How do you manage your content? Seeking opinions...
-deco-
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I'm struggling with managing all of my 3D content (both what I own & all the items I'd like to own) so am wondering how the rest of you deal with this. I created a (really basic) app to help make it more manageable, but realized I should step back and hear what other people are doing. Any input would be super appreciated. Thanks!!
1. How do you manage your content (what you own + what you'd like to own or have flagged as interesting for a future render)?
2. How do you select what content to use for a new render? (e.g. where do you look to browse your options)
3. What parts of this process work well for you? Don't work so well? Is there some way you'd like to see this improved?
And then... if you have tried a content management app for your 3D content before, what application did you use? Was it useful?
Thank you so much!!
abby
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1. This post explains how I organize my content - http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/2460/#32068
2. Selection of content, there is no method to any of it. I have an idea so I start building the characters and scene and I sort through my stuff until I am satisfied with what I have.
3. We all have our own methods so it will vary from person to person. Improvement only comes from ones growth as an artist/end user.
4. I do not require one. See answer #1
nothing to add to what Mattymanx has already said apart from this is how I do mine if it helps http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/11176/#160909
Somewhere around here there is a thread on how to edit the Smart Content file structure so you can create your own default categories. I created one called "Characters"
I've purchased and found quite a few beautiful characters that I'm very fond of, and I wanted to get to them easily, so I edited the text file that creates folders and categorize these characters under a folder assigned to their own creator and another for where I got them (DAZ, r.com, illusion design, ShareCG, etc). Bottom line is, I want to know who made the character and where I got that character from so I can properly credit a render.
So far as content, the stuff I get from DAZ is usually easily found under the Products tab in Smart Content.
Clothing I usually just find in the content libraries, same with hair. Stuff I get converted to Genesis gets filed there in the content libraries. I don't have to go after it too very often, and most of the clothing I have is from DAZ anyway and that's already under Wardrobe and well categorized...
1Q: How do you manage your content (what you own + what you’d like to own or have flagged as interesting for a future render)?
1A: I store installers per figure/category/alphabetical. I manage my wishlists as "when I have unspent budget I buy" otherwise, I buy only when looking for a specific item.
2Q: How do you select what content to use for a new render? (e.g. where do you look to browse your options)
2A: I make heavy use of the Categories features of DAZ Studio. I can find anything by figure/type/etc. For instance "People > Genesis > Poses > Crawling > Agony Poses" shows me only the poses from the Agony Poses set that look like the figure is crawling. So if I want a crawling pose I go to "People > Genesis > Poses > Crawling" and browse the different sets I have that have crawling type poses and try several until I find one that is close enough for me to adjust for my scene.
3Q: What parts of this process work well for you? Don’t work so well? Is there some way you’d like to see this improved?
3A: I'm pretty happy with my methodology. I don't really see many ways that would improve it for me.
4Q: And then… if you have tried a content management app for your 3D content before, what application did you use? Was it useful?
4A: Just the DAZ Studio internal one. Yeah, it's essential for me. ;)
Maintaining any methodology takes a lot of effort and it's only as good as the effort you put in and your willingness to improve it.
I keep mine simple. I keep all human and other main models I use regularly installed in Daz, same goes for all poses and all hairs, as these three types of items are constantly used.
I have a folder on the desktop and when I want to do a scene, I search through the vast content I have stored on the computer and on disks to pick and choose which one's I want for a scene and in some cases a season or holiday and place them in that desktop folder. I have a folder inside it called 01 Done, so when I install an item, the zip or exe goes in that Done folder, this way when I want to remove it from install I can check the original to see which files to remove. This is helpful due to many files having different names then what the item is actually called.
I learned to do this because Poser would crash if it had too much installed to it. I always make sure a copy is put in the desktop folder due to them eventually being deleted when I am done using them, that way my computer remains uncluttered, my program does not get bogged down and finally I don't have a mega search in the program to find something.
I sort my desktop folders and the disks according to content such as the Human folder has all the models of humans, in each are other folders such as one for V4 and all items for her go in there and those are sorted according to clothes, hair, footwear, accessories. Inside the folders of content I have a picture of each item so I know what it looks like, that way I don't have to guess. I also have folders according to seasons and holidays. I also keep the lists on the computer as they are constantly updated with new stuff. I want to find something I open the list and search for it, sometimes using ctrl f to make it easier.
Searching by Categories:
As others allready described those categories help to find very quickly items for each slot.
Examples:
Instead of just using clothing items from one "Product" I can select the category "Default/Wardrobe/Shirts" and choose from all existing shirts the one that fits the mood of the render.
