Smart Content creation questions.

DMFW

I'm having fun creating my own smart product meta data for renderosity content I've installed into DAZ Studio. It seems to be working well and I am learning a lot about DAZ content management, some of which I wish I'd taken the trouble to study ages ago. Even if the process is a bit time consuming, it all feels well worthwhile. Thanks to a tip from NorthOf45 on another thread I've figured out how to add a store for renderosity into DAZ Studio using a script and also I can see the implications of attaching the renderosity product ID to the DAZ product (it affects the generated DSX and DSA file names). I guess theoretically the ID could be passed into the template hyperlink associated with the store? I haven't figured out how/if that works but it doesn't worry me too much at the moment.

My question(s) are actually about the DSX and DSA files that are created (or recreated if I change the store from LOCAL_USER to Renderosity). For historic reasons, I have multiple content libraries going all the way back to "Base Content 2.0" and even though the products I am creating all relate to content in "My DAZ 3D Library", for some reason the DSX and DSA files are being posted into "Base Content 2.0", which just happens to be at the top of my list of content locations. They seem to work fine but will this cause me any problems later? What controls this? Can I move them into "My DAZ 3D Library"? I am a little unclear about the role these files play at run time. On the one hand, having an image file of the same name in the same location governs the product appearance, on the other hand, generating them is described as an export process, so that makes me think the DAZ Studio database has all the important information (apart, possibly from the image) so do these files even matter for studio functions? I do understand that you'd want to keep them to reimport them if you needed to rebuild the database, but apart from that are they actually read by studio at run time?

Lots of questions there and happy for any insight anyone can provide. I really like the idea of being able to make smart content meta data myself, where the original vendors have not done so.

Sevrin

I use Content Wizard to create Smart Content for products from third-party shops like Rendo.  It's much faster than doing it oneself.

DMFW

That looks like it could be really useful. I must admit that even though I've enjoyed learning about the process of creating meta data so far and I think it is definitely helpful to understand what's happening under the bonnet, it's also becoming clear that this can be a long winded excercise if you have a lot of products. I certainly have enough to know I'd be working on the import process for a while and it could get tedious in the end. Sounds like Content Wizard might be just what I need. I'll add it to my shopping cart.

DMFW

Content Wizard  is great. It's going to save me a lot of work. However, now I'm starting to understand Smart Content I have more questions :-)

This is more for general understanding. One thing Content Manager achieves and also DAZ Smart Products which I don't know how to do manually, is to source content for a product from more than one directory. When I'm creating a Smart Product manually, I right click on the content folder and use "Create Product", then edit it. But I can't add new assets this way. Some products have multiple roots, for example a set of poses that apply to G3 and G8 are installed within their parent folders. I would like to have just one product in this case, with the poses categorised internally but via the manual method I can't see how to do this and my work around was to create two different smart products. Maybe the answer is that the DAZ interface just doesn't support the idea when it is allowing you to edit the meta data. I guess I could just edit the XML in the DSX file directly to add assets that way and then import it? Not really a massive problem since Content Wizard handles it but just curious if there is a way to do it "natively" in DAZ Studio.

NorthOf45

You can go to another folder and add it to an existing Product by doing the same action (Create Product From...) and create the same product (might be a good idea to copy/paste the name on a Sticky Note). You will be warned that the product exists, and do you want to add these items to the product. Accept, and now you have assets from different folders. Rinse, repeat...

DMFW

Excellent, thanks. I have come across a couple of products that seem to give Content Wizard indigestion and for these I just decided to take over the process and do them manually. As "luck" would have it, one of them happened to be an example with multlple root folders. I ended up creating two products but now I know this technique I will delete one of them and merge the content into the other.

almahiedra

DMFW said:

Content Wizard  is great. It's going to save me a lot of work. However, now I'm starting to understand Smart Content I have more questions :-)

This is more for general understanding. One thing Content Manager achieves and also DAZ Smart Products which I don't know how to do manually, is to source content for a product from more than one directory. When I'm creating a Smart Product manually, I right click on the content folder and use "Create Product", then edit it. But I can't add new assets this way. Some products have multiple roots, for example a set of poses that apply to G3 and G8 are installed within their parent folders. I would like to have just one product in this case, with the poses categorised internally but via the manual method I can't see how to do this and my work around was to create two different smart products. Maybe the answer is that the DAZ interface just doesn't support the idea when it is allowing you to edit the meta data. I guess I could just edit the XML in the DSX file directly to add assets that way and then import it? Not really a massive problem since Content Wizard handles it but just curious if there is a way to do it "natively" in DAZ Studio.

Create a custom category with all the items what you  whant in your product, then create the product from this custom category. You can have poser and duf formats mixed too.

The XML can be edited or created. I use Rstudio for this task, however there must be a better software alternative for other people, Rstudio simply is easy to use for me.

almahiedra

For link to products in renderosity store use the next http in your add store script if you use the number product as token

// Finalize the function and invoke
} )( "RENDO", "https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=@", "@", true );

 

I called Renderosity as RENDO, so, change "RENDO" and set "Renderosity" or what you want instead.

drax88

Does anyone know there is a way to add a new sub-category under an existing category?

Richard Haseltine

Yes, the Categorise dialogue let's you add or remove categories via right-click - it can be launched by right-click on a file or folder.