Poser Props How I wish
deleted user
Posts: 1,204
How I wish poser props were sorted, not by the artist name, but by their function.
I have tree's, and cars and buildings, and funisher and clothing in about 10,000 mini folders.
I really wish when Venvors archive their stuff they would take into account more then just trying to advertise their name.
This goes for Daz Props too... Why cant a Venvor at least attempt to tag their items?
I.E. https://www.daz3d.com/black-snake-assault-rifle
My Library / Props / Weapons / guns / Black Snake Assault Rifle
Instead its "props / artist name"
I'm serious. There is too many artists out there who are making things to try to remember exactly where every tiny thing is by the artist name. It's an unfair chore put on the customer.
And it makes putting a scene together take for freakin ever cause your spending 8 hours folder surfing.
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These are called 'ego folders' and have been the bane of content management since the days of Poser 1. I hate this and always take the time to email the content creator and lambaste them for the practice. A lot of these people need to be taken down a few pegs.
This is why I spent MLK weekend manually reorganizing my runtime.
Yeah... Which is completly unfair for the paying customer to have to do all that work. All the work of 100 vendors who could have just tagged it properly from the get go rests on the shoulders of a single person.
The People folder for Genesis is the only thing properly tagged but even it lacks cause I have to remember the artist name instead of the outfit.
Why not the props tho? Why can't they start making the list?
Weapons
Funisher
Everyday Items - Hand Helds
Housing - Bathroom - Bedroom - Kitchen
Nature - Flora - Animals - Ground
Vehicles
And and the shaders too... Good god good luck trying to find a shader... Once again your forced to have to remember the artist name or their weird little folder names that don't cororilate with anything at all.
Why is it my wood floors shader is under a folder called V3D instead of tagged as Shader presets - Ground - wood floors
Why do I have metal shaders in like 8 differnet folders?
I do that... I never thought about it because when I started making stuff thats how everything was packaged... Actually in some cases it was even worse, there were no thumbnails...
The worst was when you would buy something like "Hanna's Hamster Hair" and install it but not use it or check on it and then a month later go looking for it... but not one folder was named as such... but you'd see "Hanna's Hamster Hair" in your account library, you knew "UncleCrusty123" made it, but you couldn't find it... You'd reinstall it, then you'd get that "do you want to overwrite it ?" message and you'd be crying and shouting and you'd start punching and kicking that penguin whom you were penguin sitting... You'd search for it (the file not the penguin, he was right there), but no, when you'd eventually find it, it was too late you'd already lost your mind and become a fugitive on the run, wanted for penguinicide...
What was the item called? Where was it?... It was in a folder for a character called Hanny and it was called Happy Hamster Updo... And it was from when UncleCrusty123 was just going by the handle Unclecrusty.... Grrrrarrrrrghrrrrraaaaaaah!
No, that was not an actual file name and there is no UncleCrusty123 and I never beat a penguin, but I did kick a belligerent capybara who owed me ten dollars... The point was it was a frustrating time and we all made mistakes...
Nobody (not counting the capybara) has complained to me so I thought it didn't matter...
Then again my stuff is all crappy freebies and doesn't come with an installer and since you have to do it manually, it can be placed anywhere... So in a way I guess that doesn't actually count since like I said, my stuff is pretty crappy to start with and if there was anything to complain about it would have to be my Readmes...
So I guess my point is that I have no point and you should probably never install older content if there is a capybara staying with you... Was that it?
Its early I should probably have some coffee or something...
I apologize if my content structure has made anyone's 3Ding experience miserable or unpleasant... I could have made it much worse... But I apologize anyway.
Some people, however, like the "ego" folders as it makes it easier to find matching styles, and because a real split by type would either enmd up with a single product spread across many different folders or would end up with disparate items lumped together under the "main" item's type. This is precisely the type of issue that categorisation was added to address.
How about Single product spread across many different folders + One main folder. (That is properly tagged under - Architecutres - Preloads - The name of the PROP not the artist) I get they want to get their name out there.
I understand that they want to get their name out there but they can do that with an icon/thumbnail. Plus it gives them a chance to make their own logo... Which is much easier to remember then a name of a folder tagged by artist name.
I want my library to make sense. And having it arranged with 1000 micro folders each with their own specil name makes no sense.
I shouldnt have to click threw 10 folders deep cause a hair prop is so narrowed down that inside that folder there is 1 item.
