Inventory Visualization Help

[Echelon Alcott]

Hello friends

When you have thousands of items in your inventory, how can one easily browse through the inventory visually to select what to use? Do you have a system/solution/tool to solve this problem that works well and is cost efficient?

I enjoy doing builds. The issue I'm experiencing is that I have thousands of items in my inventory, from building sets, houses, plants, animals, furniture, décor, food props, vehicles, etc. I don't remember everything that I have and therefore many things go unused because unfortunately they've been forgotten. It is somewhat the same experience that @Rowan Amore described in the inventory organization thread [link], where she said "I've found a few things (ok, a lot of things) I'd totally forgotten I had and loved." I'll certainly use whatever solution I decide on for clothing/outfits as well, but it will be a bonus, not the main problem I'm trying to address.

I've been thinking about how to come up with a solution for this problem. A few ideas I've come up with, so far:

• Wardrobe [MP]: it seems like a promising option, as apparently it has a web-based interface to view images of the inventory items, which will load much faster than a HUD in-world. It was also mentioned by @Orwar in this thread [link]. Does anyone use it? If so, what are the shortcomings of this product? How streamlined is the workflow? Is there any additional cost to use this product, other than initial cost (L$699) of purchasing the Wardrobe, such as the L$10 cost to upload images into SL? The MP listing seems geared towards outfits, how well does it work with non-clothing items?
• Gyazo [URL]: it is very easy to take screenshots of SL using Gyazo, and with Gyazo Pro (US$4.99/month), there is the ability to create unlimited collections which would assist in categorizing  and tagging, for easy web-based browsing afterwards. So it seems like a straightforward workflow. Does anyone subscribe to Gyazo Pro? Any opinions on what would not work with this solution? The primary issue with this option for me personally is that I'll be paying for two image hosting services, see below.
• Image hosting service: I already pay for a Smugmug subscription, which is a web-based photo hosting service (similar to Flickr, which is actually owned by Smugmug since 2018). I could take a snapshot using Firestorm, save it to my local disk, upload it to Smugmug, categorize and tag it in Smugmug, for later browsing over the web. Unfortunately the workflow seems to have too many steps and will be time consuming. The advantage is that I already pay for the Smugmug subscription - for my personal photography website - and I have no intentions whatsoever on dropping it.

What are your thoughts? What works for you? Any other suggestions?

Your insight will be much appreciated! 

Edited November 17, 2021 by Echelon Alcott

[LittleMe Jewell]

I've never used the Wardrobe, but have heard great things about it over the years, from lots of forum folks.

It still does depend on one unpacking boxes and properly filing them -- that is the part that I fall behind on.  I buy & hunt faster than I unpack.

Edited November 17, 2021 by LittleMe Jewell

[Orwar]

14 minutes ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Wardrobe [MP]: it seems like a promising option, as apparently it has a web-based interface to view images of the inventory items, which will load much faster than a HUD in-world. It was also mentioned by @Orwar in this thread [link]. Does anyone use it? If so, what are the shortcomings of this product? How streamlined is the workflow? Is there any additional cost to use this product, other than initial cost (L$699) of purchasing the Wardrobe, such as the L$10 cost to upload images into SL? The MP listing seems geared towards outfits, how well does it work with non-clothing items?

   You don't upload the textures in the viewer, but to your own dashboard in the browser interface, so there's no cost involved in that part.

   My only experience of using it in the past, was when a friend had it and gave me access to her wardrobe so that I could dress her however I'd like .. Or undress .. Mostly the latter. Ahem.

   You could always make an 'offline' option for free, by just taking pics of all your things and keeping it in folders on your computer to mirror your inventory .. Which honestly would be much the same, except you'd then have to manually put it on in the viewer. 

