Why do I have stuff in Smart Content > Available?
Why do I have stuff in Smart Content > Available?
Just noticed that I have over 20 products under Smart Content > Available... I double clicked on one of them and it appeared to download and is now in Smart Content > Updates as well as Smart Content > Installed.
Why are there stuff in Smart Content > Available and why were they not installed automatically via DIM? (these aren't all old products, some are for G8).
Most of them are morphs (G3, G8) and one G8 clothing as well as a socks bundle. Should I click on them all and I guess download them?
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I would say NO, don't click on them and download them.
First you need to realize that there are at least 4 ways to install Daz content products:
Some products cannot be installed by all 4 methods. For example, some script products and plugin products don't work properly when installed with Daz Connect. I'm not aware of any products that can ONLY be installed with Daz Connect, but it is possible that you found some. I doubt it, though.It is more likely that the product is tagged incorrectly in DIM or that you have download filtering configured to hide those products.
Hmm... it's strange coz, for example, I tested and clicked on one of the products (Tube Socks for G3 and G8 Female) via Smart Content > Available. It appears now on > Installed as well as > Updates. Previously, it wasn't installed anywhere and DIM certainly did not install it. I have 20 other items within > Available and most are G3/G8 morphs and a couple of expressions. These products are unlisted when searched for on Smart Content... so if I do not install them within DS, how can I get to use them?
Ohhh... and the plot thickens. I just went into DIM and found out that "Tube Socks" had indeed been installed by DIM... but it did not appear anywhere in my Smart Content directory or even anywhere else when I searched for "socks". Anyway, I just uninstalled it via DS (undoing my earlier installation via DS).
There was a time (not sure if it is still that way) when many products in DIM were tagged only with "Connect Available", and not at least a "DAZ Studio 4.5+", so they would not show in DIM unless you selected (counter-intuitively) that particular filter in the Downloads options. There is also a "Connect Installed" filter that will hide from DIM anything that is installed with Connect, to prevent you from installing it with again. If installed with DIM, Connect should see the Product in DAZ Studio and not show it as available. It's complicated...
Yes, it is!
I don't own the tube socks, so I can't check. There are some things you can try and some useful tricks you can use to debug similar problems:
In DIM, go to the Installed tab. Look on the line for the tube socks product. Does it show a checkmark? If not, the product doesn't have metadata and will not show up in Smart Content at all. If it does have a checkmark, right click and select Reimport metadata and select the product. Check Daz Studio again. Does the product show up in Smart Content now? If not, maybe try closing Daz Studio and reopening it and check again.
In DIM, go to the Installed tab. Select the tube socks product in the Products list. Right click on the highlighted selected product. In the menu that pops up, select Show Installed Files. This will give you a hyperlink to every file that DIM installed for that product and link you to exactly where DIM installed it on your computer. Once you know where files are installed, can you find that location in Daz Studio in your Content Library? Are the files there? If so, right click on one of the files and select Show Asset In>Smart Content Files. Is it there? Also try Show Asset In>Smart Content Products and Show Asset In>Products.
I want to mention that I used to use Daz Connect to install all my products. The graphical interface and convenient install method inside Daz Studio is attractive. But I had too many problems with content installed that way. There were products that didn't work when they were installed with Daz Connect. There were products that didn't work with content that was installed with Daz Connect. Some PAs weren't developing products to be compatible with Daz Connect, even though Daz Connect had been out for years. There were way too many installation failures with corrupted files. I finally just gave up and went to back to DIM. I have not regretted it.
It does have a checkmark so it has metadata... I selected and Reimport Metadata but it still didn't show up in Smart Content (only in Available and not as Installed). Have closed and reopened DS.
I located the socks in Content Library but when I clicked Show Asset > Smart Content Product ... it showed up, again, in Available in a greyed out status and not as Installed. It does not show up as Installed even though the product exists in Content Library.
Sigh... I guess I shall pick other battles to fight though.
These are my download filters in DIM:
DAZ Studio 4.5+
Install Manager
Windows 64 Bit
Public Build
Publishing Build
Private Build
Connect Available
Connect Installed
I just noticed that if I were to add "General" to the filters, I would have another 30 products show up (some are Photoshop add-ons from a long time ago and many "OBJ" files from recently purchased items?? - do I need these?).
FInally, when I add DS4, DS3 and DS<3 to the filter, more than 200 other (old) products showed up there... again, did I need to add these filters to the download?
Man... this is a lesson and a half... why can't things be less complicated so that we can simply focus on learning DS instead of learning how to install stuff?
Remember what NorthOf45 said? It's complicated...
If you want to install that old stuff, then select those old DS version download filters, I guess. If you don't use that old stuff anymore, then don't enable those filters, I guess. There is also a Poser 9+ filter that you may need for really really old stuff. For some old products you have to install the Poser version and also install a DS companion file. Yes, it is complicated.
I do recommend that you keep Connect Available enabled, just because of ERRORS in the tagging of some products that have ONLY that tag, as mentioned by NorthOf45.