If I am looking for a gun I go to Default/Props/Weapons/Guns
Others allready pointed out examples how to use that system for poses etc so I will not go into more detail.
Searching by "Tags"
You can also assign tags to every item so you can use the "Search" field.
Making custom Products of Favorites:
Another quick way to find content is creating "Products" of favorite items.
While the "Category" system is useful to have an overview over all items sometimes it is handy to only see the favorites.
- You can set up custom "Products" of your favorite clothes, skin textures, hairs, props, environments etc
- You can put all items you used to render a scene in a "Product" so you can quickly set a similar scene up again without the need to search around in the runtime again.
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I want to stress though the most important point:
Metadata is a way to keep the "Content Library" structure unchanged. While the "Content Library" can only have one fixed folder structure the benefit of metadata is that you can assign several "categories" and "tags" to the same item.
You can also put the same item into more than one "Product"
Example:
If you are not sure if you want to file a figure under "Real World" or "Fantasy" you can just assign it to both.
3. What parts of this process work well for you? Don't work so well? Is there some way you'd like to see this improved?
What would be needed is a quicker way to save the changes made to the "categories", "File Types", "Tags", "Compatibility Bases" "Scene Ids" and other metdata related options.
The way it works at the moment all changes made in DS are only saved to the "User Data".
If you want to export the changes made to the categories you have to go to the "Product Library" "Content DB Editor" to export the .dsa and .dsx files to /runtime/support.
This makes the whole process very time consuming because it is for example not possible to batch convert several items into new user "Categories" and have those changes saved immediately on a "Product" level basis.
What DS is missing is an option that all metadata changes made are immediately saved to the .dsx files in /runtime/support.
There are other things that need to be optimized. But I do not want to derail this thread further.
You can find the long and in detail explained last findings on the ups and downs of the current metadata system in this thread:
Metadata: The reason why we still find files in Categories/Unassigned after installing products
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/13362/
Update /Edit:
What would be cool if DS had the option to
Creating a custom "Product" from all items in the scene.
This would make it faster to store all items used for a scene in a custom "Product"
and
Give the user the option to add items to a product by right clicking on any item or selection of items
Currently it only seems possible to add items to a "Product" by right clicking on a folder and then add all items of the folder to a product by entering the folder name.This is also not that efficient because often there are items of several contents mixed in the same folder.
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In short the answer to all your questions from my point of view is:
DS and its metadata system is the tool to categorize all my CG content.
Oh! Thanks for the responses. I think I didn't ask the right question. I'm happy with how I organize my runtimes.
But I want a way to browse all content - not only the content that I own, but also all of the content that I like but haven't bought - "wishlist" items. Right now the wishlists are across multiple sites and then when you view them they're not in any kind of order and have these teeny tiny images.
So - like, here's what I put together. I've got lists of content like "V4: Characters" or "M4: Clothes", within the lists are a combination of items I own and items I've seen that I like but haven't bought yet. There are tags - like, I can find all of the V4 Clothes that are "fantasy", or I can filter to just what I own.
So then I can look at all the stuff I like (with nice big thumbnail images) and think about what I want to use in a scene. Is anyone doing anything like this?
Holy crap, that is some data base, LOL. I can't even imagine having a need for something that detailed outside of my actual runtimes, much less find the time to implement something that detailed.
When i get a project or come up with an idea, I just load the items i need. Looking at promos of them would do me no good since what i want to do is different than what the promo artist did with it. Personally if I was to look at images of the product, i would rather see untextured mesh. As for items i haven't bought yet, I pretty much just look thru the store or my wishlist, no need to take that any further.
The idea of a database of all CG content stores:
I remember that there was some talk about creating one huge database with all 3d content for purchase on all online store sometime back in spring summer 2011 on the old forum.
The idea was to run some crawler bots through all the stores to gather the information needed.
As far as I remember the project then was dropped.
At the moment not even the daz store has their own shop synchronized with their own product metadata.
One example of a software with an integrated browser of items avialable at the online store:
One of the softwares I know where you can at least browse the items you own and those in the store at the same time is e-on vue.
It seems most items in the cornucipia store are directly integrated into the e-on vue software content library.
You can toggle on or off if you can see the items you do not own.
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I would really like to have something like that integrated directly into DS.
For example:
At the moment I am in search for an eyepatch.
It would be awesome to just type inside DS "eyepatch" and then see a preview of all the eyepatches that are included in all products available in the DAZ store.
But even in the DAZ store online version you can see the problems you encounter. If you type eyepach you will get different results than for eye patch.
Any database is only as good as the people that set them up. I said it back then and I am going to say it again. Just robots crawling through databases cannot replace thinking human beings who use their head to assign meaningful categories and tags that go beyond just the product and content file names.
