Why do a lot of product icons suck these days?
TheKD
Posts: 2,703
A lot of icons these days just seem to be a random square cut out of one of the promo images, that in no way shows what the product looks like. This is really bad as an end user, I need to see what stuff looks like while browsing through the library. I end up making icons for us, but I am seriously considering that we just return and ask for refunds for any item that has crappy icons or horrible library structure.
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Comments
In the old days there were no icons... I mean like six or seven years or so back...
Not like 1876... Back then they used corncobs shaped like the product.
I still have loads of stuff that has the confused Poser guy shrugging "I dunno"...
I agree stuff should have good icons, but sometimes it's hard to fit certain items into that tiny space.
DS does have better, bigger looking thumbnails than Poser and you are probably talking about DS, so I don't know if that point of mine was valid.
Bad thumbnails are frustrating...
It could be worse... They could still be made of corncobs.
I'm still annoyed by items that bear different names from what the product was sold as.
ever try to find the right expression based on 'smile1' 'smile2'
You know how much you can fit inside a 91pixal x 91pixal image. Your lucking you can see anything
lets start a 150px revolution !!
Sounds like a great plan but what about the icons already made?
What is your criteria for "good" icons?
When ever I see a thread like this I start to fret and wonder if they are talking about me.. In this case the next thing I thought was that I spent something like 5 hours rendering thumbs for my last couple of products...
in my earlier poser days, spent time rendering 150px of stuff showing exactly what it looked like on loading, was back when poser library showed actual size library pngs
Maybe we need an "Art of the Product Thumbnail" thread pointing out good examples. Because I agree, I've seen some that I was like, "what exactly is being shown here?" I think thumbnails should strike that perfect balance between looking cool and being completely "transparent" so to speak, in other words, showing exactly what the file is.
I think faveral has the right idea
PNGs are the bane of my existence because they take so long to do. But then I concentrate on the actual product rather than making pretty PNGs because I'm guessing my customers would rather have a good product rather than pretty icons.
Edit :)
The only example of bad icons I can think of are when you mix facial expressions and partial expressions. Often times I see the same icons for a half-face expression that they do for a full-face expression. The downside is when viewed in the Smart Content under 'expressions' you have 3 icons all representing the same expression, one for the eyes, one for the mouth and a combined version.
Other than that minor issue though, most tend to work fine.
Doesn't make it easier when DS puts overlays on the icons so you can't read the text. Is there a way to disable these?
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Well, for those, getting rid of the blue "New" frame is a simple matter of setting all products as seen in the Database Maintenance, as for the file type label itself? You're on your own, there.
The overlays are due to the product having metadata. If you use Smart Content you may not want to disable them.
I guess you could stop the CMS service and then restart DS.
:/ most of that info should go in a proper readme - thumbnail notes should be short and simple
Well, for those, getting rid of the blue "New" frame is a simple matter of setting all products as seen in the Database Maintenance, as for the file type label itself? You're on your own, there.
Well I can see that the "New" frames also go away if you just click on the icon. So they're easy to get rid of if they disturb,
The overlays are due to the product having metadata. If you use Smart Content you may not want to disable them.
I guess you could stop the CMS service and then restart DS.
:/ most of that info should go in a proper readme - thumbnail notes should be short and simple
OK, not a good idea to remove them then, I guess. As for info, it would be handy if you could open an info page inside DS by clicking on an icon. Browsing through folders to find them is troublesome.
Ya the "New" overlay is easy to get rid of, just mark the contents of the folder as seen or click on it.
I agree, a product like that with extra notes should have an easy "link" to the documentation.
The thing is, most of us are working with the template the QA gave us so that they are meeting DAZ's requirements for size of graphics and PNGs so this really comes down to personal opinion versus what QA requires. Like I said, this is the part I hate (because I have to do 50-100 of these things) so It comes down to making sure the product functions well and looks good and the pngs meet their criteria and it shows a preview of what you're getting (though you'll be squinting at 91x91 or 147x85).
If you have issues with those guidelines, then you'd probably have to take it up with DAZ because I generally toss customer suggestions that may get my product bounced back to me because QA standards... and I've already been through this with them already so I'm going to work with what they give me.
K, understood.
Looks like the issue is kind of being solved in the new version of studio (4.8)
Just noticed when you hover over the thumbnails of the new Iray icons the tip window that appears is now bigger.
Closer inspection of the destination folder reveals a new image called tip.png at a size of 256x256 pixels (along with the .duf and .png)
my issue is when the product has multiple items with the same file name and icon. with smart content i can view by product view. at least one outfit set comes with a version for g2m and a version for G2f. if i have monique or Victoria that i want to dress i have to guess which one would be the right wardrobe.
also when using the regular content directory it is sometimes hard to figure out which Victoria or Michael this is for.
That is freaking cool... Its probably not as straightforward as doing a regular .png, but I gotta learn how to do that... Fitting a whole big structure into the tiny space allowed, usually ends up making the item just appear as a cube or something vaguely the shape of the model.
Zooming in to 256x256 is great.
Here's a couple of observances I noticed of the new tip icon feature.
1. Render a custom icon 256x256 in png format and overwrite the 91x91 default icon. DS will limit the display of the content library icon to 91x91 and use the new 256x256 icon as the tip icon.
2. If you want two different icons for the content library and tip icon, remove the .duf in both icon names, otherwise the alternate tip icon will not display.
If you ever see thumbs on anything of mine that you don't like please tell me what is wrong with them.. I work very hard to make sure they're nice. (that overlay in the corner drives me nuts.. my CMS was broken forever, finally got it working last week and I hate how it covers so much of the already tiny image)
The shrugging guy in Poser usually crops up because the icon is an .rsr and Poser doesn't support them. There are freebie programs around that do conversions from .rsr to .png, though the ones I have are very old and I don't know where you'd find one now. Try Google.
CHEERS!
For a while I thought the shrugging man was the silhouette of a turtle. After some time I thought to myself, "Why a turtle?" Then on closer inspection I realized, oh it's a man shrugging because he can't find the file. :)
I recreate my own file duf icons at 256px like a tip file, looks better IMHO...
Well, what I don't like is when product thumbs don't show the product very well. Sometimes I'm browsing for an outfit and the names really don't tell you much. Open a folder and everything is dark. The best thumbs are those with product separate against a white or very light background. Filling the whole icon sometimes makes it hard to know what the heck you're looking at, the same with a black background.
That tip info thing is really neat though. I had turned the feature off a few Studio versions ago because it was annoying, but turned it back on recently because the '...' in the filenames was even more annoying. :lol:
But more and more lately I'm using explorer rather than either Content or Smart Content. I find it easier to browse and find stuff and when I get out of the habit of dragging the png into the scene window instead of the daz file (no harm, just an extra step) it will be almost perfect.