Umi no Senshi no Ishi said:

Is the search path for the zip files editable?

I move my downloaded zips from DIM to a NAS as a backup and to not takeup space on my Daz hard drive.

Would I be able to set this up to look at my NAS for the content to catalog? 
I realize this would probably reduce perfomance.

Yes, one can add multiple paths. 

Is the search path for the zip files editable?

I move my downloaded zips from DIM to a NAS as a backup and to not takeup space on my Daz hard drive.

Would I be able to set this up to look at my NAS for the content to catalog? 
I realize this would probably reduce perfomance.

I think he wants to know how to do it for use within a script. This is the script developer forum.

crosswind said:

I can't believe DS still packs 114x148 product thumbnail images into IM packages nowadays ~

Does the app have the features, like:
1) Filter by Stores ?
2) Jump to DS to open the Product folder in Smart Content or Content Lib ?
3) After Editing tags, the data will be posted to cms ?
4) The performance of rescan ? How long does it take to scan the libraries with 40K+ products? Or, it uses delta scan ?

Thank you !

I can only add to the excellent answer provided by barbult.

1. It depends on how the prefix of the DIM packages from other stores are named. Mine are e.g. Rendo, RenderH and one can do a search for that.

One of the things I found useful, is the ability to select a product and click Open Containing Folder. That opens my DIM Downloads folder with the selected product Zip file already selected. Searching my DIM downloads folder with Windows 11 search is impossibly slow. Content Catalog is lightning fast to find that file. This is real useful for backing up a particular product Zip file before updating the product in DIM. There have been too many instances lately of DS6 updates breaking DS4 functionality of the same product. (I do keep a daily complete computer backup on NAS, but just making a copy of a single Zip file is quicker and easier than recovering that file later from the NAS if it gets overwritten by a bad DIM download.)

I have a couple hundres files that don't have thumbnails.  I'll fix them as they pop up in a search and catch my attention.   I use the following instructions and it always works perfectly - 

1. Select the product, right click and select "Browse to folder location"
2. Drill down to Runtime/Support and select, copy and paste into the folder the icon .jpg file
3. Rename the copied file to 1_.jpg The SKU is already in the name so just add the 1_ in front of the SKU and delete everything else.
4. Move the file to ...My Daz Connect Library\data\cloud\meta I have a shortcut to the meta folder setup and just move the file to the shortcut'ed folder.

Until today . . .

I performed the procedure on this product dForce FE Straight Bangs Long Strand-Based Hair for Genesis 9, 8 and 8.1 and the thumbnail refuses to show.  It shouldn't bother me so much, but it really does.  Any guidance in regards to what files/settings to look at to fix this would be greatly appreciated.

barbult said:

I had the chance to test this and provide feedback during development. I found this to be really useful. I can find things so much faster than trying to search the Product Library or guess what to enter in a Smart Content or Content Library search.

For example, I want to see what Alessandro_AM products I own.

• Maybe I don't remember exactly how to spell his name. I type Al into the Creator entry box. Immediately Content Catalog starts to show me the names of creators that start with Al. I see his name in the list and click on it. Instantly, I see all the thumbnails for every Alessandro_AM product I own (79 of them, it turns out!).
• But I only care about products for Daz Studio right now. I can go to the Formats drop down box and select Daz Studio, instead of the default of All Formats. Now it shows me the 59 Daz Studio Alessandro_AM products. Gee, I see a bunch I don't even remember I had.
• There is Koala by AM. I left click on the Koala thumbnail and Content Catalog shows me the details panel about the Koala product. I see that the tags include the word Iray. I wonder whether Koala uses LAMH, LAMH Catalyzer, or dForce hair.
• So, now I double click on the Koala thumbnail, and Content Catalog opens the Koala product online readme file in my default browser. I don't have to go searching for the readme; there it is for me right away. I look through the readme file and see that it has LAMH and LAMH Catalyzer hair, no dForce hair. So now I know.
• I didn't have to boot up Daz Studio at all to do any of this. I didn't need to dredge through my online Product Library. The only reason I even had to be connected to the Internet was to access the online Daz readme file.
• So now that I know the product uses LAMH and LAMH Catalyzer, I think I add a note about that in Content Catalog. Since I have the readme open, I just select and copy that comment from the readme file and paste it into the Notes section of the Koala product details and click Save Notes. If I ever wonder about this again, I have the note right there.
• I can even search for LAMH or Catalyzer in the future and Content Catalog will find my added comment in my notes and show me the Koala product thumbnail, as well as the thumbnail for the Catalyzer plugin and the Catalyzer User Guide.
• While looking at the Koala thumbnail, I see that it is a little blurry (low resolution). So I click on Fetch Thumbnail from DAZ in the Content Catalog details and it fetches a clearer thumbnail for me. Content Catalog will use that better thumbnail from now on. I could even choose to Replace Thumbnail with any image I choose. Some products, especially old Poser products have crummy thumbnails that don't really show what the whole product is, so I can replace it with something else. I can even set it back to the original thumbnail with a single click on Reset Thumbnail to Auto, if I decide my fetched or replaced thumbnail is not a good choice.