[June Starlight]

11 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Wardrobe [MP]: it seems like a promising option, as apparently it has a web-based interface to view images of the inventory items, which will load much faster than a HUD in-world. It was also mentioned by @Orwar in this thread [link]. Does anyone use it? If so, what are the shortcomings of this product? How streamlined is the workflow? Is there any additional cost to use this product, other than initial cost (L$699) of purchasing the Wardrobe, such as the L$10 cost to upload images into SL? The MP listing seems geared towards outfits, how well does it work with non-clothing items?

I use it, a lot. It is my current go-to when it comes to anything wearables from mesh body parts, physics and such to clothes, to cute little scripted "spells" I have for role play purposes.

It is great for visual person, has good navigation through tags. You will have to set your tags yourself and maintain the system, but it is waaay more rewarding than doing the same with just SL inventory and list of folders.

Workflow is meh, nothing spectacular, you still have to do most things by hand one item at the time. There's some bulk editing features that make life a little easier. It makes use of RLV, so basic understanding of how to set up RLV folders is needed.

Haven't yet encountered any hidden additional costs. It has addon you can buy separately - looked into it, it is more like a toy / quality of life update you might want rather than something you would need.

It seem to have some trouble sorting BOM layers in the right order. Which might be a big deal or nah depending on how often you change your BOM layers.

I don't think it would work well with non-wearables. Main function of Wardrobe is to let you see your items and then put them on or off yourself.

These are tutorials I watched when choosing if I want to buy or not.

[Prokofy Neva]

15 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

Hello friends

When you have thousands of items in your inventory, how can one easily browse through the inventory visually to select what to use? Do you have a system/solution/tool to solve this problem that works well and is cost efficient?

I enjoy doing builds. The issue I'm experiencing is that I have thousands of items in my inventory, from building sets, houses, plants, animals, furniture, décor, food props, vehicles, etc. I don't remember everything that I have and therefore many things go unused because unfortunately they've been forgotten. It is somewhat the same experience that @Rowan Amore described in the inventory organization thread [link], where she said "I've found a few things (ok, a lot of things) I'd totally forgotten I had and loved." I'll certainly use whatever solution I decide on for clothing/outfits as well, but it will be a bonus, not the main problem I'm trying to address.

I've been thinking about how to come up with a solution for this problem. A few ideas I've come up with, so far:

• Wardrobe [MP]: it seems like a promising option, as apparently it has a web-based interface to view images of the inventory items, which will load much faster than a HUD in-world. It was also mentioned by @Orwar in this thread [link]. Does anyone use it? If so, what are the shortcomings of this product? How streamlined is the workflow? Is there any additional cost to use this product, other than initial cost (L$699) of purchasing the Wardrobe, such as the L$10 cost to upload images into SL? The MP listing seems geared towards outfits, how well does it work with non-clothing items?
• Gyazo [URL]: it is very easy to take screenshots of SL using Gyazo, and with Gyazo Pro (US$4.99/month), there is the ability to create unlimited collections which would assist in categorizing  and tagging, for easy web-based browsing afterwards. So it seems like a straightforward workflow. Does anyone subscribe to Gyazo Pro? Any opinions on what would not work with this solution? The primary issue with this option for me personally is that I'll be paying for two image hosting services, see below.
• Image hosting service: I already pay for a Smugmug subscription, which is a web-based photo hosting service (similar to Flickr, which is actually owned by Smugmug since 2018). I could take a snapshot using Firestorm, save it to my local disk, upload it to Smugmug, categorize and tag it in Smugmug, for later browsing over the web. Unfortunately the workflow seems to have too many steps and will be time consuming. The advantage is that I already pay for the Smugmug subscription - for my personal photography website - and I have no intentions whatsoever on dropping it.

What are your thoughts? What works for you? Any other suggestions?

Your insight will be much appreciated! 

The Lindens could put all the inventory online as they already do with the Marketplace, and some of it would be marked "archived" possibly, or conversely, marked "inworld" to be always available inworld. This would take some of the load off loading the entire thing inworld on every log-in. I just spent half an hour clearing caches and doing a clean reinstall to make my inventory of 197,000 items show up -- it wasn't loading even half, and wasn't loading outfits. 

