That's independent of metadata... The value of Preferred Base is defined in Wearable's *.dsf file. Auto-Fit plugin will detect it and show the dialogue box if Wearable's Preferred Base is different from the selected figure.

As long as the required clone files could be found in data folder, you'll see the clones in the dropdown list.

Hello,
I'm trying to learn how to create metadata for a product. At first, I tried with 'Content DB editor' but I couldn't do it because I couldn't find enough documentation to understand how to do it.
I then tried Content Package Assist but it doesn't allow me to create metadata, only to make my zip compatible with the DIM installer, and that's not enough for what I'm looking for.
I then tried 'Install Manager Package Maker Version 2', a ShareCG product from Chokaphi that allows you to create some metadata, but it's either very incomplete or I couldn't get it to work.

Then I wanted to test Content Wizard, so I made a first try with a simple product, a "https://www.sdebstore.com/collections/free-stuff/products/shirtdress-g8f_free"; dress, and apparently it corresponds to what I'm looking for.

But I ran into several problems. I'm not going to tell you all about them in one go, but one after the other as I find the answers. (if you need the product I'm having trouble with, please let me know).

My first problem was with the stores.
I have 5 predefined stores in Content Wizard (Local Users, Daz3D, Renderosity, ShareCG and CGTrader). How do I define other stores like 'sdebStore', 'Renderotica', 'Render-hub' etc?
I've solved the problem in the '\data\RiverSoft Art\Common\RSSmartContentConstants.dsa' file, lines 344 to 351.
Just add the store on line 348 (e.g. 'sdebStore'), the prefix on line 349 (e.g. 'SB') and the store URL on line 351 (e.g. 'https://www.sdebstore.com';).

My second problem, again with a free SdB product (https://www.sdebstore.com/collections/free-stuff/products/bigpuff-earrings-g8f-g9-free)
after filling in the 'Product' page, I click on 'Analyze' (image 1) and it doesn't work (see images 2 and 3).

I've included a screenshot of the CW log (image 4) and attached the Daz3D log.

Again, do I need to make any changes to '\data\RiverSoft Art\Common\RSSmartContentConstants.dsa' as I've seen that line 1253 has the definition of the variable DEFAULT_CHARACTER_ANALYSIS and that it contains no reference to G9. If this is the case, what should I indicate, as G9s are not defined as male or female.

Thank you

* translated with Deepl

Problem solved, I added the following lines:
// Modification for Genesis 9
  genesis 9' : { category : ['/Default/Figures/People/Female/Real World', '/Default/Figures/People/Male/Real World'],
                                     compatibility : ['/Genesis 9/Female', '/Genesis 9/Male'], // always female first
                                     gender: ['Female', 'Male'],
                                     acronym: "G9",
                                     generation : 9
                                   },
it seems to work.

Autofit uses metadata => Necessary metadata is missing.

crosswind said:

Have to clarify something -:

1. A geoshell has geometry with dummy facet but with no 'physical mesh', you see no polycount on it in DS. Its 'mesh' derives from its Parent (a Genesis, a Hair, a Prop, etc.) with multi-resolution (Base or HR+SubD). It can be exported because it has 'geometry', and its mesh resolution derived from its Parent will be 'physicalized' when exporting. That's why you can see polycount in Blender. If you set Resolution Level of geoshell's Parent to Base, you even can use a full geoshell with Offset Dist. 0 for sculpting in Blender and import obj back to is Parent as a morph.

2. A geoshell does not have UV of its own, similar to the 'mesh' above, it derives UV Sets from its Parent. That's why all UV Sets you see from a geoshell are stored in the data folder of its Parent. Even if you make it a unique UV, you always save UV Set to its Parent data folder.

3. You don't need to save a Figure/Prop asset of the 'geoshell garment' you made, saving a Wearable Preset to the user-facing folder is good enough. It's not like 'mesh garments' that have physical geometry data... if you don't save asset, all the geometry data will be saved in *.duf file...doomed. If you save a geoshell asset, open its dsf file, you'll see the geometry section is the same as the part in Wearable preset duf file, and all Zero value (no data of vertices, weight, etc.).

