Hello,
I followed a 2021 blogpost to import several outfits in Blender.
https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/2021/07/changing-outfits.html ;
The post says manually rigging the character is the only way to get FK/IK, etc. 
I did the manual rigging, but repeating this process for every new character sounds like a pain.
Is there an easier way? Should I just create 1 instance of a character for each outfit in Daz?
I am new to Daz3D/Diffeomorphic, so please excuse any obvious miss on my end.
Thanks

crosswind said:

Only saving a Mat. Preset takes a long time ?

1st, where is the mapped folder that you mentioned located ?  Then have you tried setting up a My Daz Library locally and save your presets to this local Library path ?

For me as I said above it is not just Mats. It is also Scenes, Subsets, Wearables, and Poses. Hierarchical Mats,Hierarchical Poses, Shapes, and well all the rest ALL save as normal in under a second. So this isn't really about were the folder.

But yes, if by local you mean saving to the C:Drive, it doesn't matter, same thing happens if I add the original "My Library" that DAZ puts in the Documents Folder (via C:\\Users\\.......etc.) with Content Directory Manager, the same thing will happen with files saved into that library.

Also of note again, this is technically NOT a FILE SAVE issue, as the file itself will write instantly where ever it is saved inside the Librarys that are active in "DAZ Studio Formats", this can be observed by those of this happens to by browsing to the Folder(dir) before saving.... This is all about DAZ Studio getting HUNG UP while trying to write the "Default/Saved Files/" Category.  and It also happens when Saving a NEW figure/Prop Asset IF "Set Catagory is Checked.

Also this is not an Anti-virus Issue (for one I have exceptions for DAZ Studio and PostgreSQL Server, and if it was it would effect ALL Preset types, not a select few) which brings me to my next point.

The REAL problem is caused by PostgreSQL Server (a thread of it) getting queued while trying to write that category. This too is observable with Task Manager open and expanding the DAZ Studio Application that is saving (I use instances which I can still work in while this is happening) and expanding it to see the PostgreSQL Server (Not Responding) Which can then be right Clicked on and "Go to Details" Where you can see the thread and use Analyze Wait Chain, to get a little more info...) Now I also mentioned Instances for a reason. The moment I saved that file I can use In my Instance while I "Wait" for the other to finish writing that Category, I will Also note that WHILE this is happening, NO Copy/Pasting of Files in File Explorer can be done, if  you try It will Hang too and basically get Queued and do it when DAZ is finally finished Writing that Metadata to the "/Daz 3D/Application/Data/Daz 3D/Content Database.  Of which Mine is currently located on my F:Drive, in the past I did try putting it back on the C:Drive, and the results where the same.  Now a NEW Content Database can be made, and eliminate this problem completely, as everything will save instantly the way it should, But once you switch back to the MAIN, you will not have metadata, and STILL need to manually add it in. Trying to Save over that file that Instanty saved in the NEW "Content Database" will result in the same thing Happening, a very LONG save. So there really is no point in doing that for this purpose. Though there certainly IS, a purpose for having multiple "Content Database" locations...

So why do many people never have this problem? Simply put, their "LOCAL" librarys are not big enough.  YET, and I stress that.

The current size of my "Content Database" where the Metadata is stored located "F:/Daz 3D/Applications/Data/Daz 3D/Content Database" is 21.4Gigs Total.

Base Folder= 21.1Gigs

1 Folder= 6.03Megs

12024 Folder= 6.03Megs

12029 Folder= 6.15Megs

16384 Folder=21.0Gigs

pgql_tmp Folder=0 bytes

Thank you both: it's not a problem between my keyboard and my chair then  

I'll try to send a ticket later (likely tomorrow or monday) to see if a fix is possible (it's hopefully just a simple mistake made while packaging the product and the correct cameras are still stored on a computer elsewhere).

@memcneil70 > I bough the product a week or two ago, when one of the offer was 'Buy a new release, get a big discount on Asian-themed product' and I don't have any problem with the metadata on my end.

Yes, I see the same. In the .duf file, all cameras have the same position. (Metadata is okay for me).

The render settings do change the lighting, presumably to make the most of the corresponding camera (render settings 04 and 05 are identical, but that could be by design).

@Elor, I have it but at first I couldn't find it! I finally tracked it down in my Content Library without any metadata. For a product released in 2017 this is crazy. I selected the Iray version did a quick metadata load for the set, cameras and render settings. I may have to do a Content Library Maintenance Save, then uninstall and reinstall the product for it to show up in Smart Content. But I can't get any of the cameras right now to work, nor the render settings to adjust anything.

I don't have a clue what happened to this @Stonemason product, but this is a mess. But thank you for bringing it to my attention so I could do manual metadata. I think a report to DAZ is needed as they are responsible for metadata. Camera movements and render settings, no clue how to be sure.

