Metadata is not related to loading issues - those are down to issues in the .dsf or .duf files themselves. In this case, given the symptoms, I think the path in the .duf is probably //Runtime/Textures/SASE/Karma/SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg and the double / at the beginning is causing the first name to be skipped - in fact this issue is known to affect the eye 7 materials from this vendor, as they used an existing file (with the issue) as a template for future sets rather than saving a fresh preset each time. DS used not to care, but changes to enable it to handle more characters in paths introduced this behaviour of treating two /s as an escape. You can manually edit the .duf files for eye 7 to remove the double characters, but I would check for updats first and report the issue to support if there is no update.

OK, that's good since it works!

As for the "another issue", I only encountered the similar issue when the CMS connection was for some reason lost...  Pls check the CMS connection... (and you cannot see the installed product in Smart Content if cms connection is lost...)

And also, pls go to runtime\support folder, search DSX file of the installed product (by SKU or name...), see if DSX file was sucessfully created or not... If it was, check it with Notepad++ and re-import the dsx file by using the script in this thread - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/618456/add-to-smart-content

Then try another installation of a product with Content Wizard...

@mding, I have had to resort to 'uninstalling' and 'reinstalling' some products through DIM, without deleting it in the Products, before the fixed missing or erroneous metadata for Smart Content shows up. But it doesn't always work. There are a few items that no matter how many things I try remain stuck only in Content Library. And the ones that keep the bad categories, along with the new/corrected data. Especially on my MacBook Pro M1 that crashed when I was adding sub-categories.

I've gotten it to work. If you open up the HEAT pane in DS, and have the HEAT bridge open and logged in, you should see "HEAT Bridge is connected" in the HEAT pane. I thought it wasn't working at first, because I tried to import several animations and nothing happened, but there was just some weird delay and ten or so different import dialogues opened up all at once. After I cleared those out, I could hit import in the HEAT bridge and it would send it straight over to DS.

Odd... but first of all, Edit Metadata on the Product with which the item you categorized, see the assigned Category is really there or not, on Asset tab. And remember to Refresh "All Products" in Smart Content as well.

Haha. At least in my case, there seems to be a pretty severe delay between telling the Heat bridge to import something and DS receiving the message, because ten or so import windows suddenly popped up all at once.

Ivy said:

SimonJM said:

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

I have a suspicion I know what  the issue is, the bridge does not seem to work under Windows 7. 

you have to have a unreal account that it connects to  https://docs.heat.tech/getting-started-the-heat-marketplace/quick-start

That only seems to be true IF you're using it with Unreal. I installed the Daz/Blender/Unity bridge, and was never asked for an Unreal account. I haven't yet figured out how to actually import animations to a Genesis figure in DS, but as far as I can tell there's no actual requirement to have an Unreal account.

I also saw this in the FAQ, which is potentially of interest, even if it's a little unclear what it actually means.

generalgameplaying said:

Such a subscription would only make sense, if i can import to daz studio for instance, and keep using those. But then export to blender? A game?

Assumption could be, similar to using in games, that you can keep selling the game, if you had the proper license at the time of export. But is it the case? What with DAZ Studio?

I see questionmarks...

 

(Looks like one of the bridging plugins, so the license question really is important.)

The animations are covered under Unreal Engines ELUA https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal

Daz studio has nothing to do with licensing other than they offer you a market place to buy the animation from unreal

Actually the more I think about it, Daz probably generates the metadata and passes it to Postgres.  Since I can't find much documentation about how they interact with one another, I'm sorta left speculating.  But given Postgre's usual application as a CMS it's more than likely just responsible for maintaining the database, rather than generating anything at all.  If anyone knows for certain I'd be curious to know, but it's not that big of deal.  Never hurts to kn,ow though. :)

Richard Haseltine said:

You can edit categories without issue, a safer method of editing locations is to use links rather than moving the actual files.

