IAmNobodySpecial posted at 10:01 PM Tue, 31 January 2023 - #4455126

With my background in software engineering this is one of the first things I noticed about Daz Studio when I began using it around Thanksgiving 2021. I mentioned it in at least one of my YouTube videos as well, and I have pointed out the misspelled/duplicate folders to vendors. No standardization, no standards for content pages or documentation, inconsistencies everywhere, effectively no instructions or communications between developers and end users. Many products don't even work after using Daz's own installers, Daz suddenly takes away the "free gift" content they previously gave you and then try to sell it to you, and the largest content folder in Daz Studio is "Lost & Found" - useless junk, which you paid good money for. Daz Studio is just a hodgepodge of fun "stuff" from a bunch of confusing and overlapping generations that is enticing enough to lure people to the Daz Store, where every manipulative sales tactic in the book is used to drain customers' bank accounts, with endless "sales" that ultimately still costs far more than the content is worth. I enjoy creating renders with Daz, but it is a deliberate failure as creativity platform. The free software was never meant to benefit users. It was created to sell content, and nothing more. If it wasn't for non-Daz sites like Renderosity I would have dumped it a long time ago. Daz should be ashamed that a homeless customer knows more about running a competent professional business, more about software engineering, and more about business ethics, than they do. But Daz just doesn't care.

I'm going to have to agree with the majority of what you've said.  It really rubs me the wrong way when you get a banner at the top of your DAZ screen saying, "We have a gift for you", and you click on it and it's noting more than a BOGO offer, or discount based on an expensive purchase.   A gift comes as something FREE with no strings attached.   If you have to make a purchase, then it isn't a gift.

As to Lost and Found in "Smart Content"...

I find stuff in that category that I have to scratch my head and ask why DAZ doesn't fix it in the product folders and meta data.  Many times I find it is poser content installed in folders that overlap with DAZ folders (this is my theory).   So, I've just stopped letting DIM install Poser content.  I'll install it manually and not worry about it not showing in Smart Content.

Going back to my original comment that started this thread...

I'm more irritated about folder names and locations from non-DAZ sources.  I manually install a LOT of content and it is a royal pain if I have to rename or relocated downloaded content so it will show up with other products of the same nature.   Add to that Apple users that include .DS_Store  or PC users that include ANYTHING that is a .INI file.