Texture organizers

I am planning to buy a texture organizer soon, so I did some research and made a list off what is currently available. I thought others might benefit from this, so I'm posting it here to share with you guys.

My focus is on multi-texture displays with copy/mod permissions. Some of the ones below are also available with transfer/no-copy permissions. The list is pretty objective, listing price, HUD vs. rezzed, browsing dimensions (how many textures are viewable at once), prim count when I could find it, stuff like that. Each entry has a link to its page on SL Exchange, or directions to find it inworld.

Most of these can be found by browsing the 'Organizers' category on SLX:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&CategoryID=278
(contains other types of organizers too)

I've made the list as complete as possible. If you know of another copy/mod texture organizer, post a web link or URL and I will add it in. If someone wants to add a list of the transfer/no-copy ones, or single-texture viewers, that's fine with me.

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Advanced Texture Display (HUD)
Adriana Caligari
L$ 100
copy/mod
3x3 = 9
HUD
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=33966


Big Texture Display
Adriana Caligari
L$ 320
copy/mod
10x10 = 100
105 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=27285


Cortex Designs Texture Organizer
SunenRec Ayoob
L$1500
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
Inworld: Cortex Designs, Tawhaki 238, 22, 25


DisQ's Texture Organisor
DisQ Hern
L$ 495
copy/mod
1x10 = 10
HUD
(Appears to be the same as the free one he created for TRU.)
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=355790


Domino Designs Texture Viewer
Domino Marama
L$ 529 (mob*vend vendor, so price goes lower if people are around)
(also available from a Bid Pay auction where quite a lot go for L$50. Check around the other side of the wall the mob vend is on)
copy/mod
3x9 = 27
12 prims
Inworld: Domino Designs, Spinolds Flat 103, 48, 56


HUD Texture Organiser
Biran Gould
L$ 800
copy/mod
1x8 = 8
HUD
folders, up to 200
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=152860


K.R. Engineering Texture Master v3 (HUD)
Karsten Rutledge
L$ 1000
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
categories, 16 user-defined and 1 unassigned
http://blog.karstenrutledge.com/?p=46
http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2007/06/inventory-organizers.html


K.R. Engineering Texture Master v3 (Stand-alone)
Karsten Rutledge
L$ 1000
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
(# of prims?)
categories, 16 user-defined and 1 unassigned
http://blog.karstenrutledge.com/?p=46
http://cheyennepal.blogspot.com/2007/06/inventory-organizers.html


KUBiC Textures Organizer 1.2
Kanna Shirakawa
L$ 360
copy/mod
3x3 = 9
10 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=134881


Lestats Texture Organizer v2.1.1 (copy) with HUD
Memnoch Hathor
(Memnochs Madness is co-owned by Lestat Llewelyn and Memnoch Hathor)
L$ 1000
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
HUD or full size (36 prims)
folders
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=57152


Lestats Texture Organizer v2.1.1 DELUXE with HUD +20 Folders
Memnoch Hathor
L$ 1200
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
HUD or full size (50 prims)
folders
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=209871


Lestats Texture Organizer v2.1.1 EXTREME with HUD + 50 Folders
Memnoch Hathor
L$ 1600
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
HUD or full size (80 prims)
folders
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=209880


Multi-Texture Organizer (Copyable)
Toneless Tomba (THiNC)
L$ 650
copy
3x3 = 9
14 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=5323


NN Thumbnailer 4x4 0.0.7
Nonnux White
L$ 1490
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
HUD or rezzed (20 prims)
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=342468


Opus Labs Texture HUD System v2.2 (HUD Based Texture Organizer System)
DrenBoy Opus
L$ 1350
copy/mod
2x8 = 16
HUD
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=311312


Opus Labs Texture Organizer SE [w Sculptie Sculpt Map Preview]
DrenBoy Opus
L$ 1313
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=295497


Opus Labs Texture Organizer System SE +NEW HUD [w Sculptie Sculpt Map Preview]
DrenBoy Opus
L$ 1500
Organizers: copy/mod, Rezzers: mod
Prim: 4x4 = 16
HUD: 2x8 = 16
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=295527


Opus Labs Texture Organizer System XT + New HUD [w Sculptie Sculpt Map Preview]
DrenBoy Opus
L$ 2000
copy/mod
Prim: 4x4 = 16
HUD: 2x8 = 16
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=295537


Solvang's Texture Organizer by Starz & Stripez
Inferniel Solvang
L$ 500
copy/mod
5x5 = 25
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=224799


Texture Assistant PRO
Sparrow Petty
L$ 900
copy/mod
5x5 = 25
43 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=129224


