For God's sake, DAZ, please fix search
darinsar
Posts: 29
I love Daz Studio. People try to convince me to use Poser instead, but I resist. I'm used to the way Daz works. I find Poser tends to give results that tend to seem plasticky to me. Most of all, Daz is free and I am on a very limited income.
Still, Daz Studio also has some disadvantages. The product documentation is useless (out of date, mixed in with content from completely separate programs). Its performance seems to degrade with every new release as more resource-hungry features are added (I can't afford Pozer; I definitely can't afford a more powerful computer with the latest Nvidia graphics card).
However, I read that Poser intends to fix their search function. Now I am considering cutting my food budget for a few months so I can buy it. Why?
I have literally spent hours trying to find that one figure or mod that I know I have, but I can't find it.
I realize that it is not all your fault, DAZ. A large part of the problem is that there is plenty of inconsistency among content creators on how they package their content. Is a building a prop or a figure? Why are materials sometimes found under poses and vice versa? Most folders are named after the content creator, but I have thousands of items so I can't know the name of the content creator for all of them. I spent hours looking for a shark because the creator named it "megalodon."
Still, a large part of the problem is that Daz content and Poser content do not play "nice" together. There seems to be a separate procedure for searching for Daz content and when searching for Poser. Smart content, in theory, is a great idea (just select the figure and all the compatible content comes up), but it does not work on Poser (when it works for all, which for me, right now, it doesn't).
Too often, to find the content I want, I have to go into explorer and do a file search (another process that is buggy, but that's Microsoft's issue, not yours). Other times, I have to go to the Daz or Renderosity site and find the content there to get enough information to go back to DAZ Studio and search.
It's the lament of computer users for the longest time: "why can't it just work?!"
NOTE: Now I'm sort of hoping the some more experienced forum user will say "silly boy, don't you know you can just--"
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Comments
I come from Poser. I have rage-quit that program so many times I lost count. Years using it thought I had experienced every error possible and found ways around them. Then out of a sudden it gave me this insane error that would destroy a part of a figure when I imported it along with its material setup. Destroyed as in bones switched around, geometry flat out deleted, UV maps switched around. And each time I imported it it did this to a different part of the figure. After a PC restart everything went back to normal. It's impossible to know with Poser whether the error you're experience is user-generated or if the program is having "one of those days". Switching to Daz and experiencing the joys of features just working and no random crashes convinced me to never go back.
I don't want to sound to biased but I hope the Earth splits open, demon tentacles erupt from its molten depths, grab onto Poser, and pull it back into the depths of Hell back from where it came.
To be honest. the reason I don't have a lot of experience with Poser is that it kept crashing on me. Thanks for the heads up.
I got so angry at vendors putting stuff all over the place back in the day, I wiped out my whole library hard drive and started from scratch. Now I go through and edit product, folder structure wise at the very least, before I add it back to the library. Now I can find stuff. I also end up making my own icons and rollover icons(I make 1k rollovers since my 1080p monitor can hadle larger popups) for almost everything as well. I want to see what the dress or outfit, or character body and face actually looks like without having to load it into a scene. A bit of time on the front end, saves a ton of time when I am actually trying to make some renders. Most times I can at least use a promo in PS to make the icons, but some stuff don't have good enough promos so I have to make a redner for the icon. Doing it that way means I have to manually install everything instead of using DIM or connect, but I am OK with that lol.
- quit 3D rendering completely?
Use DIM to install everything
Or even Connect
Just make sure that you use one or the other, don't try mixing and matching
I think, but have never verified, that every DAZ 3D Store product (but not freebies or products from other sites and stores) you have installed to Smart Content / Content Library via DIM and/or DAZ Connect shows up in an alphabetic list, 1 through Z, where it's quite easy, if long & tedious, to find, at the Products section at the bottom of your Content Library pane.
If you install freebies manually they aren't there in ways that are easy to find many times as know.
If you want to products and presets to be found in Smart Content in ways DAZ 3D hasn't classified their metadata you go through and manually create new catagories, if you want, and add products and product files to the categories you want manually. You export the results of that work as a CMS dB backup so you don't lose it during DAZ or OS clean installs. It takes a long time to do so though.
So basically, you can, but it's your choice, manually move the product files you can to were you want in a folder structure where you want and that you name, possibly renaming the files to, and possibly editing files internally if you move files from the location they were expecting internally as designated by the PA OR you go ploddingly and methodically through your Content Library and use Smart Content meta keyword creattion, categorization, and assigning handle the organiztion of the products in ways that is helpful to you. Count on a couple of weeks to do that. It'll work though very well for you from then on if you then do that for each new product and/or freebie you install after that.
I do use DIM to install everything (well, everything from the DAZ Store). However, I then move content to where I want it - my own folder structure which is based on the DIM defaults but arranged to my taste. That way, I know where everything is and I also know where to put content from other stores. Vendors can be a little idiosynchratic and props can get installed in Environments or Architecture and vice-versa, so I move them to where I want them.
Of course, I never mess with the "data" directory and I leave textures where DIM places them otherwise I know I'll have problems. I don't use Smart Content at all - the tab is removed from my Viewport layout. And I don't categorise after having some bad experiences with updates destroying several day's work carefully placing products into categories.
Good for you is free now, in June 2009 I paid 97 USD for the Advanced version of Daz3
I use Everything
https://www.voidtools.com/en-au/
Snap!!! Scrolled down to say exactly this and you'd already done it.
That really should not be the only answer.
Yup! I use it and love it.
the OP was not looking for a definitive answer if you read the comment. I reacted to his comment.Things need to be read in context.
Me too!
And I am using and I do like Poser AND DazStudio (PoserPro 2014, to be exact, as I don't like the "I have to phone home every 9 days or I quit working" "Feature" of PP11 ...), the search or the runtimes organisation aren't any better.
My second to last picture in the galleries is rendered in PP2014. https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/919736/ I don't think it looks like plastic. It's a matter of knowing the material room and lighting.
Installing with DIM does not help with finding things inside of DazStudio (at least in my experience), Smart content is not always smart ...
P.S. I like Bryce too (which I used for my latest upload to the galleries) ...
No application wars on my computer. They are coexisting nicely.
Firstly the results that Daz Studio achieves versus what Poser can is like comparing CGI in the 90s versus now, so i wouldn't go hungry over a search function.
Now addressing your issue, when the search function doesn't find what I need I usually dive into the content library locally on my SSD and hunt it down that way. Regardless, using DIM to install everything as stated above eliminates this problem. In the event it does happen it usually takes me less than a couple of minutes to find at most since the SSD speed helps us here. It really is a rare issue, for me that is. Most times when I can not find something via the search function it is due to the content creator using special characters, typos and also being a non Daz website product. Again, I wouldn't trade off 20+ years of advancement in tech for a search function.
I am not trying to start a software versus software discussion but rather disuade you from impacting the quality of your art/work over what can be remedied via good practice and hardware in the rare event the issue arises.