Missing Smart Content Icons - Solved
Jason Galterio
Posts: 2,562
Can someone help me with how to fix this:
I am installing with Install Manager only. Uninstalling and reinstalling the missing icons doesn't fix the issue.
I have been having a lot of download issues with IM recently (failed downloads, extremely slow download times, refresh times, etc.) but I am not sure if this is related.
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Post edited by Chohole on
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I forgot to add, the issue isn't just limited to the icons being missing.
Right click functions on the missing icons don't work either (browse to file location, update metadata, etc.)
Being in Lost and Found is annoying, but I can get around that. Though why 2,000+ files need to be in Lost and Found is beyond me.
Those show as installed via Connect (within DS) - if they weren't they'd have the circled, downward pointing triangle at top-right (as Atonement Iray does). If they show Uninstall when you right-click on them that again indicatyes they are Connect installs. Can you actually open the products by double-clicking them?
Yes, entering the product shows the sub-ordinate icons. Double clicking on the asset as it to the scene with no issues.
However, I have 10,000+ products installed. Missing icons like this is extremely annoying and makes the products almost useless. I know that sounds dramatic, but when I am scrolling through thousands of files, the missing icon means there is little chance that item is going to be used.
Also, thank you for pointing out the additional issue. I need to look at DIM to see why those items aren't installing / downloading.
Can anyone point me to where these thumbnails reside? Maybe I can correct it manually using the downloaded product images in the Read Me directory...
Fixed, but time consuming. There are two methods.
Pre-Steps:
1. Make an empty directory on your desktop.
2. Locate "../Runtime/Support" directory under your content directory, open it.
Main Steps:
1. Right click on the missing icon in the Smart Content pane, select "More Information."
2. This should bring up the product description in a DS browser. If "Not Found" comes up, go to the alternate method below.
3. Right click on the image and select "Copy Image Address."
4. Go to Microsoft Edge (may work in other browser, but does not work in Firefox). Paste the link into the address bar.
5. The image should come up alone.
6. Go back to the DS browser. Locate the "Product ID" value. Select it and Copy it.
7. Go to the "../Runtime/Support" directory and paste the Product ID into the search field.
8. At least one file should appear, possibly two. They should have the same file name. Select the file name and copy it.
9. Go back to the MS Edge browser. Right click on the image and select "Save as..", paste in the file name. Save the file to the new directory on your desktop.
At this point, you can move onto the next file and slowly populate the empty directory. When you have your graphic files ready, copy them all, paste them into the "../Runtime/Support" directory. When you re-start DS or switch to a different section in Smart Content, the thumbnails should populate.
Alternate process (for if "Not Found" comes up in step #2):
1. Open the Daz website and go into My Account.
2. Go into Product Library.
3. Search for the product using the filter.
4. When the image comes up, right click and select "Copy Image Location."
5. Return to step #4 above.
Like I said, time consuming. But can be accomplished quickly if you get into a rhythm.
/Runtime/Support/
Corrected. Thanks. Not sure why the Copy and Paste flipped that.
mmm this can be a solution for 1, 3 or 10...
but no for 1775 items...
I barely remember typing all of that...
In any case, my final resolution was to uninstall and reinstall everything. Which I have done a couple of times since 2019, sadly.
yeah, I have even have tried windows factory reset, and install all... and... nothing help
Wow. That's extreme.
Are you using DIM or DAZ Connect? If you are using DIM, you could try locating the install package, manually unzipping it, then copying it into the product library directory. When you go into DS, have it process the outstanding metadata. This method worked for me once.
Note that the original thread was a couple of years old. Right now, there is a problem with Connect suppressing the product icons. It is well-known, and DAZ is working to correct it. There are at least a dozen other threads on the subject with more curent information.
So you’re telling me it’s a punctual thing (or temporal)?
that in a few days will be solved and we will see the icons again?
Who knows? But it does make me wonder if it is the same problem as the OP first had. There was no clear resolution or follow-up. But, I do not use Connect, or log in from Studio, so whatever it is does not affect me.
