Identifying products used in my work

MJW

I have just spent a frustrating twenty minutes trying to identify items used in my render. I never make a note as I go along, so I usually forget, unless it is something I use a lot. I can sometimes work it out from the surfaces tab and going into windows explorer, but it is not always that easy. Even using Content Library and searching a term can throw up hundreds of items and not then tell me what package they came in. Is there a simple way to get back to the product from the workspace, or do I have to go through lots of searching?

Richard Haseltine

If it's recent you could try going to help>Troubleshooting>View Log, then scroll back looking at the content loaded and presets applied. That won't, of course, tell you if they were full presets overriding previous settings or partials, nor will it tell you if an operation was undone or loaded content deleted.

MJW

Thanks Richard. Now I know where to go for the logs to which I keep getting referred!

This may work, but what I really want is something that tells me when I flash an item in a scene (say a dress) what that dress actually is - in other words, what is the actual product name for it (as in the upload parameters to Gallery). I used a frame which is an insignificant asset in a larger product, and only found the product details by luck.

On a slightly cheeky matter, I am having problems with 'flash-over' instead of outline framing when I move my mouse round the screen. I recall it being simple to get the frame box instead, but not how. Please remind me.

Thanks

Richard Haseltine

For items from Daz, with proper metadata, at least the product name is there - if you don't have an item you own installed when opening a scene that uses it you will be prompted. It's probably possible to get that via scripting, but it's not an area I have looked at yet. For items from other store (or freebies) I'm not sure how much of a link is preserved - for Poser format items certainly there's a pointer to the source file, since DS can rebuild the native data from those if the auto conversion is lost. Settings, of course, are not so simple.

You can change the node highlighting behaviour in Draw Setings, at least for node selection tools (I don't think it can be changed for the Surface Selection tool, not sure about the Region Selection tool).

 

MJW

Now there you go, Richard. I am not unintelligent, but I cofess that most of that meant pretty well nothing to me. The words all mean something, but combined!?!

I think you're telling me that there is no absolute way to do it, nor any work on such a method in the pipeline. That's okay, but it does mean I will be less informative about products I use. Not that I imagine many people care, but ti is helpful when I am looking on my own account. Thanks for your time.

BW

 

Richard Haseltine

Yes, I was saying theer isn't anything yet but it might be possible to write a script that would partially do it - it would tell you which figures and props were loaded, possibly which materials applied, but I don't think it would tell you which products the psoes or expressions came from.

Tobor

In Poser land, there was a Python script that collected up all the various objects and materials and made a list of them. You could then save this list, which could place along side either the scene file, or the rendered image file. You could then go back to the list to see how that scene was made.

I'd be surprised if there weren't something like this for Daz. You might start with the scripts at https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/ ;

As Richard sez, a script won't help for things like poses. My way around this is to keep a close connection between the finished render and the scene file that made it -- using consistent filenaming, for example. I also have a different work system than most, in that most of my projects all live in the their own runtime. When I'm done with a project, I zip up its runtime and put it away. If I ever have to return to it, I know where all the consistuent files are from. Of  course, this separation doesn't include things like the base characters, which are all in common runtimes.

MJW

I find the whole finding stuff difficult. For example, in CM I find that a search on 'table' shows everything with 'table' in it - 'stable', 'constable' etc. Even switching off options like poses does nothing - the poses come up.

I did find a program that created a catalogue of all my stuff, but it was not perfect and even with a quarter of the items I now have it covered dozens of pages.

I'll just have to tell what I know I have and forget the rest.

Thanks Guys and Gals.

nonesuch00

Somethings like articles of clothing aren't listed individually but are part of something like Dark Storm Outfit for a nice corsett I favor using. And somethings very unintuitively aren't listed - such as Genesis 3 Male. Well that used to be a seperate download product as did the Genesis 3 Female but now maybe those are part of the overall Genesis 3 Starter Essentials? And if that's the case then why isn't the Dark Storm Outfit considered part of the same Genesis 3 Starter Essentials?

I usually am most frustrated with the number of different items I used to create a scene when it looks like not so many products were used but that's not really a problem.