What are the first useful things I can do to categorize my content library?
Subtropic Pixel
Posts: 2,378
The content library continues to frustrate me. I want to try to organize it somewhat to make it more useful.
1. Smart Content versus Content Library. The former is not always useful. Should I just hide it?
2. But then the latter, with it's sideways-moving heirarchy, is just as annoying.
Figures/Mechanical is one example. I would expect there to maybe be "Figures/Animal", "Figures/Humanoid", or whatever. But there are no other subdirectories under "Figures". Just "Mechanical." Why the lousy organization?
3. Going back to Smart Content, I see "figures/animals" and also Creatures, Mechanical, and People. Well, that's a little better, but fancy this: The one (mechanical) that exists in Smart Content doesn't match up very well with the same folder in Content Library.
4. Finding people is frustrating. I have to know three or four different folders in Smart Content, and it's even worse in Content Library because sometimes the people I bought are hidden away in some vendor's folder buried way way to the "Far East" in an overly sideways-deep folder structure.
I want to start getting the hang of categorizing my content library, but I don't want to break anything.
I don't want it to become harder to find stuff just because I tried to make sense of this mess.
I also would rather not get stuck into an endless maintenance task required to fix messy relationships and heirarchies every damned time I download and install a new product or an updated product.
So my question for anybody who can help:
If you had to completely re-install your CMS contents from scratch, what would be the top 2 or 3 things you would do to organize or categorize your content library for some immediate functionality gain?
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Comments
My first peace of advice is not to use the Default categories. I create my own categories outside of Default which are organized in a way that makes sense to me. If I later decide I'd like to do it differently, I can easily change it.
Think about what kind of organization makes sense to you, and sketch out what categories would work. You'll end up revising/adding to that setup as you go along, but having a plan to start with is the best way of gettig something usable in the end.
Setting up your categories for the first time can be a lot of work, especially if you already have a lot of content installed. It's a lot easier to do it a few items at a time. If you use DIM and don't mind uninstalling and reinstalling everything, that can make it easier.
Thanks, Mike.
I do use DIM, but I don't really understand why uninstall/reinstall would be needed. Could you expand on that for me?
I'm in IT, and I am used to thinking in terms of heirarchies and relationships. I'm sure I could come up with reasonable naming rules.
Edit: I just googled "creating categories in daz" and found some interesting things, including some tutorial docs from our own SnowSultan on DA. I'm reading some of those now.
When there are a lot of things installed it's easy to lose track of what you've categorized and what you haven't, so since it's so easy to uninstall and reinstall with DIM that can help avoid missing things. Another option (assuming you haven't already done some categorizing/tagging you don't want to lose) is to reset the content database, then you can Scan Known Content Directories, which will put everything in Unassigned so you can categorize it. Once that's all done you can re-import metadata nd then you can add new items a few at a time.
That's the whole point of using categories...do it how YOU want it, not what somebody else thought was 'logical'. I can tell you, what my wife thinks of as logical and what I think of are, very often, NOT the same thing (I won't even get into what my kids think...). I can assure you, that my categories won't look anything like yours.
And being under a vendor name...that's pretty much the standard for non-Daz Original items, or at least it seems that way.
Adamr001 has his system of categories here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/15192/
Go ahead and hide the Smart Content tab if you won't be using it. One small gotcha if you abandon it altogether (like I have) — you will need a pretty good memory for where you've installed things. I do, so it isn't a problem for me, but it isn't for everyone; people do have problems navigating the Content Library if they're not used to it.
FWIW, I've never understood why people seem to like the "sideways hierarchy" in the Content Library tab so much. It isn't the only setting, it's nothing more or less than one of the layout options. Click on the Options button on the Content Library tab (arrow and four lines at top right) and look at all the choices you have; I use "View as Tree" with "View Side by Side" deselected. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but that's pretty much the way things were in the very first versions of D|S, and I've never felt the need to change. It also has the advantage that it's less easy to lose track of your folder level than in the sideways setup.
Yeah, there are several options...and Tree View is so much more 'normal' looking to me.
I've never understood why they're labeled the way they are -- "Tree View" looks like a list to me, and "List View" looks more like a tree to me.
When you expand everything in 'Tree View' I think it looks more like roots or an inverted tree...