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This is just my opinion, I feel like I'm alone with it. DIM looks old, feels old, is harder for me to navigate (I have no idea what half my products are by name, because a lot of things are named ridiculously), and just overall not that great to use, in my opinion. I started out with DIM, found DazCentral very quickly which was leaps and bounds better - I assumed it was Daz's modern, new, shiny version, whereas DIM was the dated, old version that would get phased out.
I've now installed DIM again because of DazCentral being scrapped (can I still use it, or will it just no longer work?), and it really is just, very visually at least, outdated. Maybe my install has an error (I just updated it), but I can't see any way to actually make the product images bigger? At first, I assumed it wasn't possible to see the images, because they haven't loaded - I'm not sitting here to go through thousands of products just to retrieve the thumbnail, either, so I guess I just don't have product images with DIM. Sure, DIM is slightly faster to load (even though it prompts me to sign in every time, despite 'Remember Me' being checked), but I really prefer clean, modern, and highly-visible UI over a slightly faster load time.
I suppose I'll get used to it eventually, and I know that plenty of people prefer DIM and think it's better than DazCentral. Personally, I think it's a shame I have to start using something that's harder for me (personally) to use. If anyone can help me figure out how to make those images bigger AND load all of them in for thousands of products in one go, that'll make the transition smoother I think. I do like that it's a little quicker to scroll through all my items, but that's not quite a benefit if I don't know what half of them are. :)
Rant over, and I am sure there are benefits to DIM, people do seem to prefer it after all!
You can download all the thumbnails in a couple of clicks, but you may need to do it on more than one tab in DIM.
Assuming you have a lot of products already installed, then go to the "Installed" tab and click the box at the top of the list which selects all products, then right-click and "retrieve thumbnails for all selected". (Careful you unclick the box again before trying to do anything else like reinstall or uninstall or it will assume you want to do that for all the products)
If you have anything downloaded but not yet installed, then you need to do the same on the "Ready to Install" tab.
Similarly if you have any products not yet downloaded then you need to do the same on the "Downloads" tab.
ETA: Most products will then show a larger thumbnail pic if you hover the mouse over it's name, also details of installer dates, order dates, etc.
Richard has said that it doesn't have an offline mode, so you won't be able to use it at all.
Yes. All of this!
DIM is fine if you can remember what all those badly named items actually are.
DAZ CENTRAL is so much better at showing them to you so you can choose intelligently.
The loss of CENTRAL will make me use Daz a lot less because it will be a lot harder to use it in the way I need to use it
Thanks for the response, @MelanieL - I'll try and get them all loaded. I started with my installed products and it's taking forever, which is frustrating. Neither a limitation with my PC or internet, it just is what it is. My uninstalled list is MUCH larger, so I'm not looking forward to that. At least I can do other things whilst it... downloads pictures. I noticed that it shows me how much space my collection is taking up, too, and now I just feel like I have too many products installed!! :D I do hope the images appear at least slightly as large as DazCentrals - however it's now not so easy for me to spin my mouse wheel, see what takes my fancy and get inspired to install something to make art. That is a horrible loss as I did do that quite a bit.
@butterflyfish - how sad. Thank you for letting me know!
@JamieM - it's nice to know I'm not alone with my frustration here. I probably won't be using Daz as much, too. I know it sounds silly, but I'd spend a lot of time just looking at my collection in DazCentral, and getting inspired by products I've never used, or forgot I owned, or whatever. Meh. Here's to hoping they can make DIM a little more modern, or just with more options for sizing/layout for those of us who struggle with seeing things properly/needing larger images.
i didn't know this, thank you for the info.
however i'm wondering.. i already have a bunch of daz-bought products that disappeared - not even mentioning all those (probably older) that landed in the "lost & found" category. some of the products that were fine in the smartpanel and are now gone i can still find somehow via content panel in the folder or products, but some were there and now they're gone, leaving a tringle icon or sth, no way to make them available - or at least i don't know how, and i'm too tired these days to find out and do it.
so, let's say i spend time & energy (and even money, content wizard is, i guess, a product too?) to write meta and make 3rd party content smart, how big is the chance that at some point, it will disappear too?
@manekiNeko I personally think "Content Wizard" is a must-have add-on for Daz Studio. It works on both the Mac and PC and it seems to go on-sale fairly often. Also the PA, RiverSoft Art is very responsive to answering questions and providing updates.
I don't think you have to worry about the data disappearing, because it is installed in the exact same database that Daz Studio uses to store all your other "User Data".
If you would like to delve deeper into Content Wizard, here are some resources to get you started...
Content Wizard
https://www.daz3d.com/content-wizard
Content Wizard for Daz Studio (21-min. Demo):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmb8H9Cr2gw
Daz Forum thread - Content Wizard [Commercial]
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/387911/released-content-wizard-commercial/p1
Daz Content Wizard Documentation:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/67507/start
You're welcome!