If you own the products from 'hameleon' from Rendo, you may play around with them. He's a veteran of making shell garments. I've ever learnt a lot from him.

Again, it is a response like this that makes me pleased I started this thread - all good information that I was not aware of. 

Yes, I have a couple of Hameleon products too and now I wonder whether they are shells or they need to be applied to shells? I'm not at my PC right now so will look later. 

By the way, I've also noticed that R-_-_-hub has some free "clothing" that I'm pretty sure are of the Hameleon type.

Have to clarify something -:

1. A geoshell has geometry with dummy facet but with no 'physical mesh', you see no polycount on it in DS. Its 'mesh' derives from its Parent (a Genesis, a Hair, a Prop, etc.) with multi-resolution (Base or HR+SubD). It can be exported because it has 'geometry', and its mesh resolution derived from its Parent will be 'physicalized' when exporting. That's why you can see polycount in Blender. If you set Resolution Level of geoshell's Parent to Base, you even can use a full geoshell with Offset Dist. 0 for sculpting in Blender and import obj back to is Parent as a morph.

2. A geoshell does not have UV of its own, similar to the 'mesh' above, it derives UV Sets from its Parent. That's why all UV Sets you see from a geoshell are stored in the data folder of its Parent. Even if you make it a unique UV, you always save UV Set to its Parent data folder.

3. You don't need to save a Figure/Prop asset of the 'geoshell garment' you made, saving a Wearable Preset to the user-facing folder is good enough. It's not like 'mesh garments' that have physical geometry data... if you don't save asset, all the geometry data will be saved in *.duf file...doomed. If you save a geoshell asset, open its dsf file, you'll see the geometry section is the same as the part in Wearable preset duf file, and all Zero value (no data of vertices, weight, etc.).

If you own the products from 'hameleon' from Rendo, you may play around with them. He's a veteran of making shell garments. I've ever learnt a lot from him.

I keep losing track of this thread, but I finally caught it while on my computer, so I'll be able to try and break down things in a more organized way. As others have explained, consider a Geoshell as an extra  "layer" of skin atop your character.

You decide...

• How close or far from the body this layer is by decreasing or increasing the Mesh Offset (select the Geoshell, then in the parameters tab > Mesh Offset).
• What parts should be visible, and which do you want to hide by toggling the visibility by surface or face groups (also in the parameters tab > visibility).
  • So if you want to create a geoshell bra, you don't need the hands, face, mouth, nails & legs. So you can turn off those surfaces or face groups and keep the parts you need.
• Once you turn off the visibility of the parts you don't need, you will want to create a cutout opacity mask, which you'll apply under surfaces, to further hide things more smoothly.

The Process:

 I'm going to use G9 as an example.

1. You export a Genesis 9 from DAZ.
2. Import it into whatever software you'll be using to create textures.
3. "Paint" the clothing directly onto the figure. Export all those maps.
4. Export at least one map (diffuse, maybe) without a background. Then, in an image editor of your choice, turn that into an opacity mask (black and white image. White = visible, Black = not visible).
5. Return to DAZ. Load a character and create a geoshell (Create > New Geometry Shell).
6. Set it up by determining the offset and visibility. You may also need to apply the Iray Uber Shader.
7. Now, set all your maps on the corresponding surfaces, including the cutout opacity.
8. You can now save that as a prop asset (edit > save as > support assets > prop assets).
9. If you want it to load with a morph on the figure (micro pressure or something like this), then you can now save it as a wearable preset. When the window pops out, go to the shaping tab and select that morph. Then click accept, and that's it!

Richard Haseltine said:

You should be able to cancel the AutoFit dilogue, set none as the fit to target, and parent/adjust it without needing to go through an OBJ export/import.

