's just a result of lots of little things happening over the years and it makes things messy. There's not really a solution for this, unless smart content gets a LOT smarter.
I've been complaining about this stuff ever since DAZ started DIM. My solution now is to install with DIM and move "Facing files" where I want them. Sometimes I want some "custom collection," and play Hide n Seek with DIM. I spent the past week or so fiddling with this stuff and got exhausted. Now I just want to use my stuff!
I came into Poser and DAZ Studio with a desire to get creative and have fun. DAZ came along with DIM, and made it all technical. DAZ doesn't understand many customers are artists, and don't want to be bogged down with searches, categories, etc.
Most of the other categories are plural, so it's possible Evironments is correct and Environment is not. It's one or the other, and I've seen this same packaging issue on a couple of Environment/s assets.
Level 19 is such a great set, easy to light and easily updated with whatever Iray materials you want to use, that we tend to overlook any slight packaging errors. Ive used it for a number of projects.
Urban Future 6
it's OK I gave you as an example of a PA more consistent than most
as I said some have stuff all over the place with no rhyme or reason
Yeah I love Stonemason's stuff. But I remember items called The Core being placed in two different places. I couldn't tell you where they went because I fixed the problem!
Yep, I have to keep everything organized in custom categories or I just can't find half my stuff. lol It would be nice if there was more consistency in where certain products are placed. I can see why some of the older content may be in odd places or in different folders that may not be ideal - but even brand new stuff that has been released recently have been oddly placed in my library. Almost every week I purchase something brand new that has been put into an odd place making it hard to find stuff. Just over the past week, I brought something new for Dog 8 and instead of it being where it probably should be: Library >> Animals >> Daz Dog 8 >> "product name". The product just plops a new "Daz Dog 8" folder in my main library. So it's Library >> Daz Dog 8. All the rest of my Daz Dog 8 stuff is under Animals.
Another new product I bought had lights and render settings included. Instead of categorizing them under "Light Presets" and "Render Presets" like most of the rest of the products I have of that type it put them in folders named "Lights" and created a brand new folder called "Render Settings" that none of the other products I have uses. Did the jewellery I just bought end up in People >> Genesis 8 Female >> Accessories like most of the rest of the jewellery I've purchased, nope, it's under People >> Genesis 8 Female >> Clothing.
And another recent product just placed a random "Expressions" folder in my main library. Nothing else in it except a handful of expressions from that product. Instead of People >> Genesis 8 Female >> Expressions >> "product name" (where it more likely belongs).
As a PA I know that it would be difficult to move everything to the correct category once it's saved in a different folder, but as a customer, I sure wish the Daz Team would force more consistency in how certain types of products are categorized so that customers can find the products more easily without having to hunt down the Read Me to find out where the product has been placed. And it's just annoying to have random new folder categories pop up in my main library with just the one product in it.
This is why I have a folder on my desktop named "Daz Thumbnails".
It's fully categorized, with images of everything I own, DAZ, Rendo, and free.
Every image carries the name that it's found under in the Content Library, and
I can place one image in multiple folders, like an outfit that comes with a gun
and a briefcase will be in the folders "Clothing" as well as folders "Firearms" and "Cases".
Makes it very easy to find stuff.
And I don't have to touch the Product Library.
I've been trying to figure out the best way to organize and this might very well be it! I'm gonna try it, at least.
I don't use smart content so I always move the stuff around when I install it. Spent a long time organizing the poser side putting mats and props with the outifts they belong to. With as much stuff as I have I would never find anything otherwise even if DAZ stuck to a common format. I don't want to spend hours locating a particular prop for example, I group them together in subdirectories by type. If I want to find money or treasure for example I look in that category.
You can probably do the same thing with smart content, I just prefer to use the directory structure.
Yeah, corrupted my database as well when I categorized stuff in my own categories. Nevertheless I think I'm gonna give it another try because Smart content is IMO unusable and I spend too much time finding stuff in the content library.
Was in my environments folder and I never use smart content. Moved it to props/Stonemason.
From all the complianing, it sounds like a lot of people don't realize they can move content anywhere they want within the root content path and Studio will recognize it the next time the program is opened. I do this all the time (use folder structure as categories, rather than create categories w/i Studio.)
I've had my custom categories corrupted twice. But not in the last year or so, its all working quite well, and I got smart and started keeping back ups of my external drives (I keep all of my content on external drives anyway so I guess you could call it a back up of my back ups lol)
I still feel that Categories and Smart Content deviate from my wish just to Make Art.
So does not being able to find your content, LOL
I get tired of things being both Environment and then Environments. I always move them to Environments and then look for stuff associated that I don't want to leave behind. Also I have sets that have installed to Texture instead of Textures. Now Texture isn't even an accepted format for Daz folders, so that should have been caught in QA. So again, I move it, then go through the other folders and move them and then change the paths to make sure I don't get callouts after moving them.
No one's mentioned it yet; so, I will add that I find all my content simply and easily by using the Content Library / Products tab. It's all arranged alphabetically! With only two exceptions, I've found every product (over eleven thousand) under its listed name. There are a few older items for which a portion of the content is not found in the Products tab, and then I must go to the Legacy system of folders.
Daz generally seems to be averse to standards in spelling, grammar, naming, & categorization.
DAZ's avoidance of standards really reduces the quality of their work. I cannot buy something and just sit down to use it. I blame DAZ for that problem.
True, I never use smart content or DIM either, but there are still issues using this method depending on the content you have as posted earlier with folders called Landscape and then one for landscapes. There is also an Architecture in both environments and props. Then you have vendors with a folder with their name on it instead of props, environment or Architecture. Any way to use DS, there are issues with the file paths
I'm another that uses custom categories exclusively. I categorize everything as soon as I install it. I hardly ever look at the "original" install locations after that. Its much easier to find things that way. Things are in the categories that make sense to me, some in multiple categories if merrited.
I export and back up my user data file frequently to help deal with database coruption issues - though that hasn't happened in a couple years (back when I moved from 4.8 to 4.9). It really helped out in that case though.
The Daz Install Manager (DIM) will simplify this process significally.
I now move my stuff manually. No corrupt database that way
I wish though that they’d stop with folders like architecture when only some people use that. at one point. An attempt was made to categorize vehicles but that is not complied with.
I also could wish that sets with props that preload could also have those props broken down so I could use them in other scenes.
So, I've tried out the Petercat Method, and it works perfectly for me. It's pretty painless to set up, versitile, and exactly what I was looking for. It's a simple and elegant solution to a needlessly complicated problem. Thanks for the tip!
I used to have a lot of trouble with the category database getting corrupted and some things that wouldn't go into categories but that seems to have gone away now. I don't know if this is due to the current version of Studio being better or just because I've re-installed Windows and eveything else twice since then.
I barely started using DAZ 3D one month ago, and I'm already wasting a lot of time searching for stuff, and not having a clue where it could be. I don't dare to think how much of a pain it must be when you've accumulated years of files.