How can I fix missing thumbnail images in Smart Content?
mavante
Posts: 734
I have a few products installed that, for some reason I can't fathom, show up in Smart Content as a grey rectangle with a small white "frame" inside it, which has a triangle with an exclamation mark framed inside it. See attached screen grab. In most cases, the content items inside of such "no primary product image" products do have images—although I think I have at least a few of the "next level down" items that don't have thumbnails, too.
I have no idea how or why this happens, or what, if anything, can be done about it. So I have several related questions:
Can I make my own thumbnail image for products or items that are missing them?
If so, where in my content library are such images stored?
If I can make my own, how do I "link" such an image to its correct product so it shows up in Smart Content?
Thanks for any help or tips.
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If you installed with DAZ Connect, product icon images are stored in ...\My Daz Connect Library\data\cloud\meta
If you installed with DIM, product icon images are stored in ...\My Library\Runtime\Support
I'm sure you can figure out the file naming format and icon size by looking at examples in either folder.
Edit: I just use the store's product icon image displayed on the main store browsing pages (as opposed to the individual product's page) and it needs to be in .jpg image format.
The DAZ Connect meta folder files names are by SKU or Product ID number. You can fine them displayed on the store's product pages and are unique for each product in the DAZ Store. The number also shows up in the file names in the Runtime/Support folder where you would normally see 3 files for each product, one of which is an icon .jpg file.
FYI: The singular DAZ Connect folder setting is set in Edit>Preferences>Content Library>Content Directory Manager and can be pointed to an external drive.
Thanks. I know all of that. None of it makes it any easier. You cannot just sort each folder by name, and easily correlate the two folders, so you have to do every single product one-by-one, unless you have some kind of "gifted" memory for numbers, which I am not blessed with (or cursed with, as you like it). It is patently absurd that having created this mare's nest, Daz did not implement any means for simply MOVING all the files out of Connect's repository into a user's selected content library, at a user's behest, and RESOLVING all issues in the process. That's my position, and I'm not going to move off of it; I'm merely going to deal with the mess created by the fact of its absence.
Yes, I know that, too, thank you, from my earlier nightmare tag-team death match with Daz Connect:
Can somebody help me exorcise the Daz Connect demons?
But knowing that NOW does NOTHING TO RESOLVE THE MESS ALREADY CREATED BY USING CONNECT AT ALL, ALLOWING DAZ TO USE ITS DEFAULTS.
Also, nobody here can seem to understand AT ALL that I don't want Daz Connect A T A L L. But I'm sick to death of trying to explain it or resolve it.
Thanks for your input.
If the products are installed via Connect, in DS seelct them all, right-click, and uninstall. Anything left over can be deleted. Then don't let DS go online if you don't want to use Connect. Once uninstalled any exsting DIM installs should still work, if not you can reinstall them by seelcting all in the Installed tab, right-click, and using the reisntall Using Current path option.
Posting here because it's a recently active thread. In my Content Library, in list-mode, almost all the mini-thumbnails are "new" (with no actual image to show what the item is) but if I click on that item, the actual thumbnail will appear. If I hover over, the thumbnail shows up in the hover box. In icon-mode the bigger thumbnails display. Is there a bulk way to make the content library update to display the mini-icons in list-mode? Thanks. Lx
Same here. Nearly all new (since more or less two weeks) installed products miss those thumbnails in smart content. I first installed as usual with DIM, than uninstalled in the smart content tab and the installed again. Also updated meta data, but nothing so far fixed this.
I just did a re-install (on a new pc) all through Connect and my Icons are a total mess. I've deleted the whole lot and will start again!
Now I have tried all three ways known to me to install and uninstall content. I used DIM, Connect and also DazCentral and uninstalled and installed the newer content again and again... Still the same mess with the missing thumbnails.
I didn't get why this happens now. Some weeks ago everything was fine.
Looks like DAZ messed up something on their end again. Every new product that I've bought/installed is missing the product preview images.
Same for me. The products I installed yesturday all have missing icons, but not those from the day before.
I can fix it easily but it's still a minor annoyance!
How do you fix it?
I'd like to know, as well!
I'd like to know this as well!