If you are not a PA, you don't need Publishing Build or Private Build, but they won't hurt anything. They were checked in mine, and I just left them that way to see if anything ever showed up. It didn't.
If you never install with Daz Connect, Connect Installed is not much use to you either. The only use I see is to double check that you have not installed something with both DIM and Daz Connect. You would do that in DIM by clicking on the magnifying glass near the upper right corner and selecting Filter by Tag>Connect Installed. There are lots of prebuilt filters there for you to experiment with.
I think you should have General checked. Some tutorials fall in that category, I think. Also, if you have purchased things like Ron's brushes, you should have Photoshop checked. You should probably also have Software and Plugin checked.
If you want to see everything you own, just check them all, but be careful with what you install. You may end up with a lot of things you don't really want to install, like Poser companion files and Win 32 and Mac files, so be careful. That is why filters are handy; they can hide inappropriate files.
I have:
Blender (I'm curious to see if anything ever shows up here. This is a new addition to the filter list.)
DAZ Studio 4.5+
Hexagon (I own it, so I have it checked)
Install Manager
Photoshop
General
Software
Plugin
Windows 64-bit
Public Build (this is the Beta for Daz Studio)
Publishing Build (for PAs, which doesn't include me)
Private Build (for an mysterious select few that do not include me)
Connect Available
Connect Installed (because I used to use Connect, before I gave up on it and returned to DIM)
As far as OBJ files go, you shouldn't need them for Daz Studio. Some users requested them, because they wanted to use the product in other applications. Some PAs started including OBJ files for that purpose.
For example, I have Sea Shanty Props OBJ in my Downloads list. The product works without those files in Daz Studio. I did not download the OBJ files. In fact, I chose to hide that download in DIM so it didn't keep showing up in the list.
I just followed your advice above and changed my filters... whatever it is that's downloading, I have an additional 420 items that are coming in as we speak. This is waaaay too complicated. And I hate not knowing what it is in my inventory when I have no control over it... I am sure I have close duplicates of stuff and scripts and a ton of things that I have never used either coz I didn't know they existed or didn't know where to find them! You have been such an amazing help (even with UltraScenery :P)... since I have the 5TB HDD dedicated to DAZ, I figure I will just download them all and not have to worry about what's purchased but sleeping in limbo land.
Now you will be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in Daz Studio. You still won't know what you have or where to find it.
A lot of the complexity is based on history and how things have evolved over the years, from Poser into Daz Studio, and from generation 4 (Victoria 4, Michael 4) to the Genesis line, and from 3Delight to Iray. The current Content Library folders structure with folders like Runtime are a holdover from old Poser days, even though it makes little sense for Daz Studio itself now.
Thanks for the grin and the chuckle :D :D ;) ahhhh... the Daz world is such fun indeed... and throw in the flash coupons, some that don't work, some that work much better than intended, some that don't stack, some that stack like a 3-feet high pile of pancakes from iHop... overall though, despite the quirks (I am 100% sure that the DAZ team tries its very best - no reason why they wouldn't), I am finding my DAZ journey a very amusing and exciting one that I truly enjoy waking up to every day!
barbult, thank you so much for explaining this! I recently found out that I have double installed all of my content with both DIM and DAZ Connect. My husband had been griping with me over filling up my new hard drive so fast, and now I know why!
I did an experiment with one of the double installed products. I uninstalled from within DAZ with DAZ Connect, exited DAZ, started DAZ again and the product was not in Smart Content / All, but it was in Smart Content / Available. DIM said it was installed, so I exited DAZ, uninstalled with DIM, installed with DIM and the product was again available in Smart Content / All. (with the very tempting swirly icon... must....not....click....)
This will be a very tedious process with all of my content. Can I just delete the items in the /cloud directory? or will that completely break everything?
Thank you very much for your wonderful information!
@Helene I wouldn't recommend just deleting files in the cloud directory. This is what I would do, but I have only done this on a few products at a time, not everything at once, so you are taking a risk by trying it. Maybe you should ask customer service first.
Despite trying all the above steps, I still haven't resolved this issue and 41 products remain greyed out... it's very annoying.
I performed the DIM Filter by Tag >Connect Installed and nothing showed up.
All the files were installed by DIM and can be found within Content Lbrary but they all show up as greyed out within Smart Content > Available and do not appear in Smart Content > Installed.
If anybody has any of the below products, could you please let me know if you're facing the same problem?
I am a purely DIM person (haha) and do not use Central or Connect. Thanks so much!
Searched on Youtube and managed to resolve this issue for 6 items (including the G8M Tube Socks!) by performing this action: Content Database Maintenance > Process Metadata Queue & Re-import Metadata (I don't exactly know what these action are for but many of my previous manual metadata adds for M4 also showed up as "New" in Smart Content)
I now only have 35 more greyed out items under Smart Content "Available" even though all those files have been downloaded and installed in the proper directories and can be manually located; most of these have that strange icon looking like a notepad with a "U" on it.