Hi Richard, thanks for the tip.  I haven't had a chance yet to begin organizing my library, I've been super busy lately.  I'll certainly take a look at links first before doing any manual edits to physically move things.  That said, I've stumbled onto a particular package that has really stumped me in regards to what Daz Studio is looking for and what the metadata says.  Rather than make a new topic in the Nuts and Bolts area, I figured I'd run the question through here first, although a moderator can feel free to remove the question if they would prefer I make a new topic over there.  This is loosely related to this thread because it's another reason why I believe metadata is being stored or pulled from another location outside of just the .dsx in /runtime/support

I need to make a new character so I was looking through more of my content lately that I haven't even opened yet since purchasing, and found a really weird inconsistency in SASE Karma for Josephene 8.

I never would have noticed anything since the logfile is not showing any error, but a Missing Asset dialog box pops up in the lower right corner of Daz Studio.  I haven't ever encountered a package for Daz that I haven't been able to fix missing files for, except this one (this is technically not true since I merely copied the file and put it where Daz Studio is searching for it, but that's simply a work-around in my opinion).  When Daz says it can't find a file it's either because the file is in the incorrect location or it truly just doesn't exist.  In either event you can stop Daz's fussing about it by correcting the metadata (and either removing the entry for the missing asset, if it's truly missing, or by correcting the broken path).  The file in question for Karma is no different, Daz is searching for it in the wrong location.

Here's where I'm confused... and what's rather interesting...

Digging into the metadata's code, the file does exist where the metadata tells Daz to look for it.  The rundown is that Daz wants to look for this file in:

D:\My Daz3d Library\textures\SASE\Karma\

The actual location of the file, where the manifest told DIM to install it to:

D:\My Daz3d Library\runtime\textures\SASE\Karma\

Normally I would just update the metadata's .dsx file in runtime\support to provide the correct location of the file and do database maintenence to fix this up.  But according to the .dsx, Daz should be looking for the file exactly where it is, in the runtime environment.  There's only one reference to the file in question, SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg, and the support asset is coded as such:

(Snippet taken from \Runtime\Support\DAZ_3D_68489_SASE_Karma_for_Josephene_8.dsx)

<SupportAsset VALUE="/Runtime/Textures/SASE/Karma/SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg"/>

This is the correct value, and should also be the value being passed onto Daz Studio by Postgres/CMS in regards to the file's location.  If the CMS only generates the metadata from the provided .dsx file from the product, why is it searching for SASEKarmaEyesB_1007.jpg using anything but the path defined by the .dsx..?  Which is how this is loosely connected to this thread, where I've asked if the .dsx and manifest are the only files which need editing in regards to moving things around in the library... :)

generalgameplaying said:

Such a subscription would only make sense, if i can import to daz studio for instance, and keep using those. But then export to blender? A game?

The Heat Bridge also exports to Blender and Unity.

Such a subscription would only make sense, if i can import to daz studio for instance, and keep using those. But then export to blender? A game?

Assumption could be, similar to using in games, that you can keep selling the game, if you had the proper license at the time of export. But is it the case? What with DAZ Studio?

I see questionmarks...

(Looks like one of the bridging plugins, so the license question really is important.)

If you can save the HEAT animation as animated pose file (.Duf)  it would seem that the "import action"  feature of Diffeo would work.

Good morning, I am a self proclaimed digital artist and I've been using Poser for well over a decade. With Poser I was using Reality 4 to export and render with Luxrender so my renders stood apart from firefly renders., I knew about DAZ and had friends in the art community that used it but I stuck with Poser. I was too smart and too good to be served by a free program when the one i was using was used by professionals and I would see commercials on TV that were clearly done with Poser.

Well, a few years ago, Reality was discontinued and I went into hiatus, I had just spent 8 months converting my characters, textures etc to work with Luxrender to get the results I wanted and was very pleased with mysellf. So after almost 3 years of not spending time in Poser because of this, i picked it up again and decided to just convert my stuff back and use Superfly and frankly, its nicer than I expected. I got some really nice renders of old scenes (its how I practice and compare) but then something hit me. I REALLY wanted to use IRAY, as an avid nVidia fan. 

