Can someone please recommend a searchable by keyword database for Daz assets?
DawnStar
Posts: 70
Like many, I'm sure, I now have literally thousands of pounds worth of Daz Studio assets. Keeping track of them is a nightmare. None of the pre-existing options are 100% ideal. I do like Daz Central but the search facility, although the best I've found so far, is still very limited. Often one knows that one has a specific asset somewhere like, say, a wine bottle, and it's probably in a kitchen or dining room or restaurant, but one can't find it by searching for 'wine' or 'bottle.' So I've been thinking of going through my assets slowly one by one and listing all the individual assets by keywords in a searchable database, so that if I then do a search for 'wine' or whatever, the system will then list all my assets which include something relating to wine in the asset/bundle, and I can then go straight to the asset that includes it.
I can't see any other way of keeping track of specific individual assets. I'm sure others have been doing this. Could anyone please recommend a database program searchable by keyword which might be suitable for this. I've looked far and wide and it's not immediately obvious. Thanks!
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Do the search options in Smart Content (which are database queries to PostgreSQL) not work? Adding to and refining that, which at least already has some of the ground work, would be easier than starting from scratch.
I have solved the "can't find anything" problem in the following way. (I have over 5000 Daz assets).
1. I search via Smart Content.
2. If I can't find what I want then I consult my low-tech do-it-yourself "database" of product screen prints.
In this way I always find what I bought.
How to set up your screen print database.
1. Go through your entire product library and screen print the product page. Now some will have retired and you won't be able to get anything else than a small place holder, but it's still good enough. For the products that are still current one side benefit is that you get to keep the promo image that probably sold you on it in the first place vs the Smart content image which can sometimes not look much like what persuaded you to buy the item.
2. File each of the items under main categories - for example people, clothes, hair, props, environments etc.
3. Now split each main category up by era - I have medieval, victorian, 20s, 50s, 70s, contemporary, sci fi grunge and fantasy-sci fi for example.
4. Now for something like clothes, within those split up by character (this is less important if you have all the clones).
5. If something like hair is for say G2 and G3 - then I have 2 copies of the picture one for each character.
I've found this particularly useful for utilities. I have a very large collection of those and I can easily lose them in smart content as I forget the name of it.
If you think I'm not serious then consider this:- Before this system I realised I had no less than 3 rain tools. Since this set up I've not bought any more duplicate items.
Yes it's a pain to set up, and you'll need about 5-6GB of storage, but one other benefit - all my characters are headshots. I choose the headshot and it's always of the image that sold me the character in the first place. So when flipping through my low--tech database, I always know why that character was bought.
I can't see any other way of keeping track of specific individual assets. I'm sure others have been doing this. Could anyone please recommend a database program searchable by keyword which might be suitable for this. I've looked far and wide and it's not immediately obvious. Thanks!
I'm a recently retired dabbler in 3D CG. I started using iClone, DS, Poser and others starting in 2007. Regarding assets in DS, I've come to appreciate the Files tab in Smart Content when I want to find a particular type of item. For example, I just typed in the keyword "bottle" and got 209 bottle items with the keyword "bottle" in the file name as opposed to a search in the Products tab that only produces two products with the keyword "bottle" in the product name. The search results include items from my Poser assets as well.
Joe
Yes, the file search of Smart Content works great.....for those assets I have installed. I thought I'd read here in forums, however, that irrespective of how much hard disc space one has, it can get to the point that too many assets installed will dramatically slow down the system. Is that not the case? As a result I often uninstall assets I think I'm not going to use for a good while. I can then still search for them in Daz Central, but not file search of Smart Content. Unfortunately Daz Central won't pick up the assets within the asset. Do others keep ALL of their assets installed?
Thanks Sci Fi Punk. Some good ideas there. Perhaps a hybrid of this system focusing on those assets I don't tend to have permanently installed might be the way forward....
Yes, having too many assets installed will result in major slowdowns when you add a character (as I understand it, the issue is with the morphs; when DAZ loads a character, it has to load all the morphs for that character family). So uninstalling them is important if you want to keep DAZ Studio responsive.
I wish that DAZ software offered some kind of unified tagging/categorization system. DAZ Install Manager already supports search but not, as far as I know, the way to add your own keywords to content. I'd love to be able to group my content into categories by tagging it -- 'genesis-8-favorites' or 'old-stuff-do-not-install' or 'genesis-8-additional-females' would all be useful -- and then manage my installs that way. And having Install Manager categorizations carry over into DAZ Studio itself might be handy too.
