Metadata is created by Daz, not by the artist. Please don't blame the artist for the lack of metadata in their products, or for metadata errors in their products. All the blame for metadata issues should go to Daz. Daz just chose not to make metadata for the imported products, because there were so many and it would take a lot of resources to make it. It was a choice Daz made, and so we suffer from that choice they made.

How to know if a product doesn't have metadata ?
- Install Daz-Deals extension to your internet browser. Then on the product page, you'll see a ReadMe link which directs to product's ReadMe page (screenshot 1). Click it.
- If you see Page Not Found or find no DSX file in runtime/support folder after clicking File List, that usually means the product has no product data.

How to quickly and correctly install a product with no metadata if you are a user who much rely on Smart Content ?
- Don't bother installing them from L&F manually, cumbersome and tedious. Install the products with Content Wizard
- You can install a single product or multiple products by batch. I myself much rely on Content Wizard to install 3rd-parties products as well as the products with no metadata...

jukingeo said:

Elor said:

On top of @barbult's explanations, a product will appear in Lost and Founds when one or two of its elements don't have a category set. In such case, the good new is that it's relatively easy to fix it yourself using the UI provided with Daz Studio.

A short video explaining how to create metadata:

It's old, but the basics have not changed since it was published.

ecks201 said:

Do you log in to Daz Studio?
Doing that will trigger a metadata update.

Which won't solve the problem with most of if not all the products listed on the screenshot: like @barbult said, when many artists moved their products from other stores to Daz3D.com, they didn't have metadata and Daz didn't create them (to be fair, while for some products, it will only take a couple of minutes to create them, for some, it can easily require an hour to create the metadata).

It also won't solve the problem I spoke about, because the problem, as in the examples from barbult, is that they are simply no metadata available to fix the problem.

Doing so could apparently mess things up, so I would avoid doing so.

It takes an hour to create metadata?!?!  Yeah, I don't have that time, especially if it was something that was supposed to have been done by the PA and watched by Daz.  As I mentioned in my other reply to Barbult, isn't there an easy way to just assign it to the Smart Content folder so it shows up there?

Also, I have noticed a bigger problem.  Not all of the content is showing up in the Lost and Found.  In the case of outfits, I can't find the wearable.  Please see attached example.   As you can see, there is no wearable.  If I click on an item, I get an error message, which you see on the screen.  Now, what do I do?

 

Thanks to all for your help!

Geo 

What you bought is a texture add-on. Do you have its Base product ? : https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/162668 ;

 

The reason they don't show up in Smart Content is they have no metadata; the metadata tags the product (clothing in this case) as a product and associated with a certain class of characters.  If the metadata is absent then the asset is placed into lost and found.  There is an alternative way to see the assets which is the Library as opposed to Smart Content.  If you want to, you can select each product, and create metadata.  Just in case, it might be worth rebuilding the database to make sure that the product is missing metadata rather than having corrupted metadata. It is a mess but other stores and Poser use different systems.

nemesis10 said:

 

Technically, it is something the artist is supposed to do. Daz3d had a sudden influx of new artists leaving another store and was stuck with the choice of absorbing them with their products without metadata or turning down the artist and their products and perhaps everyone losing them forever.  It is a useful skill for Daz Studio artists to know how to create metadata; if you Google 'how to create metadata for Daz Studio", you will find endless tutorials.  Nonetheless, these artists were brought in in an emergency so there you are.

To create metadata for a product in Daz Studio, load the object into the scene, go to Edit > Scene ID Editor, and then click Compatibility Base to associate it with a suitable base asset, linking it to compatible products and presets. For general assets, you can add descriptive metadata within the product packaging or during the import process to enhance discoverability and categorization. 
Adding Compatibility Metadata
This is essential for creating your own products that work with existing Daz Studio figures. 

1. Load your asset: into the Daz Studio scene.
2. Select the asset: in the scene.
3. In the top menu bar, click Edit > Scene ID Editor.
4. In the Scene ID Editor dialog box, select Compatibility Base.
5. Choose the appropriate base that your asset is designed for from the dropdown list and click OK.
6. Other Metadata Considerations

While the "Scene ID Editor" is for creating new Daz products, you can also use metadata to organize your content and enhance its searchability: 

1. Content Library/Smart Content Tab: Use the Content Library or Smart Content tab to browse and organize your assets. Right-click on an asset or folder to view its metadata and add or edit properties.
2. Content DB Maintenance: If you're having trouble finding a product, use "Content DB Maintenance" (accessible by right-clicking on the Content Library or Smart Content tab) to update your metadata queue and re-import metadata, which can help new products appear in the Smart Content view.
3. Metadata in Smart Content: When you add products to Daz Studio, they will often come with pre-existing metadata. You can view and sometimes edit this information in the Smart Content tab to better categorize and search for your assets.

