Content Management

SwingGecko

Hi,

I apologize in advance if there's something here in the forums, but I looked and I haven't found it yet. I'm realizing that I'm starting to hit "maximum capacity" on my ability to remember what and where I've put all the various content. For things like clothing, the smart pane works best for me. For my (thousands...) of iray shaders, I've been finding that the Content Library works better for that. I find the Smart Content "fabric" directory for instance to be an unmitigated disaster.

And that's worked fine until now. Unfortunately, with the Daz4.9 update, I'm noticing some of the shaders and other content still aren't showing up for me int he Library. I know it said it's suppose to, but as of yet, it's not there.

So I guess the two questions are:

1) Do you know of a way to get the content from DazConnect to actually show up in the Content Library in a simliar format? I see it in the "products" but nowhere else.

2) Perhaps a better course of action, how do you all manage your content, especially all the shaders? I'm not too familiar with the abilities or features of Daz's CMS, so any tips/tricks/suggestions would be well apperciated!

Thanks!!

Former DAZ Customer

I've noticed that as well (shaders vs smart content).  I created another category tree at the same level as, but separate from, Default (call it Mine or something), and then categorize some things there that the smart content isn't working as well for.  And, of course, regularly back up user data... ;-)

Richard Haseltine

1)

a) find the content files in Smart Content

b) create the destination folders (right-click menu in the Content Library pane, or using the OS tools)

c) drag the files from the Smart Content pane into the target folder's name (not the empty space where the files will appear).

This will create special shorcuts to the content, .djl files, which can be further moved around in the OS file browser if desired.

ShelLuser

SwingGecko said:

So I guess the two questions are:

1) Do you know of a way to get the content from DazConnect to actually show up in the Content Library in a simliar format? I see it in the "products" but nowhere else.

Unfortunately it seems the system doesn't recognize any 'mapped' folders any longer, which was the previous approach. Another problem is that the DazConnect library doesn't use one single directory but dozens (if you check the folder you'll notice data\cloud where 'cloud' contains a large amount of subfolders which all basically contain the same folder structure). But if you know which sub directory is being used then you could map that by right clicking on the content library tab and selecting the content direcory manager. This gives you access to one specific directory through the content library tab.

But as said: its not an ideal solution because the current approach is no longer to have 1 direcory structure which contains all the installed items, instead it now maintains dozens of directory structures; one for each item. Daz says that the new DazConnect helps save diskspace but I seriously disagree with that statement. The new storage format is far from redundant.

SwingGecko said:

2) Perhaps a better course of action, how do you all manage your content, especially all the shaders? I'm not too familiar with the abilities or features of Daz's CMS, so any tips/tricks/suggestions would be well apperciated!

Can't comment on shaders in particular, but check out this Metadata tutorial by Herald of Fire. That really helped me out a lot with sorting out my 3rd party stuff (stuff which I created but also the large amount of freebies which I downloaded and which never showed up in the smart content pane).

Hope this helps a bit.

 

 

Richard Haseltine

ShelLuser said:

SwingGecko said:

So I guess the two questions are:

1) Do you know of a way to get the content from DazConnect to actually show up in the Content Library in a simliar format? I see it in the "products" but nowhere else.

Unfortunately it seems the system doesn't recognize any 'mapped' folders any longer, which was the previous approach. Another problem is that the DazConnect library doesn't use one single directory but dozens (if you check the folder you'll notice data\cloud where 'cloud' contains a large amount of subfolders which all basically contain the same folder structure). But if you know which sub directory is being used then you could map that by right clicking on the content library tab and selecting the content direcory manager. This gives you access to one specific directory through the content library tab.

But as said: its not an ideal solution because the current approach is no longer to have 1 direcory structure which contains all the installed items, instead it now maintains dozens of directory structures; one for each item. Daz says that the new DazConnect helps save diskspace but I seriously disagree with that statement. The new storage format is far from redundant.

It's  bad idea to map the individual Cloud folders as you will then have nested content directories - the folder that holds the data folder and the subfolders of Data\Cloud - which can produce unexpected behaviour.

SwingGecko

Thank you all for taking the time to comment. I apologize for not responding earlier, I didn't realize anyone responded (stupid of me...)

I'll look over the tutorial and see if I want to get things in line that way. I think the thing I'm mostly looking to do is to just get in line with how the product intends it to be done, rather than how I figured out to do it. Though of course, if the product's intent is "find what works best for you", then I'll certainly have to alter that plan. :)