PShop: Maintaining clean layers / textures
polycounter
Yo Santa believers,
I was hoping to create a base in this thread for discussion revolving around the process / techniques you've come across and have used that best maintain a clean and orderly Photoshop file. I'm looking to learn more about different approaches that might be out there.
More directly, what organizational techniques do you use to prevent those rouge pixels and other similar human mistakes? Mainly, I'm aiming to steal your professional artistic powers, so watch the fuck out.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's cool too. Merry soon-to-be Christmas, you slag!
-kp
I was hoping to create a base in this thread for discussion revolving around the process / techniques you've come across and have used that best maintain a clean and orderly Photoshop file. I'm looking to learn more about different approaches that might be out there.
More directly, what organizational techniques do you use to prevent those rouge pixels and other similar human mistakes? Mainly, I'm aiming to steal your professional artistic powers, so watch the fuck out.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's cool too. Merry soon-to-be Christmas, you slag!
-kp
Replies
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78932
Outside of that, layer folder groups, masks and naming shit. I gut mother fuckers who use 200 layers with one pixel each and no naming conventions.
Collapse stuff, do more painting on the same layer
Actions and scripts to help automate saving. I lost track of the thread but an old board member/mod Harlequin (you probably know who I'm talking about) created a save script that rocks.
Hunt around for photoshop scripts that save time. I haven't done this yet but I dream of stumbling upon a site like scriptspot or creativeCrash for photoshop scripts.
If I'm not being picky about selection of discrete/blended areas on a single UV island, I just keep a layer of "bake base texture" (from xN) hidden, swap to it and use the wand thing to select contiguous islands. If "sample all layers" is not checked then you can select them without unhiding the layer. Generally stays up top with the wire overlay, useful for doing quick adjustment layer tweaks etc if trying out some overall changes, or masking in whatever photo overlay you might want to use.
Adjustment layers are awesome. When I start using them, I generally consider that the end of a 'pass', and group together whatever painted / textured / blended crap beneath them in a layer group, and start a new one in the non-grouped space above.
Come to think of it, though, that's a pretty linear, overall way to do organize stuff. Maybe I should try grouping things based on what they are and just working with what I have, like skin group / metals group, or whatever. Sometimes I will do so for special parts, such as emissive data or materials that go over other materials, like stains and blood, just to keep it separate and modular.
Harlequin's vTools is here http://home.insightbb.com/~jamestaylor/ it's great.
Adjustment layers are something I've switched to over the adjustments menu. It's much easier to have control over the blending that way.
It sounds hardcore, but if someone else opens your texture or illustration, navigates through it to check something and turns everything off then everything back on .... and then for some reason he or she decides to save the file ... you're screwed!
Thats one reason I got into the habit of saving my finished copy twice.
super_important_filename_0039.psd
super_important_filename_0040.psd
same exact file, but someone can jack up _0040 and it doesn't matter, because people tend to only mess with the latest file. If they're the same then screw up 40 all you want I still got 39 beeches!
__
As for as photoshop orderliness:
Group -> Sub Group -> (depends on the project)Potentially Sub-Sub-Folders
Color Mark each major group.
And I name everything.
I tend to close the groups I'm not working on as well so that makes it easier to notice when I switch groups and then undo something and I notice there's more than one group open + in a different colored group.
But I can also be a bit cdo at times.
rebirth is actually a crash caused by max that destroyed my files before that, luckily I save frequently new versions and so I didn't loose much work at all.
I wouldn't trust Photoshop more though had some nasty stuff with it likewise. Everything thats important needs to be saved in sequence!
I always have a master group for each texture pass (i.e. Diffuse, Specular, Alpha, Height, Normal, Gloss, Illumination, etc...). Makes saving them out easier, you can just hide everything bar that group and you're ready to save out that pass.
Always, always name your layers something meaningful. Nothing worse than opening up a complex texture with everything named "Layer 0, Layer 1, Layer 2, Group 1...". Same with objects, layers and materials in Max. Everything should have a descriptive name so other people know wtf it does.
The thing is, I always start with a nice layer management idea, but then stuff like deadlines creep up and I rush it, create new layers whenever I need it and don't think about naming it.
edit: qlz, CS3 doesnt have smart filters.
edit2: so yeah, never want to meet mark in real life *shakes as a leaf*
i also use the same names across most of my textures, and keep the same layer order when possible.
for more complex files, i'll often name the layer after the setting, so i can change it to try new things and always return it to what i had originally liked... for example: colorburn 20, softlight 50, etc
Does most everyone use massive amounts of layers or very minimal amounts?
