Smart Content and 3rd party content compatible?
Hi,
I'm a very very new user of Daz. I've only discovered recently that we could download products elsewhere than on Daz directly, it tells you how much of a noob I am. I've followed all your tutos to install 3rd party contents and use them on Daz via content Library, it seems to work fine. But I can't seem to find anything about 3rd party content and Smart Content panel compatibility. I like this smart panel, as a beginner, it helps me a lot, contrary to Content Library which is quite messy for me, but I've been looking for quite some time, I only see tutos on how to put the items on DAZ but nothing about smart content. I don't even know if it implies that it's supposed to work automatically so there is no need to explain it or, on the contrary, that Smart Content panel is only supposed to work for content downloaded via DIM and it would be obvious (to you) that it wouldn't work for anything else. At least, on my end it doesn't seem to work whatever I try.
Could someone please tell me if that's possible or maybe if there is a tweak to make it possible ?
Thank you a lot.
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A few items may have been packed for use in DIM, with the Content Package Assistant tool from the store: those you can drop in the DIM Downloads folder and they will be available for install. For the rest, if you drag the icon from the Content Library to a category in the Smart Content pane while the base figure is loaded and selected it will be made "smart".
I should have added that I used the method of the two separated folders, as advised by Daz, since I've read that putting items from outside of DAZ store directly in the main "My DAZ 3D Library" folder can lead to issues. I don't know if this "content package assistant tool" would prevent that kind of issue, but I don't really plan to use it for now (and I don't know what the percentage of items on the net it can make compatible with DIM).
I'm sorry but I'm not sure to understand that :
I've tried to drag everything from Content Library into Smart Content pane, figure selected or not, nothing "moves". Did you mean that I can make the Smart Content pane interacting with an item loaded via Content library as if it were an item from Smart Content itself (and show items compatible with it in the Smart content pane)?
In short, I will never be able to really use items (meaning "choosing them from") Smart content if I've downloaded them from outside of DIM and put them on another folder than "My DAZ 3D Library" ? Is that correct?
Thank you for your answer.
Apparently we can.. kinda. By going to a folder in Library content, right click on it, Create a category from... -> Selected folder. Then choose the appropriate folder to merge the items into smart content pane. Also I need to uncheck the "Filter by context" from smart content, which removes all the advantage of the smart aspect but at least I have everything displayed at once. Still figuring out a good way to do it and exploring the software in general.
I have created a tutorial for categorizing. You can find a link in my signature.
There are a few typs of content where the separate fodlrs simply won't work -the mopst obvious being morph expansions for exP figues like Michael 4 and Victoria 4 where only the main /Runtime/Libraries/!DAZ/Figurename folder will be used.
They shouldn't move - the Content Library (under ... Formats) is showing files on disc. However, dragging them should add them to categories adn make them smart in that they get tagged as compatible with the active figure (so you want to handle materials separately). Another option is to create a product from a folder, via right-click, which lets you set a clothign item as the smart filter for its materials.
So I've found informations about 3rd party content and smart content compatibility... I do understand why you didn't mention it, it seems very complicated as it means adding metadata to the products plus it's apparently not very appreciated by Daz for a very understandable reason.
Is this the only real method to really make the items compatible (lol, like this time you would tell me)? If it is then Daz wins, as I'm never going to do this for every product I buy outside of Daz store and will probably prioritize their own store for my purchases.
Albeit completely logical from a company, that's not really cool from a user point of view, but I guess I'll learn to use Content Library rather than Smart content at one point so all in all it's not that bad.
It also explains why Daz always has huge sales all the time of the year. At first, I did think they were the only ones to sell 3D products for their software on internet. *sigh* Classic noob.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer me.
Well, if stuff isn't categorised from the source (using the Content Package Assistant) then I think daz has already done about as much as it can to streamline the process. These are, as ffar as I am aware, the tools that are used internally to set up the products in the store.