CMS Not Reading Multiple Content Directories
This is a bit of an odd one, not sure if I'm missing something. I have two directories on my PC for Daz content:
- My Library - Usual Daz content directory, has all my purchased stuff
- Personal Library - Stuff I've created, scenes, characters, presets
The reason for two is that the personal one is in a folder synched to OneDrive, if I have a hardware fail I can reinstall the products, but the stuff I've created is safe on OneDrive.
I've been using this happily for years, it all appears normally in the CMS, the problem started when I managed to break a load of the CMS by renaming files as part of housekeeping. "No problem, just re-scan known directories, reset the CMS and re-import the lot"". Scanned directories, re-imported metadata, but nothing in the personal library showed up.
I know the files are still there, and the directory is perfectly normal in Content Library, but I don't seem to be able to get CMS to read the contents.
Any thoughts?
Cheers
Fran
Comments
Did you undo the renaming? if not the metadata, which has the old names, will still not point to the renamed/relocated files. the only way to keep the link is to rename inside Daz Studio, and save your User data to preserve the changes.
Right now the problem is more fundamental than that, there's about 100 files in that folder (Personal Library), I renamed about a dozen of them, but now NOTHING in that folder shows in CMS despite scanning folders and re-importing meta data. The Main Library folder works just fine, and Peronal Library shows normally in Content Library.
I don't understand what you mean by "nothing in that folder shows in CMS". Do you mean nothing shows in the Smart Content pane? Did you export User Data with Content DB Maintenance before resetting the DB? If not, your personal data won't have any metadata files to reimport.
That's what I mean, and no, I didn't so that's probably the root cause.
So, how do I go about fixing this? Take the Scenes, I've just saved a new one into the same folder, that shows in Smart Content, but the others in the same folder don't. I've selected the scenes in Content Library and right clicked, used "Categorize" to mark them under "Default > Saved Files > Scenes", which is the same as the new file, and reimported, but to no effect.
I know I'm going to need to go back through the files and give them meta data, but as "Categorize" doesn't seem to have the desired effect, is there another route?
In order for things to show in Smart Content they need to be categorised, have compatibility, and have a file type. You can set these by drag-and-drop from the Content Library pane to the Smart Content pane, with the to-be-compatible-with item loaded and selected in the scene. You don't need to reimport metadata after making chnages in DS, there you are working directly on the database ((re)importing metadata just adds the metadata to the database).
Did you actually reset the database? If not, the metadata is still in there, looking for the original files. Did you try putting back an old name to see if it comes back in Smart Content? The references should be in the LOCAL USER product, which is where all saved files go, since thery are not part of an actual product. If the metadata is still available, there will be orphaned references to the original file names. If you restore the original names, you should get back your metadata.
Thanks, didn't realise drag and drop to Content Library was a thing, that's given me a good enough way to start, thank!