Texture Display HUD (ver. 1.2)
Imhic Schlegal
L$ 350
copy/mod
3x15 = 45
18 folders
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=166697


Texture Organiser 1.2
Sam Stork
L$399
copy/mod and transfer/mod (package comes with two different versions)
3x3 = 9
10 prims
Inworld: Perfect Prefabs, Pefect Prefabs Cyan 102, 104, 27


Texture Organizer 25 textures at a time
Salahzar Stenvaag
L$320
copy/mod
5x5 = 25
8 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=326897


Texture Palette 1.5
Fred Allandale
L$ 180
copy/mod
Three sizes: 3x3 (9), 3x4 (12), 4x4 (16)
13, 16, or 20 prims
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=160851


Texture Viewer Pack
Yina Yao
L$ 600
copy/mod
Two sizes: 5x5 (25), 7x7 (49)
Wearable as HUD, or rezzable inworld
View textures on cubes or spheres. Preview with shininess, bumpmap, and alpha.
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=284929


Textures R Us Organisor
Created by DisQ Hern for Lillybeth Filth of Textures R Us
free
copy
HUD
Inworld: Textures R Us (TRU), English Rose, 127, 158, 30


Texturik 1.0 - Texture Tool HUD
Orson Skall
L$ 600
copy/mod
4x5 = 20
HUD
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=202381


Texzilla - Texture browser / organizer
Saii Hallards
L$ 595
copy/mod
4x5 = 20
HUD
17 categories
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=258479


Titan Texture Vendor/Organiser
Jack Hathor
L$ 2000
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
prim and HUD
multiple categories?
Inworld: Enchant Jacques 195, 23, 276

Free Sculptie viewer and selector
TheBlack Box
free
copy/mod
Note: Prims created list TheBlack Box as the creator, but it is possible to replace the master prim with one created by you (so the "selected" sculptie prims list you as creator).
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tech%20Expo/105/209/22

Note the SLX links may not work properly with the Greasemonkey script or other hacks to make links clickable. If you have this problem, you can just search SLX for the items name or creator, or get the proper URL by quoting the post or turning off Greasemonkey temporarily.

(I dream of the day LL will turn BBCode back on!)

Texture organizers by Knick Nabob
(in Aquaria)
Couldn't find information about permissions. (will add to list if someone finds info)

Graffix HUD
Some ads call it a texture organizer, but it is mainly a picture organizer and projector... features aren't really optimized for textures.

MagnaMural
Uses mega-prims? (ETA: Creator says no, just 4 regular prims.) Not optimized as a texture organizer, seems meant for other uses. Only one texture shown at a time (per copy of MagnaMural).

The Domino Designs Texture Viewer is also available from a Bid Pay auction where quite a lot go for L$50. Check around the other side of the wall the mob vend is on

Wow, Ava..I don't know how you do it. I thought I was organized but you are incredible.

I use the Cortex cause you can make as many as you want and since we all know that texture addicts will keep buying, its nice to know you can just make another copy of the organizer. It has a nice solid feel to it too; everything rezzes fast and I have a vast line of them along the wall of my workshop and they just look really nice!

Thanks Domino, I saw some floating text about that, but I didn't realize it belonged to something on the other side of the wall.

I have to admit I almost missed yours because it could only be found through SL search. I'm glad I checked it out, though... it's simple, but good enough to make the short list of organizers I'm considering buying.


I have LIBRARIAN SUPERPOWERS!!!

Frankly even my librarian friends marvel at my powers of organization. But the laws of thermodynamics must be obeyed, so for every piece of information I neatly organize, the random junk-pile that is my apartment gets just a little more random.


I absolutely agree about needing copy permissions, which is why I focused solely on those (and they are the bulk of the market, fortunately). Even though a few have integrated folders/categories, I much prefer to have a separate organizer for each major category.

After reviewing all the features, I've narrowed the field down to about 10 that I will go and demo. The few I've tried so far vary widely in performance, so I can really appreciate what you say about the fast rezzing.

I still haven't decided whether to go rezzed-prim or HUD, or one that can do both. I'm also still debating about whether I want a simple one, or one of the snazzier more complicated ones. There is just so much to consider!

One thing I wonder about is whether having more textures rezzed at once is a good thing or not. A HUD I tried had too many, so the thumbnails were so tiny that they were essentially useless. On a rezzed organizer you could zoom in, but not on a HUD. On a rezzed organizer, I guess the issue would be whether paging so many textures at once would slow down the performance too much... that's probably more of an issue for me because my currently computer is rather slow.