This is all much easier than it seems, with all my verbose explanation here. The PDF manual is very helpful to discover all that this product can do.There is a lot more that Content Catalog can do, than this one example.

I had my thumbnails sorted by Download date, recent first. There are many other choices, alphabetical, SKU, etc.

I see it works with other stores too. But what if I have content from stores that are no longer in service like sharecg, hivewire? I've created a bunch of custom DIMs for those store products, i probably have hundreds of products from sharecg, hivewire installed via DIM. Will this work with all of those too? I ask because I see @barbult mention the need to be connected to the internet to access the "read me files" for the Daz store products. So I am wondering if this app needs access to other stores databases for info as well. Can it show me the read me files from Renderosity for example? I'd really like more info on how it works with those 3rd party stores, both offline and online stores.

I had the chance to test this and provide feedback during development. I found this to be really useful. I can find things so much faster than trying to search the Product Library or guess what to enter in a Smart Content or Content Library search.

For example, I want to see what Alessandro_AM products I own.

• Maybe I don't remember exactly how to spell his name. I type Al into the Creator entry box. Immediately Content Catalog starts to show me the names of creators that start with Al. I see his name in the list and click on it. Instantly, I see all the thumbnails for every Alessandro_AM product I own (79 of them, it turns out!).
• But I only care about products for Daz Studio right now. I can go to the Formats drop down box and select Daz Studio, instead of the default of All Formats. Now it shows me the 59 Daz Studio Alessandro_AM products. Gee, I see a bunch I don't even remember I had.
• There is Koala by AM. I left click on the Koala thumbnail and Content Catalog shows me the details panel about the Koala product. I see that the tags include the word Iray. I wonder whether Koala uses LAMH, LAMH Catalyzer, or dForce hair.
• So, now I double click on the Koala thumbnail, and Content Catalog opens the Koala product online readme file in my default browser. I don't have to go searching for the readme; there it is for me right away. I look through the readme file and see that it has LAMH and LAMH Catalyzer hair, no dForce hair. So now I know.
• I didn't have to boot up Daz Studio at all to do any of this. I didn't need to dredge through my online Product Library. The only reason I even had to be connected to the Internet was to access the online Daz readme file.
• So now that I know the product uses LAMH and LAMH Catalyzer, I think I add a note about that in Content Catalog. Since I have the readme open, I just select and copy that comment from the readme file and paste it into the Notes section of the Koala product details and click Save Notes. If I ever wonder about this again, I have the note right there.
• I can even search for LAMH or Catalyzer in the future and Content Catalog will find my added comment in my notes and show me the Koala product thumbnail, as well as the thumbnail for the Catalyzer plugin and the Catalyzer User Guide.
• While looking at the Koala thumbnail, I see that it is a little blurry (low resolution). So I click on Fetch Thumbnail from DAZ in the Content Catalog details and it fetches a clearer thumbnail for me. Content Catalog will use that better thumbnail from now on. I could even choose to Replace Thumbnail with any image I choose. Some products, especially old Poser products have crummy thumbnails that don't really show what the whole product is, so I can replace it with something else. I can even set it back to the original thumbnail with a single click on Reset Thumbnail to Auto, if I decide my fetched or replaced thumbnail is not a good choice.

This is all much easier than it seems, with all my verbose explanation here. The PDF manual is very helpful to discover all that this product can do.There is a lot more that Content Catalog can do, than this one example.

I had my thumbnails sorted by Download date, recent first. There are many other choices, alphabetical, SKU, etc.

I would also suggest you post the issues on renderotica forum > meipe product support. There're lots of folks having the related domain knowledge.

I would suggest to post in their forum. Meipe has a support thread.

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

I agree on the oddity, yet I ran several searches through DS4.24 and don't know why, but it works.  

Are the content directories the same?

