Organizing Daz scene files

Granville

After a decade of rendering, I'm finding it hard to find my old scenes. How do people organize their Daz Scene files?

• All in their own folder or in the specific project folder or something else? 
• What level of nesting folders?
• Track which assets used in a project?

I'd love to hear how people are thinking about this.

crosswind

My folder structure is like this : My Daz Library \ My Scenes \ Years \ [Subjects] \ [xxxxxx] - 000 - 999. duf 

All of the scene files have metadata, so I can quickly locate what I want in thousands of DUF files by filtering some key words.

I think it should be always up to your preferences to build a folder structure for better organizing and managing the scene files.

Granville

Love your avatar btw. Do you have a like about how to use the metadata? 

crosswind

Thanks ! And yes ~ normally when you save a Scene file, the file info. is written to cms database. Then you can type the keyword in Content Library to instanly get the searching result... (ss1)

You may also add custom keywork / category to the scene files for more flexibly searching.

DrunkMonkeyProductions

In my case, it's a bit...complicated.

(Note: in windows, unless you have long file names available and enabled, you will have a 256 character limt.)

 

I start with an unmapped, in CDM, folder labeled Scene. I do this as i don't care for the tags on thumbnails,nor need any meta-data, and because i organize on a folder/file level, they're unnecessary to my workflow.

Personal projects are organized by week, with the start date being which ever day my 'week' started on.

As i have a character centric workflow, the working folder is named based on the character and base mesh i'm working with.

The file name is generally the character name followed by the scene title. I don't always follow this of course as the project may change at any point.

x:\scene\6-29-2024\Rylee g9\Rylee, the princess gets pulled over.dsf

For larger or more complex scenes, I'll switch to a project title as opposed to the character name, even if i keep the project in the character folder.

x:\scene\6-29-2024\WIB(womeninblack)\WIB(womeninblack).dsf

or

x:\scene\6-29-2024\Matilda(custom) g8f\cleaning day\cleaning day.dsf

 

When it comes to something i may be working on longer term ,such as a comic, visual novel, or animation, i'll move from the weekly folder and switch to a project folder.

x:\scene\sequential\heroes in highheels\page 1\panel 1\heroes in highheels(page1, panel1).dsf

x:\scene\animation\bombing run\previs\bombing run(previs start, frame 0-30).dsf

 

Commissions and requests are started with the particular parent, and the sub folder is the name of the commissioner/requester.

x:\scene\commissions\drunkmonkey\bongoboingo(start date, delivery date)\bongoboingo.dsf

 

Benchmarking scenes are based on what i'm testing.

x:\scene\benchmarking\500 Itterations.dsf

x:\scene\benchmarking\100% convergence.dsf

 

Forum related scenes will be based on the forum post title and date, and i'll often include a txt file with the url and original post.

x:\scene\forum stuff\why is iray crashing 3-2-2019\why is iray crashing test.dsf

 

Since I use Pontari's "Recent files" plugin, i have a sequential save option,which i use ctrl+s for, so the final file name will look something like this.

x:\scene\6-29-2024\Rylee g9\Rylee, the princess gets pulled over14.dsf

(yeah, i have a tendency to save a lot because of this plugin).

 

 

In regard to determining what is used in a scene, this is where things get complicated.

The first step i take, manual installtion of assets and split data directories for any assets that adds property data(morphs, pose controls, etc) to a figure.

With this setup, i just copy the ContentDirectoryManager.dsx file  to a backup directory, and when i want to work with the scene again, i just replace the one in daz studio, selecting the relevant content set.

For personal projects, once my week's done, the CDM file gets renamed to include the week, and in DS, i delete out all the paths in cdm that were used in those projects, just keeping my most used assets.

For other projects, i'll put it in a project related folder and add the project name to the file, before the extension.

I tried just adding copies of content sets, but the file got to the point i couldn't open it in a text editor, so i stopped doing that and currently just have 14 content sets, that i modify as needed, for different purposes.

 

For really old scenes that predate my current system, i just load the scene, copy the missing folder information, and check the log for additional missing content and either add that back to the CDM file, or install the content if it's not currently installed.

 

 

I also use a notepad++ document for some projects, and even an excel spreadsheet for others to keep track of stuff. These get added to the relevant project folder.

I'll often save the final version of a character(s), or asset as a scene subset, in the working folder for that project.

If it's something i think i'll use in the future, i'll add the subset, character preset, wearable, etc. to my 'custom' or 'project' directory, or even the particular related folder(clothing, character, prop, vehicle, etc.).

 

One last thing i do for some projects, is to make a screen cap, or even a test render as a 'tip' image or just replacement for the default 91x91 png so i get a better idea what the heck i was doing.

Gordig

Because I'm a maniac, I neither organize my scenes nor use a naming scheme to keep them straight. There's a scene in my folder that, if I remember correctly, is titled So Stupid, and I have no idea why I originally named it that. Sometimes I'll save the scene file under one name, then once the scene is all worked out, I'll give my final render a different name without changing the name of the scene file and have a hard time finding that scene because I don't remember its original name. 
 

Suffice it to say, I can offer you no advice on this topic. 

jhogenboom_da69c035a9

I thought I had a setup with a folder for scenes with people and a folder for scenes without people, then when I didn't use the scenes much anymore they'd go into subfolders of those folders called Archive. Just now I looked at my setup and found a folder called OLD. What was I thinking?