All the "2.99" stuff I bought (on different days) during Mad Madness has missing thumbnails in DS.
And now it's even worse as they start to disappear even from items that DID have them. For instance "Andrea for Genesis 8" had the thumbnail displayed a few minutes ago, but now its gone o_O
(the actual thumbnail file is still there, it just isn't connected somehow. So if there's a way to reconnect the thumbnail I'd love to know how)
Yup, happened to me as well. It seems to have started on or around March 16th. I've noticed newer products (at least for me), the icon picture shows up in my Smart Content pane, but older content will not.
Seems that the metadata server is borked. It is all (rather) fine with only some of the thumbnails missing if you stay offline with DAZ Studio. Once you log in, the thumbnais start disappearing. It is not the thumbnails as such, it is the database entries that get messed up. I did a restore from my CMS folder backup and the thumbnails were back again.
Would be nice from DAZ to
But as usuall, the silence from DAZ side is deafening.
I followed the instructions in this post (from another thread, also about the missing thumbnails :) ), it was surprisingly easy and painless :)
I second this! Works pretty easy!
Maybe I understood it wrong, but isn't it that you have to copy, rename and paste some jpg in different folders for EACH product? With more than 100 products with missing thumbnails I wouldn't call that easy and painless.
Yes, that's basically what you need to do. However, the renamed jpg's are going into the same folder (the one called Meta in the cloud folder). But essentially, yes you have to copy one jpg from the folder of each product that are missing a thumbnail, and than rename that one before moving it to the Meta folder. I started with copying the jpg's from each product folder, than got some coffee and sat down to rename them. Before moving them over to the Meta folder at the same time.
I considered it rather easy and painless compared to some other work arounds that has been around over the years for different problems :) Besides, the first batch of copy-renaming-moving might be a big one, but the following ones (when you buy something and if the problem still is around) shouldn't be as many :)
It was easy for me to fix too, but I only had 5 missing thumbnails.
But this fix is only a bandaid. The next time you login to DAZ Studio and Connect updates metadata, it will screw up the thumbnails again. At least that is what happened to me.
And with more people experiencing this issue, sure would be nice if DAZ could just fix this so that people are not going through this mess.
Same issue here.
Two days ago almost all of the Smart Content products icon disappeared.
Hope someone can help ^_^;
Daz is aware of the issue, and is looking into it.
oh man, I've been going crazy trying to fix this... so it's a problem on the Daz's end.
The jpg files in DAZ 3D\Studio\My Daz Connect Library\data\cloud\meta are completely empty for recent products I've purchased and (as others have said) it seems to be the $2.99 PC+ for a day items which I've been getting a lot of.
I also noticed I couldn't install this https://www.daz3d.com/blocks-and-structures using DIM, it would install using DAZ Connect though. Not sure if or how it's related.
I've been experiencing the exact same issue as well -- it started a couple of days ago.
Incredibly annoying.
I don't even post in the forums but I had to say something.
ditto.
Same problem here, it is very frustrating when you are trying to remember which item is which with similar items and haven't got the images for reference.
I am google translate Japanese.
I also no longer see thumbnails of content I recently purchased on the DAZ site in Smart Content.
If there is a chance the missing thumbnails problem happened on DAZ's end, it makes sense to wait and see the results of DAZ's investigation.
The problem started more than a week ago. That shows me that this is not a priority problem for DAZ. Compare that to major glitches (eg. Nov.2017 sale) that get fixed in less than 15 minutes if it affects DAZ and the PAs' bottomline.
Fixing a sale on the website is a completelyl different animal than tracking down a bug in the database doing something extremely strange like this are two COMPLETELY different animals. Entirely different skill sets, entirely different difficulty level, and entirely different team working on it. A sales glitch is very straightorward and will generally be easy to track down and resolve. Something like whatever is wiping out the icons is going to take much more digging to find the cause, and once the cause is located, it'll be more time to find a solution, and then it will have to go into testing to make sure there aren't other breakages that haven't been found yet and that the fix for it doesn't break anything even worse than it already is. Yes, it's annoying that this has been going on for this long, but I'd rather they take the time to fix it right than to just slap a bandaid on and break something else in the process.