Mary

Edit to add: After the uninstall and reinstall my metadata brought the product into Smart Content finally. But the cameras are still the same shot, half way up the hill, cutting off the arch.

Ron Knights said:

I just got done reinstalling all my content again. Then I re-imported all my metadata.

Perhaps I should have done that first? Maybe the metadata was outdated because I had installed and uninstalled so much content?

I can find all my content now. So I can go back and redo Categories.

Yeah sometimes daz loses stuff..

This is why you want to use the same preset, Daz then reverses the chnages made on export when it imports. Otherwise you are having to manually set the topions to invert any effect. You also need to make sure that Blender is similarly not making any changes on import unless it reverses them on export.

This https://www.daz3d.com/shenandoah-for-genesis ? It's for the original Genesis, if iit isn't showing with Filter By Context  checked in Smart Content that may just be a metadata issue.

hillside3d said:

Recently I noticed that a lot of products are missing in smart content.
So I asked google and the daz forum for advice...and I couldn't believe what I saw.

Appearantly a lot of products found in the official daz store don't have the necessary metadata to work properly with their own software.
What's baffling me, is that daz isn't adressing this issue.

This wouldn't bother me if it would only be a few products. But in the last purchase I made, almost half the products I bought were affected. And I bought a lot.

Does the community just accept this? 

A lot of products are missing in smart content. - 

Yep-, always have been.  SmartContent is an idea that has never worked up to the way it was promoted, and everytime DAZ acquires a new bunch of existing products from other stores, the vast majority of them have never been processed into smart content.  

What's baffling me, is that daz isn't adressing this issue.

DAZ hasn't updated their usuer manual in nearly 13 years old, even though it only addresses how to use the no longer licensed 3DL renderer and lists the pre-iray Genesis 2 as the latest figure base.  A large percentage of the catalog don't have read-mes in the product wiki. Why?  I can't speculate as forumn rules don't allow us to do that. 

Does the community just accept this? 

Well, a lot of us simply don't use SmartContent, given that nothing sold by a non-DAZ store is going to work with it anyway, so those of use who don't generally don't care.  For those who do, there are some products that let you convert outside product to SmartContent, but it's quite labor intensive.  Outside of that, it's DAZ's store and their product, so there's not much we can do otherwise except just not buy here.    

I am slowly bringing content that I’ve installed on my laptop over to the newer desktop that I bought last summer.  On the laptop,

• I install from the DAZ3D store to an external HDD using DIM.
   
• I install content from other stores (Renderosity, RuntimeDNA, etc.) manually, create a Daz Studio Product for each content and add basic metadata so that I can view the content in Smart Content as well as the Content Library.

Last summer, after much deliberation, I installed all DAZ3D content onto the desktop using DIM rather than connecting the external HDD or copying the HDD’s files to the desktop.  About 1,300 of the 3,200 installed content, though, still have some or all of their items categorized in Lost and Found.

Today, I connected the external HDD to the desktop to finally explore how to deal with installed Poser content.  In Daz Studio (4.24.0.3) on the desktop, I can see the installed content in the HDD’s Poser Format in the Content Library with no problem.  However, I’d also like to see it in Smart Content as I can on the laptop.

Is there a file (or files) that I can copy from the laptop to the desktop so that Daz Studio shows the Poser content in Smart Content also?  UserData, perhaps?  Other?

I recently bought RiverSoft Art’s Content Wizard but it only works on zip files that are configured for Daz Studio; it won’t handle Poser configured zip files.  Or is there a way to use it to generate metadata for the Poser files so that the Poser content appears in Smart Content on the desktop?

Thanks in advance.

Richard Haseltine said:

Did you use the Blender preset for both exporting the OBJ and importing the morph? Did the Blender Import/Export leave all settings of the mesh alone? Somewhere, in DS or Blender, the X/Y axes are being swapped and possibly inverted but then the reverse step isn't being applied.

Thank you both for the suggestions to the both of you.

Very strangley It stops rotating if I scale it up in the morph loader for some reason... I ipmorted the morph with the blender option for geometry. If I leave the scaling at the default it imprts the morph and when I apply it it rotates, often through its self, (turning inside out to a 90 degree angle) but if I up the scale to 1000% and in the morph loader and apply it, its fine and applies the morph correclty without the model transforming axis. very strange...

any ideas why this is the case? I alway export on "to blender settings" and import back to daz "from blender" settings. I have never had this issue before. but better than nothing I guess.

EDIT: My bad I realised for some reason the X Y Z axis conversion keeps defaulting to a setting where Z and Y are swapped everytime I  load DAZ. not sure why it does it but I found the issue. Thank you.

