Another thread about organisation and file-management

garciiia

Let's say you use Blender, Photoshop and Premiere Pro/Davinci and you are making a music video with a little dinosaur.
Where is what kind of file located?

Are the references in the Project Folder inside the Blender Folder or do you use a seperate Reference&Asset Folder?
Blender->Projects->Music Video->References->Dinosaurs
or
Blender->References->Music Video
Blender->References->Dinosaurs
Music Video->References->Dinosaurs
References->Dinosaurs (general folder without a specific link for a project)

Do you keep the final video in the Premiere Pro Project Folder? Do you use an Export Folder inside Premiere Pro Folder or do you put it in the project folder inside the blender folder? or do you have a project folder and inside that folder is a folder for blender, premiere pro and so on?
Premiere Pro->Projects->Music Video
Premiere Pro->Projects->Music Video->Export
Blender->Projects->Music Video->Export
Music Video->Export
Music Video->Premiere Pro->Export

Export is where the fin.mov or fin_final_superfinal_finished_nr156.mov comes into.

Where is the music for the video located? 
I know it's a horrible topic but maybe a few of you are interested to share some ideas.

Ruz

just don't forget to name all your folders new, then new 1 new 2 , also final 1 , final 2 etc

poopipe

It's an unanswerable question without looking at a specific project and it's needs.  I know this because it's been my job to invent these systems for years


The basic overriding principle behind organising your shit is to ask yourself whether somebody who's not worked on the project can come along and find the files required to easily recreate the final result after you've quit/been eaten by a horse (it happens, I swear)

Alex_J

it's very specific to each project but maybe there is a few universal principles worth following...

IME, I find it best to do as little custom organization as possible. Instead, try to make use of windows built-in organization tools as much as possible. 

Reason is because the more nested directories you got - it just translates to wasted time searching and more RSI-inducing hunting and pecking. When it comes to finding things it is easiest just to filter by type and use a naming convention so that like items group together in a text search. 

Using the tools like that, you need much fewer directories in total, and more of your work is done with keyboard. Also it is much more efficient to search with text versus your eyes looking for icons or reading list. 

Big caveat is that I work mostly alone. However, I still try to organize like its a team. Because when I do some programming for a few days and then have to switch gears to some art stuff, pretty much I forget where things are. 

Since I am working in unreal currently, I just follow their guidelines. Example: Assets naming convention - Gamedev Guide (ikrima.dev)


One thing I see people do that I think is a genuinely bad practice: putting the different assets that compose an single cohesive asset into different directories. Like you got a character model, but its textures are all inside a texture directory, it's model file and materials all in separate directories... That becomes a nightmare really fast. I like to put like items with like items, and let the sort/filter tools + naming convention do the work.

one final note, project management is just like anything else i suppose - its fluid, changing process. you go in knowing a few things, and you learn more along the way. so take time occasionally to revaluate and reorganize based on what you've learned, and what you predict to happen in future. dont shoehorn yourself with arbitrary restrictions, keep your work style fast and loose, make a mess and then once you see a clear path forward, then go back and clean up, set yourself up to get the next 100 yards or however far you can see to the next big obstacle.

poopipe

Structuring stuff by asset type into folders has its benefits .
They're mostly focused around trawling repositories with scripts or auditing content so probably not a concern for small scale working but when you're looking at hundreds of thousands of files the ability to filter by folder name becomes quite valuable. 

DavidCruz

Ruz said:

just don't forget to name all your folders new, then new 1 new 2 , also final 1 , final 2 etc

I am not alone, i found my peephole!

Ruz

DavidCruz

Eric Chadwick

Maybe the peephole found you!

garciiia

@Alex_J yeah you have some good points. Putting tons of files i rarely touch on an external drive already helped a lot. I also put old files in a drive-folder, sent the clients an email and said they can download them until the end of the year and then they are gone.

gnoop

I wish there would be an AI  that would tag  your folders and files automatically   based on things you ever did with them  .    For some uncertain reason there is non of a sort.  

    In my experience whatever projects based file  structure  you  maintain  something will be always  lost .      Substance Designer is especially nasty with that  for example.

Lamont

I do like this with projects. All apps that are required for that project have a folder inside the main folder. For me it's ZBrush, Max, Substance and Unreal. Max sets it's project folders as needed when you set the directory. zBrush and Substance don't do that, so all the files just get tossed in that folder. If I export a file to be used for a an app (my high poly from zBrush) that goes into the Substance folder because it's for Substance.

The file names are based on the project. Since I am not doing a huge production with many people (Just myself), I would say dino is my main name and use that as a base. dino_sculp.ztl, dino_music_vid.prj. This way no need to have apps with their own folders all over the place and trying to gather them when it's time to archive. Just grab the entire project and back it up.

poopipe

That's a solid approach, pretty similar to the way we manage source data in our studio. 

It's not perfect but it makes tracking source data down fairly intuitive and that's vital when you have hundreds of people potentially needing to find it. 

@gnoop
We have over 50,000 files in our substance libraries and our worst organisational problem is cross project dependencies.
You just have to stick to a system and its perfectly manageable. 

gnoop

Yeah,  Cross project dependencies  is what I meant.   Whatever material you do it always has something , an edge , scattered details or something from other materials  you need auto-updating   if you tweak them in other places .   It all quickly turns into a Gordian knot of long reaching relations  and sadly  Substance Designer does very little help to manage all this.   

   Photoshop at least keeps rasterized copies if something is lost.  MAx and Blender both have tools to easy replace  lost stuff.    "Make unique"  , mesh linking  etc. 

It's easier in big company  my guess with an access to a huge local storage  but  it's a non stop pain when you have to work at different places , on a laptop sometimes and usb  drives.