Simplest Daz Question.

[TheTypist]

Do you have to restart daz Studio each time you add new content, or is there a way to simply "Refresh" content while daz is open. I despise reloading my scenes every time I add a new product...

 

[DreamLab Studio]

You don't have to restart it when adding content. I only really use the Content Library, not Smart Content, and I just go to the top folder "DAZ Studio Formats" and right click to hit Refresh.

This collapses all of your folders under it but it will now show you the new content you have added. If you use Smart Content there is also a Refresh when you right click but I haven't used that so I can say for sure it works the same way. Hope that helps out.

 

[porcupyne13]

if there is a "refresh" option, just a guess, but you probably don't have to take minutes to reload the entire program (depending on your computer's speed, of course).

 

[MaxCarna]

If you are installing new products using DIM, I personally prefer to close DAZ to avoid conflict with Daz Connect. The alternative is not use DIM and install new products through Connect. Use both at the same time caused me some damage to the database, I had to clear and install everything again.

 

[Jobeo]

Never have to reload... most of the time you don't even need the refresh button... just click onto a different category and then click back and walla the content is there

 

[rb813]

I only really use the Content Library, not Smart Content

Do you just have to know exactly what item you're looking for? Because my understanding is that the point of Smart Content is that it filters in just the items that go with the particular figure you're using at the moment. (I'm brand new to Daz.)

 

[Rich]

Do you just have to know exactly what item you're looking for? Because my understanding is that the point of Smart Content is that it filters in just the items that go with the particular figure you're using at the moment. (I'm brand new to Daz.)

That is, indeed, the intent of Smart Content. However, Smart Content is dependent on the PA's that create the content having put in quality metadata for their products, and some products are a bit lacking in this respect. (And some older products may be completely lacking in this respect.)

In addition, Smart Content will only show items that were installed via Connect or Install Manager, because those are the "things" that know how to make the database entries. If you manually install products, they won't ordinarily show up in Smart Content. (There is a way to rebuild your database from scratch which will sometimes pick up manually installed items that do have metadata.)

 

[DreamLab Studio]

Do you just have to know exactly what item you're looking for? Because my understanding is that the point of Smart Content is that it filters in just the items that go with the particular figure you're using at the moment. (I'm brand new to Daz.)

Along with what Rich said - it's just the way I first added content into DAZ and I've always preferred just managing content via folders. There is also a Search feature in the Content Library that sort of works.

After working in it for a while you really get a much better understanding of the directory structure that DAZ has it's content in but I wouldn't say it's better than Smart Content at all, just what I'm more familiar with.

 

[OhWee]

As a bargain shopper, along with what Rich said, yeah the older (pre-Genesis) content is pretty much almost nonexistent as far as smart content is concerned, so I end up having to go into the 'Poser format' folder to find most of that stuff. Which is annoying, because there were a lot of cool outfits made for V4, which you can often autofit to newer figures, with a bit of tweaking.

And, of course, MOST of the stuff from Renderosity doesn't have metadata...

Search will sometimes get me at least partway to a product. It may not give me the attachment, etc. but it'll bring up textures, which I can then right-click on to get the 'browse to directory' option, to figure out stuff about that texture - hopefully a PA and/or product name, and where it is in the directory structure, so that I can find the 'rest' of the stuff that I need for that product.

Yeah, you can take the time to categorize everything yourself, but if you have thousands of items...

I think someone was selling some 'metadata' related products on Renderosity, but I haven't looked closely at those, plus there's the 'paying for them' part that goes against my frugal nature... if I can find it on my own, and I'm on a budget so buying that instead vs some other shiny thing that I want... well I haven't made the leap of faith yet.

 

[Bip]

To refresh, on Mac versions you can right-click on a folder, either in Content Library or Smart Content. A Refresh option will appear to refresh the selected directory and its children. I suppose this option also exists on PC.