BACKGROUND Until now, I have worked on mostly small projects of a single image or two. Only lately have I been venturing into what I would call “medium” sized projects of multiple images being combined to form comic books. So far, I’ve only done a few pages here and there (for a superhero noir comic that I did as a test), and I’ve laid the groundwork for a 16-page story. By “laid the groundwork,” I mean that I have written the script, sketched thumbnails, purchased all the assets I will need and designed the three main characters in the story, as well as purchased the pieces I need to create the two locations in which the story occurs. And I’ve started work putting it all together to creating the pages, one panel at a time.

IDENTIFIED NEED I need to document what goes into each scene (possibly down to the page/panel level). This includes characters (and their specific settings, morphs, etc.) as well as all the costumes and props (as well as any customization I’ve done). I need to do this in case I need to revisit the project in the future (what if I have a new PC and suddenly can’t find a bit map or prop that inexplicably didn’t get moved to the new machine?) and to provide credit to the content creators.

SOLUTIONS? So far, I’ve tried a spreadsheet and a Word doc, but neither is intuitive, nor are they easy to use (finding the product names is often hard, especially for older products). Maybe there’s a software tool out there that can help? Or someone has created a spreadsheet or database that I could use as a guide? If anyone has suggestions or examples of how to do this, I would love to hear them.

From the DAZ side, and I assume Poser does the same thing, if you are saving the scenes every item that goes into it will be in that scene file including the paths to it. That itself isn't terribly intuitive, but you can parse all that stuff out from there. The files are usually zipped to save space, you'll need to unzip them, but they will yield the files you actually used and what you did with them. This is of course what your program will squawk at you about if it can't find the files when you try to reload the scene.

I'd name those files by the picture and page the scene is going to go on when you are naming them. Again, I don't know how you do it in poser, but in DAZ when I am saving scenes, I can use a directory structure that maps to the comic, say comic1/page1/picture1.dsf

You might also be able to change the name of the item in the scene to match the product name, ie change the node "V4' to " "Clarise V4 By Tempesta3d" and have your scene files be self-documenting for example.

In poser under scripts/utility there is collect scene inventory this might give you a start, although it's not perfect. (For example, if you have created a character complete with clothing etc and saved to the library, then used in a scene it only lists the saved figure not what you have used to create it.)

Of course the best insurance in case you want to go back to a scene is backing up everything including runtimes and scenes.

One good organizing trick is to create a new runtime for each major change of scene. In 'general preferences', set file seach to NONE, and then copy each of the needed items into this runtime as you encounter them. Let Poser tell you when something is missing.

I tried using spreadsheets but found they were too clumsy. For my courseware projects I just keep a worklog in text form for each chapter.

Discipline matters more than format. If you always record each step in the worklog, you'll have enough info to recover from errors.

I've not done this myself and I've no idea of your IT skills but here are a few suggestions.

I would use a spread sheet and use column A for the Asset name. If required use column B and C for the filename and runtime location. I would then go across with the page and frame location. Keep it simple an just put an x in a cell if the asset is used.

If you want to keep the layout compact then make the spread sheet mimic the project- make a WorkSheet tab at the bottom for each page for easy flipping between pages. You can copy and paste Column A from one worksheet to another to save retyping the asset names

After adding several asset lines you can sort them in name order- make sure you select ALL the cells (except the headings) before sorting. In Exel you define your data as a table to make this easier

If you have more data than one screen then you can keep your row/column headings on screen by selecting the first cell you want to scroll and us Freeze Panes (in View toolbar if using Exel )

As above, check out using Tables if you're an Exel user

Use the same workflow as Poser- save on a regular basis and Save As with a modified filename if you're not sure about a change - no Undo :)

I'm in a similar situation as I develop a graphic novel I intend to deliver via web, so I'll toss out a few thoughts.

I've created some terrible, horrible, no good, very bad headaches by copying/moving items into different runtimes, so now I have only three:

• default Poser content
• content I downloaded (purchased or freebie)
• content I created

My "downloaded items" runtime is HEAVILY customized so that all items for a particular figure are organized into subfolders for that figure. For example, my Characters library has a top-level folder called V4-APPAREL which has subfolders for shoes, pants, dresses, etc., and the Materials library has a matching set of folders (regardless of whether the materials were in .pz2 or .mc6 format).

The upside is that I know where everything is. The downside is that I lose the references to vendors that typically come with their runtime packaging, with the vendor's name or initials used as the top-level folder name for the product. So what I do instead is either add the vendor's name to the end of the folder name (like LittleBlackDress by Esha) or add the vendor's name or initials to the ends of library files (using macOS Finder's ability to batch rename). If I'm not sure who the vendor is, I open the library file in BBEdit and look for the top level geometries folder for the product and use the name of that folder.

I like the idea of taking this one step further and renaming items within Poser, which is easy to do on the Properties panel or Hierarchy Editor. That way you really would have almost all the info you need for credits within each .PZ3 file (except for things like light presets or Python scripts you used).

But here's what I've been doing thus far. I have a Numbers spreadsheet set up to record info like skin, eyes, morphs, hair, and clothing for each character I set up, along with stats like FBM and height dial settings. And b/c I've already set up my runtime to display the vendor's name with each item, it's easy to figure out who should get credited for what item.

I hope that's at least a little bit helpful!

(I also keep Numbers spreadsheets to track info on all the hair models, skin textures, and character morphs I have, so that I can more easily put together characters of different backgrounds as well as their family members, but that might be of interest only to other Virgos :-)