Why Names Matter?
SpottedKitty
Posts: 7,232
I've mentioned this before, but I've just spent a little while being utterly baffled while installing a few simple sets of Iray shaders.
Three of these batches of shaders installed five folders into /Shader Presets/Iray/ — only one of them actually indicated the name of the product, the others were all generic category-type names. I had to go back into the installers to figure out which folders were parts of which products.
Note that I don't use Smart Content or anything that uses the content database, and I'll never in a million years use DAZ Connect, so I was able to easily rename folders so that they made sense (and they'll stay that way), and I'll easily be able to find things in the future.
I've seen this happening in the last couple of months as a huge number of brand new Iray products come out — the original folder names are a complete tangle, and are not obviously designed to go together. I've bought a lot of Iray shaders sets recently, and if I'd left them all with their default folder organisation, I would have very little idea of what I actually have installed, and which generic-named folder goes with which other generic-named folder.
Could we please have a bit of systematic folder naming as we get more and more Iray products in the store? Don't just toss all the shader subfolders into /Shader Presets/Iray/ — organise them so that they can play nice with everyone else's subfolders tossed into /Shader Presets/Iray/.
Apologies for the rant-like post, and I've done my best not to name names, but we've seen this happen again and again over the years. This is a whole new category of content, only a few months old, and it's already getting a bit chaotic.
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Comments
And its not just Iray. I do my own categorizing but I load via Dim if its from Daz and I cant tell you how much time I have spent going back to my product library so I could figure out which character it goes to. The shaders drive me nuts becaust I have 8 files that all say leather shaders. Okay, but .... leather shaders by whom? What if i like your shaders so much more than the other 7 but I dont know who you are because the file just says Leather. I can't buy from you until I figure out who you are. And honestly, I work a day job, I have a family and I help my husband with his business. I also make beads as a small business. I don't have TIME to track down who made what.
Wasn't any of mine then. Mine all have product name and Iray in the top level file. Every Iray shader has the word Iray at the end of the file name and starts with a K then some other letters to designate the set. I did it so that they would fall properly for smart content. But, I lay them out so they are all correctly set up as part of the file structure.
As to vanity naming products. Most people really frown on it and to be honest I have always thought it a bit tacky. Many products will have the author name in the information tab and tool tips so it really shouldn't be nessisary to do vanity naming to see who did the product.
It isn't vanity folder naming that's a problem, it's vague folder naming. In my example above, two of the shader sets I installed gave me four new folders in the /Shader Presets/Iray/ folder. None of them were exactly related to the product name, all of them were sort-of-generic, and when they were added to all the subfolders already in /Shader Presets/Iray/ they ended up scattered all over the folder. The only thing that lets me see any sort of logical structure to the folder arrangement is the manual changes I've made as I install each new product. I shudder to think what a default installation looks like using nothing but Smart Content; I'd never be able to find anything, and I'd never be entirely sure what was part of which set.
I'll chime in that product names should aim for some f'in consistency.
If the outfit I put on a character is named Willow Wonderbust, I'd REALLY appreciate it if the outfit wasn't given some completely different name as a product, like Stirring Arboreal Pursuits or something.
I'd say roughly half of the items I have, this is a problem. I'll end up having to try to think of every term that might apply, or even just go rifling through directories to see if something jogs my memory.
Sonja was saying she needed the pa name on the product SpottedKitty.
I can tell you though what a default instilation looks like in smart content, I like having things properly organized as they are installed so I go with default. I don't have a ton of shaders by other people none of them break out of thier own folders when installed by default. In Smart content the main folder is shader presets. All Iray shaders are in a main Iray folder and then everything is broken down by type. Leather, glass, rubber, and so on. I have 23 of those so far. And then inside is an icon for each product that has that sort of shader in it. So when I go to leather I see the icon for my 2 leather products and a couple of others. Then I can select based on that nice big thumb which products shaders I want to look at. Inside all the shaders are in one file (though I think they can be broken into extra folders in smart content if need be) all named properly to show what type of leather shader they are. I actually love how smart content breaks down shaders for me so far.
Yeah it's kind of stunning that there is no standardisation for the way things are named. Personally I find it really irritating when vendors stick a million !s in front of their products to get it to the top of the list. I get it, you want me to use your thing ... but I already bought it and now I can't find it when I'm looking for it by name.
I also bought a ton of Iray Shaders and they're just one giant mess of materials in the Iray categories now. I mean as long as they categorise themselves with the appropriate material type I guess that's great, but I have no idea what comes from where or what's even in half those folders anymore.
Also, Daz original characters' materials are shunted off into the materials folder while every single other character uses the character folder. I know how to find them, but why are only these different?
I really like the people who now do little corner Iray icons on their shaders now. Also the way some vendors use the same style icons and make things really clear and since I have a whole bunch of their products, I know where to find them each time. Then I buy something from someone new and sigh when they have an entirely different system.
And this is why custom categories. If no one can agree on how to name and organise things then at least I can rearrange it all myself.
No matter how you cut it we are independent contracters and to much "standardization" makes artists pretty cranky. Daz venders however do not use ! any more so that is no longer an issue here. If you wonder where a file is from you can always look at the information about that file in the info tab. I will give you the Author, product, product id, file name, file path, file type, file version, creation date and size.
I've only done a couple of products with Iray shaders, and the shaders are in the same folder as the props. I don't use an Iray icon (although it's something I'll consider in future), but what I have been doing is filling in the tag for all Iray shaders. Like 'Glass - Drinks - Clear' and 'Liquid - Rum', etc.
