What NEVER made sense was vendors naming the folder in Figures “Jane’s Sexy Dress,” while naming the MAT folder “Club Outfit,” and naming the product itself ... “Night on the Town.”
What NEVER made sense was vendors naming the folder in Figures “Jane’s Sexy Dress,” while naming the MAT folder “Club Outfit,” and naming the product itself ... “Night on the Town.”
That’s just it. It ISN’T a texture. It’s a set of textures/material settings, so I never found “Pose” to be counter intuitive for applying material settings to an object. Textures are actually put in a Texture folder under the Runtime.
It also made complete sense to me for lights to be in Lights, Cameras to be in Cameras ... etc. It’s not at all different from filing taxes in a Taxes folder, utilities in a Utilities folder, rent/mortgage papers in a Rent/Mortgage folder. Marriage/Divorce papers in a Was I Crazy?!? folder. And ... so on.
What NEVER made sense was vendors naming the folder in Figures “Jane’s Sexy Dress,” while naming the MAT folder “Club Outfit,” and naming the product itself ... “Night on the Town.”
.
Gedd - 10 July 2012 03:49 PM
I mean come on… calling a texture a ‘pose’ because of some underlying technical aspect? That is just unacceptable in a user interface imo.
“It made sense to me” doesn’t help anyone but the person making the comment unfortunately.
Textures, materials… I hold to my opinion that the item that is modifying something should be a sub folder of the item it modifies. And, they are only under the runtime folder in a Poser material scenario, if they are (which version, I forget.) Even the runtime poser format puts different materials under different subfolders, with different versions in the different locations with no information other than an extension that the *user* has to research rather then determining what the user needs/wants upfront during the install. Then ofc there is the DAZ shaders, materials, whatever you want to call them… The point is, it is not intuitive to a new user.
Which brings up another issue. I don’t personally think there is an issue with the exe format of installers as much as I think the issue is that one can’t save a default set of settings for a unified, comprehensive installer that gives one various options but then doesn’t ask again unless they specify they *want* a different install then the default template.
That’s just it. It ISN’T a texture. It’s a set of textures/material settings…
You are correct here, and it actually goes to the heart of the matter. Even I fall back on calling things ‘textures’ and ‘materials’ when to someone not familiar with the technicalities of these terms are a bit confused. For them, it’s ‘skin’ or ‘fabric’ or in the case of walls etc… maybe ‘material’ (as in stone, wood, glass…) The point is, if we are to empower more people to use this technology, we shouldn’t ‘require’ them to understand technical nuances from the start. Let them decide to delve into that after they’ve been intrigued by the possibilities and have a reason to explore further. For some, they will be content to put stuff together without ever caring about the similarities and differences between a ‘material’ like wood or glass and a ‘fabric’ or ‘skin.’ My plea is, organize things the way a new person would expect, and use terms at least for the most basic usage ones that a new person would understand. Is that really too much to ask?
Edit: actually, I might regret this if it happens because when someone new creates stunning images right off the bat when it took me a long time to learn how to do the same, it might be easy to feel cheated, but that is the cost sometime of progress.
I’d just go as far as keeping the names the same for each folder. Going any deeper will just complicate things. The core issue is this. I use a hair, I want to apply a texture to it, I expect it to be in the same named folder. Thats it really.
I’d just go as far as keeping the names the same for each folder. Going any deeper will just complicate things. The core issue is this. I use a hair, I want to apply a texture to it, I expect it to be in the same named folder. Thats it really.
Yes.
I’ve read lots of other attempts to come up with organizational standards. But the end result is that no one could agree on anything.
But this one idea is a very very simple change that I find hard to imagine arguing with. It’s not asking much. It’s asking very little, in fact. But it would be extremely helpful.
I’d just go as far as keeping the names the same for each folder. Going any deeper will just complicate things. The core issue is this. I use a hair, I want to apply a texture to it, I expect it to be in the same named folder. Thats it really.
Yes.
I’ve read lots of other attempts to come up with organizational standards. But the end result is that no one could agree on anything.
But this one idea is a very very simple change that I find hard to imagine arguing with. It’s not asking much. It’s asking very little, in fact. But it would be extremely helpful.
Of course, then if you want to move all of the material presets, hand poses, etc. into a subfolder of the main folder, you need to rename them all anyway. And if you have a bunch of items that all go in the Poser pose library by default (e.g. morph injections, material presets, poses, fits, styles), you’ve either got to bunch them all together in one folder, name the folders differently, or have a folder with subfolders, another thing everyone disagrees on.
Not that I disagree that having a standard, whether it’s “name the folders in the different Poser libraries the same” or “always prefix the name with mat/pose/etc.” or “always suffix the name etc.”, would be helpful. But as has been seen over the years we’ve been arguing over this, no standard has ever stuck.
Between wanting things to be comprehensible to newcomers, wanting to maintain legacy compatibility (moreso these days the legacy being what the long-term user is used to, rather than what the application is capable of understanding), and wanting to allow each user to customize things as they like, you’ve got a heck of a tangle.
