"Ps" files with duplicate content and no thumbnail appearing in Smart Content?
Whiskeyjack
Posts: 59
I've noticed that my Smart Content tab seems to have an awful lot of duplicates of products, but these duplicates have no thumnail and have the letters "Ps" at the end of their filenames.
If I understand it correctly, these are Poser files, and sometimes are needed for the product to work properly in Daz. But they really only seem to contain the same stuff as what's coantined in the Daz equilivents, and as I can access everything I need through the product that actually has a thumbnail, there doesn't seem to be much reason for both files to be showing at all. Some of these "Ps" products don't even appear to contain any content at all, oddly enough.
I've tried uninstalling the "Ps" files through DIM, but they still appear in the Smart Content even after uninstalling them. I'm wondering is there some way to filter these "Ps" files out of my Smart content, because they're really just a bit on an eyesore now, especially as there seems to be so many of them.
Any help would be appreciated!
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Exactly where in smart content are you seeing these files? And when you say they have no thunbnails do you mean triangles with exclamation points or just blank squares?
Are the thumbnails just greyed out? That means they are available and not installed.
Did you install them with DIM, DAZ Central, or from within DAZ itself? Possibly you've installed them more than once with different methods? Different methods of installation save files in different sets of folders so that can sometimes cause some confusion.
You've got to uninstall them the same way they were installed. That would include uninstalling them twice with different methods if you've installed them twice with different methods.
Hi Whiskenjack,
I'm seeing something similar to your complaint.
I recently needed to purge and reload everything & I was advised to do everything through DIM and NOT use DAZ Central or allow D|S to log in and download any products. The reason is that D|S is installing the files in an encrypted state, while DIM installs them in an unencrypted state. Because of this, they can interfere with one another and result in you not being able to access various product fuctions.
By default, D|S will normally install the product files in a path like [your harddrive]:\users\[your account]\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Daz Connect Library\data\cloud\[1_ProductID#s\]. Also by default, DIM will normally install them in a path like [your harddrive]:\users\[your account]\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Support\. Of course, all of that can vary depending on what you set up, but troubleshooting gets to be a royal pain if you change them too drastically. DIM is also supposed to allow for proper installations into Poser, Carrara, and other programs--but from my experience, that expectation is a bit overly optimistic. There are tons of other locations, but the paths listed above are where DAZ and DIM will store the files that direct their product installers to scatter the complete database throughout your system--and if you move any of those files, you can totally FUBAR your entire database. When you run into problems, these are the locations you need to start from for troubleshooting your issues.
FYI: the stuff in red are variable locations. By default, the Harddrive would be you C:\ drive, but the C:\ drive should be reserved to your OS and should NOT be the repository for programs or data files--best practices and industry standards are that you should use a dedicated Program&Date harddive separated from where your OS resides. your account under users\ is whichever account you're using for DAZ & DIM--they advise using Public\ if you're trusting your Public user account to exist. Finally, ProductID#s are the SKU numbers from the DAZ Store, but the folder format takes the form of "1_####..." (for example: it would create a folder "1_85029\" in the Cloud\ for the ECK Amma for Genesis 8.1 Female).
Unfortunately, since I have to abandon the D|S install route, I can't tell you much about how the Daz Connect Library works other than it DOES NOT like you putting any new files (like modified textures) in the Data\Cloud\ folders! For that, I needed to create a mirrored setup of that path for any of my personal modifications. Other than that, I generally liked the layout as it made finding the files associated with the products SO much easier--all you needed was the product's SKU#!
For the DIM, it's putting your initial product files in the Runtime\Support\ folder. You will see a slew of .dsx files--you may also have some .dsa or some other extensions along with them, but the .dsx are the ones you need to pay attention to--those are the ones that are getting listed out in your SmartContent with the nice pretty pictures (or even the ones that don't have pretty pictures). For each one that does have a pretty picture, there's a corresponding picture file with the EXACT-SAME-FILENAME as the .dsx file-- they can be .jpg, .png, or someover format. So, for the ones without pretty pictures, like your _Ps, you may also see files with _PoserCF, _Legacy, and/or _StudioCF. As you know, Ps, PoserCF, and Legacy files all have something to do with using them in Poser and/or interacting with Poser. "CF" stands for Companion Files, but I have no idea what's up with that, nor do I understand the purpose of the StudioCF. All I know is, if you want the pretty pictures instead of the ugly ⚠, then you need to make a copy of the product's picture and rename the file EXACTLY as it appears in the .dsx file--note: characters such as quotes, colons, prarentheses, spaces, or any other nonnumeric/nonalfabetic characters will appear as extra underscores in the filenames.