Thanks for the reply, but I have done that a thousands time or so, buys like g9 hairs to use w my G8.1 all the time, and use older generation hairs on my G8.1 all the time. When I load the hair without having g8.1 selected, move it into place, resize ect, then choose parent to head it gets deformed and lowered to look like some sideburns/beard, and it's GLUED to where it is, NO way to move it up or down or any place. I tried many times, over and over, and even tried to parent it to the main G8.1 - same - glued beard. So there is something wrong w the model, not that I know much about such things, but to me a model that can't be skipped autofit and parent to something then there is something wrong. I have never in my years of using daz had this happen. I do it right, just trust me, as I have done so with success thousands of times. Until this is solved there should say, on the sales page: please note that the skalp can't be used on g8.1 unless you want to move it manually in place for every changed pose.  

You should be able to cancel the AutoFit dilogue, set none as the fit to target, and parent/adjust it without needing to go through an OBJ export/import.

SofaCitizen said:

The images in that folder will be the thumbnails for your products which you will see when browsing Smart Content and I also believe when using the Products area of Content Library. The DSX files contain a record of all the metadata in the smart content. I don't think Daz would need to access these after the product install outside of using re-import metadata in Content DB Maintenance - however they are designed to be stored there so they could be used for something else I suppose. Also, if you manually edit the metadata then these will get recreated. As far as I know the dsa files are useless - but they take up so little space so deleteing them won't make much difference.

Exactly, any product level thumbnail will be gone...

Affirmatively : 1）If one needs to re-import metadata, *.dsx files in there will be used; 2) If one modify product metadata by using Content DB Editor with the option of Auto-Export, dsx file will be updated. If dsx was deleted, a new dsx file will be save to user's Daz Library rather than Daz Library where the dsx file used to be. So it's not really good. 3) dsa is not a big deal as you said, very small file size.

crosswind said:

OP, do you use Smart Content ? If you haven't ever and will never use Smart Content, technically you can delete them. But if you do use Smart Content, even just for reviewing what products you've installed, NEVER ever delete them.

Not just Smart Content, a specific pane that uses the Content Management System, but the whole CMS (including presets tabs in property panes, Categories and products in the Content Library  pane, and some other features that rely on content type data). However...

Because all the metadata from the products are stored in *.dsx files, and all the product level thumbnails in Smart Content are from the *.jpg and *.png files in that folder. If you delete them, you'll be crazy when you open Smart Content or when you need to re-import metadata if there's anything wrong in cms database.

The non-image files are not actively used, but the .dsx files are needed if one wishes to reimport metdata at a later date. The folder is also used for any exported userdata files, again not referred to live but needed for a reimport.

So, be cautious before taking action of 'deleting'...

The images in that folder will be the thumbnails for your products which you will see when browsing Smart Content and I also believe when using the Products area of Content Library. The DSX files contain a record of all the metadata in the smart content. I don't think Daz would need to access these after the product install outside of using re-import metadata in Content DB Maintenance - however they are designed to be stored there so they could be used for something else I suppose. Also, if you manually edit the metadata then these will get recreated. As far as I know the dsa files are useless - but they take up so little space so deleteing them won't make much difference.

I'm a heavy user of SC though I also started from using CL many years ago. I used to be very happy with CL when I had 1000 products. Then I was not that happy when I had 5000 products. It was not easy to search and locate the items that I need from Daz / Rendo products, as I had no way at that time to automatically install the products from Rendo with metadata other than a direct dump....

When I had 10K products, I was driven mad, as well as my fingers and my mouse. I had to click many many times to see the thumnail of an item, e.g. to find a good gown from Daz / Rendo prodcuts. Though my memory was not bad at that time, it was still cumbersome and difficult. Then, after Content Wizard was released, I eased and started to very much rely on SC. It used to take appr. 10 minutes to find a pair of shoes that I need, now it only takes 1 min. at most. Then more time could be spent on my scenes...

But anyway, it's pretty natural that people have the preferences of their own in terms of assets management, as well as the pain points with different ways. If one is not happy with the way he could manage, probably he won't be happy while buiding the scenes, let alone happy rendering.
So just go for what you like to do....Only when one really feels 'the pain points' some day, he / she might have chance to think of how to improve or making some change...

OP, do you use Smart Content ? If you haven't ever and will never use Smart Content, technically you can delete them. But if you do use Smart Content, even just for reviewing what products you've installed, NEVER ever delete them.