What about the items that are missing items, such as the wearables I mentioned above.  I looked in Smart Content and it isn't there.  It only comes up in the Lost and Found, but it is missing files.  Not all of the products are missing files, but a good number of the newer installs are.

I did a quick calculation and I found there is about 385 items in the Lost and Found.  Last year, I had updated Windows from 7 to 10 and Daz to 4.24.  Last year, I had about 75 to 100 items in lost lost and found.  In less than a year this bloomed to 385.  Something is seriously wrong with that.  Or at least I think so.

 

Thanks,

Geo

jukingeo said:

barbult said:

Daz brought a lot of products from other stores into the Daz Store. Daz didn't bother to make metadata for those transferred products.

That's rich, is it something they are supposed to do?

They will all go into lost and found. The only thing you can do about it is create your own metadata, buy a product to install and create metadata for you,

return the products that have no metadata, stop buying those products.

Isn't there an easier way to just put the "Lost" items into Smart Content?  Also, how would I know if a product doesn't have metadata to stop buying it?

Technically, it is something the artist is supposed to do. Daz3d had a sudden influx of new artists leaving another store and was stuck with the choice of absorbing them with their products without metadata or turning down the artist and their products and perhaps everyone losing them forever.  It is a useful skill for Daz Studio artists to know how to create metadata; if you Google 'how to create metadata for Daz Studio", you will find endless tutorials.  Nonetheless, these artists were brought in in an emergency so there you are.

To create metadata for a product in Daz Studio, load the object into the scene, go to Edit > Scene ID Editor, and then click Compatibility Base to associate it with a suitable base asset, linking it to compatible products and presets. For general assets, you can add descriptive metadata within the product packaging or during the import process to enhance discoverability and categorization. 
Adding Compatibility Metadata
This is essential for creating your own products that work with existing Daz Studio figures. 

1. Load your asset: into the Daz Studio scene.
2. Select the asset: in the scene.
3. In the top menu bar, click Edit > Scene ID Editor.
4. In the Scene ID Editor dialog box, select Compatibility Base.
5. Choose the appropriate base that your asset is designed for from the dropdown list and click OK.
6. Other Metadata Considerations

While the "Scene ID Editor" is for creating new Daz products, you can also use metadata to organize your content and enhance its searchability: 

1. Content Library/Smart Content Tab: Use the Content Library or Smart Content tab to browse and organize your assets. Right-click on an asset or folder to view its metadata and add or edit properties.
2. Content DB Maintenance: If you're having trouble finding a product, use "Content DB Maintenance" (accessible by right-clicking on the Content Library or Smart Content tab) to update your metadata queue and re-import metadata, which can help new products appear in the Smart Content view.
3. Metadata in Smart Content: When you add products to Daz Studio, they will often come with pre-existing metadata. You can view and sometimes edit this information in the Smart Content tab to better categorize and search for your assets.

Elor said:

On top of @barbult's explanations, a product will appear in Lost and Founds when one or two of its elements don't have a category set. In such case, the good new is that it's relatively easy to fix it yourself using the UI provided with Daz Studio.

A short video explaining how to create metadata:

It's old, but the basics have not changed since it was published.

ecks201 said:

Do you log in to Daz Studio?
Doing that will trigger a metadata update.

Which won't solve the problem with most of if not all the products listed on the screenshot: like @barbult said, when many artists moved their products from other stores to Daz3D.com, they didn't have metadata and Daz didn't create them (to be fair, while for some products, it will only take a couple of minutes to create them, for some, it can easily require an hour to create the metadata).

It also won't solve the problem I spoke about, because the problem, as in the examples from barbult, is that they are simply no metadata available to fix the problem.

Doing so could apparently mess things up, so I would avoid doing so.

It takes an hour to create metadata?!?!  Yeah, I don't have that time, especially if it was something that was supposed to have been done by the PA and watched by Daz.  As I mentioned in my other reply to Barbult, isn't there an easy way to just assign it to the Smart Content folder so it shows up there?

