Although I've only been using Poser and Renderosity a few weeks, my collection of free downloads is HUMUNGUS! Seems I keep putting things away for a rainy day. Big question is, how to remember what a character, morph or object zip is after a month or even 2 days? Heres one solution that takes a little space, not so bad if you have a zip drive or CD burner. (1)Open a page in MS Wordpad (2)Copy and paste the thumbnail from your selected item in Freestuff, then hit enter to start a new line. (3)Copy and paste the text under the picture, then hit enter to start another new line. (4)Download the Zip from Freestuff and save the file to your desktop. (5)Restore Wordpad to a smaller window and drag and drop the Zip file from desktop into your wordpad page. (6)Save the Wordpad file with a name you will remember, then keep it in a folder with other similiar items on hard drive, zip, or CD. Now you can browse the folder anytime to find a picture of the file you are looking for along with the author and zip in one place. Have included an example screenshot of geraldays "Uncle Harry" as an example of the Wordpad layout and I'm prepared to do a PDF tutorial if everbody thinks it's a good idea or has an improvement or even better way. Tommy.

I started using an Excel spreadsheet for my colletion of Poser CDs of stuff. Now it's to the point where I have to use something called CD Catalogue. It goes through the index and creates a search engine that tells me exactly where to find something by keyword. Best thing I ever did...

Know what......? It is a great idea, I did the same when I first started, then when I got a new computer I organized everything, with names of artists and what they made, now I do things systematically right away, I like putting things in folders of the Artist that way I never forget who made it, but I think your idea is wonderful and you should write the tutorial, many will thank you. Sharen:-)

I sort by Bryce/Poser, and then by category. When a subcategory gets too large for one CD (!) then I spend a weekend and sort that into categories. I'm up to 8 CD's of Poser stuff, 1 of Bryce, 1 of generic 3d models, 1 of my own stuff, and 1 of poser templates (not complete) I sort into folders as I download, when I run out of scratchdrive (2 gigs) then I do a new burn. It does mean burning everything all over again - and some quality Hammer time with the old CD's. But I can lay my hands on my stuff without too much trouble - and when you have 8x650 megs of stuff - that's a good thing. Lyrra

I have a database, sortable and searchable by category, character, author, etc. I haven't included thumbnails yet, but I'll get around to that eventually. I also include the addresses of the websites where I've found the items. However, my database isn't limited to the stuff I have. I'm trying to keep track of everything Poser-related and available on the 'Net. Not an easy task when you consider the capricious, unstable nature of the beast.

A trick that I use a lot, especially when I'm either writing a tech manual or showing my college students screenshots of what something should look like (whether it is an MS Access query relationship or a finished Bryce scene) is: 1) Press the PrtSc key on the keyboard (print screen) 2) Open MS Word and click the Paste button or press Ctrl+V 3) Click on the pasted screenshot and click the Crop button to trim off unwanted screen areas. You could get real fancy and create an MS Word template that has a multi-column, multi-row table. In Step2 above, simply click in an empty cell to set the insertion point, then click Paste and crop the screen shot. Just my $.02US

I rename everything I download. I change the name of the zip file to the name of the object and include the name of the artist who created it. Some folks use cryptic names on thier files. You can use long names on files now, so it's not necessary to keep the names 8 characters or less anymore. Then, I keep a folder in my C drive called "My Downloads" and within that is a series of folders for things like Animals, Clothes, Hair, Props, Textures, etc. When I get enough of them collected up, I'll burn the collection of folders onto a CD, then delete them from the hard drive (I make sure the CD works properly first). In a Word Perfect document, I have a table that I catalog the CD's in, so I can find objects, with info on who created it, which CD it's on (I number them), and whether or not the object can be used for commercial projects. Probably not the most efficient system, but it works for me. Melanie

Glad I started this discussion topic, I am working in the background here trying out some of your ideas in order to invent a good easy system. Perhaps scaramouche could elaborate on his "(#3) Click the crop button", My PC has just been reformatted Win 98 and the Wordpad doesn't have a "crop" button that I can find?, only re-size handles, or am I looking in the wrong place? I could re-load Office 2000 but not everyone has it, so will hold off for the present moment.
Tommy.

and the next obvious question- how big is your runtime folder? mine is 2.8 Gigs!

Just checked 749megs in runtime folder, 43 megs of zips in a desktop folder and 84 megs of zips on a superdrive disc and I've only had Poser for 3 weeks. The trick seems to be keeping the less used goodies in storage and removing them from runtime when your project is finished.
Tommy.

That's my trick, as well. I normally have a runtime folder of about 650-700MB, although in light of recent projects and my acquisition of Michael it currently stands at 2.7GB. Time for some early spring cleaning.

Yeah, I've been using the "Excel spread sheet" type thingy for quite a while now; started after I went through not one but two hard drive crashes and had no idea where stuff was. Well, it took weeks to sort it all out, but I learned my lesson. Guess anything that works for you is the way to go - always more than one way to skin a cat. Larry F

Well I just deleted and reinstalled poser - had been installed for about 2 years on this system - runtime was at 3 gigs. Only reinstalled the important stuff- now hovering under 1 gig.

