I'm trying right now to reinstall all my content (Renderosity that is) in an attempt to make it more visible/actually work in the Smart Content pane.

The main problem as I see it is that there is no uniformity to any of the vendor's archive file structures. Some have a 'My Library' in them, others a 'content' directory and yet others just a 'runtime'. And when I unzip the various archives I get the directories either raw into the subdirectory I'm unzipping in: data, with the usual Daz3D directory and various artist directories and subfolders, But I also get a content directory that duplicates that same thing with all the rest of the subfolders, and a data that does something similar. And a DS-content, and Daz Studio with a My Library subfolder (that doesn't even count the My Library at the root level).

There are so many of these different structures arbitrarily chosen apparently because each artist has their own idea of what the ideal file structure should be or something. Can I just mingle all the related subfolders of like types under a single main directory? or can I leave them all as is and will smart content be able to do a nested search to find all these various assets properly despite their chaotic organization?

I ask this because I have 50 gb of the stuff and I really don't think installing each and every one of the things individually is going to work for me. It's taken a week (off and on) to compile them all into moderately discreet alphabetical directories and then merge them into one larger whole. Now I'm just looking to make it so they're all in the right place, or at least mostly.

Smart content will not show any item unless it has been setup to include metadata with the product which is generally found in: ContentLibrary/Runtime/Support

Most Renderosity products will not have metadata and will need to be found via the normal content menu unless the product otherwise specifies.

Generally all content is made up of a top folder which can be called a number of things e.g. My Library, My DAZ 3D library etc And the actual product contents below that. You need to merge all products under your own top folder what ever it is called without nesting the top folder if included with the product.

Hope this helps

Thanks. I was calling the Content Library Smart Content erroneously - I am aware of the difference.

The problem was that some of the Daz help seemed to infer that the library could sort out the layers somehow. It seemed more logical that I'd have to consolidate all the various and sundry content folders into a single aggregate directory, I was just looking for some confirmation.

I'd done it previously and run into some assets that couldn't find all their parts even though they were clearly where they were meant to be as far as I could see. That's why I deleted my entire Renderosity Library to start from scratch, just in case. Fingers crossed I guess. i'm just lucky enough to have space to store all this stuff and backups too, plus their unarchived results before lumping them all together.

I have all my runtime contents Daz/Poser/ etc on another drive..Poser I just called Poser Runtime.. I just open preferences and add this to Daz..

Hope this helps

It is simply wrong for product zips to have a "My Library", "My DAZ 3D Library" or "Content" folder.

The current DAZStudio 4.9 content folder is called My DAZ 3D Library, My library is the hold over from DAZStudio 4.8 which makes it that much more confusing when installing older, non-Daz content files. Content folder is actually the top most folder found within DAZ compressed files, individuals manually decompressing these files have, inadvertently, retained this hierarchy thinking that this is the true arrangement of folders. If you use DAZ Install Manager (DIM) to install DAZ zipped content, the Content folder is discarded and everything folder within is moved to their appropriate location either to My Library or My DAZ 3D Library, whichever you are currently using.

My Library, in the user's Documents folder, is the default for saving to. My Daz 3D Library, in the public documents folder, is the default for DIM installs. Both can, of course, be changed.