Also, I have noticed a bigger problem.  Not all of the content is showing up in the Lost and Found.  In the case of outfits, I can't find the wearable.  Please see attached example.   As you can see, there is no wearable.  If I click on an item, I get an error message, which you see on the screen.  Now, what do I do?

 

Thanks to all for your help!

Geo

crosswind said:

I'm sorry... I'm quite familiar with how tags work but how could you see the tagged assets in a certain order in Daz Studio ?

Sorry, I didn't get to the main point. What I mean is that after I find the model I want, I will arrange their paths in the order I need. For example, first is the scene, then the clothes, and then the character. When I import this path into the dsx file, if it can be arranged in this order, I will easily find what I need. I even added some fake paths to the list of folder paths. The final folder names of these fake videos are some symbols or prompts to remind me what the following folders are about. If my plan goes smoothly and the folder path order is not disrupted, the final effect should be like this. First are several scene models, then an empty path to remind me that the next ones are character models. Then the next few are character models. Then another empty path to remind me that the next ones are clothes models. The following few are indeed clothes models, and so on.

barbult said:

Daz brought a lot of products from other stores into the Daz Store. Daz didn't bother to make metadata for those transferred products.

That's rich, is it something they are supposed to do?

They will all go into lost and found. The only thing you can do about it is create your own metadata, buy a product to install and create metadata for you,

return the products that have no metadata, stop buying those products.

Isn't there an easier way to just put the "Lost" items into Smart Content?  Also, how would I know if a product doesn't have metadata to stop buying it?

I have used both the Alembic export and obj series export and dforce worked in both in Blender/Octane Standalone/Unreal Enngine for abc and Carrara for obj's respectively

I do use a much older version as since it worked I never updated, a separate obj import can give you the textures

i've tried a few possible places to put the files, but none of them seem to work. the best i've been able to do is to get it to appear in the "Scan Results" section .... I'm just hoping there's a way to install a product from there. I found another thread saying that the .dsf files will contain their expected full file path, and some of them do (not all), but it's for an older version of DAZ which had different file paths. Is that the problem? 

i've tried these file locations:

"C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Morphs\SY200b"

"C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\People\Genesis 8 Male\Morphs\SY200b"

"C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Morphs\SickleYield2018\SY200"

"C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\People\Genesis 8 Male\Morphs\SickleYield2018\SY200"

"C:\Users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\data\SickleYield2018\SY200"

basically using different permutations of what people have been trying on other help threads. but none of these has worked. i'd be interested in seeing a way to import the content from the Scan Results into the program. then i should be able to find where the program stores the content, and remove the duplicates. is there a way to use the Scan Results to install a product? thanks.

I got a new computer recently and was able to download all of the files I had purchased directly through the DAZ storefront. I'm glad for that. However I had purchased one of SickleYield's Genesis 8 morph products from another storefront, and that file was not reinstalled. These are important to me as they're my only real way of distinguishing characters by facial features.

 

I have access to the files, and have followed a few different suggestions from tutorials, but I can't get the DAZ program to recognize the files. For example, putting them in the Genesis 8 Male directory didn't work. Putting them in the root directory didn't work either. 

 

The closest I can get is to have them appear in "Scan Results", but it does not add a Morphs folder in the main list in the Content Browser and they do not appear on the figure's Shape properties or anywhere else. Is there a way to manually import files into Daz Studio after a scan? That's the one thing I haven't found a tutorial for so far.

 

Thanks for any help you can give. Please let me know if I can give more information that will help me solve the problem faster.

Taoz said:

So what does this mean?

You can find new icons for this product in the following DAZ Studio Categories:

• “Materials:Iray:Wardrobe”

• “Wardrobe:Swimwear:Bottoms”

• “Wardrobe:Swimwear:Tops”

That was just generated from the product's metadata, i.e. both Bottoms and Tops are checked under Wardrobe > Swimwear.

Even the Product Details were generated by AI... IMO, which makes less sense to me on such a simple "one-piece" that could've been splitted into two pieces for easier use. 

golem841 said:

Honestly there are many lanscaping and vegetation programs which are much more realistic than DzStudio. You must find a way to import these. One of my favorite is Gaea from Quad spinner. Plant factory from Eon/Bentley is also a must, so is Vue (both are now free), the render engine is really old, but imported in Daz, it can be fabulous.