For photo-sourced textures I tend to use gobs of layers and folders. But for hand-painted textures it's not uncommon to have 10 layers or less for a diffuse map for me. I'm just wondering if I should move towards using more layers when hand-painting or less when photo-sourcing textures.
I do that too. In fact, if someone would have layers that were toggled on but had opacity set to 0 that sounds pretty annoying.
I personally dislike the "single layer" method as it doesn't provide enough flexibility to make changes later in the process.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49192
Works with CS5, too!
sprunghunt Does this action create an initial PSD setup for you to springboard out of? I've tried to make something similar but it didn't work too well. It likely wouldn't work for what I do, but I'd love to take a look at the results of it if you're willing to share it.
MightyPea
cryrid and Grimm_Wrecking mentioned the same thing, maybe you can chime into your take on the same questions I presented to cryrid in this post?
Sectaurs Naming files and folders is classic-fancy, yo! OOoh I'm Ian, I like my PSD files like I like my sandwiches; Without condiment.
I've experimented with "Texture and Layer Library PSDs" which seem useful for cross-texture harmonization stuff. I'll probably develop this idea more when I gain more interest in the concept.
Now that's just anal! You don't fool me sir!
(It's funny because he's one of the most laid back dudes I've known.)
qlz I guess I'm not familiar with "smartobjects/smartfilters". Could you explain what you're referring to?
Talon
*fist-pound*
renderhjs
I imagine this would greatly inflate a directory's footprint, depending on the file-size of the PSDs. Does anyone have experience using this?
There are times I lose entire PSD updates. This is typically a noobish mistake but, it can also happen due to brain-fatigue, sometimes you just work yourself a little too hard.
Usually it results from me closing down Photoshop when I don't need to, but for whatever reason decided I need this closure for my work session. "Would you like to save?" What? Of course not. I had already saved, otherwise, why would I have decided to close Photoshop in the firt place? Stupid computer." *Click NO* ... wait, what? Immediately open the file again. Fuck! *soda can crush*
Grimm_Wrecking Not a bad idea actually. Other than the fact it drastically inflates file storage size, it's probably worth taking the extra precautions. Not only that, at least you'll know for certain wither you're to blame or not. I'll probably adopt this idea.
cryrid mentioned the same thing, maybe you can chime into your take on the same questions I presented to him in this post?
love the CDO image
pior
That does indeed sound hardcore... My first thought is that this approach would prevent the worst thing that can happen to a large layer list that has hidden, unused layers scattered through-out it: The ol' "Show/Hide all other layers" fiasco.
For me, it starts with this question:
"Where did this layer come from? What is on it?
Hmm, I can't see anything in it's thumbnail ..
or when I toggle its visibility ..
or when I move the layer around in a circular motion ..
there's no marching ants from the pixel selection because the pixels are too light in opacity, so i guess I can delete it ..
BUT! What if I needed that layer but I'm just not seeing it!? .. Maybe viewing the layer by itself .. *Show/Hide all other layers* ... maybe if I add a white layer beneath it? ... maybe black?
Fuck.. well lets toggle all the layers back ... oh SHIT ...
I CAN'T! Which were on and which were hidden?! ...
FUUUCK!"
Typically to prevent all the madness that could occur from this shit, I try and delete unwanted layers. I don't like hidden "keep-safe" layers either.
Noticing large scale PSD changes and creating a new variant would be the best solve. You can recall those old layers from an old psd if you ever needed.
I wonder how often that's happened to me without me realizing it? Hopefully something like that wouldn't go unnoticed for too long.
I'd be interested to see how this looks in a layer list. I'm with MightyPea in expecting that to look annoying. Maybe you could hook me up with an example I could thumb through?
jeffro I try and keep each material type as one gray scale layer which has adjustment layers nested into it, using clipping masks. Taking efforts here tends to pair down my layer number quite a bit and still leaves it simple and easily editable.
vTools are awesome. I made good use of them while working with the 3Point crew. I feel as though I had only scratched the surface with them. This is a good tool to make new users aware of.
Personally, I am actively trying for minimal amounts of layers to promote quicker, cleaner work from me, for a better hand-off and production speed.
cryrid I like this concept. I really like the color key concept. I use colored folders in explorer and it's so helpful for navigating a lot of project directories.