I'd be interested to know what that Daz Central scrollable list of larger images looked like (I started with DIM shortly after it was introduced so have never seen Central). Personally I spin my mouse wheel on Smart Content Products view for inspiration. I sort by Installed Date Recent First as my norm, so I can easily see things I've just bought, but change that to SKU Id Low-to-High or High-to-Low sometimes just to get a different perspective!
thank you for the info! ^^ - and well, turns out i actually wishlisted content wizard, probably right when it came out. but constantly short of cash, i picked other products when i exceptionally had a few $$ around, apparently. also i like riverSoftArt's products, well made and very useful, i have some. seems this needs to get off my wishlist then.
about the data disappearing... well daz data disappeared too. but once i find the energy and the focus to go after this issue, know why it happens and what i can do about what's gone and maybe prevent it to happen again, this would include anything with meta created by content wizard... so i have to solve this first.
Here is Daz Central with the images set to large. You can have them smaller, too, in a list like with DIM. But these big pics are a big draw for me as I rarely wear my glasses (they cause migraines), but without them everythings a little bit fuzzy so I sometimes have no clue what I'm looking at! It does take longer to get through the list, but that's OK for me - I want to see if anything catches my eye rather than just whiz through.
I looked at DIM again after installing the pics, and the icons when hovering over are a bit better. Still not great, but it's not as bad as I first thought. I definitely think I'll be making less random art based on things in my collection inspiring me, which is a shame as I have so much stuff!
And you can do a search like this and quickly get a view of possible items.
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I think a lot of users will have missed the announcement and this discussion and are going to get a shock when Daz Central suddenly disappears.
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If it is essentially the same underlying program as DIM, it's hard to see why something so useful would be cut. It's surely not a huge heap of work to keep it as a front end.
I think they could happily drop everything from Daz Central except for the Daz Studio assets section and I'd be happy.
You can do a search for whatever word in DIM, too. You just get your results in list form.
And yeah, there are probably a ton of Central users who are going to be blindsided by this. We're always told most users never come to the forums. Is it being announced anywhere else?
Thanks for the pics.
I'm still not sure what this does that Smart Content Product View in DS can't do, but I guess it's a matter of what you are used to.
From what I’ve read there’s actually an announcement message inside DazCentral.
Oh, good. Hopefully people will read it.
The message is well hidden. It's below the introductory images. Easily missed.
Maybe they'll replace it with a bigger one once Central is actually retired?
The images are nowhere near as large, and Smart Content in DS is a pain for me as things are rarely where I expect them to be, whereas in the non-smart view I can usually find G8F clothes in the G8F clothes folder, props in the props folder etc. Plus uninstalled products are greyed out, making them even harder to see sometimes. This is just for me, but I think others may feel similarly! :D As a random side note, I also don't own the Content Wizard thing, and I have a bunch of products I've made myself or bought from other stores, which don't go into Smart Content. So, for me, Smart Content has plenty of drawbacks.
Surely your content from other stores doesn't show up in DAZ Central, either, though, does it?
No, but I was just explaining why I don't use Smart Content much (and the differences!) :D Sorry for any confusion, there
Ah, OK. I understand you now.
For me, I usually filter by Products instead of individual items because it's easier for me to find something when I know the product and see the product thumbnail. If I'm looking for a specific item, I just use a regular expression (ie. name::somethingsomething).
Having said that Smart Content with Connect functionality were *miles* ahead of everything else that Daz had with DIM and Central, but it's utterly broken right now because the store upgrade years ago broke the date tags -- and it hasn't been fixed.
Thanks for your insight @mtl1 - I admit that sometimes I've used Smart Content to see latest installed. Or more often, for products that I can never seem to find in the folder list but know the name of. Usually that's if I know precisely what products I need, such as Grungeworx or the Ghost Lights. I did notice however that products were all over the place, trying to sort by recently bought is... well, according to Smart Content, my most recently bought stuff is stuff I bought years ago, hahaha.
My I bother you for a little tutorial on how to do that? I've often wondered if I can direct DIM to install into seperate "My Library" or "Runtime" locations.
One feature I'd love to have for DIM is a way to tell DIM to backup all content into another directory for safe keeping.
Scenario: So you have a C: drive for all your My Library content and then you have a D: drive for your back up but remembering to back up all the time gets to be daunting and annoying.
So my suggestion would be to have a backup drive and have DIM install to TWO locations at the same time. It's simple, elegant and you don't have to think about it.
With so many of us that have been at this for literally over a decade or more we have unimaginable amounts of content and if we manage to find the time to back things up (like half a day of our lives) and then wondering how we are going to continue to get NEWER content backed up to the location leaves us with basically one choice, go to our accounts and download and manually install to that backup location.
No thank you! So PLEASE DAZ give DIM a way to backup to another location while it's installing to the current directory we access all the time. Thank you!
Seconded!
Back again. :) I've just installed something with DIM. Is it possible for it to auto-open this product in Smart Content in Daz... or? DazCentral has this feature, and I used it with pretty much every product I look for.
I'd forgotten about that "auto open" feature. I use it a lot.
Absolutely! Coming right up!
Here you go, my friend!
If this doesn't fully answer what you need, let me know. :)