There are also some vendors who are making outstanding products for DazStudio : HowieFarkes is my favorite, MartinJfrost is making extremely realistic plants, Predatron is also good enough.

With all that you can make your own landscapes with vegetations, it's more time consuming but really worth it.

Have fun !

on this topic

many have used Vue to render HDRi panoramic images because it is particularly good at that and landscapes, volumetric clouds, biomes

Bryce isn't bad either, or Carrara

Vue is the leading choice I have noticed among PAs

On top of @barbult's explanations, a product will appear in Lost and Founds when one or two of its elements don't have a category set. In such case, the good new is that it's relatively easy to fix it yourself using the UI provided with Daz Studio.

A short video explaining how to create metadata:

It's old, but the basics have not changed since it was published.

ecks201 said:

Do you log in to Daz Studio?
Doing that will trigger a metadata update.

Which won't solve the problem with most of if not all the products listed on the screenshot: like @barbult said, when many artists moved their products from other stores to Daz3D.com, they didn't have metadata and Daz didn't create them (to be fair, while for some products, it will only take a couple of minutes to create them, for some, it can easily require an hour to create the metadata).

It also won't solve the problem I spoke about, because the problem, as in the examples from barbult, is that they are simply no metadata available to fix the problem.

Doing so could apparently mess things up, so I would avoid doing so.

Do you log in to Daz Studio?
Doing that will trigger a metadata update.

Daz brought a lot of products from other stores into the Daz Store. Daz didn't bother to make metadata for those transferred products. They will all go into lost and found. The only thing you can do about it is create your own metadata, buy a product to install and create metadata for you, return the products that have no metadata, stop buying those products.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

3Deedlin said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

Dforce animation, the best way I found but it takes a lot of drive space

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/428856/sagan-a-daz-studio-to-blender-alembic-exporter

use the obj series option

import sequenced obj by DCG 

obviously you need the plugin installed

Thanks. Would you say the same without dforce? I see lamh has several options. Just trying to waste less time on trial and error.

pointless for things not Dfrorce

LAMH a different thing entirely, the Catalyzer only loads as obj on render AFAIK and massive files so doubt doable

you can convert to mesh on a Tposed character and try rigging it but again thats a massive file and gets distortion

using Carrara hair with any length and density map images is the best option 

also for Dforce, if doing short animations https://www.daz3d.com/dforce2morph is quite good but you need to save a morph for each pose and have to keyframe them so zero other frames

I just happen to have a little dforce animation I wanted to play with. DS takes longer to render also. I did get the full LAMH. It sounds like you can use some other options besides obj. I am not even certain about what morphs to include when exporting. The bridge is pretty straight forward, but throw in hair/fur and it suddenly gets more tedious. The downside to going between products. Thanks for the info. It's kind of a bummer when the details of the process get in the way of the creative flow. Lol.

 

Brash and Moxie are dancing.  

Here is a 5-second proof of concept. The starting image, frame 1, consists of my Brash and Moxie models, some primitives, and a couple of my custom plants.  I rendered these with the native Toon filter.  I then processed that starter image in ComfyUI to generate some metadata.  I perused the Internet Archives for an old music/dance video purporting to be public domain.  In this case, I found Yvonne Decarlo. I extracted 5 seconds from Yvonne's dance.  I then uploaded the Brash/Moxie starter frame with the metadata to ComfyUI Wan Vace.  This allowed me to use a reference video (public domain Yvonne Decarlo) to guide the movements of Brash and Moxie.  Note that when I constructcted the starter Brash Moxie scene, I consciously approximated the poses and props of the first frame of the extracted Yvonne video.  Here is the result.  Lots of flaws, and too short, but I am very happy with the proof of concept.  

  

 

Honestly there are many lanscaping and vegetation programs which are much more realistic than DzStudio. You must find a way to import these. One of my favorite is Gaea from Quad spinner. Plant factory from Eon/Bentley is also a must, so is Vue (both are now free), the render engine is really old, but imported in Daz, it can be fabulous.

There are also some vendors who are making outstanding products for DazStudio : HowieFarkes is my favorite, MartinJfrost is making extremely realistic plants, Predatron is also good enough.

With all that you can make your own landscapes with vegetations, it's more time consuming but really worth it.

Have fun !