Can I move the parts of the content folders without breaking it?
fredfredburger55
Posts: 70
Some charachters e.g Mousso are outside his charachter folder while some are in it. I've read some other posts about this but I couldn't really make out a definitve answer from them. If I don't touch the "Runtime" folder or the "data" folder, but only the "People" folder. Can I move those charachters in to the same subfolder or will it break the charachters?
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The files in the folders / sub-folders of People / Environments / Figures / Props, etc. are user-facing files. In general, the user-facing files can be in any folders if you only use Content Library. You won't break the character preset(s).
But if you a Smart Content user, pls be cautious: DO NOT move files in File Browser or some similar applications other than moving by Cut or Copy / Paste in Content Library, otherwise you will mess up the metadata, then you have to correct them.
Not just Smart Content but anything that depends on the database. A better option is to create links and place those where you want (you could even create a secondary content directory and put links to everything there, organised as you want) or to use categories which you can freely adjust as you wish (the original, "vendor" categories will continue to show in the Content Library pane, however).
In product Librarie(s) (non-user Libraries), Copy or Cut will automatically create a djl asset link, however, the linked user-facing file(s) have to be still in the 'original linked folder(s)'. It's the same when creating links for asset manually...
As for vendor categories, they could be overridden or eliminated from metadata if really needed, as quite a lot of vendor categories are wrong, or at least inappropriate...
The cut/copy to create links wasn't working for me last time I tried it.
After we talked about that last time, I further tried in my Product Libraries, they work but they don't work in user's Libraries.
I'm not sure what you mean by the different library types.
In Red Library, Cut is a 'real cut'. No asset link will be created. The file(s) won't exisit any more in its original folder and its Content Type + Category will be all gone.
I'm actually surpised that QA doesn't do more about this problem.
I have categories that simply should not exist - like the mis-spelling of Vehicles for one single product, the mis-spelling of Environments for two products and artists deciding to put their own folder wherever they want.
When they came out with Daz Studio 4.0 they had a beautiful opportunity to thwart the horrible mess we started seeing in after-markey runtime structures - but they chose not to embrace it - fairly early on. Probably because of the slick new Smart Content feature.
It's crazy. Buy a product and it gets installed to a decent place. Buy an addon for it and it's in an entirely different place? That not only doesn't make sense... it toally sucks! And some of these are coming from veteran artists!
So anyway, are you saying that we can move these things to where they actually should be and have DIM still recognize the new location? I use DIM as my database manager/file locator. So I need everything to jive with it.
It should actually be caught Before it ever makes it to QA. My product manager would have noticed that right from the first upload!
User-data vs Vendor data - though I thought I had tested that after the first failure (with a user data file).
As for the issue at hand... each to their own but for me this is exactly why the smart contents pane (or bettter put: why the virtual categories) can be of great help. It's not perfect (you often cannot move an item from its designated "base location" without changing the product entry itself), but even so it can be a great solution - in my opinion of course - to allow you to move or place everything just about anywhere, within the virtual space of course.
For example... most of my poses begin with Figures = Genesis. I'm not going to bother myself with trying to find these base figures within deeper categories, not to mention that I usually couldn't care less about gender when making such rough basic poses. Same deal with clothing: Wardrobe => Outfits. I 'collected' and re-categorized a lot of stuff myself because it made it much easier on me.
Best part: I can customize all I want and/or need and it doesn't affect anything.
Anyway....
While I definitely recognize where you're coming from I also think it's important to keep in mind that being a veteran artists doesn't imply also having full insight as to how things work within Daz Studio on a technical level. And I'm not too sure that you can (or should) try to put some blame on anyone. I get it that this can be really annoying... heck: I relied way too much on 'smart contents' as a newbie and as a result I still have plenty of assets that are available either within my 'lost and found' category or often also only within the content library pane itself.
The thing is though... standards are easy to devise, but much harder to get accepted and / or acknowledged as a standard. In the end we all know best, heck, myself basically included given my take on smart contents and all....
Yea ~~ Though I can see no source code of DS, I think they check the file's metadata before Cut/Copy/Paste.