To be honest, since I don't use smart content, I'm not even sure if that helps people, but DAZ do advise PAs to fill in shader tags, so I'm doing it anyway.
Well I'd say better one artist or programmer gets cranky than 500 users...
http://blog.garrytan.com/how-a-bug-in-windows-might-be-costing-humanity-over-600-years-of-wasted-time-per-day
Or like the way Connect is going to make it that users' corrected metadata will be overwritten by the issue-filled defaults over and over again (see beta thread) ?
(One of the major reasons Connect is being put in place is because users were having issues with the way artists organised the content in different ways and moving things without knowing what they were doing, causing problems for support, as stated by Daz people.)
Isn't using a parallel structure (not in the default categories, a new top-level folder) safe from overwriting?
I believe so - that's what I do at least and I've had no issues, but there are a bunch of people complaining in the beta thread that Connect keeps overwriting any data they try to put in. I'm not sure if they mean adding tags etc. or just rearranging default categories, since I do neither and haven't had the issue.
I'm guessing Default overwrites any user data to make sure that support can always tell a customer where to find an item regardless of anything they might have done to it. But if everything had been in standard folders in the first place, there would have been far less moving and reorganising happening by frustrated users to create the problem.
Note: I know Daz is rewriting all of the metadata at the moment, but obviously that's a terrifyingly long process and there are still reports of many errors even in brand new content, so artists saying that they should be allowed to ignore any attempt at a universal system seems counterintuitive to what the software owners and customers want.
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only person to think that a cranky PA is a viable solution.
Just more reasons to buy Khory...I've been remiss of late and haven't gotten the Iray shaders because there were updates to old shaders making Iray versions... Wish List and holidays will have to lean your way.
But, Richard, that means you have to do a significant amount of work yourself... not to derail this...but we ought to be able to rely on the meta data coming from DAZ.
You can't depend on other people to know how you organize stuff. I've been leaning heavy on the custom catagorization feature. I just have to remember to back up the database so I don't lose all that work. Which I haven't done yet.
I get people wanting to organise it themselves and I agree, I do want to - my point was just that if everything was all in the same place to begin with then there would be a lot less of it overall. Just simple things like knowing what folders you're going to get when you open a character's folder, having the daz originals in there too. I imagine that sort of thing bothers a much wider range of people than just the power users. Or maybe it's just me. I have no idea, but it seems likely that that's a big reason the cited "people moving folders who don't know how the references work" thing happens.
No it wont, as wont be using.
Sadly, this isn't true for a lot of the things that I have purchased. I have looked. Author info is usually none or unavailable. Its the first place I look when I can't figure out who I bought it from. and ya, I wasn't talkign about vanity names, just some way of knowing who the author is of a product. I have no desire to make any PA's cranky lol. But, for instance, if I have a new product, and it involves more than clicking to apply i.e. do this first, or whatever. for people who are new especially, I have no idea how to use that product. Most PA's are very good about read me's, tutorials etc. BUT if I don't know who I got it from then I can't FIND the tutorials or read me's without going through my product pages. And even then, many times, the file in my directory is not named the same as the product title. Some vendors put mini tuts or simple directions on their stuff. Like do this first, or apply in this order which is super helpful and greatly appreciated but I don't expect that from everyone or even from the same vendors all of the time, I am sure that this is more time consuming. But I need to be able to find the read me's etc. to be able to figure it out. I do categorize all of my stuff my way so once I find what I need I don't have to do it again. but its still a massive time consuming thing sometimes to figure things out. And if I like your stuff I WANT to support you and buy more.
(You and yours not being directed at anyone specifically)
lol ya, me neither.
I don't have any issue with organizing it myself, in fact I prefer it. But it would be nice to easily find it to start with.
I'll chime in here as well.
I do understand the need to be creative, but one can only be so creative with product names in Studio before it becomes counterproductive.
What's so wrong with using the same names in DS that where used on the store?That's the first thing I'm going to look for when I want to use my new product.
I agree with the rest of the consumers, we want a standardized way of naming things so they are easier to find.Content makers may not want to have to put their bikinis in (i.e.) the Genesis 2 Female>Clothes folder, but it makes it a lot easier to use for the people buying the bikini.
as far as Connect goes, I like the idea of the built-in downloader. It makes installing stuff brain dead simple.No extra configuration to mess with or folders to assign in CL config. I don't need to run a secondary program (DIM) to do my downloads and installs.When metadata is updated for products I own, it downloads just that part instead of a new copy the whole product.The same applies to items found inside products.If a map or something needed fixed; with DIM I have to re-download the whole product again.If the file names changed I get left with old files and no way of knowing what files have been orphaned because of an update.
As with any software, never put user made customization inside a folder or database structure that can be removed/altered by an update of the program.
The "Default" categories database structure is a terrible place to add things.First of all, it's not default if you changed it :)
as was said before, make you own :) and name it what ever you want.
Don't forget to export your user_data at least once a week so you have a current backup in the event you have an upgrade or program re-install and want to re-import your customized database structure.
I haven't tried the Beta yet, so I may be off base here. It is not new categories that I want to make. I want to correct Daz errors in existing metadata, like where they don't assign a type, or leave out compatibility, or incorrectly type a Wardrobe item as a Material Preset. I have written numerous bug reports about bad metadata, some of which get fixed and some which don't, so I fix them myself. Then I allow the DB Editor to overwrite the Daz metadata support file with the fixed metadata. I also create metadata for older products that don't have it. I don't want all that work overwritten by DS 4.9! If I fix or create metadata, I want that fixed version to be used and only be changed if I choose to update a product with the DIM. Will DS 4.9 overwrite my metadata anytime it connects to the Daz server??