In my case, after getting everything done through DIM [~16,000+ items], I chased down the missing pictures for all those .dsx files in my E:\users\Public\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Support folder--the Ps, the PoserCF, the StudioCF, the Legacy--and there were even a handful of evidently corrupt or misnamed product pictures I had to creatively rename to get the pictures to appear, too! (After about a month of agressive searching, I have about 100 or so of those left to chase down, but I think that's doing pretty good out of a database the size of mine--the urgency is starting to wind down a bit)
The new urgency is now coming from those files showing up in the "Installed" tab, and like your issue, when I go to any of those those Poser & CF products, there are no files available to load into a scene.
Also, there are a ton of items in the "Available" tab. DIM says the products [shown in my picture below] are installed--D|S says they're not. When I try to access them through D|S, D|S wants me to log in and download them through DAZ Connect--which I was advised NOT to do!
So, my big questions are-- How do I recover these 2500+ items in the "Available" tab if DIM can't properly install them? What's up with those items that have the little icon of a notebook labled "U"? And how do I find the missing files currently residing by the thousands in the "Installed" tab under the Ps, CF, and Legacy products?
I hope someone can help us.
Thanks,
Ryuu
Ryuu@AMcCF The screenshot you're showing of DAZ behind the DIM window is showing the Available tab. If you're using DIM to install, and you're not trying to install items multiple times with multiple methods, then you can pretty much ignore that Available tab. What items are in the Installed tab right next to that? From the DIM window I would guess that those items are all in there, but I could definitely be wrong.
If you're sure that they are indeed not installed, then that would suggest that you installed them with DIM and then uninstalled them some other way that DIM is not aware of, manually for example. If that's the case, I would try uninstalling them with DIM, since it's giving you that option. Then I would completely close DAZ, and after waiting for that, I would reboot my system, open DIM and install the items that I wanted to have installed. Then when that was done I would open DAZ to see if it worked.
Hi guys, thanks for the help.
@Spacious They're just showing up in Smart Content like any other product. And yes, they're showing the exclamation mark inside the triangle to idiciate the thumnail is missing/misplaced. They're not just greyed out, which I understand means they're just not installed.
I've installed everything through DIM, and I'm positive that I haven't "double installed" anything because I recently built a new computer and reinstalled all of my Daz content through DIM; I never even bothered to download Daz Central. The only products that I didn't download through DIM were a few odd ones that I had to download in Daz istelf because they weren't showing up as installed in Smart content (even though they were installed in DIM and showing up as installed in DIM, but that's a question for another day), However, none of those products were among the ones I'm having this issue with (the ones with "Ps" at the end of their name).
@Ryuu@AMcCF, I haven't manually moved any files or folders whatsoever. I make sure not to, because I did that once on my old computer and everything went ass-ways on me and I eventually had to completely remove and reinstall Daz to fix it.
Strangely, if I go into one of these "Ps" products, right-click on any of the assets within click on "Browse to File location...", it takes me to the exact same place that the normal Daz product is located. And I click on "Show in Content Library", it takes me to the content library, and I can see two folders; one for the Daz product, with all the assets inside, and another folder with all the same assets again (but with a smaller version of that icon indicating a missing thumbnaill, and a small red square next to it).
It's as though these "Ps" products are just duplicates of the original Daz product, but put into a second folder for some reason.
Here's some screenshots to show what I mean.
Seriously? It's not rocket surgery. They are just Poser versions or Poser companion files to the D|S format version of the same product. It's even documented in the product's readme.
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/56867/start
Sounds like we've pretty much eliminated all of those ideas then maybe. Have either of you tried the Update Metadata command under the Connect menu inside DAZ? You've got to log in DAZ first if you're not already.
@Ascania, yes, I know that. I'm just asking how I can stop them showing up in Daz Smart Content, seeing as they're all just duplicates of the Daz files and are just cluttering up the Smart Content library.
@Spacious, tried updating metadata and they're still showing up.
Seems I've found a solution though. Just browse to the Poser-duplicate in the content library, delete the product from there, and it vanishes from the smart conent library. The original Daz files all still load and work perfectly fine without them.
No, Daz Central will install them compressed rather than as plain ASCII, which may or may not be the case with the other methods, but they are not encrypted - they can be uncompressed through the Batch Convert pane or with an archive tool such as 7Zip. Daz Central installs the same files from the same zip as Install Manager - the differences are that it doesn't have the option to retain the zips, it places everything in sub-folders of a user-specified folder rather than having multiple user-specified folders, and it cannot install some content types (e.g. betas). If you install both through Daz Studio itself and through one of the other emthods then the Daz Studio files wil be the ones used. Some products, mainly scripts or files called by scripts, will not work through Connect due to the way the scripts were written.
The database stors only relative paths - the locations within the content directory. As long as those don't chnage the location and name of the content directory can be freely modified. Daz Central and Isntall Manager dos tore the absolute location for files they install.