Nope. I only use DIM and my issue seemed to be related to the database and the processing of metadata. It manifested by installing / uninstalling / reinstalling products.
Knowing that was the issue, I tend to avoid doing such if I can. If I do reinstall items, I try to reinstall to a new product library directory. That seems to prevent the icon issues too.
I, too, only use DIM and never had what I would say is a persistent problem with product thumbnails. The ones you show in the first post actually don't have metadata and/or thumbnails in the zip archives, so the problem is just a lack of suitable data from the start. If you add one manually, it won't get removed if you uninstall and re-install the product (I think).
The current problem is that Connect is suppressing those thumbnails regardless of how the product was installed, so if you only use DIM, don't log in from Studio. You have at some point, because many of those that have thumbnails have the tell-tale stylized "C" with the down arrow in the upper right corner.
The Connect symbols in my screen shot are related to one of the attempts to get the icons to appear. I conencted to Connect and tried the "Repair" function. It made things worse.
That was the one and only time I used Connect for anything.
Yeah, that would do it. Just FYI, about half of my products (mostly Poser content, some DS), below 13000 (about when Studio 4 and DIM came out) have no thumbnails, and never did. I have made no attempt to correct those missing, but after 13000, all are pretty much accounted for, with the occasional omission due to wrong file name, wrong format, or simply no file.
Re-importing the metadata should restore those that have (had) a thumbnail, if you remove all the Connect data first, which takes precedence. That might involve having to delete the Product in Product view (removes all metadata for a Product, not the files). I wrote about that a while ago soon after it started (Missing Thumbnails) and someone verified that it works for them (last comment, after some further discussion). I might add that re-installing might not be necessary, re-importing metadata should be enough.
This hapened to me a week ago, when new products did not show an appropriate icon in the smart library.
I think I have discovered the problem and an easy fix, partly alluded to in the posts above.
It seems that either at source or during download the .JPG icon files are corrupted. This can be seen by trying to view them in explorer as tiles, the file is there but will not show in the ICON view mode.
Referring to a solution presented above, I reviewed the missing file icons and made a list of them. Then going to DAZ central resources, opened the relevant products via a browser. Saving the product advertisement imagefile to the 'My connect library\data\meta'. but, and this is important, using the product ID as the file name, prefixed with1_ (Example : 1_ProductID.jpg)
The icons must be in JPG format. Some of the product advertising pictures are in webP format and will need to be converted first to work.
I >HUNDRED MISSING ICONS, I hope they fix it soon ... Includes todays purchase (missing icons).
Also, my sort by order date doesn't work.
As I said, they are not missing but the root icon file is corrupted in some manner. Now how this happens is another issue. It seems that it might be a problem within DAZ as I corrected the root icon files in the META folder for one computer, but when I copied it cross to my other computer, some of them corrupted again when DAZ was opened. But not all of them, which is strange, so I had to re-correct those as well.
Wow, this current iteration of the problem really came along at just the wrong time for me! I decided yesterday to try to bring some renderosity products into the world of smart content and after struggling a little I was getting the hang of creating products and building meta data for them when I foolishly (in retrospect) tried to fix an issue with the LOCAL_USER product that wouldn't remove some old deleted scenes despite various attempts at database import / editing and checking the "remove assets not in list", setting and unsetting sync to local database in all combinations I could think of and even up to and including hacking the XML to manually remove the problem items before trying to import it. I can't help but feel there is something not quite right with the logic for tidying up deleted items. Anyway, eventually in frustration I escalated to the nuclear option of rebuilding my library as the only way I could think of to get the LOCAL_USER product data correct. The annoying thing is that the original problem was only a minor irritation to be honest and I could have quite happily lived with it, but it was the principle of the thing that drove me into trouble. Little did I know that after rebuilding the library I'd hit this problem and because I was unaware there was a general issue out there, I assumed it was something I'd done wrong. After a lot of head scratching and lots of attempts to update and reimport meta data by various methods which I now suspect was probably making the problem worse, I found myself with some products greyed out and uninstallable (these are also missing in the store now, I notice) and most products (but not all) missing their icons. It was lucky I found this thread or I would have assumed it was all my fault.