ArtAngel said:

since 2014 California has been utilizing such and studying road usage charges. Since a ton of people went to green electric vehicles, California lost a bunch of gas tax money which is mainly used for road repair and maintenance. Lori Wilson recently authored a bill (AB 1421) which was passed which orders California to design a mileage tax system, study it, and report back with a plan to implement it. So California is considering a mileage tax, pending the January 2027 report. Also if anyone has a dummy (non-human) in their passenger seat (for cheating FasTrak) I might be interested in buying it to throw face-down on my front lawn for April 1st .

This is a vicious circle, as the main reason electric vehicle usage has become so high in California (over 35% of all EVs in the U.S.) is that the state currently has the highest gas prices in the U.S., currently nearly $7 a gallon, even higher than than runner up Hawaii which has to import all their fuel by boat.  Unfortunately, in the case of a mileage tax, the group that would be most affected would be the agriculture industry, which at over 100 billion annually accounts for over 12% of all produce grown in the U.S., and would cause yet another escalation of food costs across the entire country.  I'm a native Californian myself and have no intention of moving back there as the cost of living there has gotten beyond stupid... 

fayke-1 said:

So I took the time off today to figure this out, smoothed the ear as suggested. Worked faster and looks good, great. Now i'm fighting with brave's AI overlook trying to figure out how to get the obj from blender back into DAZ and recognizable as a genesis 9 figure again. AI is kinda stupid at times but I think it's figured out because the only good luck is dumb luck.

I needed to use the transfer utility to copy the face groups and surfaces to the no ears mesh BUT the no ears mesh facegroups in geometry editor's tool settings had a default group with 0 faces that was leftover from before the transfer utility was used. Deleting that made the H.material work.Also should note I had to change the scene identification for the no ears mesh to match base genesis 9 figure and manually create the surfaces (maybe not but i did this before using transfer utility so i'll mark it down just in case) using geometry editor.

This has been extremely frustrating and made me question my own existence and sanity, so hopefully this post helps some other newbie save themselves some time. Thanks for the info and for taking the time to read my frustrated word vomit.

You just need to make a G9 figure earless by using a Morph, so as barbult said,  you should've imported OBJ as a morph by using Morph Loader Pro rather than Transfer Utility (TU is mostly used for rigging conformers ~~ ), just like the 2nd screenshot I showed you above.

Then export the figure to Unity / UE as a game asset (direct export / import or by using Daz to Unity / Daz to Unreal bridges....).  Or maybe you want to decimate its mesh in Blender or by using https://www.daz3d.com/decimator-for-daz-studio

1138648241 said:

Choose the BSDF method. After performing Diffeomorphic import, a large number of halos and volume fog will appear.

Okay I'm not quite up on the jargon. Halos and Volume fog? 

Did you use the Blender preset for both exporting the OBJ and importing the morph? Did the Blender Import/Export leave all settings of the mesh alone? Somewhere, in DS or Blender, the X/Y axes are being swapped and possibly inverted but then the reverse step isn't being applied.

Diffeomorphic adds metadata for the tools to work, so it only works with figures exported and imported with diffeomorphic, not with figures imported or exported with other tools. Also it may not work if you change the rig structure by hand that seems the case in your description. You have to use the diffeomorphic tools to operate on the rig, thus the metadata is updated.

The easy way is to use easy import. Then you can reference the wiki to use the various tools by hand, including rigging.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Import/Easy Import DAZ

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Setup/Rigging

steps:

1. in daz studio export the dbz
2. in blender easy import with G9 preset
3. convert to MHX or rigify, you can't use auto-rig with diffeomorphic

Because you imported OBJ as a new figure into DS and the figure has a wrong Node Name ... then Mat. Presets cannot apply. 

Change its Node Name to Genesis8Female or Genesis8_1Female via Edit > Figure > Scene Identification... Correct Surface names with Geometry Editor, then Material Presets will work. However, since you recreated a new surface for ears but didn't recreate / imported any new UV Set for the Ears surface, you're not able to get correct textures on earless area...

I don't understand why you did the work in such a way of creating new ear surfaces... this way would be pretty cumbersome even if you want to make a another standalone "G8F figure" ~~

Instead, to make a G8 earless, you just need to sculpt its Mesh (in Base Resolution) with Smooth brush + a Mask + Symmetry mode, then import its OBJ as an Earless morph. (ss1) 

Edit: To remove texture of ears if needed, you can retouch Face texture map in Ps, Affinity or GIMP with Healing Brush or sth. similar, then assign the map to Ears surface.

That sounds like a metadata issue, the RSL/MDL tags are not on the thunmbnails but are added by DS according to the database entries.

I just got done reinstalling all my content again. Then I re-imported all my metadata.

Perhaps I should have done that first? Maybe the metadata was outdated because I had installed and uninstalled so much content?

I can find all my content now. So I can go back and redo Categories.