Content Folders and Products mapping?

tom_bf4025f165

How do products and created files get placed in the content folders?   Products installed from Daz Central seem to have locations picked almost randomly.   And the folders they're installed in seem to have nothing to do with where they show up in Smart Content  ("People" versus "Figures" for example.)   I'm a noob so I'm very confused by this.   Sorry if this is a silly question, but I don't know enough about the CMS to even know that.

SofaCitizen

There are two ways of looking at what you have installed - the physical location and the "virtual location". This second method is what Smart Content uses and is defined by entries in the database - often referred to as the CMS or "Content Management System". As you have probably seen, any items you install have their files merged in the existing physical folder system (and so not kept together in one parent folder). Without going into details some of these locations are very important and so you should not move them unless you know what you are doing as it can easily break things. Therefore, a Product is created in the database which has links to all the files/items you need within it and allows them to be accessed together in one place. The items within a Product can then be further Categorised without needing to move the physical files - they can even appear in multiple places where it makes sense.

hansolocambo

tom_bf4025f165 said:

 I'm a noob so I'm very confused by this.  [...] Daz Central seem to have locations picked almost randomly

Daz is well thought. OFFICIAL Daz morphs bundles, and characters are well made. If all content creators were following the organization logic of Genesis 8 Female Body Morphs or Genesis 8 Female Head Morphs, working with Daz would be a breeze. But it's not.

Because 99% of what you can buy for Daz is made by literally anyone. Any random user can save a Daz bundle and sell it on the web without any quality control (except a bit more here on Daz Store).

seem to have locations picked almost randomly

If your library ends up being a huge mess, if you can't find anything, if folders are spelled differently or wrongly, etc. it's not because of Daz Central, Daz Install Manager, or Daz. The culprit is always the content creator(s). What you see is what "the content creator" chose. And multiple Daz Bundles = multiple content creators brains = a mess of folders with sliders named with wrong spelling, words that don't even exist, morphs for the shoulder located in the butts folder... a nightmare to find anything.

Daz is an app that lets anyone sell their content anywhere. On one hand it's really great ! On the other hand, it's a freakin' hell.

The way I do it : Let Daz Install Manager (DIM) or eventually Daz Central download the package. Do NOT let it install the package (a zip file).

Now open the downloaded zip somewhere and organize it the way your want. Put data and runtime folders in the root. Everything else : you can organize exactly the way your want. No rule but the one you chose. Organize by content creator's name ? Organize by clothes style ? It's all up to you. When the content is clean, mispelled folders are renamed, etc. Re-zip it, save that somewhere in an hard drive or a cloud. And install manually that cleaned content.

I organize the face/body shaping and posing sliders. I organize everything according to my understanding of tidiness not the one of countless random creators. Daz is a nice 3D platform to let people express their creativity and share/sell their work. Because of that, the only one you can trust to do the cleaning is you.

tom_bf4025f165

Ah, that makes perfect sense.   So Daz content is organized by Daz guidelines, and third party content is organized however the creator wants.  And the CMS bridges the gap between the two.  Well... sigh...   At least I know that now!  I can work with it, hopefully.    Thank you!