May as well have 10 folders deep, on each item you own... In fact... As it sits right now. Thats basicly how it is. Only.. It's not even arranged in a order that makes any sense. I want my Library to be a library. Not an advertisment.
What makes it even worse is that the Content Library search is possibly the most ineffeciant search engine on any program I've ever used on any computer in all my life.
I know I have books. Lots of books.. It finds 2... Or it finds 1000 Materials but the prop is amung them.. One of them. Keep clicking and hope to find it.. Cause you cant even sort the search.
Yeah, I'm agreeing with you, although in fairness the couple of times I'd seen attempts by PAs to try and organize content "logically" it wasn't logical to my weird mind and I had to move everything around anyway.
The beauty of most poser props is that you can freely reorganize your content.
For example, I have things like
Props>!Primitives
Props>!Setting>!Environment
Props>!Setting>!Nature and Weather
Props>!Setting>!Props>!!!Everyday Stuff>!Books
Props>!Setting>!Props>!!!Everyday Stuff>!Food
Props>!Setting>!Props>!!!Everyday Stuff>Parasols and Umbrellas
Props>!Setting>!Props>!!!Everyday Stuff>Sports
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Fantasy Props
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Furniture
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Historical
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Holiday Stuff
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Medical
Props>!Setting>!Props>!Vehicles
etc.
Nobody sorts things the same way. Assign folders by what they are? We get complaints. Sort by time period? Complaints. Sort by vendor? Complaints.
By the same token, we assign folders by what they are? Some people love it. Sort by time period? Some people love it. Sort by vendor? Some people love it.
Honestly, this is a neverending argument.
Good points, Valandar, and btw, ValSpears/ValShields/etc got alot of play before I reorganized my runtime because I knew who made them and could recognize what they were by the folder name :)
They still get a lot of play, btw, just before reorganization, yours were almost the only weapons props I could reliably FIND. :)
No taxonomy is perfect. There will always be a problem with any classification system, even if you make it up yourself for your own use.
My only gripe with folders is when I download non-Daz products and there is an exclamation mark (or more) at the beginning of the folder name. Thankfully, I haven't seen any DAZ products like this in the time I've been here.
The silly thing about it is that it only searches on file names, not folder names, and it's usually the folder names that contain the product names, not the files. So in most cases it's useless for finding anything.
And if I want to do a render using only Aeon-Soul products I don't want to have to hunt for them in among the potentially dozens of items of each type that I own because I don't remember which ones they did off the top of my head. And no, it's not generally 10 folders deep on my system for the default folder structure in the content pane.
Everyone has their own sorting preference. I instal manually and put things in the folders I want. I have one, for example, for Christmas/Winter because those aren't something I use all year. When I first started, they were all exe files and I've been cleaning them up since I figured out how it worked.
It's also not that straightforward to classify content...Imagine I made a buddah statue as a prop. How do I classify it? Historical? Religious? Decorative? Asian? etc...
I spent a few weeks some months ago reorganizing all my Poser content (note: I only use Studio, but more than half my library is older stuff in Poser format). Studio *doesn't care* where things are across the *library* folders, so long as the geometries and the textures are in the right places.
By the end of it, instead of having to search for all the pieces of an item across the Character, Prop, (Camera, Lights), Materials and Pose folders in order to find all the bits and pieces for it, I had everything consolidated into one folder for the product (which I generally stowed in the Characters folder) with the props, poses, cameras, lights, and MATs all in subfolders inside the main folder. And any texture add-ons are in there too.
And not scattered around loose in the Character folder, either. Inside the Character folder is where I put my category subfolders, and the separate products are sorted into those. It took weeks, but by the end of itit was much easier to find things.
Studio format requires that the data folder and Texture folder in the Runtime folder not be tampered with, but I suspect that most other components can be grouped and sorted into subfolders as well. If you've a large collection it will take a while. But once done will be relatively easy to maintain.
True, but as a prospective PA, my viewpoint is one that takes into consideration the desires of the customer to have a list of products that were used in store promotional renders, as well as the desires of the PA community at large to have as much freedom in creating and naming products as possible. This latter one is much harder to do if you have to be concerned about the possibility of a buyer already having product with your chosen name in exactly the same location as you're installing yours to.
Er, right. Trying to install two different packages which are named "sofa" into the same runtime is likely to have the older one eaten by the new one. Installing one into the MaryCozy folder would be a lot safer -- at least until MaryCozy made another sofa and didn't name it something else.