I have the Lestats, and tried out (or had conversations with the maker) four of your choices before buying. I don't want to post product reviews here, but if you want to IM me any questions, be happy to talk about them.

I have the Cortex Designs. While most of the choices have about the same feature level and general operation, I'll give an extra shout out for one because I had a n00b moment about 8 months ago and decided to clear out my existing textures in my organizer and start afresh. Rather than using the built in delete function, I just went into the organizer contents and deleted everything. Yes, everything. Then loaded all the new textures into it. Couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the thing to work. IM'd SunenRec, who graciously came out and looked at it. Upon examination, he informed that that I'd deleted the script that makes the thing work; I felt mighty stoopid. Not many creators will make house calls anymore, so that level of customer service keeps me from even considering switching and is worth noting.

I use Cortex also as do many pros. I haven't tried many others and there may be some better but no matter which one, you do want one feature the Cortex has:

If you pay the $1,500 for the pro model then it is copyable. This is extremely important. I have about 8,000 textures. The more textures you have in a single organizer, the longer it takes to find the one you are looking for. So you want to have multiple organizers with each haing a different category of textures, ie; Brick, Rock, Wood, Flooring, Siding, Fabric, Marble, Stone, Silk, Sculpties etc..........

The problem with Cortex ( which we based & had our first single vendor based on back in 2005) is the old duplicates bug
At the store there is a superb new organiser Opus Organiser which checks for duplicates and deletes them as one option and lots of others and comes with 2 perm options one with copy/mod
There are the kiosk options and the HUD option too and it comes with lifetime updates ( free auto ones )

Cortex is OLD now very old. But that said I am not sure if he does auto free updates?

We stopped using the single vendor by Cortex because of the Duplicates and the fact that foolishly I didnt pay for exclusive rights to it and all the tacky little ' textures off the net and freebie LL texture stores' started using them

Each time I got a report of txtr theft they would be using that damb vendor so I grew to hate it and upgraded.

But even that didnt have the check dups and remove feature which would of been handy.

We also have a basic free HUD organisor compliments of TRU you can find them floating about the store in boxes if you want one.

I have 20,000+ textures and have NEVER used an organisor. lol

Actually setting it up at this stage puts me off !

No argument here... that's why I only included copyable ones in my list. And to be honest, there were only one or two makers I found that were not offering copy/mod perms at least as an option.




LillyBeth, if there was ONE person in all SL that I expected to use texture organizers, it would be you! You must have one HELL of a memory to be able to deal with that many textures.

Textures R Us was offering a free organiser. I got it a while back... haven't rezzed it yet, but since it was free, it may be worth looking into it.

hahahahahhahaha I don't think you want to start now then. With 8,000 textures it took me about 2 months of off and on work to get the organizers setup like I wanted. The Opus sounds very interesting and I am going to check it out in world later. The HUD feature should come in very handy especially If I will be able to use the same organizer to display in world or as a hud? Don't know. I do know I don't want to have to setup two of each!(Edit: Yes, the organizer you setup works in world or HUD) The problem with the organizers that you rez in world is that the Cortex uses 30+ prims each and like the 10x10 Caligari uses 105. Have run into the problem a few times where I had to take some back into inventory because I had run out of available prim for the build I was working on.

Great thread!!!!!

The Opus line uses a separate HUD that does not hold the textures itself, but rather connects back to the rezzed organizers (as long as you are in the same sim).

The more advanced version uses a rezzer for the rezzed organizers, so that you can save on prim usage when they are not in use. I can't tell from the SLX page, but I'm pretty sure you have to actually have an organizer rezzed (from the rezzer, using up prims) in order to connect to it from the HUD.

The upside of this method is that you do not have to set up two copies (HUD and rezzed) of each of your categories, but the downside is that you lose major benefits of HUDs, the zero prim usage and using the organizer anywhere. My problem? That I can't decide which is more important to me!

I have seen at least one and I think maybe two that say they can be used both as a HUD or rezzed, and I _think_ they mean the exact same organizer... meaning you only have to load one copy, and that copy can be rezzed OR worn as a HUD. But (A) I'm not sure of this... most HUDs I've actually rezzed are rather small, and (B) the ones that offer this are not my favorites for other features.

Jesse, I'm glad you mentioned the time it took to get large quantities of textures into the organizers... that's the main reason I am putting so much effort into choosing the one that's right for me. I _know_ once I get stuff sorted out and loaded into an organizer, I am NOT going to want to do it all over again with another one! Of course, most will let you take all textures out as a bunch, which you can then load into a new organizer, so perhaps I'm worrying about the "move-ability" issue too much.

