Stop hiding smart content
westernnomad
Posts: 90
I, and certainly so many other Daz'ers, now have a huge collection of products for M/V4, M/V5 and M/V6, each which has its own specifically compatible accoutrements listed in the smart content tab, and each with strategies to be compatible with each other.
Can we do away with hiding of the so-called non-compatible products and just show all products - or at least have that option to show all smart content panel with any 4/5/6 model selected? Is there a way to do that already that I'm missing?
Post edited by westernnomad on
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Comments
Have you tried using the Content Library pane instead of Smart Content?
I use "all of the above" for finding products, but trying to remember the names of these 700+ products in my library is a brain buster. I prefer the visual selection of the smart content pane which is broken down by category, rather than the alphabetical listing of products.
Just make sure to have nothing selected in the Scene pane or Viewport, and all Smart Content will be displayed.
Updated and edited:
When nothing is selected in the scene only presets declared as "actors", "props", "sets" and "scenes" show up in the smart content pane.
Presets that rely on compatibilities like "surfaces" and "morphs" will not show up in the smart content pane when nothing is selected in the scene.
No, materials don't show unless an item they can be applied to is selected. AFAIK that has always been the case.
That is simply the nature of Smart Content, it isn't smart at all, it is just database using tagged metadata. If an item doesn't have metadata it won't show up in Smart Content. If an item has limited or incomplete tagged metadata it may show only in limited and incomplete ways. Stop relying on Smart Content, use the Content Library pane and take control of the way you organize your libraries.
I can agree that any system to sort content is only as useful as the logic that is used to categorize it.
Think of a time 100 years ago in an age without affordable computers. Libraries faced the task to organize thousands of books.
No matter how hard they tried they faced the issue that some books could not fit in just one category.
So they used to write the name of a book and its location on a library shelf on cards.
They made multiple copies of each card and put them into file cabinets that each had their own logic how they were sorted.
One file cabinet sorted the cards based on the names of the book.
One file cabinet sorted the cards based on the name of the author.
Additonal file cabinets sorted the cards based on the type of the book.
So even though the book was just in one place in the library the reference cards could be found in several cabinets each sorted by their own logic.
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Today with DAZ Studio you are facing a similar task.
Your "content" in the content library can just be in one folder.
Nevertheless by adding metadata "tags" to your content and placing it in "categories" you get the benefit that your content shows up in more than just one place.
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Based on what I tried to explain in the library example you may now understand that I cannot follow your conclusion.
The more content you have the more important it is to rely on an advanced category system that makes content show up in more than one place.
And from that point of view what the OP suggested is a very important insight.
Some customers would like to have more options HOW we have a look at the content in the different categories.
In general the "compatibilites" are extremely useful to have. Being able to click on any item and see all the compatible content is an enormous time saver.
But sometimes it would seem very useful to just see all products of a category no matter if they are compatible with the selected Generation of figures. :exclaim:
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A practical example:
When creating a new scene one of the first steps would be to select a character.
In the content library all characters I have installed are spread out over many different runtimes by default.
In addition in the content library there is no quick way to see a promo image of a character.
Currently there is not a single view that shows me all product promo images of all characters of all generations of figures I have installed.
:exclaim:
In theory it would be so easy to browse to the Smart Content pane and selecting the category "Shapes" or "Materials/Feminine" and then a customer could conveniantly have a look at all the product promo images giving him an idea of which character to use.
So all that seems to be missing is the ability to toggle on and off compatibilites when browsing the smart content pane...
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