I have a some what different approach, I do not sort anything installed, whether installed via DIM, or if done manually from content providers other than DAZ. This has the advantage that when a product updates via DIM, I can then just press install to get the latest version into place, rather than trying to remember where I placed it during a re-sort.
What I do do however, is save all promo images for every product that I buy or acquire as a freebie in a separate folder, and place these along with the installation zip(s). These folders are then sorted via genre, characters, clothing etc in a similar way to many others organise their runtime/library. When I am looking for a product to use, I browse this folder hierarchy, not my runtime, to see if something will be useful by looking at the full size promo images rather than the tiny thumbnails you get in runtime. Having located the product I want, then either DIM will tell me where every file is (or I use smart content to find it), or for non-DAZ products, I look at the zip file to see where all the files have been placed. With this method I really do not care how the PAs have organised their installation zips.
Or two characters named "Alice" or two different takes on "The Streets of Tuscany".
Using the Content Library should be like going to Wal-Mart or Tesco or ALDI. Sure, it takes a while to find things you have never bought before but you do generally know where to look after you've been there a few times.
Yeah, maybe I'm just used to the system after almost 20 years as a Poser/Daz user, but I prefer the "ego" folders. It's a breeze for me to go to Andrey Pestryakov, Gypsyangel, Sveva, or Stonemason, etc. since I know what those products consist of. Others like Bitwelder, seem to catagorize his or her products by the products name under 'Props'. Obviously, a simple thing to find. But for me at least, I like finding products under the creator/artist name.
I have all my stuff sorted into my own categories. I only have to find things once, then they are put in their proper place in my categories and its not difficult to find anymore. I have kept 4.8 on my laptop so I load the new stuff there, follow the blue bars and then just categorize both the pc and the laptop at the same time. And my category items update via DIM as well since I havent actually moved anything.
I do something similar to this, but I don't include installation files. I just save all promo pictures and a screenshot of each product's page. It's a lot of work, but worthwhile because it allows me to get the most use out of what I have.
I like my library set up like the Sims where I can see most everything. :)
The Sims 3 set up made sense... Or maybe I'm just a big Sims junky xD
It doesn't really bother me where vendors put their content, as long as I can actually find it the first time. I'm going to move it right away to a place that makes sense to me. I have everything sorted by theme or function, depending on the item. So if I'm doing a sci-fi render, I go into my sci-fi props folder and my sci-fi clothing folder, etc. If my figure is a brunette, then I'll go into my Characters/!Dark Brows folder to find a skin. Only a rare few vendors stay in their vanity folders.
My latest peeve has been the overlap between Environments and Props. Is it here? Is it there? Who knows! So I fixed it. :D
I have just gotten int the habit of manually downloading everything and then going through all of the folders to remove the vanity (ego) folders before I install my content. I have everything broken down to suit my OCD, shoes, pants sets, dress sets, ect ... even my vehicles are broken down to bikes, cars, military, flight ... It really saves a lot of headache when looking for things
These days I use categories in Daz Studio to organise things the way I want them. For example, I have clothes sorted into categories like Casual Clothes, Office Clothes, Fantasy and SF Outfits (quite a lot of those), Party Clothes, Elegant Clothes etc.
I used to use Collections in Poser in the same way, but after I had to re-install Windows and everything else I have switched to moving the content around instead. Current versions of Poser are a lot more flexible, you can have materials, poses etc in the Character, Props or Hair folders so you can move texture sets to be sub-folders of the content they apply to. I don't move content in Daz Studio so Install Manager can still update it but I install Poser stuff myself so that isn't a problem.
Getting it setup takes a lot of time but once you've done it you just have to categorise new stuff as you get it. People have different ideas of how to organise their content so you can't expect the content creators to do it the way you like. Most stuff from Daz is well organised apart from some environments that get put into the props folder.
When I first started with Poser it didn't have collections so my way of keeping track of content was a database in Microsoft Works where I entered details of everything I bought or got for free. If I wanted an office outfit for Vicky 3 I searched the database for it, then I had to search again for any texture sets for the clothes since there was usually no logic behind where they were put. I still have the database, migrated to Open Office now, and it is proving useful putting things together again after a Windows re-installation.
Seems to me that most everyone has the same thing going on where they are manualy orginizing things into logical order on their own. Perhaps its too late but if Daz/Poser would have been more arranged from the get go customers wouldnt be spending countless hours trying to get their library to make sense.