Man, there's just so much to think about!

Lestats Texture Organizer v2.1.1 (copy) with HUD
Memnoch Hathor
(Memnochs Madness is co-owned by Lestat Llewelyn and Memnoch Hathor)
L$ 1000
copy/mod
4x4 = 16
HUD or full size (36 prims)
folders
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=57152][url=http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=57152]http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=57152[/url]


This is the one I have been using for over a year (Well, I had the pre HUD version first). It's great, and has 8 'folders' along the top that helps organize. I have about 12 of them in my inventory right now, each one handling 8 diff categories.

I even use it as a Photo organizer.

It's nice, because I can rez it in world, and let the group go through and select pictures and the like, or lock it off so that only I can use it.

Ava, the Lestats organizer can be used as a HUD or prim, but they are separate copies. However, Lestats tells me that all the contents, including the folder structure, can be copied from one organizer to another, so it is actually not too hard to go back and forth if you need to. I have not yet tried this feature. It is, however, the current method of upgrading when new versions come out, so I'm betting it works fine.

The current low-end version has 10, not 8 folders (not including the main one).

Wonderful thread. Thanks, everyone. And, thanks again, Ava, for compiling this list.



No mega-prims - just 4 regular prims, which are resizeable through text chat commands.



Well, I'll agree that it's not a normal organizer, but, I hope it's useful for more besides just a changeable backdrop.

I'd say more, but, I don't want to turn my post into an ad.



Yes, on a single MagnaMural. But, fortunately, MagnaMurals (at only 4 prims apiece) can be easily duplicated, and either controlled all at once or individually.

Best wishes,
Apollia

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I decided to go with a feature-rich organizer, although I can certainly see the appeal of the simpler units. I bought the KR HUD, and immediately regretted it... I have a fairly high resolution display, and the HUD was just a little bit too small to be useful as a texture organizer (and it can't be resized). It does come with an audience panel, though, so I can still use it for things like slide shows and presentations.

I did really like the functionality of the KR system, though, so I went back and bought the rezzable version. It's complex enough that I needed to spend time reading the manual, but I got the hang of it pretty quick and have already got several organizers loaded. All in all, I am pretty happy with my choice.

No, the thanks go to you Ava. Because of your thread I went out and got the Opus Labs combination Hud/rezzable organizer system. It really rocks and puts my old one to shame!

Cool!

Did you get the one where the rezzed organizer can be tucked away in a rezzer to save on prims? If so, does it have to be fully rezzed in order for the HUD to connect to it?

Yes, but I have the combo package, not sure how the hud only one works. With this one, you can put all of the organizers in the rezzer and when the rezzer is activated it rezzes the first one and you hit the forward or backwards buttons to get to the organizer you want. Then you can connect it to the hud and use the hud. The hud isn't resizeable but it does have a drop down window that shows the selected texture in both tiled and stretch mode. You can also rezz a smart prim that will display whichever texture you touch and changes when you select a new texture. Whenever an organizer is rezzed then it is 33 prim but once you have connected the hud to the organizer you want you can turn off the rezzer and go back to just one prim.ooooops That is wrong. You need to keep the organizer rezzed that the hud is connected to with this one. I don't know if you can load a bunch of different huds with different sets of textures like the organizers and use them without the rezzer.

I don't think the HUD alone stores textures (meaning the Opus HUD, not other HUD organizers). If I understand the SLX page correctly, the HUD-only version keeps textures in one-prim canisters which must be rezzed somewhere in the same sim.

It's really a shame that individual HUDs can't be scaled on your screen. For a texture organizer, it totally makes sense to have the same one rezzed sometimes, and in a HUD at others. The Opus one almost gets it right, but it still has its limitations... for instance, the HUD has to connect to rezzed organizers in the same sim.

Oh well, maybe someday we'll get the perfect hybrid HUD/rezzed organizer. Of course, then I'll just complain because it doesn't have a direct neural interface!

I have been wanting to get an organizer for so long now...but lacked the time to do the research.

This thread has been such a help and I cannot thank you all enough! I have learned more about texture organizers than I though possible and can actually make a decision without purchasing blind.

You all rock!

~Ari

I so agree with you, Ava. I got the Lestats because it is at least possible to copy everything, including the folder structure, from a Hud version to the prim version. I'm hoping followon versions make that easier.

The Opus system was just too complicated for this non-commercial builder. It looked, however, like a great option for someone who has a large, stable workshop area. And it looked like the hands-down best option for a group of people who build together and want to share a single pool of textures. I don't know how common that is.