timewyrm opened this issue on Sep 18, 2008 · 9 posts
AnAardvark posted Fri, 19 September 2008 at 3:25 PM
One thing that I've just started to do is preface each clothing item with the figure it is for, such as "V4 Bodysuit". I also do this with the matpose, material, camera, light etc. files. I also regularize the naming, for example, I change pose files named "MAT foobar" into just "foobar". In the case of products which have crs for different figures, I split them into separate folders, so something which has crs for both V3 and V4, for example, goes into two folders. Currently, I treat all flavors of A4/V4 as the same. I used to just preface each item with all the figures it supports, so something like Hongyu's Maiden Lingerie 2 would be A3-V3-V4 Maiden Lingerie 2 (HY). (I often incorporate the creator's name at the end if they are one I particularly like.) It does make it a little harder to find things for a specific figure, since it isn't in just alphabetical order by figure.
For pose folders, if the same poses support multiple versions of the clothes (for example, BATLAB uses the same UVs on all versions of a given product, so the same textures work on all of them) I create shortcut folders for each figure. (I use the Advanced Library for Poser www.neocron.lunarpages.com/library/ which handles shortcuts fine. I don't know if this works with the regular library palette.) When I have a texture expansion product, I put it under the main pose file for the product. So, for example, if I have "totally awsum by vendor_v" which is actually for the V4 basicwear, I put it under the V4 basicwear pose file.
For hair, I pretty much just keep them in one folder, since prop hair can be tweaked to fit just about any figure, and conforming hair tends to support most DAZ figures. (I use DAZ figures almost exclusively.)
I've got multiple runtimes. One is for DAZ products (and add-ons) only. Another is for utility type products, such as generic materials, environment props etc. A third is for most other creators products. A fourth is exclusively for models (figure morphs and mats, eye mats, nails, etc.), including hair. So when I want to go start with a new model, I know where to look.
Each of the categories in my runtimes is divided into subsections, and they are the same for each category. So, for example, in character I have models (subdivided into people and others), clothes, hair, articulated props, settings (buildings, furniture etc.), vehicles and so on. So if I decide to dress a character in particular clothes, I can find any props associated with the clothes in the props->clothes directory, and the mat poses in the poses->clothes. And if the clothing set comes with something which is grasped in a hand, I can find the hand in the hands->clothes folder.
A few categories are special -- poses, for example, has a sub-directory "figure poses", which is basically pose sets.
Remember you can move these things around -- I do that from time to time. What you can't do (safely) is move something from one runtime to another.