I find assigning layer colors unwieldy. Even after taking the time to define a color scheme, and assign a color to a layer or group, sometimes layers are shuffled or copied which requires a relabeling.
Have you found any ways of around these problems?
What is the color scheme you use? You mentioned to pior, Red is used for layers that are to be hidden or set to zero?
Vrav This means you store your unused/old masks, eh? I don't normally set out to do this. What type of selections would you say are the most useful to hold on to?
I've seen this done. I like that it keeps your layers clean by giving a home to all selection masks and essentially removing them from the layer list entirely.
My concern with this approach is that it complicates viewing (I'll often work with the alpha displayed as a channel overlay) and saving an alpha channel, for 32 bit images.
Over time and texture iteration, I've seen this approach cause a long list of channels that can become unwieldy, as channels inherently have less functionality than layers.
Otherwise, I'd argue the alternate approach is cleaner and more straight-forward. I typically pull selections from layer transparency or masks in use.
I've been leaning more towards this approach. It's very useful when working across different texture types. Otherwise, I've seen it broken up by area which can be more useful in other situations or work scenarios.
I think the most important selection mask to have are trim areas. From my experience, these typically are more useful, as you can subtract them from fast-grab lasso selections to get a finer edge from either within in trim space, or outside of it.
Mark Dygert I am.
That could be awesome.
Yes it does exactly that. It works because it's simple. It's three layer groups detail, texture, and colour. I add new layers into these from hipoly bakes and other sources as required. These have predefined blend modes but they're not set in stone.
I have been using this system for several years now so most of my work to date is an example of it in action.
Red for layers toggled off, and green for Hard Light layers. The second is something that won't work for everyone, so it's just something I use while I'm using the file. The advantage of the red is that it's immediately obvious without having to have a glossary or something
I also do what someone else mentioned, which is keeping my masks in a seperate folder. I have one folder at the top set to screen with the wires (set to screen) and a mask of all the uv-islands (to help with Dilation, for which I use Xnormal's Dilation filter, edit: Also for selecting specific islands with relative ease!)
edit: here's an example image. I stray from this depending on the texture, but it's a simple start to most textures.
This is the base layer set up I have for guns. I'll delete a folder I don't need, but it pretty much covers the majority of what will pop up for me.
Like I said I only color code major groups. I don't bother with trying to color code individual layers except red in which case they'll probably be deleted anyways. I'm the guy that every 5 save files goes through his outliner in maya and deletes everything that isn't needed.
Trying to color code individual layers in the past led me exactly to what you said, a great big pain in the ass. With duplicating layers and such. However, with major groups its not so bad.
If you drag a an individual layer into a folder it automatically assigns that color to that layer, so it makes color management much easier from that perspective. If you need to color code a sub folder then just right click on the eye with that layer selected and it does a drop down menu with colors available. (You probably know this but just in case :thumbup:)
On top of that I prefix layers with the first letter and underscore "N_" = "normal" to mark what major group its supposed to be. I'm starting to get into the habit of prefixing for group and sub group ie "Sm_" = "Specular Metal". Not sure if I'm going to stick with that for layers or not though.
With major groups color coded and subgroups and layers prefixed it makes it easy to identify what group I'm in. And the alphabetical order of the sub folders tells me where I'm at in that group. So if I step back and I start layer hopping I'll notice fairly quickly and while I may loose a minute or two of work its definitely not as crippling as painting 1/2 the spec into the diffuse like I had done once before I started doing the groups and color coding.
tl;dr
Colors on Major groups only.
Alphabetical order on sub groups.
Name everything everytime, you don't have to do it immediately but before you save, you better do it otherwise Vig will hunt you down and gut you like a trout... and then I'll buy him a sixer.
Prefix everything. S_ = spec, D_ = diffuse, etc (I know caps are giving someone epilepsy somewhere...)
Edit: forgot to re-mention, I also collapse (the drop down not merge) the major groups I'm not working on so its not a gigantic list of folders and layers... this also helps to identify if I jumped out of my major group on accident, because I'll have 3 miles of drop down lists show up.
They seem like a great idea, with all the fancy one-click export scripts and all - but in the end I noticed they tend to be much, much slower to work with than split PSDs with a simple one button TGA save script. I'd rather have my diffuse, spec and normals all visible at once and sitting next to each other in Photoshop, rather than having to toggle annoying layer groups - I cannot even imagine working on a spec map without being able to instantly see what a certain spot corresponds to on the diffuse or gloss.