Using a database can solve a lot of problems—one thing I like about the Categories introduced in DS2 is that I could effectively import my existing file & folder based organization directly into an identical structure of categories. The biggest shortcoming of the “Smart Content” in DS4, IMHO, is that there isn’t an automated (or even fast) method of creating metadata.
(Aside from, of course, the fact that different programs use different database schema and metadata systems).
I’d just go as far as keeping the names the same for each folder. Going any deeper will just complicate things. The core issue is this. I use a hair, I want to apply a texture to it, I expect it to be in the same named folder. Thats it really.
Yes.
I’ve read lots of other attempts to come up with organizational standards. But the end result is that no one could agree on anything.
But this one idea is a very very simple change that I find hard to imagine arguing with. It’s not asking much. It’s asking very little, in fact. But it would be extremely helpful.
Of course, then if you want to move all of the material presets, hand poses, etc. into a subfolder of the main folder, you need to rename them all anyway. And if you have a bunch of items that all go in the Poser pose library by default (e.g. morph injections, material presets, poses, fits, styles), you’ve either got to bunch them all together in one folder, name the folders differently, or have a folder with subfolders, another thing everyone disagrees on.
Not that I disagree that having a standard, whether it’s “name the folders in the different Poser libraries the same” or “always prefix the name with mat/pose/etc.” or “always suffix the name etc.”, would be helpful. But as has been seen over the years we’ve been arguing over this, no standard has ever stuck.
Between wanting things to be comprehensible to newcomers, wanting to maintain legacy compatibility (moreso these days the legacy being what the long-term user is used to, rather than what the application is capable of understanding), and wanting to allow each user to customize things as they like, you’ve got a heck of a tangle.
Using a database can solve a lot of problems—one thing I like about the Categories introduced in DS2 is that I could effectively import my existing file & folder based organization directly into an identical structure of categories. The biggest shortcoming of the “Smart Content” in DS4, IMHO, is that there isn’t an automated (or even fast) method of creating metadata.
(Aside from, of course, the fact that different programs use different database schema and metadata systems).
That’s just it. It ISN’T a texture. It’s a set of textures/material settings, so I never found “Pose” to be counter intuitive for applying material settings to an object. Textures are actually put in a Texture folder under the Runtime.
Gedd - 10 July 2012 03:49 PM
I mean come on… calling a texture a ‘pose’ because of some underlying technical aspect? That is just unacceptable in a user interface imo.
True, it’s a material setting, rather than just a texture. However, here’s the dictionary definition of the noun “pose”, which is what your average new user thinks of when they see the folder name:
“A particular way of standing or sitting, usually adopted for effect or in order to be photographed, painted, or drawn.” (New Oxford American Dictionary)
So, how exactly does putting material settings in the “Pose” folder make sense, again?
So, how exactly does putting material settings in the “Pose” folder make sense, again?
It was a technical requirement because MAT poses were never intended by Poser engineers, they were merely discovered to work by users.
In Poser 5, the material room was added in order to incorporate this functionality in its own tab. And all material changes should have taken place there.
However, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with Poser 4, MAT poses continued to be made. Shortly after (or maybe at the same time) they became the main method of maintaining compatibility with Daz Studio.
Had that compatibility never been a concern, Poser would have happily gone from version 5 onward with no MAT poses at all, since they have been unnecessary in every version of Poser since 5.
So, how exactly does putting material settings in the “Pose” folder make sense, again?
It was a technical requirement because MAT poses were never intended by Poser engineers, they were merely discovered to work by users.
In Poser 5, the material room was added in order to incorporate this functionality in its own tab. And all material changes should have taken place there.
However, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with Poser 4, MAT poses continued to be made. Shortly after (or maybe at the same time) they became the main method of maintaining compatibility with Daz Studio.
Had that compatibility never been a concern, Poser would have happily gone from version 5 onward with no MAT poses at all, since they have been unnecessary in every version of Poser since 5.
This explains how it ‘made sense’ but doesn’t explain how, so long after it ‘makes sense. I think we sometimes forget that having lived through something, strange things can make perfect sense to us but not to anyone who didn’t live through something. Also, there is a time to regroup, rewrite and simplify.
’ Having said that, thank you for going over the history of it so simply and to the point.
So why load mt5 or mc6 in DAZ Studio, it can only lead to confusion, expecting a user to know what is/is not of *any* use to them without them having to do research and.. um, little to no documentation. Again, doesn’t seem to make sense here. Then let’s convolute it by placing materials in multiple locations, none of which are vagely related to the object they are supposed to effect to an ‘undoctrinated’ person.
I understand how these things could eventually make sense to someone who’s spent time learning this stuff. What I can’t wrap my brain around is how *anyone* could think this could possibly make sense to anyone else who is new to this environment, or why this should even be a goal.