Because all the metadata from the products are stored in *.dsx files, and all the product level thumbnails in Smart Content are from the *.jpg and *.png files in that folder. If you delete them, you'll be crazy when you open Smart Content or when you need to re-import metadata if there's anything wrong in cms database.

So, be cautious before taking action of 'deleting'...

miladyderyni_173d399f47 said:

Hey, I picked this up a few months ago and started to play with it yesterday. Of the items I tried, it will only work with Force Convert. I think it is because I didn't use the main Characters directory  (Figures?)but the product folders. I originally added that main directory and it showed everything - castles to animals to V4 & Company bases themselves and it freaked out/intimidated me. So I started over cherry picking the folders of stuff I really wanted converted. 

Should I have just left it pointed to Figures and let the script sort all those items out as to what was or wasn't clothing? I have one of the logs saved, in case it sounds to you like there is an actual issue. However this is more likely a Me Problem not a Script Bug. I have always had a bad learning curve with software. To me, the log looks like it was expecting the file paths to include "Character." 

I do like the results I have so far. It's a good product. I just need to figure out what I missed in the manual to use it properly.

When you add a folder, CC should have filtered out items based on the reported content type.  It sounds like the metadata in your DS is corrupted (unfortunately, very common), and CC could not determine the content type of object.

SofaCitizen said:

PerttiA said:

'Smart' content may seem like a solution, but is it really when one has a massive library.

I do have to respectfully disagree on this point tho. "Smart Content" absolutely SHOULD be the solution to larger libraries - database-based searching has the power to crush file-based searching easily. However, it hasn't been implemented well and so it doesn't work as I believe it should. In my opinion all products sold on the Daz Store should not only have complete and accurate metadata but they should also have more complete tags/keywords/taxonomy. For example, I should be able to go to my Smart Content search field and type something like "Shoulder-length hair fringe G8F" to find the hair I am thinking about even if I have forgotten the product name of "Harriet Hair" (or somthing similar, I didn't check to see if that product exists). Likewise, I should be able to search for "warm smile" in the parameters tab and see ALL the available warm smiles - even if the PA named their expression unhelpfully, e.g. "10" or "PA BEP WS".

That was part of the point I was trying to make, when one goes to 'smart' content, looking for clothing and/or hair and gets 1000+ results, which it may not even show all because there are too many, does it really work?

I started with PC's in the 80's and organizing something in a 'tree' comes naturally, so I have categorized for example the clothing to separate folders, based on the type of clothing they are. Easy to climb the tree until one gets to "Swimwear", "Uniform", "Historical" or whatever.
If a category gets too big, I can look at it and divide it to smaller categories, like "OnePiece", "TwoPiece" or "Granny"

PerttiA said:

When one uses manual installation, organizing content doesn't take but a few seconds.

I would partially agree but also point out that someone doing that does have to have a little knowledge of what can be changed and what cannot and so not ideal for new users. It is certainly good that this is an option for those that prefer to do this.

There will never be a standard that fits everybody. Some want to have 'vanity' folders and others hate them, some feel that the product belongs to Props, others think it is Environment.

This I also agree with. If I browsed my content library more often then I would get annoyed at vanity folders - although someone in another thread did post a good comment about why those are necessary.

'Smart' content may seem like a solution, but is it really when one has a massive library.

I do have to respectfully disagree on this point tho. "Smart Content" absolutely SHOULD be the solution to larger libraries - database-based searching has the power to crush file-based searching easily. However, it hasn't been implemented well and so it doesn't work as I believe it should. In my opinion all products sold on the Daz Store should not only have complete and accurate metadata but they should also have more complete tags/keywords/taxonomy. For example, I should be able to go to my Smart Content search field and type something like "Shoulder-length hair fringe G8F" to find the hair I am thinking about even if I have forgotten the product name of "Harriet Hair" (or somthing similar, I didn't check to see if that product exists). Likewise, I should be able to search for "warm smile" in the parameters tab and see ALL the available warm smiles - even if the PA named their expression unhelpfully, e.g. "10" or "PA BEP WS".

