Bizarre anomaly with Smart Content [on Mac Catalina]

mavante

[Bizarre anomaly with Smart Content (on Mac Catalina)]

And of course it may not help anyone, but I'll try. [ETA: This won't help anybody, including me. The "fix" I initially thought had worked lasted only until I closed DS and opened it again. See my later post.]

On a recent installation of the release version of DS 4.12.1.117 to a new 2019 iMac running Catalina 10.15.5, a very large number of thumbnails for products in Smart Content were missing. I had the dreaded exclamation mark in a triangle on a grey postage-stamp looking thing all over the Smart Content pane. When I tried to reimport metadata, it was only listing a pretty small fraction of the number of content products I have installed. Then I did something that for some very weird reason (to me) fixed the problem.

Before I say what I did that fixed it, here is some necessary information for the way my content is set up with this new installation of DS 4.12 and its default included content:

1. I avoided Daz Connect like the plague because from my past experience I consider it a plague.
2. In the Content Management preferences, for Daz Studio Content I pointed the new installation of DS 4.12 to my main content directory on an external networked drive that I have been using for Daz content for years, with content going way back. I'll call this my Main Content Directory.
3. This Main Content Directory drive is connected to my old iMac (the one I'm on right now), which has DS 4.11 on it. My version of DS 4.11 is pointed to the same Main Content Directory on the external drive as I pointed the new DS 4.12 to (from the new iMac).
4. My 4.11 installation of DS on this (old) computer shows all my content correctly in Smart Content.
5. My 4.12 installation suffered from all the symptoms I described in the second paragraph of ths post.

Well, this seemed very weird indeed. Both versions of DS on the two different computers had listed in preferences the exact same Main Content Directory for Daz Studio Content (stay tuned). And one was displaying all my Smart Content correctly, while one was displaying those hideous "MISSING!" thumbnail images.

And here's what I did that made the new installation suddenly work correctly in Smart Content: I went into Content Management preferences of the 4.12 DS, and added the exact same Main Content Directory for Poser Content!

The instant I closed the preferences window, BOOM! all my Smart Content showed up. No more hideous little exclamation mark images. Why did this work for fixing the presentation of Daz Studio Content in Smart Content? I have absolutely no idea. (But it is Daz, innit? So...)

I hadn't bothered to set up the Main Content Directory path for Poser Content initially in 4.12 because I was going to try to go cold turkey from Poser-only stuff for a while (at least on the new computer). But for reasons known only to God, a Daz coder, and a few East Oriental mystics, failing to do so completely munged my Smart Content.

Now when I do a Reimport Metadata operation, DS shows the expected lonnnnnng list of installed products.

And there, boys, girls, and whatever, you have the whole story, as well as I am able to tell it.

Sevrin

My guess: a Poser mole has infiltrated Daz and is trying to sabotage Daz Studio!

Richard Haseltine

They may have been files for Poser-format content, or DS files integrated into a Poser folder structure (e.g. some kind of companion file).

icprncss

Does it matter as long as the issue was easily resolved?

mavante

Sevrin said:

My guess: a Poser mole has infiltrated Daz and is trying to sabotage Daz Studio!

Well, I have the Poser skunk but not the mole. Rats, maybe I should gopher it.

daveso

i had similar problem..try importing metadata. it fixed mine. did you try Daz Central?

mavante

daveso said:

i had similar problem..try importing metadata. it fixed mine. did you try Daz Central?

Thanks, daveso. Yes, I tried importing metadata early on when this first happened, but DS on that computer only puts up a short list of products in the window that pops up. I'm pretty sure that it is nothing but what was installed automatically when I installed DS, so is limited to the items on that computer in the default Daz directories that it scatters all over.

That means DS is ignoring my Main Content Directory, (actually named "3D Active Content MASTER") which is on an external networked drive, even though I have set up that installation of DS to have that Main Content Directory (on the external drive) in the list of content directories:

In a word: Bedlam.

fixmypcmike

ISTR that if MacOSX loses the connection to an external volume, it reserves the name and tacks a 1 on the end when it reconnects.  Make sure it really sees that drive under the correct name.

mavante

Fixmypcmike said:

ISTR that if MacOSX loses the connection to an external volume, it reserves the name and tacks a 1 on the end when it reconnects.  Make sure it really sees that drive under the correct name.

Thanks, @Fixmypcmike. On the iMac 2019 (the one where the DS Smart Content problem is) I go to Finder>Network, and open the iMac 2012 that the external content drive is connected to. There I find that the external content drive is listed by its correct name: Calliope. There is no "1" or any number appended to the name.

Also, on the iMac 2019 computer where DS Smart Content is hosed, I can navigate through Finder to Network/iMac 2012/Calliope/3D Active Content MASTER, and all the expected folders are there. While there, I can open a folder, e.g., Network/iMac 2012/Calliope/3D Active Content MASTER/Documentation, and in there open a text file with no problem whatsoever. Or, I can open the folder Network/iMac 2012/Calliope/3D Active Content MASTER/Texture, and easily open any image I find in there.

So unless I'm missing something above my pay grade in the technical arena, I can't see that there is any problem communicating over the network between my iMac 2019 and my iMac 2012/Calliope/3D Active Content MASTER, which is where the vast bulk of my content is stored—except, of course, with Daz Studio 4.12.1.117. It can't seem to find all the content I can easily find over the network from Finder, and from various text and image programs. What am I missing?

Totte

What mike said, the main issue is this.

When you have a fresh rebooted system and mount a remote disk, the disk is mounted in the root directory /Volume /this is hidden by the Finder, but you can see that using the terminal).
So, you mount the remote disk named My Disk, it will be mounted as /Volumes/My Disk, and presented in the Finder as My Disk. The  yoiur machine goes to sleep, you loose network connection for a short period of time, and now the macOS looses the connection to the disk My Disk, so the systerm remounts it, as /Volumes/My Disk_1, but in Finder you still see My Disk, you see that it contain stuff, but that is just a virtual mapping to /Volumes/My Disk_1. DS and may onter programs use full paths, which in this case would be /Volumes/My Disk/Content/Something.duf
Now, after the wake up, you try to access Something.duf using  /Volumes/My Disk/Content/Something.duf but that  is empty, file not found, but you can see it through Finder, this is a real weird feeling, but the as the real path now is /Volumes/My Disk_1/Content/Something.duf, this is what happens.

I usually dismount the disk from Finder, then run the terminal and do:
 

cd /Volumeslsand then do diskutil unmount '/Volumes/My Disk_1'  and then mount it again from Finder

 

mavante

Thaniks for your comprehensive explanation, Totte. I'm left with a number of questions:

1. Did my simply adding that drive/directory inside DS as a Poser content path—never using Terminal—suddenly somehow reset the drive name, therefore causing all my Smart Content to reappear in DS?

2. Does a reboot accomplish the same thing as the terminal command?

3. Once the path is re-established, if I prevent my 2019 iMac from going to sleep will that get rid of this absurdity of Mac changing the drives names?

And you said:

DS and may onter programs use full paths, which in this case would be /Volumes/My Disk/Content/Something.duf

I don't know how many other programs use the full disk paths as you seem to be describing, and therefore have temporary insanity when the Mac OS does what you describe it doing as a basic matter of fact, but as I posted above, I tried two different programs that could easily locate content on that same drive/directory when Daz Studio had gone brain-dead about its existence. That is evidence that it is the programming of the individual programs that fails to take this OS behavior into account. Is that right?

Thanks.