I think they are cool for small props, but for bigger more important assets I feel like it's a "bad good idea". I know I am the minority on that subject tho haha.
If I'm doing stuff that's directly related to another texture, I'll just paste a copy of that group in a new layer temporarily over the top and ramp down the opacity. Then I can tell exactly what I'm painting on. Or paste it temporarily into a new window.
I briefly played with smartobjects a bit, this feature is rad. Thanks for the heads up. I feel like I learned and lost this one. I'm curious to see what more they can do.
pior
Noting you work with a separate PSD per map type, I'm curious how you've setup your save script.
I have 3 different save actions that's directory and filename must be initially re-assigned. Is this similar to how you save out your textures, rather than the alternative one-click approach?
Grimm_Wrecking
This looks great. This is a very nice and orderly setup. The one concern I'd have with your arrangement is that you alphabetize your subgroups. Normally, for me, I would likely order a material-type from surface to base. For example, if I had cloth ties on metal plates, I'd place cloth first, then metal. If I had metal staples on cloth, I'd place metal first, then cloth. The reason for this would be to minimize cracks between kissing masks. Does this ever become a problem for you?
MightyPea
I'll have to play with Layer Comps more as I cannot see much use for them in my workflow... Would you happen to have an example of a time it was practical to use? I think something like this could be very useful for UI mock-ups.
Thanks for sharing your layer list. I think this has a nice standard feel to it.
Something simple I've done recently is hotkey a show/hide toggle to my "UVs" (wires) layer. I use the same keys for my 3d package.
MightyPea, cryrid, and Grimm_Wrecking
So after thinking about it a bit, I'm going to try coloring my layers. Although, I'll be assigning a few colors, which should include "None", to hotkeys. Since you guys use them already, I mention it because it may be something you'd find useful. I noticed the other day one could assign colors to menu items as well. I wonder if these could be conjoined into a mutant script baby.
-kp
Woa, such a simple and genius idea!
Great thread btw, goldmine of info, thanks!
That was just a shot of my blank ps file that I can open up and know exactly where everything is and can quickly adjust all master groups to fit the order as determined by the object(s) at hand.
If I know for certain that something like say wood is going to overlay metal, I'll move it ahead of time.
You can continue to remain cdo about things though if you make a "_crust" layer sub-group, and then continue the naming convention established for your "sub-sub groups" (crust because they're the smaller details that are always overlaying other materials -> Earths Crust on top of everything
ex.
Diffuse -> D_crust -> Dc_metal / Dc_wood / etc / etc
Edit: Btw this sub-group isn't for painting the overlaps at seams like say a guns wood grip overlapping on metal, its more about things where the majority of your base material is underneath something except in spots. Like say cloth wrapped over a barrel and metal wire holding down the cloth. Cloth dominates metal in that instance, but there is a minor amount of metal overtop of the majority of the cloth. /edit
Honestly though even then with the exception of that group, you'll generally be re-ordering your alphabet to the hillbilly standard (ordered as needed) due to material constraints.
---
On the multi-texture psd's honestly I agree with pior. However, I adopted that workflow because of Maya's psd network. It makes things quick to update to give me a rough preview of things to come. So for me its an acquired taste (even if its a bit bitter).
Btw, not to derail the thread, but does max have a psd network feature? I'm afraid its been so long, I don't know any features past max 4.5...(and psd networks as you guys know didn't show up until relatively recently in comparison).
In the end of it all though, aside from having two copies of my master psd file, I also save each major group as a file unto itself as the standard format:
ex
mat_dif_awesome_dildosword.psd
mat_gloss_awesome_dildosword.psd
mat_spec_awesome_dildosword.psd
mat_norm_awesome_dildosword.psd
Yes it eats up some extra hdd space, but in the end of it all I can delete the previous 30 incremental saves. I can move my final psd master copies to an external source usb/hdd. At that stage pretty much the problems aside from tweaks noticed on individual maps once its in engine will be whats changed, so with separate files it makes ps load faster and I don't have to do a layer dance to save the .tga I need, just "save as".
My incremental saving obsession and file structure with naming conventions came as a result of working in max 4 on 700mhz sgi which at the time = blue screen and corrupt files pretty much 2/3 of your working time on top of them being shared lab computers where f-tards that thought it'd be funny to go in and completely jack up your final files on purpose, its just translated over to ps.