I cannot find the assets I need...
jpetersen1
Posts: 148
I have thousands of assets and most of those have secondary files (like textures, morphs, poses, etc.). It's probably close to a million files in total.
I spend more time searching for things than actually doing 3D work.
Even when I know the exact name of the asset I can't find it. I've been searching for more than 15 minutes for a garment. I could have dressed and posed my figure by now and these lost minutes are lost forever.
If I search in the Content Library (with both database and file options), it turns up the texture for this garment but not the garment. It also turns up fences and grass and rubber duckies and a LOOOOOOOOONNNNGGGG scroll list of completely irrelevant items. You never know if what you are seeking is in the LOOOOONG list and you accidentally scrolled past it, so you end up scrolling through this LOOOOONG list multiple times.
I cannot find it in the Product list. In fact, the Product list seems to have only a tiny fraction of my assets.
I cannot find it in the Categories list (maybe it's there, but there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of items that are similar, so it's still difficult to find something specific).
So I searched online on my Daz account Orders page and it brings up the texture but not the original item (more wasted time). It turns out that the titles are different. Some people say G3, some say Genesis 3, some say Gen3, some leave that info out of the title. You can search and search and search and still not find certain things that are compatible and you have to do many searches with all the variants.
So I finally find the texture and go through the Required Products link to find the original garment. Almost 20 minutes to locate this specific garment. Now I know the exact title. I try typing it into the DS search box exactly as it is and the DS search still doesn't find it. I know it's there. I bought it. I installed it with DAZ DIM.
So... I tried searching with quotation marks around the title (and also tried with the first two words of the title) hoping it would EXCLUDE all the irrevelant stuff that pops up in search, but this doesn't work. You get no hits.
So, first question 1) is there a way to search the way one usually searches with quotation marks? So you get only an exact match and not the secondary (irrelevant) matches?
I would say that 30% of my time is wasted simply searching for things I know I have (many of which have very weird titles and even weirder file names). This time is multipled over all the DS users that are having the same problem. This is time that DS users cannot get back AND is directly relevant to DS potential asset sales because makes it difficult to monetize our creations. If I can reduce the production time, that gives me more clients, more sales of my artwork and more funds to buy more assets. It if takes too long to create things, it's difficult to monetize (costs too much for the buyer) and there is LESS money available for buying more assets.
Time is money.
Search advice would be very much appreciated. If you have a very large base of assets, how do you find the right items (especially items compatible with something you've already put into the scene) and how do you do it QUICKLY?
Thank you
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Comments
I've been doing renders for only one year and a half, and after six months, I was already running into this problem. At the time, given the difficulties I had finding assets in my rather small library, I precisely wondered how people like you who have a bazillion of assets can posibly find anything. I'm slowly organizing everything in categories of my own, but I'm a long way from being done. Meanwhile, like you I search through library folders, make searches, look through the product folders, look in the DAZ catalogue to find the read me that will tell me where the asset is, etc...Even though there's no monetary loss since I do renders for my pleasure, I wish that I wouldn't waste so much time searching for stuff (and also completely forgetting assets that I bought but that are misplaced. You need to at least remember that you have an asset to search for it).
One thing that could be done is DAZ *imposing* the folder where the asset should go, and a standard format identical for everybody. To get rid for instance of vanity folders and such (you search for the "Temple of evil" folder, but in fact it's in under the "Artistname" folder or in a subcategory that only this artist uses), to avoid having similar assets once in "Architecture", once in "Environments", once in "Props". Not even counting spelling mistakes (or variations of naming conventions like the G3, Gen3, Genesis 3 you mention) that create a new folder. To avoid finding two elements of the same asset in two different folders, etc... It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it would allievate it significantly.
You make a good point about remembering that you have an asset. You're completely right. As the asset library grows, you might have exactly the thing you need but can't search unless you can remember you have it, and many assets come as sets with individual props that are useful for other things but you have to know what they are.
Another problem I'm having is that I cannot find the prop. When you search for an item, it sometimes brings up all the mats (as well as a lot of irrelevant hits) and these can be extensive if you have purchased additional materials for specific items. When you search, the prop can be anywhere, so I scroll up and down, up and down, through 600 items, trying to find the prop, which has to be loaded before you add the mat.
It would be helpful to have a priority system in the search. An option to put the props at the top. You would still have to scroll through mats, but at least you could FIND the prop (assuming you can remember the name and assuming the name even finds it, which sometimes it doesn't).
I think in a few years, as people accumulate assets that this will reach a crisis level (I'm already reaching that level) where the productivity is so low in relation to the time spent finding things that it's almost not worth it. One way Daz could help is to let us download a .csv of our assets. Then we could add our own keywords. It would significantly help sorting through the database so we can FIND the filename or title of the items we need before using the DS internal search.
Even when I go outside to Mac OS file search I have to enter several names to find a prop. I have started my own categories such as Shoes under Genesis 2 Female in the Content Library.
It is time consuming but it helps.