The Lindens could provide thumbnail pictures which merchants could prepare to certain specs on each product -- or not. Then the burden is partly on the merchant and partly on the Linden code to have an entry for each item something like the entry for each item for sale, although it need not be as robust, i.e. no need to show its permissions or whatever.

This is all possible -- because items are already on the Marketplace in the millions, and you can already upload or download items to the Marketplace by putting them for sale or buying them.

So that's the logical system to use, although the Lindens could comment on whether this makes their website impossible to load -- to which I could only say, well, you're on AWS, make another web site just for inventory and make it very robuts *and have people pay for it* -- it's either a perk in a more robust premium account they've been discussing, or like a Manhattan Storage, with fees like tier fees depending on the size of the online version of your inventory. I'd be happy to pay it just to be able to log on without trouble and to find things again since it doesn't load.

 

[Orwar]

5 hours ago, June Starlight said:

Workflow is meh, nothing spectacular, you still have to do most things by hand one item at the time. There's some bulk editing features that make life a little easier. It makes use of RLV, so basic understanding of how to set up RLV folders is needed.

   The person whose wardrobe I had access to had done something which I absolutely would do (.. Will* one of these days, damn it), is she had set up a plain photo booth (white prim backdrop), with a poseball with a single pose (the lazy T-pose with arms slouching a little), and used a camera position HUD to save presets so that she always had the images look the same in her directory (I imagine not doing so would risk turning things confusing). I never partook in the rest of the work flow for setting stuff up, but the picture setup part really appealed to me.

[June Starlight]

19 minutes ago, Orwar said:

The person whose wardrobe I had access to had done something which I absolutely would do (.. Will* one of these days, damn it), is she had set up a plain photo booth (white prim backdrop), with a poseball with a single pose (the lazy T-pose with arms slouching a little), and used a camera position HUD to save presets so that she always had the images look the same in her directory (I imagine not doing so would risk turning things confusing). I never partook in the rest of the work flow for setting stuff up, but the picture setup part really appealed to me.

I am doing similar thing, only difference being I have several poses in my stand. The all are similar standing modeling poses, but some work better with different items. (Heels, you might want some good walking-but-not-really poses for them). I've seen some people just upload vendor pictures to their Wardrobe... and it does speed up things, but for me seeing how the item really looks (unedited, not cropped out of the picture if it dares to cover my knees) is worth that extra step.

What I haven't done yet, but should is putting my bodyparts neatly in (nostrip) folder and then moving outfits to the Wardrobe. Should make my life just a little more comfortable.

 

added: Here's another example, aside from heels. Middle one has interesting sleeves. Hey, let's use different pose for once so sleepy dum-dum me will notice it next time!

 

Edited November 18, 2021 by June Starlight
added picture

[Laurel Aurelia]

A friend of mine uses One Note to keep track of her inventory. For those unfamiliar with the program,  you create virtual notebooks that can be organized and tabbed for easy reference. She uses  either a Gyazo or her snipping tool and copies the image into the document. Then she adds a description. Its not nearly as uniform and clean looking as wardrobe nor does it have the added  in-world functionality, but for her needs it worked really well. I am not sure how well it would work for real clothes horses like me. But maybe I could make individual notebooks for different sections (E.G. a notebook dedicated to my extensive sweater and cardigan collection). I also could potentially use it to catalogue my decorating bits. Another thing I loved about it  was that it was shareable, so I could take peek at it.

[June Starlight]

Aside from gashing about Wardrobe. Catznip viewer will display a preview of a texture inside a folder, if you hover your cursor over said folder. Helps browsing the inventory quite a bit.

Edited November 18, 2021 by June Starlight

[Jennifer Boyle]

For years, I have wished for better tools to manage inventory. See

What would really be great is an app that had the functionality I described and, in addition, had searchable tags, pictures, etc.