I'm leather-guy, and I'm a compulsive Poser Downloader. I've been trimming & reorganizing a bit, so my Runtime folder is down to 18.9Gig. I add a descriptive prefix to zips while downloading them (like Char4VicTex-Mor-Blimpie-.zip). Then once every couple of weeks or so I extract & install new purchases & Freebies I want to use soon. Anything left I sort into SubFolders (one named for each library catagory, plus about a dozen special catagories). I back my C:, D:, & H: drives onto an external Firewire drive every week, but I only archive onto CD's if it's an item I've already installed. Poser, other 3D Apps, & downloads all share 65% of a 60-Gig D: drive by themselves (other apps & OS are on the C:Drive, Graphic files & software are on the 100-Gig H: Drive). - Anyone else want to testify? G

scaramouche....your way sounded interesting, but after I pasted the screen shot into Wordpad and clicked on the image to highlight it....I can't find CROP anywhere or anyway to make a smaller selection inside the already pasted image....??

Attached Link: http://www.irfanview.com/

He mentioned he was using Word, not Wordpad. The best image management program on the net is irfanview (Freeware). Among the many many things it does is an easy crop function. Take a look!

Attached Link: http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Products/ImagingProducts/ACDSee/ACDSee/index.htm

this is how i have been trying to organize all my downloads. whenever i download something, i download it first: 1. because sometimes the file is not even there, because of bandwidth exceeded or bad link, or whatever. 2. to see what the actual filename is. sometimes the thumbnail image is totally different from the file name and it makes it harder to go back later and figure out which thumbnail goes to what zip or exe. I sometimes change the filename, but usually not. But i always try to make my thumbnail reference the same as the file. Now...using ACDsee, I can see all my downloads. I have a folders Poser1 through Poser 11 so far and each folder i try to keep at 200 images. The folders usually run under 5mb. ACDsee also lets you compress them...so even less disk space. I have folders for my purchases. Poser Purchases 1, 2, 3, etc...with thumbnail images and zip file in same folder. Then, I have folders for each site I love to visit. Ex... Sams3d, Poserworld, Mecom4d, Propsguild, etc... Now i am trying to go back and organize even more one day at a time by putting characters, props, morphs in their own folder and subfolders of what kind of character, prop, morph, etc. This will take a long time, i'm sure. But it will be easier for me to backup and restore files from a CD i burn, if i needed to... Also, I'm thinking about making a catalog of my downloads and printing them out on hp glossy paper and putting them in a pretty binder. Then, i can clear up allot of space on my hard drive by just burning stuff to a CD. If i dont want to fumble through allot of Cds, i can just choose a binder to browse through which will tell me what i have and where it is (what cd, etc) and if i am on a road trip, i would like to take my binder with me since i will be away from my computer and going through poser and renderosity withdrawel. having my binders, is like having a book. it gives me something to do. looking at the images in a car gives me ideas of scenes i want to do or whatever and keeps me occupied. (a.d.d.) i have acdsee zip, too. it allows you to see what is inside a zip file. really neat! Another really cool feature is SENDPIX. It allows you to share images with anyone on their server for 30 days.

This morning I found I had about 600 mb's left on a 20 gig drive thanks to Poser... I have about 10 burned CDs. Half of them of unzipped files and half of them still zipped up. I've recently begun a project to regroup all the unzipped files into directories that make sense to what they do rather than the directories the people I got them from put them in. As least as far as the libraries are concerned. The geometries and textures directories will always be a mess of pure chaos. Over the weekend I discovered I had 7658 poses on my drive when I reorganized them into logical folders. rather than a folder with one mat pose of one special figure I have things like one folder for all mat poses for vicky's body. Another for face. Folders for standing, sitting, and laying down; by base model (p4m, p4f, mike, vicky). And so on. Started that project when I discovered Poser has a limit of 256 folder in a library directory. Beyond that it can see the folders in the listing but you cannot access them. However there is no limit of 256 poses in a folder; which I found as one of my folders had had over 700 (poses I downloaded from schlabber). Now I'm on to reorganize the other libraries. Then I'll burn new CDs of everything and toss out my old CD's that were of unzipped files.

i use to save the thumbnails or preview pics - then download the zip file - then extract only the readme file - at the end i rename the pics and readme files according to the zip file and store all in a separate zip directory. that's all. i use p3o or irfan view to browse the thumbs to find the desired item. it's not much work if i do this procedure immediately after download. but if you collected tons of stuff it's much work later. here a small request: please don't name your readme-files just readme.txt - tons of readme.txts - and all is overwritten if you don't care ... name it i.e. yourstuff-readme.txt - so the name becomes unique ... just a proposal ... :)

I use Microsoft Office so that I can include the thumbnail and other details such as type, author, location, whether or not I downloaded it, any comments by the author and if it needs obj mover. I also have fields for the zip filename, and if it includes texture, transmap, bump, template files. Finally there is a file for where I ultimately stored it on CD. The database fields can be added as the need arises.

Yes, I am using MS Word, not WordPad. As soon as you click on the pasted picture, the Picture toolbar appears. Word has worked like that since version 6.0 (the crop button looks like a slanted diamond with tails). I also use ACDSee and GraphicConverter, but those two programs are lesser known than Word, and both my high school and college students use MS Office as well.

I just tend to download the .zip, then save the thumbnail as the same file name. Then I can view the thumbnails in any thumbnailing program from ACDSee to XP. Also group them by type...Characters, Props, Poses, etc....