The /Runtime/Support/ folder does contain a copy of the metadata in .dsx format, but that is not used in regular operation - it is read only when reimportting metadata, and modified only when saving new or modified metadata
@Whiskeyjack Yep, that's the proper way to remove bad entries in Smart Content...
Right-Click on the Product in Smart Content and Select “Show Product in Content Library”. After a few moments, Daz Studio will show the product in the Products list of the Content Library.
Right-Click on the title of the product and Select “Delete…”. Click OK when the confirmation dialog appears. The offending Smart Content for the product has been deleted, but not the product files.
Since you are using DIM to install products into Daz Studio... If a product has 2 types available such as: Video Arcade Ds and Video Arcade Ps - Don't bother installing the Ps (Poser Version) as it's basically a duplicate of the Daz files for Poser users.
Thanks for the clarificaion, Richard. I was going based on what I may have been nisinformed about this in the conversations I had at the beginning of my endeavors.
Except for the fact that only some of the items appearing in the Available tab show up in the Installed tab:
If you compare to the picture I posted earlier, you can see an example: "10 Faces of Asia" is not present in the Installed tab, even though DIM says they are installed & the .dsa and .dsx files show up in the Runtime\Support\ folder. Also, there are a number of items that are in the Available tab & not in the Installed tab, yet do not have the "notebook" icon, many of them were items I used to use quite frequently and would still like to make use of--hense my desire to get them fully installed through means that are still compatible with DIM and NOT involving Daz Connect.
And where items do show up in the Installed tab, like the "100 Essential Emotions for M4" for example, the Installed icons are completely empty:
When trying to access them through rightclicking the icon in SmartContent and pull up the "100 Essential Emotions for M4" in ContentLibary, that fails to get any results either.
The thing is, my database had gotten hopelessly FUBAR'd and while looking for a way to fix it, I learned that we should not mix installing through DIM and D|S Connect. At the same time, I was running into a very bad issue with LAMH crashing DAZ everytime I tried to do more than one instance of it in a scene--which after talking with AlessadroAM about it, had prompted me to try rolling back to DAZ 4.10. To do that, I had to slick everything related to DAZ out of my Program Files\ and Program Files (x86)\ installations and restart with a brand new fresh install, strickly using DIM to do any installs.
I have only recently finished reinstalling everything and have meticuouly gone through the Runtime\Support\ folder to chase down those missing pictures for the SmartContent--so it's not a matter of anything from D|S Connect has infected things because I haven't allowed DAZ Connect to make any downloads. Nor have I done anything to uninstall or remove files through other means, as I never got to such a stage at this point to need removing anything--I've been too busy getting them all loaded in and their pictures to match up with the files during all this time! Manually checking 16000+ products for Poser-related files doesn't leave a lot of time to fart around with removing anything.
I'm afraid if they're not working, it's most likely because the products being installed by DIM are corrupted from the source.
So, quick question, Richard--is it okay to try using Daz Connect to load in those products available, despite relying on DIM for most of my installs?? As I mentioned earlier, I actually preferred the DAZ Connect because the file structure of the data\cloud\ folder made life so much easier in finding and making stuff for modificaitons.
Unfortunately, the other issue I was having: LAMH is still kaput. And in addition, the Garibaldi/dForce Hair is also kaput because *something* in DAZ doesn't like my GPU card (supposedly because it's "obsolete", even though DAZ has NEVER recognized I HAD an Nvidia card!) and even with the attempt at rolling back to an earlier D|S, there's likely a updated .dll or other file being loaded even with the 4.10 installer package that is still rejecting my GPU card--so, if I'm going to do any hair simulations at all, my only option at this point is to maybe try learning to do it in Blender.
Thanks,
Ryuu
Okay, that would indicate you and I have different issues going on. I'm not getting anything to show up in the Ps, PoserCF, etc. under SmartContent. At least it looks like you've made decent progress in fixing your stuff.
Yeah, I was fairly certain I had made sure to hide Ps files in DIM so they wouldn't be downloaded, but I guess I must have misclicked something.
Seems to be fixed now anyway. Thanks for the help!
@Whiskeyjack, I am in the process of reloading files on one computer and installing fresh on another, all through DIM. The reinstallation was due to a mixture of DIM and Daz Connect being used. During this process I have found some items have not shown up after installed by DIM, but available to be installed by Daz Connect. Instead, I went to the Product Library, deleted the item, the uninstalled and reinstalled in DIM until the item finally showed up correctly as installed in Smart Content. One OOT hair took five tries, yet its texture set went on the first upload.
Before you go hiding PS files, make sure that there is not an old texture set that may call to the geometry of that file, even though the D|S files have been updated to .duf. I have ran into a number of those where I 'have' to install the Poser files. Or there are other files that Smart Content is looking for so the product is considered complete, like cameras, lights, ... which can be annoying if not usable in today's D|S.