Yes, they are the same, or at least it's what I can see. Both programs access the very same content directories. Do you believe there might be something interfering at this stage? 

It seems likely, I am certainly getting the same results in DS 4 and DS 6 on quick tests.

Hello Richard. The funny thing is that this mess started after I uninstalled DS4 and went on to use only DS6, then upon suggestion from another user in this conversation I did reinstall DS4.24 and the search function in it worked just fine. Ah, the oddities of computer programs.

Somehow I got Poser 1 in 1995 as a free product. I wasn't interested in graphics at the time, so my reaction was "that's interesting" and I put it aside. In 2003 or 2004 I got into a software-oriented forum; there was a graphics sub-forum I started following. In September of 2005 (I think) someone posted two items - Poser 6 was out, with a significant discount if upgrading from Poser 4, and Amazon had Poser 4 for sale at a discount that made it viable to buy Poser 4 and upgrade to 6. Someone else pointed out that DAZ was offering Michael 3 and Victoria 3 base for free.

Two weeks later I was blundering around in Poser with V3 and M3. Never did get the hang of Poser even with the Doctor Geep tutorials. DAZ came out with Studio version 0.9 (I think) - I fired it up and the whole UI made much more sense, and I dropped Poser like a hot rock.

Richard Haseltine said:

There was a thread a couple of days ago quoting social media posts indicating that the work was going well, apparently from people who had standing. I am still a little wary as there hasn't been an overtly official announcement at all, that i know of.

I saw it in the Art Studio forum and posted earlier.  I hope it's true, and at least the comment about them successfully clearing it to be Open-Souced, sounds certain!

Regards the OP's question, if I recall, I first came across Poser on a coverdisc of Computer Arts Magazine, but rather than upgrade using that route, I bought a physical MetaCreations bundle in a computer store that contained Poser 3, Bryce 3D, and Ray Dream 3D.  Damn, those were the days, physical discs and a big fat manual for each product, to sit down with and read over a coffee!

Those were upgraded to individual physical copies of Poser 5 Pro, Bryce 5, and Ray Dream Studio 5.5 Pro, which again, all came with big fat manuals to read!

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

I agree on the oddity, yet I ran several searches through DS4.24 and don't know why, but it works.  

Are the content directories the same?

Yes, they are the same, or at least it's what I can see. Both programs access the very same content directories. Do you believe there might be something interfering at this stage? 

It seems likely, I am certainly getting the same results in DS 4 and DS 6 on quick tests.

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

I agree on the oddity, yet I ran several searches through DS4.24 and don't know why, but it works.  

Are the content directories the same?

Yes, they are the same, or at least it's what I can see. Both programs access the very same content directories. Do you believe there might be something interfering at this stage? 

matt.fiorese said:

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

I agree on the oddity, yet I ran several searches through DS4.24 and don't know why, but it works.  

Are the content directories the same?

Richard Haseltine said:

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

I agree on the oddity, yet I ran several searches through DS4.24 and don't know why, but it works.  

matt.fiorese said:

jmucchiello said:

matt.fiorese said:

Hello Richard, and thank you for your reply.
So I guess I have no other choice than either reverting to version 4 (uninstalling the current one, cleaning up, reinstalling a fresh version) or retrying with version 6 (with the same passages as for version 4). 

Or run them both together. I have both DS 4.24 and DS 6 running simultaneously on my workstation most of the time. The only trouble this brings is if you are doing renders in both. (Even if it isn't at the same time.) I can't imagine running DS6 exclusively with all the plugins still in need of updates.

OMG, then I guess my original sin is to have ditched DS4.24 and kept only DS6, I'll try to re-install it and see. Thank you for the suggestion. 
Just checked: DS4.24 content search engine works just fine. I guess DS6's needs a few tweaks but...

It seems to be an oddity, search works (apparently) normally for me in DS 6, so it would seem that soemthing is interfering with it on your system (database issue, though I would expect that to affect DS 4 too, or some particular add-on, setting, or even piece of content (perhaps one that is visible to one version and not the other).

This is getting weirder.  I tried it with various browsers and got a variety of results.
Opera (my default)  Everything looks great.
Chrome  Timeout when going directly to site.  From forum I'm seeing what everyone else is seeing.  Broken media links, timeouts from embedded links.
 

From my work computer
Chrome Success when going directly to site, from forum,  bad media links timeouts from embedded links.
Edge  Complete mess.
Might have something to do with caching.  I'm no expert.