'Show Asset In' Functionality Not Working

docbadwrench

I'm pretty new to Daz, but I'm starting to get the hang of things. However, there is one problem that continues to confound me and I'm not sure what the reason for it is:

Within the Content Library, I can search for only some of my assets. But for plenty of assets, when I find one, select it from the results, and then Right Click on Show Asset In...

Selecting the first option - Smart Content / Files - results in an error stating "The chosen products could not be found with the current filtering options. Clear the filter field and try again." However - and I cannot stress this enough - there is never a filter applied when Daz displays this message.

Selecting the second option - Smart Content / Products - results in an error stating "The chosen products do not provide categories which are required for navigation in the Smart Content pane." Now this I can understand. I downloaded a bunch of stuff that likely needs to be categorized. In this particular use case, I'm trying to identify the other scripts in the 'package'. However, as I cannot use any other method to find these items, I don't know how I could categorize them.

Selecting the third or fourth options - Mapped Folder or Products respectively - results in nothing. Literally nothing happens and no alterations to the UI occur.

Why can't I just drill into it's home since the CMS is able to ID its existence? I'm certain that I must be missing something. 

Thanks in advance for your help.

NorthOf45

The first two options presume the presence of metadata, either from the product, automatically generated (more on that later) or manually added. All DAZ3D products from the last few years have it, but not all. Some earlier DAZ/Poser products might have it. The metadata defines the Product and the content type of all included items, among other things. This allows Studio to trace back to the Smart Content views when selecting an item in some folder or category. Without metadata, you'll probably get those messages, since there is info missing. Does not compute.

The fourth option is basically the same as the Smart Content > Products, except that it goes to the Content Library > Products > alphanumeric list. It also presumes the existence of said Product as determined by the metadata. The Mapped folder is nothing more than the folder in the Content Library. If you are in a Content Library folder, you are already in the mapped folder, so that option won't be available anyway. If you are in a category folder (default or your own custom categories), or search results, it will bring you to the Content Library folder, which is basically a file explorer that filters out any files not recognized by Studio.

Metadata is added when installing with one of the three automated processes: DIM, DAZ Central, or DAZ Connect. I only use DIM, so I will stick to that method. If the product has a metadata file, it is automatically added to the CMS database when the product is installed, and that's all there is to it. If a product does not have a metadata file, a default minimalist version is generated to define the necessary info, like the Product and all its items. There are no content types nor any compatibilities defined, so it has limited functionality, and definitely no Smart Content (just the basic Product and its contents). (DAZ Central is supposed to work the same as DIM. DAZ Connect is an entirely different system for installing content from within Studio)

Manually installing content (i.e., unzip into a folder) will not get you any of the data needed to identify the Product or what it includes. You can define the Product and include the necessary files by selecting the "Make Product from..." option. There is a whole manual process of adding metadata if you really want it.

docbadwrench

Thanks very much for breaking that down! I'm taking care to categorize things as I install them so I won't have so many problems with this.