I would agree that spending time organising files and folders is not fun for a lot of people. I would prefer things to be nicely arranged in their correct place but after a while I realised this was a losing battle unless I just stopped acquiring stuff so I gave up and let DIM put stuff where it pleased.  However, this is why Daz QA should always ensure acurate and correct metadata is present in all products before they are released. Then it doesn't matter as much that the PAs do not put stuff in consistent folders as the Smart Content search/navigation would still work.

FSMCDesigns said:

Personally I would get the ManFriday morph converter and transfer my 8.1 character over to G9

Thank you so much for the reply . I'm staying on G8 and G8.1 as I have invested so much in those. I managed to get it to work by making the skalp hair visible in the view port, then export as obj, then import, strangely enough it kept all the hair materials and everything.Then I could w no issues parent it to the head. There were 2 morphs that was lost in the obj of course, but those I can most likely make dform morphs to get similar recult. She looks amazing in the hair . Another problem is that the hair materials is hirecal materials, or whatever it's called, to tired to gogle. So I have to load a G9, load the hair, load the materials, all of them, them save as material preset. NOT a fan of the h materials. But I made a quick edit of the top coat and the hair diffuse color to get a nice look. If someone knows of a way to make the hair scalp work with parenting to the head without having to export to obj I would be very grateful . Will share an artwork w the hair and my charcter in it when it's done to show that it looks great even w this solution. 

As for Shrinkwrap in Blender, you may feel free to learn and try. No harm indeed.  Just a reminder, if you wrap a banana, a bust, monkey Susanne or sth., more or less you can get what you want. For wrapping a full body Genesis figure from Daz and then send back for creating a morph, that'll be a different thing. The resolution of floating mesh has to be high enough otherwise the wrapping will be in vain, but in that way you're not able to import it back to DS, let alone various artifacts you may encounter, etc. (G8's geometry is still unique to a certain extent...) 

I'm also a Blender user, but just imagine a modifier from a free software comparing to a pro. software with the price from 100 USD ( ZWrap plugin for ZB ) to 1500 USD (Node-based, flow wrapping for Expressions, etc. nearly all-mighty ).

...

He said he did that... otherwise he had no way to have obj imported and saw that distortion.  I've not used Legacy for a long time but I tried it again with these wings. Only when setting wrong Scale values, I could see 'distortion'. 

Thank you! Your method has meant a considerable improvement in the results I have obtained, there is no doubt about that. However, it still doesn't work.

You see, my model is a 1.65 meter (5.41 f) G8.1 Female and the Morningstar Wings are exaggeratedly larger than her by default.

Scaling the wing bones has given me results and relocating the entire rig, but, in my opinion, in the hypothetical case that a human being could develop wings, the most suitable bone to support that structure would be the scapula. I'm not an anatomy expert, but this is fantasy! 

The point is that with the scaling of the bones I can adapt the wings much better, but they do not coincide with the scapulae. Once I have the mesh of the model and the wings in Blender, adapting both figures so that they "connect" is not very complex.

I make a slight deformation in the scapulae of the model that I import as a morph and everything is perfect, but when I alter the wings, apply new ones to the model and add the morph, they lose all the height and scaling information that I gave them in Blender. The Morningstar joints remain at the height of the character's thighs.

Thanks to NOT exporting as Wavefront OBJ (Legacy) like you said, I no longer have the terrible distortion in the mesh, but they are still out of place.

I have exported the meshes of the original wings to Blender with Daz Studio preset at 100%, the ones adapted to my model, fit to the figure, unfit and I can't do it. The Genesis figure's morph works perfectly.

 

Okay, I understood what you wanted and ever did. So, do not use edit mode in Blender, use sculpting mode with Mask / Moving / Scaling, etc. I guessed that you might've made the vertices stretched or something...

Anyway, I tweaked the wings to make them placing on G8F's scapulae with smaller size in Blender, then sent back to DS ( non-Legacy ) and found no problem. Tested with morphs and poses, all fine.

P.S.: Better not do scaling / rigging or whatever on the wings in DS, that'll be cumbersome. You just touched the G8.XF figure and do all tweaking on the wings in Blender.