Bug - Studio stops remembering categories
bytescapes
Posts: 1,905
I'm currently doing a full reinstall of my far-too-large DAZ content library, having wiped everything to zero. Because I have stupid amounts of content, I am hand-categorizing the products according to my own scheme as I install them, so that I can find them again.
In doing so, I have run across an apparent bug in DAZ Studio. The symptoms are as follows.
At a certain point, Studio will stop remembering my categorizations. I select an item and assign it to a category that I have created. Everything seems to work fine, but if I go to the category under Categories, the item will not be shown there.
Once the bug hits, no further items that I categorize will show up in their assigned categories.
To make matters more mysterious, DAZ knows about the category assignments I have made. If I go back to the item in the product library and try to re-categorize it, the Categorize window will show it as correctly categorized already, at the precise location where I originally put it. But if I go back to Categories and drill down through my hierarchy to the place where the item should be, it doesn't show up.
The only cure that I have found for this so far is to follow the reset procedure described by Jay Versluis. Once I've done that, I can start categorizing items again ... but all the categories and categorizations that I created after the bug hit are lost, and I have to redo them.
I haven't yet found anything that specifically triggers this bug, which occurs at random and fairly infrequently.
Because categorizing stuff by hand is a time-consuming and fiddly business, I find this a little frustrating.
Has anyone else encountered this and, if so, is there a fix or workaround?
DAZ Studio 4.24.0.3 on Windows 11, with DAZ content installed using DIM.
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Comments
I also categorize all my products. Sometimes the new categories don't show in their respective locations (usually after doing a lot of new categories), but a simple refresh anywhere in the branch above it will make them appear.
I haven't had a problem with new categories not appearing, but with references within the newly-created categories (although the newly-created categories do go away if I have to reset the content manager DB). Refresh doesn't seem to help with the problem I'm having.
It's just happened to me again (about 30 minutes after a full Content DB restore), so here are a couple of screenshots showing the issue. The first one shows that Jungle Kit Banana Plant 01 is definitely categorized in /User/Props/Plants/Trees; the second shows how that category appears under the Categories section in the Content pane, with Jungle Kit Banana Plant 01 nowhere to be seen.
2 thoughts. think this answers your query unless i misunderstood?
(1) while categorizing, have run into quite a few times, where subcategory is made, but is empty after new folder name (make sure you selected subcategory with files)
fix that works 100% of time, is rename the folder in DAZ proper directory , i just add my own suffix, and then recategorize
my theory is internal ID conflicts etc, and rename creates a new ID
to do this right click in daz and rename and add your extra.
only down side, likley won't get updates to that folder? Never checked. Didn't care.
also, did post this fix ages ago on these forums. find external search works pretty good.
(2) just maybe DAZ has an issue with categories in 10's of thousands? if that's what you have?
could always ask DAZ support if internal limit?
have 5k? with lots of 3rd party and own, and all works categorized.
backed up catalog is 4 files i think.
I've never encountered such an issue though I also customize the categories a lot as well as handle assignments frequently.
Actually the categories shown in your screenshots look weird to me. Normally if one creates a user-defined category, the category icon should show a U mark on it (in below screenshots...). But most of yours are shown as Default (white icon with no U...).
Default category (AKA Vendor category... with pure white icon) can only be created by Daz or manually created in cms database directly... How did you create them?
I couldn't reproduce your issue by now but, for instance, if you assign a Default category under User to an item... maybe with a conflict or glitch, you can try going to Default to filter the item out, I suppose....
(This sort of issue can be easily checked and identified within cms database if you have a postgreSQL DBA software... I always use Navicat to edit and fix things in cms ~~)
34K products installed, no problems with lost assets. Not that I go looking for everything, but I do check each product as they get categorized. Restoring the DB will, of course, overwrite what was there before, so that will only bring you up to the last backup.
On a hunch, check the LOCAL USER product to see if they are in there. I have had problems with categorizing assets when they weren't actually part of a Product. I create the category from a folder and sub-folders, not using the Categorize dialog (that I use for individual assets)
Products created via Create a Product from... and the local files that users saved as Scene or Preset files, as well as Tagged with LOCAL USER go to LOCAL USER product. It has nothing to do with Categorize...
(BTW, LOCAL USER product cannot be found in DS 2025 under Content Lib > Products, but the items with LOCAL USER assigned can be filtered out.... It's strange ... then I may ask in Alpha thread... )
Categorize operation is very simple, it just assign exsiting IDs of the categories a user checks to the item(s) in Content table. If a category is successfully assigned to an item, the record in cms is instantly updated and the item should be able to found under that category ~~
No, as long as you add the metadata from a valid .dsx file with a valid Product GUID and Store ID (which doesn't have to be Daz) it will come in as Vendor data. You can create a new Store ID using http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/metadata/add_store_id/start (I have added one for the stores from which I have products, plus two for freebies - commercial use and non-commercial use). In fact the products that I have created in DS, no reimporting metadata, that meet those requirements are not user data and are not in the Local user product.
You're right ~ I forgot some vendors from 3rd-parties also create IM or XX installation package, as well as the ones made by the users.
As for Store ID, the case may vary... for instance, even if the vendor creates one store ID which is specified in product's DSX file, a user has to create the very same one in his cms database beforehand, otherwise the product will still go to LOCAL USER.
I thought that @crosswind had the answer, and that the issue was that my user-created categories were somehow getting converted to system-created categories, which might not allow addition of references. That would make sense (although it wouldn't answer the question of why the user-created categories were becoming system categories).
But it turns out not to be that simple.
I duplicated my entire hierarchy, and the elements in the new duplicate hierarchy were indeed marked as user-created, with a little 'U' on the icon. However, the problem quickly recurred, and affected even the categories with a 'U' icon.
The answer to the question of why my user-created categories showed the default icon rather than the 'U' icon is that this is a product of resetting the database and reimporting user data: it turns out that when you do that, the user-created ('U' icon) categories become default system categories. This doesn't seem to affect my ability to add items to the categories, but it does mean that I can't rename them.
I am creating the categories using the usual Categorize ... tool in the pop-up menu, and I don't (yet) have an excessive number of categories: probably hundreds rather than thousands.
When Studio fails to add an item to a category, it fails silently; it doesn't generate any messages in the log.
Ah, as you nailed it: re-importing user data made them Default... If so, it seems a bug to me. User-defined categories should be always marked as user-defined (non Vendor...)
I've never used export / re-import UserData, I only back up cms cluster and clean the data as needed from time to time.
But as for DS failing to assign a Category to an item, I've had no idea so far.... I hoped I could reproduce the issue but I failed ~~
When i was rebuilding my categorizations from a save in 2019, i got the same.
Filed a ticket and, if i remember right, that issue was known and no fix available.
So figured out a workaround for restored categories: duplicate everything to another temp folder. Once duplicated my ability to rename is restored. Downside was took time.
Sounds like you are having similar issue. System vs User categories. And as for main issue, did you try the rename with suffix to address youir issue?
Asking because categories need some luv, but these are long-standing issues, and not priority it seems. So workarounds are all we DAZ users have.
Never saw fixed in change-log.
As for why some don't have this issue and some do, would need investigation.
Think i have over the years renamed as a 'workaround' maybe 25 folders?
Subject to the CC 3.0 license terms a store could produce its own variant of the sample script above to add the store's chosen details, which the instalaltion (if they make the product DIM-friendly) could then use to make sure the store was valid before importing the metadata - the ,dsa files that match the metadata file in each Daz DIM product show how this can be done. That would also mean that the products would gain the right-click/thoubnail click More information option (for example, my Renderosity products use that to open the store product page).