So here we are, I installed DAZ this week, started trying to learn it (the interface is NOT as polished as Poser IMHO) but the real gem came when I was able to point Daz at my 68GB Poser Runtime folder I have on an external SSD so I could use it on multiple PCs. Now, when I import my characters, the clothes and hair doesnt fit right, I will probably have to recreate and save them for DAZ,  BUT I am all in now. I was able to load in my character, hit Render and with no manipulation at all, I had amazing images of my characters rendered in Iray. 

I DREAD learing the DAZ interface, some very basic things I need are almost impossible to find but I am here to stay, and hope to meet and learn from you all.

https://www.deviantart.com/vadenkwinn

VK

Eyelashes are a separate figure in G8, so they need to conform. In diffeomorphic you can use the trasfer tool which also allows a selection, to mask out unwanted areas. Be aware that actor morphs as FBM FHM will require morphing aramatures. In general though the best and easy workflow is to import a baked shape via dbz.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Morphs/Transfer Shapekeys

https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2023/12/new-way-to-do-morphing-armatures.html

It's purely optional. I personally convert all my models' hair (scalp, body, pubic, etc) to particles to save file space. Some of the polygonal hair, especially on the head, makes the file size balloon, because all facial morphs/shape keys you import should also be applied to the scalp or facial hair so everything moves naturally. If you just convert it to particles, you don't have to worry about transferring morphs, and it really saves space. I have cut a 700K file down to just 12K doing this. If you don't want your new particle hairs to be affected by simulations or force fields, you can go under the particle settings for each group and turn it off: Particle Properties -> Field Weights -> All -> 0

Leana said:

Content Library tab displays the actual files on your drive. Moving the files is not a problem for Content Library, as long as they stay in your content directory. Well, for Poser-format content you have to keep them inside one of the main Poser folders, and for DS-format content don't put it under Runtime or Data, but those are basically the only limitations.

However moving the actual files and folders it will break the metadata links to them, so it will break your Smart Content. So you'll need to edit the product metadata so it knows where the files now are.

I guess I'm not being very clear... lol.  I edit the metadata with applications designed for editing raw code, like Atom or Notepad++.  I've fixed lots of packages this way.  I'm just not certain if the only files Daz Studio needs to be edited are the manifest and the .dsx in /Runtime/Support or if there's another one somewhere. 

I suppose I'll just trial by fire it since editing metadata straight in Daz Studio is super tedious (to me, anyway).  I accomplish the same task in a fraction of the time by just going straight to the source of the metadata.  Although I realize most people wouldn't be able to read those files, it's pretty straight forward to me.  A lot of server applications are configured in a similar way which is something I did for a living for a while.  A lot of linux applications are also configured out of text editors.

So the manifest file (for DIM), and the .dsx file in /Runtime/Support if I'd like to change any locations of Smart Content items?  Is there any other file containing metadata that would need edits?

Content Library tab displays the actual files on your drive. Moving the files is not a problem for Content Library, as long as they stay in your content directory. Well, for Poser-format content you have to keep them inside one of the main Poser folders, and for DS-format content don't put it under Runtime or Data, but those are basically the only limitations.

However moving the actual files and folders it will break the metadata links to them, so it will break your Smart Content. So you'll need to edit the product metadata so it knows where the files now are.

Maybe the user is looking for content inside Daz Studio using Daz Connect. In which case, he needs to sign into his account from within Daz Studio. That can be setup in the Preferences to automatically log in, and download metadata, if desired.

The default to import a HD mesh is a multires modifier, that will allow you to animate and pose fine since the HD layer is only used for rendering, not in the viewport. Of course rendering will be slow depending on the HD level, but this is not a issue for still images.