Organising our Second Life inventory is always a hot topic, so finding new ways to do it or getting tips or advice from others are always welcome. Until I found my (CTS) Wardrobe, how I organised my inventory worked to an extent.
One of my biggest problem was with poses and backdrops. I buy a pose when I see it and generally won’t use it on that same day, so I forget about it. Now I have so many of them that I can’t remember what they are or from who. Just today, I was looking for a pose I knew I bought last week but couldn’t remember the brand name. It took me 30 minutes of Flickr browsing to find it. As for Backdrops, I stopped buying them for a while because of the same problem. I probably have used a third of what I own. At this point, it is easier to buy a new pose that will work with the picture I have in mind or LumiPro will do the job.
Surely there is a better way to organise Poses and Backdrops?
This is how my Animations folder looks like:
It’s kinda organised but if I’m looking for a specific pose, I have no idea where to look.
I used to organise poses with categories:
It didn’t make things any easier and lost track.
Recently I tried to make note of what I was buying.
Even if taking a screenshot doesn’t take long, it’s still an extra step and couldn’t imagine how it would look like once I had 100s of them in one note. I could create a note for each brand as I tend to buy often from certain brands, but again, I wasn’t convinced with that system.
I thought about doing it in my (CTS) Wardrobe, but you know … time and all that … never got around to do it until someone on Facebook wanted to know how other Second Life residents organised their poses and backdrops? It was time to test my idea.
The easiest way by far is (CTS) Wardrobe and this is how it looks like:
Isn’t it refreshing to see them like this?
I have two main categories, backdrop and poses, then I created tags for brands so that I can show stuff from one brand only for example. I also have a tag for Male poses and a tag for Couples. I’d probably create others ones for Group poses, and I guess you could go deeper by creating tags such as drinking poses, sitting, leaning, etc. just as long as they are different from the fashion and props ones. Then, it’s all there at one glance depending on the tag(s) you select. I only have a few so far but can you see the potential when you have 100s of them?
Then it’s just a matter of looking for the folder:
As I’ve explained before, (CTS) Wardrobe is not a miracle and it would take quite a long time to enter 100s of poses and backdrops. It will take even more time if the pose doesn’t have a picture, which at this stage I would skip them. I’ve noticed I have a few Foxcity folders that have no pics but I’m sure I could find a pic on her Flickr account. It would take time, but doable. For some, I could look through the Marketplace. Of course it is much easier when there is a square picture in the folder that you can save which so far I found that Foxcity, K&S and LW all have. Others I had to resize and some I had to use a screenshot.
With the new Wardrobe update, all brands using Caspervend can contact CTS to get a script to add to their package that will allow us to unpack and the package would be added automatically to the Wardrobe. I’m not sure how it works because none of the brands I buy from are doing it and not sure how it would work for poses and backdrops since we’re not actually wearing them.
Please note that I’m not affiliated with the CTS brand. I am just a big fan of their products and I absolutely love the (CTS) Wardrobe (click here for my review). I simply cannot imagine my Second life without it now. (Find it on the Marketplace)
What do you think about using the (CTS) wardrobe to organise poses and background? Or maybe CTS could come up with a special Wardrobe for just poses and backdrops? I wonder how Carlyle would feel about the idea.
How do you organise yours? Any tips you would like to share?
The wardrobe is a bit expensive but good idea.
Oh I’m so glad I found this article. Honestly, I’ve recently returned to SL and wanted to get back into photography but with all my unorganized poses it became really discouraging. I have already spent 1 week semi-organizing everything from my furniture to clothes and trying to remove any old or unwanted items which was a bit therapeutic for me. I kept looking up tips for photographers in this area but only found info about how to optimize the viewer and other beginner things. While that is important, it really doesn’t touch on how important good organization is to increasing the enjoyment and quality of life. I don’t want to have to spend hours going through random poses just to figure out the right one. Organizing by designer is pointless because I never pay attention to things like that. And to use descriptions can get so nuanced that it kind of makes it clumsy for folders. I had bought the CTS wardrobe years ago and I think I gave up because of issues with time but after reading this I think I’ll give this a try again! It’s strange how calming it is to just clean up my inventory. Hehe.
It takes time to organise everything in the wardrobe with my overly ambitious goal to get all my inventory added to the wardrobe, but it is so worth. To be able to see everything at a glance in a browser, I just can’t describe how good it feels. And if I don’t have a pic, I just take screenshot. In fact, I don’t even bother downloading any pics. I even screenshot Flickr if I have to as it is so much quicker, and I just have to delete the screenshots to not clutter my computer. The best organisation tool ever made for Second Life inventory.
My method is to screenshot the vendor ad for multipose packs, save it as the title it is in my SL inventory on my hard drive and then tag the pic with keywords. Then when I want to see all my poses that have someone drinking coffee for example, I just go into my folder and search for the tag/keyword. Bam! All the pics come up, I select the one I want and copy and paste that title into my SL inventory.