Add to it the fact that some PAs over the years—and some right now, today, at least at other product sites—had (have) no idea how to properly set up a distribution folder. For instance, I've had to deal with these kinds of variations in folder names at the top level of the "My Daz Library" (or whatever you call yours):
Readme's (standard)
Readmes
Readme
Or:
Environments (standard)
Environment
Or:
Scenes (standard)
Scene
And some PAs even create their own self-named folders at the top level! I don't want to name names, but it becomes maddening trying to organize the resulting dog's breakfast.
I had started doing that but I was advised against it. I remember people mentioning to issues with reorganizing the library, but can only remember one : the updates can't find your products anymore. That's why I started to sort everything in categories instead, my goal being ultimately to use only my categories, and not at all the library.
I use "category" to identify products that go together but have different naming styles being made by different artists. For props, I make my own sub categories, like plants there are now tree, flower, grass, shrub, weed and so forth.
For example under my sub-category "tree""I have palm, fir, dead, bonsai and so on. I'm not after botantical accuracy, just "show me what I have that looks like a fir tree". The time I spend, after installing and adding my own categories is well worth the short time like less than a minute, than searching in vain. Or, props in scenes that don't show up in PROPS, such as ones in environments, or interiors. For somethings are in Lost and Found. A little more time consuming, but I remove that category check, and make my own. And, of course things I rarely use are stored in the Content Library, and that search is 50/50 if I don't know the exact name.
I was trying to find a very old product, for a Brugesmania (spelling?) that I bought. Sometimes the plant is called Datura, incorrectly, but I tried it anyway in vain. I tried plant, flower, vine, tree, bush shrub. Turned out it was an add-on to a vine product and it was called "Lethal Beauty". I simply found that title in IM, and installed and immediately made a sub-category for both the mat and base product as "datura" (cause I can remember how to spell that and what it looks like). So the vine which has its own default categories also now has my sub-categories, 'vine' and 'datura' for the prop and that particular mat.
This eliminates all the other mats that go with that vine in a search. I do the same thing with say, furniture. I have sub-categories that search by style, ie Egyptian, Deco, Victorian. and so on.Again, not strictly accurate, just how I remember a product. If a sub category is not working for me, I can change it. This doesn't affect the original files or disrupt anything. Very handy for a project. Let's say I want every prop that suggests "Egyptian", even if it was in a Sci fi product, or a Greek product. I make a sub-category, "A Egyptian Project 2020". The A is just to put it at the top of the menu. There's all the props I expect to use, or choose from for that project.
on google use...
"search term" site:daz3d.com
usually (not always) gives better results.
Marc, I don't have trouble finding the items on the DAZ site if I know at least part of the title. I do use Google if I can't find it in the product database.
But some products have weird names that have nothing to do with what they are (it could be clothing but it might be called "Winter Nights") and if it's a shirt, it could be called, shirt, blouse, top and you have to look through all the possibilities until you find them.
But even if you can find it in the online product list, the biggest problem is finding the items in the DS app. Even when you know the exact name it sometimes doesn't come up in Content Search.
Even if it does come up in Content Search... so do 500 other assets with some of those letters in the name and then you have to scroll and scroll and scroll trying to find it and it's VERY easy to accidentally zoom past it if you don't know what the thumbnail is going to look like (and many of the thumbnails for different items are very similar, which complicates it further if you need something specific to match with something else in terms of compatibility).
This is an astute observation that echos something I have wondered about for quite some time: I can rapidly and easily filter things in the Daz marketplace and find everything relevant (even when the actual name of a product isn't necessarily relevant), but I can't come close to such relevant filtering for a search in Daz Studio.
That's downright bizarre. Obviously the products have keywords assigned to them in Daz's own database that don't get transferred to a purchaser/user of Daz Studio and those products.
To me, that's the very first thing that should be addressed in the next version of DS. Make its search function far more robust for filtering and narrowing down.
Then again, I look at the "search" function right here in these forums, and I think: Who I am kidding?
Are you searching in Smart Content or the Content Library?
I don't know about mavante, but I am searching in the Content Library. I always work offline. Only a fraction of the assets show up in searches and can't always be found in the directory trees on the left (Category or Product) either.
It's a nightmare, actually. I spend more time trying to find things (and finding things that are compatible with what's currently in the scene) than I spend doing productive work.
The Content Library search is more limited than that in Smart Content.
One of the things that greatly hinders Content Search is the unrelated items that are displayed. They clog the search results.
For example, if I type "Hair" I get about 200 chairs mixed in with all the hair. For some searches that's okay, but other times, it makes it very hard to find the right asset, and makes it harder to even know if it came up in search at all (it's easy to accidentally zoom past it).
Is there a way to limit search so that when you want ONLY items that match hair, you don't get all the chairs as well? I tried putting quotes around it (which is how it works in most search engines) and that didn't work.
Valid point. It would be nice if, when you select a category in the Content Library, results were limited to items in that category, say People > Genesis 8 Male > Clothing, rather than poking through props, poses, shaders, etc., as well.
Either. Both. Files and Products.
That would be very useful. Unfortunately, many assets don't appear in the Category or Product folders, which means you might have it, but Content Search wouldn't find it.