Purchased Product Catalog/Gallery

torqy

This is a product concept that arises out of my frustration with the current clunky methods of finding products that I have already purchased.  This product has the potential of speeding up workflow, tracking products' relations to each other, and allowing artists to focus more on their art rather than the mechanics of their 3D object library.

I would like to see a product that catalogs my purchased products.  Not a catalog of installed products (like PZDB or CCEZ), but of purchased products.  Also not just a simple listing, like my DAZ Product Library web page or the product list in DIM.  This should tell me what I really bought, not just its name, not just a simple thumbnail picture, but more of the information from the product's original web page.  This catalog should simplify the process of bridging between purchasing 3D objects and artistically using them.

I would like to be able to browse or search my purchased products by key words, compatible characters, related products.  For each product, I would like to see one or more of the promotional pictures that appeared on the product's page when I purchased it (after all, those are the pictures that sparked my imagination and convinced me to buy it, not the simple thumbnails that are in the Runtime folders).  I would like to see a visual indication of its related products (texture add-ons in particular).  I should not have to rely on the vendor naming a texture in some supposedly obvious way (e.g. "Sci-Fi for V4 TechnoSuit") to clue me in to the relationship between products.  And I need to see the products' pictures!  My "V4 TechnoSuit" product catalog entry should be able to have links (with preview pictures) to "Sci-Fi for V4 TechnoSuit" and "Laguna Beach for V4 TechnoSuit" and any other related products I have.  If the links between the products cannot be established automatically, please let me link them in my catalog myself (the link information may already be there in the DAZ/Renderosity product pages for automatic linking, but, if not, I can read the text and link them myself).  This is particularly important for inter-site links for, say, Renderosity textures for DAZ clothing.  I should be able to select one or more products and add my key words or notes to them (e.g. "weapon", "steampunk prop", "used in Martian FarmGirl book cover").

Ideally, the browsing experience should be more like wandering through a gallery or a library, searching for something specific or simply looking for inspiration.  Product promo pictures are inspiring - little tiny thumbnails are not!  Galleries and libraries are visual - purchased product lists are not!  Serendipity needs a place to flourish.  Simplifying the mechanics of product relationships unfetters creativity.

The data loaded into this catalog could very well be from my purchase info from the DAZ/Rendo/etc. sites (and if an appropriate API is not available from each site, please take this as a serious request, ye esteemed web masters).  But at the very least it should be able to load from my downloaded .zip files, which are of course totally independent of any site API.  The program could look each zipped product up on its source site (with source hints from me, if necessary) to get promo pictures, etc.

Of course, after having found items that I want to use in a project, being able to easily load them into DAZ or Poser would really speed up workflow.  In fact (and this is a really, really powerful concept), if the catalog program could be used to create individual project Runtimes, there would no longer be a need to keep ALL of my (thousands of) products in a single Runtime.  Nor would I even have to attempt to create and maintain separate "topical" Runtimes of related items (e.g. V4 Casual Wear, V4 Beach Wear, V4 Fantasy Wear, V5 Fantasy Wear).  When I work on a scene, I browse for the objects I need from the objects I have bought.  No more orphaned textures.  No more forgotten purchases.  No more bloated Runtimes.  I could archive each finished project's files with its own project-specific Runtime.

A further stretch of this product concept would be to incorporate some of the DIM features.  Why even download all my purchased products if this catalog program could search my DAZ/Rendo/etc. purchased products and download the .zip files on demand to build my project Runtime?  Isn't this the model of cloud-based video, photos, and music?  Keep the files in the cloud and only load them when needed.  Yes, this is more appealing to those of us with high speed Internet, but, like audio-visual media, I should have the choice of having the file on my local hardware or downloading it on demand.  To go a bit further (...placing DAZ/Rendo/etc. marketing hat momentarily on my head...), there could be links to product pages of products that I have not (yet) purchased.  E.g. that "Sci-Fi for V4 TechnoSuit" texture is in my Wishlist and this may be the right time to buy it.  Or did I know that there is a brand new V4 TechnoSuit texture available?  The iTunes model is not an exact fit for us, but the basic concept has potential.

While this catalog could conceivably be based on highly involved database management software and sophisticated programming, it would be nice if it were based on software technology that is readily available and inexpensive (what good is a product concept if it is expensive or cumbersome to implement and/or to obtain?).  The technology already present in Microsoft OneNote could provide a technology framework for this catalog (and, no, I am not a Microsoft employee!).  OneNote comes with all new versions of Microsoft Office, but I have found that its power generally goes untapped as most Office users are either unfamiliar with it or underutilize it (definitely a sleeping giant).  It is often used by students for taking classroom notes, but it can do so much more.  Its built-in organization, linking, searching, graphics, visual orientation, and programmability make this a very suitable foundation technology for this product.  OneNote can be useful for artists to keep project notes (e.g. render settings, Photoshop layer info, archive CD number) and include links into their product catalog items.  And finally, OneNote data files are small and simple, easy to copy, back up, and share.

I am looking forward to hearing others' views on this product concept.  Most of all, I would love to see it become real.

Vhardamis

I created this very thing  with One Note but had t split it into sevaral work books/tabs because once you hit a certain size you'll start having sync issues. Its tedious work but it is doable and far more useful thant the paid version I bought to keep track of.

RLSprouse

I do this using a fantastic product called TheBrain a.k.a. PersonalBrain. It allows things (called "thoughts") to be linked together in various ways, so for example I have a category called "Clothing - Women's" and linked to that I have categories for Generation 4, Genesis, Genisis 2, Genesis 3, etc. Within those, I have categories like "Dresses and Skirt Outfits," "Pants and Shorts outfits," "Tops," "Swimwear and Lingerie," etc., etc. Then a thought for each individual product. Within those thoughts I have pasted the URL of the product in the marketplace, one or more promo pictures, and the verbiage from the product page. If there are related products, such as texture sets, I add thoughts for those and link them to the "parent" product."

Luckily, I foresaw the need for this when I first started collecting content, so I am pretty religious about adding every new product I purchase. I have thousands of products now, and the software seems to be able to cope with the database size.