Anyway I've gone from a mostly nice library with icons on 99% of my DAZ products and just some renderosity items that weren't in smart content, to almost only the handful of renderosity products I've build manually having correct icons and 99% of my DAZ products missing their icons. Sigh. I can't help but feel this isn't an improvement and I just needed to vent about it! Hopefully there will be a fix soon that allows the metadata to be imported with valid thumbnails.
Connect is currently (for a couple of weeks, now) supressing the product thumbnails when logging in. Replacing them is a workaround, until the next time you log in, then they go away again. The Rendo thumbnails won't be affected because DAZ doesn't recognize non-DAZ content.
The LOCAL USER product is a catch-all for any items that are not part of a Product (in the context of the CMS database). To get them out of LOCAL USER, you have to include them in a Product. If you correctly make your metadata, the database should create a Product from the name supplied in the metadata support file, or enter it manually in the metadata editor from a Product view and export the .dsx file for future use. There is a script to add stores to the database so that you can use something other than DAZ3D or LOCAL USER (you can't add new ones manually) in the Scripting samples area of the Documentation.
Using PS you can batch convert the files, from the corrupted JPG format back to a Standard JPG format. It works, I've tried it. But the real solution is for DAZ to get their fingers out and do something about it.
In Daz Studio 4.22 today no icons show up at all in the program, I reinstalled but no change, yet in Daz Studio 4.22 public build all the icons show up. Does anyone know why all of a sudden they all vanished from the main program but not the public build?
That can happen if the files are there in the database (Smart Content) but not found in any known paths. If you can see them in the public build then I assume the files are accessable by your machine and so double check that you have all the correct base folders setup in 4.22 that you do in the public build.
This goes for the Daz formats ones regardless. BUT, if you ever log into your account on either version - and thus you use Daz Connect - then you also need to make sure you have the same Daz Connect folders mapped also since Daz Connect puts the product thumbnails in it's own folder.
I was having similar issue with many icons not displaying in 4.22. I ran the Content Database Maintenance tool and re-imported metadata. It seems to have fixed the missing icons, except for a few CF items.
After much effort I finally have my missign icon issue resolved, well sort of.
Now that I have gone through the list in Smart Content in the Products tab and following the steps in Jason Galterio's post and a little fanagilalling was able to go through my list of products and get my icons fixed.
Most of them were PS or CS, (Poser) files. I don't use Poser, and really don't need the files associated with that although in some instances the Poser files are the only ones that exist for some things.
That said; I am wondering what happens if I run Content DB Maintenance. Will the problem resurface?
After using DAZ from some time now I have come to realize that running the maintenance is necassary. It took me four days to rectify my problem so I don't want to find myself back in the same place.
Thanks.
I am not sure, but I have come to the suspicion that if I don't 'export user data' after working witth files on my metadata or thumbnails and close D|S, the next time I open DIM, my work may have been overwritten by what is tthe DAZ release. I use sub-categories and fix missing thumbnails or replace the DAZ icon for the PA's thumbnail when I first download a new purchase something. So that part of Content DB Maintenance I consider essential. And I never, ever turn on 'Login'. I use DIM for DAZ and 3DShards items and Content Wizard for other products witthout DIM installers.
Edit to get rid of a runaway 't' key.
I will take that into consideration. What I suspect is if I run content DB Maintenance it will overwright all I have done and now I regret not testing that after spending over a week fixing everything.
That's on me. Someone has also suggested a few other products earlier in another of my threads they use to manage their assets. I will look into those and see how they might help me with the issue.
At some point I think we all aquire a number of assets that is so large it becomes difficult to manage, and know what we have.
Live and learn I guess.
Thanks for the comment,