You could try this, there's a free version (1000 products limitation, otherwise fully functional) so you can test it for as long as you like:
https://taosoft.dk/software/pm-daz/
Current version does not have keywords / tagging, but it's being implemented right now, and should be in next version. Includes both DAZ standard categories as well as user defined keywords / tags.
I use Voidtools Everything
I keep an inventory of all the promotional images that come with the assets I buy and organize them alphabetically in ACDSee Photo Manager. Further, I use ACDSee Photo Manager to create a contact sheet of installed items, thereby making a visual catalog of installed assets. That works like charm to keep track of poses (like DM's Feeling Pretty as seen below) and expressions.
ACDSee also enables you to assign labels and define categories. Just create a category called "wine bottle' and assign all appropriate promotional images to it. You can organize the images using either or both methods to keep track of them. I won't call this an unrivaled time saver, but I can find what I want and know how it looks before-hand. And it's certainly easier than learning SQL, Excel, or Access.
That's interesting. If the slowdowns are primarily caused by having too many characters installed, for the reasons that you say, then that would simply matters. Searching through uninstalled characters via Daz Central is easy, and if this means I can keep the bulk of my other assets installed then the search options in Smart Content work a treat. Is this a definite, or just as you "understand it"? If anyone else could confirm I would be grateful!
This looks VERY interesting. I have downloaded and will explore. Thanks!
This also looks very interesting. Definitely going to take a look at this. Thanks! There's been some great suggestions on here overall, and I'm very grateful.
I am fairly new to Daz, but I already have 4,000+ freebie items and (now I'm starting to get the hang of what I'm doing, and understanding what I need) an increasing number of paid-for items. I avoid Daz Central like the plague - here's how I'm approaching the problem instead.
I do all my searching in the directory which holds my archives, using File Explorer. The directory structure is logical (to me) and filenames follow a pattern 'description characters (authorname) tags', e.g., "jupe flamenco dress g8f (guy91600) daz.zip". The description is usually based on the author's own title for the product, but I augment it if the original is obtuse, inaccurate, misleading or non-english. In hindsight I could have treated the authorname and list of characters (g3m, g8f, g81f, v4, m4, etc) the same as normal tags. I use the tool from advancedrenamer.com to automate most of the renaming process. This tool can process batches of files, to perform operations such as trimming filenames, standardising case, removing punctuation which may complicate file searches (underscores, etc), adding or removing tags, and much more.
The tags don't automatically appear in My Library or My Poser Library, of course, but I also manage those directories manually, and so far I've never had any difficulty finding an asset whose archive-name suggests it may be of interest.
In the case of the OP's 'bottle of wine' example, a successful search would depend upon the user having added the appropriate keywords when filing the archive. It would not matter whether it had been filed under 'eateries', 'dating', 'france' or '1980s' - if the tag 'wine' had been added, the archived file will be found by File Explorer. There is no need to build a dedicated database, IMO.
Although probably impractical for the OP, I solved this problem by creating an Access DB (actually multiple, linked DBs). Since I created it specifically for my needs, it does all the things I wanted; downside, it's very time-consuming to populate and maintain. I can do full text search of product descriptions, I attached JPGs so I can see the product pages and I created fairly granular categorization of things I particularly need - for instance, I can find products that include, specifically, boots, or if I want to find a pose for sitting on a flat surface like the ground, I don't have to wade through hundreds or thousands of generic "sitting" poses.
Just sharing my experience, since I was facing this exact problem a couple of months ago. Sorry, not an easy answer.
No, definitely not an easy answer, especially as I haven't properly got to grips with Access yet - but it was the direction I was originally leaning towards when I first posed the query, and I still feel it's probably the most comprehensive answer. I don't mind that it would be time consuming to populate and maintain. My experience of databases in the past has been numerous false starts only to discover that there was some other field I wish I'd added in right at the beginning, and I would have to start inputting the same data all over again! Hopefully database creation has become a bit more flexible since then. Could I trouble you to give me some idea of what fields you created for your DB? Thanks.
Redacted
While a full database might be overkill for a simple tagging system it does allow other features, such as relating items to their compatible figure(s) or targets, which is - I think - why Daz uses one.
Considering that default metadata in batch writing is damaged and is worse than useless, it would be interesting to see a script of that nature.
Ditto. It is the most important program on my computer.
DS solutions are working, but I find they are limited. Found it difficult to add to a item pointers to related items (e.g. hair to hair color or maybe a prior unrelated hat) which will be visible at the same time as I get the information about the the items I was looking for (your wine bottle - there it would be the relation to liquid shaders....). And too I found no good way to booster up the description to include information I would like to add regarding the use in my scenes.
Therefore I experiment with an Open Office Database at the moment.
Regards
atoxic