File organization and naming conventions
polycounter lvl 3
I was wondering how you guys and gals keep track of your files and folders for a single model that is complex and/or requires lots of changes. For just for normal models that go fine, but also what happens if you have to make changes after the model is exploded or something has to be redone, how do you stay sane and organized in these situations where ten or a hundred small changes have to be made late in the making of the model? Does anyone use the default 3ds Max folder structure? How do you keep track of the newest versions of HP, LP and cage (additionally exported versions of these), uvs, textures and revisions and tests/experiments etc? Do you save the full scene when saving a new HP or LP version or just "save selected" to a separate file? When a revision has to be made to you make a new folder with a description for the changes along with new subfolders for LP, HP, etc, or do you just add to existing LP, HP, cage, etc files?
So far i have not been able to get through the exploded normal bake without having to use the exploded bake as my final model because of all the little changes i've had to make to it. :poly141: My problem is compounded by the fact that 3DS Max has corrupted by HPs a few times, yet the problem didn't somehow show in the viewport until i deleted something wrong the modifier stack. If that weren't bad enough, all the 5 autobackup had the same problem. Thus i save iterations of all 3DS Max work constantly.
*shrug*
So far i have not been able to get through the exploded normal bake without having to use the exploded bake as my final model because of all the little changes i've had to make to it. :poly141: My problem is compounded by the fact that 3DS Max has corrupted by HPs a few times, yet the problem didn't somehow show in the viewport until i deleted something wrong the modifier stack. If that weren't bad enough, all the 5 autobackup had the same problem. Thus i save iterations of all 3DS Max work constantly.
*shrug*
Replies
My own structure looks like this. Quite a lot shorter than what I use at my studio.
<root>/category/type/asset_name/model/asset_name.v###.ma
<root>/category/type/asset_name/texture/
<root>/category/type/asset_name/etc
In reality it'd look something like this
P:/project/forest/scene (root) /creature (cat) /animal (type) /direwolf/model/direwolf.v001.ma
A colleague wanted to use it as material library and asked me to add "engine" in front of category. This is what it looks like with material functions added.
http://imgur.com/HM6vnuH
At work asset names also include a section of their path so we can easily find them based on debug info. Eg. Spacestation_doors_security.mb lives in. ...Assets/spacestation/doors/