Example:
If the crawler bot just reads shorts and assigs the tag shorts you will not find them by looking for pants.
I don't actually want to see ALL of the content. For that I can go to the stores, but then it's overwhelming how much is there. I just want to track the items I've already decided that I like.
I'm looking for a personalized catalog of just those items that I like (some of which I happen to own, some of which I've flagged as content I like but haven't bought "yet").
Think: unified wishlist browser that also incorporates what I already own.
I know what you're talking about and basically that is something you have to set up yourself with whatever program you have that shows images and basic information like what you own or what item is at what store and the category it falls under, maybe include price. I don't know if excel will allow you to add images to the various types of layouts they offer, but it's the only thing I can think of at this time for doing that. It is an interesting idea though, I will have to change on what programs will allow a set up like that.
There used to be a search site "whatever3d" or some such that kind of searched all the main content sites but they found it was impossible to maintain because the format of the various stores kept changing or they were flat out blocked for the load that they generated on the stores. It's quite difficult.
Excel will definitely let you insert images, but it's going to throw your formatting for a loop and make it a bit difficult to line things up. Might be better of using file:// style hyperlinks.
Yeah, I'd like it to recognize the formatting on the big sites (DAZ, Renderosity & RuntimeDNA) to automatically pull image, name, vendor, price - also worried about the formats changing frequently. Well, I can give it a try... :)
Thanks!
abby
Truthfully, I just organize my installed content. When it comes to render time I pick and choose. I've never seen a need for anything more than that. I do keep a Spreadsheet of ALL my content but that is just for a contest thread I play in from time to time.
If you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can create database using the image catalog program. Simply save the (promo) Image in a folder with the url to it and/or package if you obtained the object in question. The photos can have tags and catagories assigned to them, as involved as one wants.. so it's easy once it's set up to look up anything tagged with 'asian' for instance. Then it's an easy task to filter for own/don't own. And yes, I do something like this now (but more complex, I'm simplifying) but it is a bit of work.
The advantage to using an image catalog program is that the program is very flexible, already coded, and.. the same skill set used for this will be helpful in other areas of keeping track of artwork etc.. (like saved images from the web of concepts, reference materials, textures... etc...)
I also have tags for licenses, artists, etc..
I've considered putting together something on what I do, but I haven't decided if anyone actually wants to hear it as it's pretty involved.. ;p
(it includes sorting my files into zips and setting up my runtime almost exactly like Mattymax.)
I have Photoshop Elements 7 that came with an old P4 computer someone gave me, would that version have the image catalog program
Yes, I'm not sure if there are limitations to it though that would give you fits... but it does have a cataloging program that tags. Would have to research it's cataloging capabilities to make sure you didn't invest a lot of work into something that had some fundamental flaws though. The main thing is, The newer cataloging programs usually store much of their data in sidecar files and/or the images themselves, the older ones stored the metadata in the program itself. In the case of the older ones, if the program crashed, you lost all of your index information/work, much like Itunes and Microsoft Media Player work now (lousy that is.) With saving things to the photos or external sidecar files stored with the photos, if the system crashes, one only has to reload the program and point it the folder that the files/pics are stored in and tell it to reindex. It will find all of the metadata stored in the photos/sidecar files and rebuild it's index. This method is much more robust. I would never put serious work into the older method as it is too fragile and I wouldn't want to loose months or more of work.
I would double check how ver7 stores it's metadata. It will have an internal index, as that is faster... but the question is, does it persist the data back to the images or sidecar file.
Oh another note... jpg, and I believe png images can store metadata right in the image. some file formats cannot (like gif iirc.) So, the image used as a promo image if not jpg might need to be converted to jpg. I'm not sure about the older versions as I never used the cataloging programs untill they went to persisting metadata externally but the newer versions will warn you if they cannot save data to the image.
One cannot tag zip files, but one can have jpgs in the same folder with the same name as the zip file that does have tags, so what I have done in my system is to essentially use the promo image double as a sidecar file for tags for the object in question.
PSE btw is one of the best priced pieces of software out btw... great cataloger and more image manipulation features then most people need, in a simple format. It also goes on sale for around $60 u.s. regularly
With Photoshop continuing to add to the 3D and Video capabilities of Photoshop and more importantly Bridge (their cataloger) I would imagine that the time spent learning and setting up Bridge would be well spent as I'm sure they will continue to evolve it's capabilities in a good direction for managing this type of environment. One can for instance preview a video right in Bridge, at some point hopefully we'll be able to look at a mesh also of common formats right in Bridge without having to fire up a full 3D program.