Help with naming conventions and organisation

Irreal

Hi everyone.

For a long time now i've been trying to keep my scenes/folders/objects organised and named correctly. Having backed up my work the other day i realised that my folder structure and naming were still a complete mess. Urrrgh! Obviously the method i thought i had didn't work at all when it came to re-visiting old scenes and files. Once inside my scenes things didn't get much better. (I suppose that Maya doesn't help as it gives objects generic polysurface names when you use combine.) I had just a long list of nameless objects and empty group nodes and transforms. Do I need to name every last single object in the scene? I imagine I can only do this when the scene is completely finished. What should I put in layers? What should I group together?

My folder structure is as follows:- I have a "WORK" folder into which I have created separate folders for each app I use. MAYA, ZBRUSH, PHOTOSHOP, UNREAL. Into these folders I create separate project folders for each new scene or project I create.

I also have a TEXTURES folder into which i put my TGAs and.PSDs.

My naming conventions are as follows:- If it's a work in progress I put _WIP001,002 etc at the end. I end up with a lot of WIP files but i rarely lose work if the app crashes.

This may sound quite organised to some but things get complicated during the course of a project. For example, i create say, a low-res pillar in Maya. (Save scene.MB). I export the object to zbrush (save as .ztool). I export the High-res (Save as OBJ) to Mesh lab to optimize (save out as OBJ). Import that object into Roadkill to unrwap (save as OBJ). Import that back into zbrush as new UV'd base mesh.

What I end up with is something like this:-

Pillar_WIP01,02,03 etc (maya scene file)
PillarFROM_MAYA.obj
Pillar.ztool
pillarHIGHRES_FROM_ZBRUSH.obj
pillarOPTIMIZED_FROM_MESHLAB.obj
PillarFROM_ROADKILL
Pillar_FINAL.MB

Pillar.ASE (If i take it into unreal)

I thought this was pretty organised but it looks like a mess to me. I'm trying to keep all my wips and OBJs so can I go back to them if need be (which makes sense I think?!). My method makes so little sense that I'm struggling to even write it down.

So, what folder structure/naming conventions do other companies/people use? Should I keep all my scenes/objs/textures in one project folder rather than separate ones? (Writing this down I'm beginning to think that may be a good idea).

Hopefully someone out there can help me as I'm terrible with this. I'm sure a lot of people have the same issues as me but I'd really like to nail this once and for all as it's holding me back in terms of my workflow and sanity.

SHEPEIRO

try using sub-folders a scene folder an export folder etc etc

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, I'd recommend a subfolder for each app.

But really, take a critical look at how many times you actually go back to old files. Probably not worth the effort, nor the disk space, nor the archive space.

Brice Vandemoortele

I second what Eric says. And you can't really have a fixed rule. You have to evaluate on a per-project basis how much you're likely to re-use that work later on, considering how many assets of the same kind you'll produce, or how generic it is. I'll tend to have cleaned up source files for tiles for examples, because I know that very similar works can come up often, while I wouldn't really mind keeping organized files for a quick unique asset (if keeping them at all).
I use sub-folders as well but I try not to be too systematic (not splitting up by file formats for ex, mostly 'genre' of files). Typical hierarchy would be a main folder named after the asset, that contains the main maya file (preferably with path relative to a virtual drive so that you can easily transfer you work from one station to the other) and a bunch of folders:
- "bake". You never know how many different apps you might be using to render out textures, neither how many attempts you'll use to get it right. Considering they might all have different conventions and file formats (turtle, xNormal, mentalray, maya software, mudbox etc) it easier to separate them from working files.
- 'maps' contains textures I've touched up and worked on. If the same asset uses a lot of them I might split up between 'maps' and 'src' or 'PSDs', or sometimes 'dds'
- 'sculpt' contains the enormous files from mudbox, so I can easily skip it to save place when moving files
- 'obj' contains backup files for long term projects, in case you might not have the same softwares available.

renderhjs

just as a addition to whats been said already,

i have a background in web development and there its common to handle with bloated folders and many different filetypes (php,css,htm,xml,swf,fla,psd,jpg,gif,png,lnk,pdf,js,...) and different levels.

A few general rules for myself are

1.)
is using as less folders as possible and using hierarchy name structures instead,- example you have textures for a queen,- it would look something like this to me:
queen_tex_difuse_01.psd
queen_tex_difuse_02.psd
queen_tex_bump_01.tga
queen_tex_spec_01.tga
king_tex_difuse_01.psd
king_ani_walk_01.ani
the great advantage is that with a detailed view mode in windows or list view alike in mac or other OS you have a better context view of the other files within that folder that might have a context e.g which other characters, which oter types, wich other versions,...
Making lots of sub- folders is imo. idiocy
What matter however what comes first the bigger and broader the definition the more it should stand at the beginning so that name sorting works from left to right (reading order)

2.)
use less than 4 characters to describe often used terms and category. Its somewhat identical to the old dos days when file extentions were limited by technical reasons- but also from a visual reading perspective making smaler words can help alot when browsing through alot files at once.
Some of my favourites:
img = image
tex = texture
spec = specular
dif = difuse
bump, ani, ....
well obvious stuff but usefull for folder labeling and structuring within names e.g
"paris_tex_dif_001.png"

3)
Flash renamer is a awesome tool developed by game developers for people like them
http://www.rlvision.com/flashren/about.asp
with such tools its piece of cake renaming masive files in a smart way and another reason to stick with rather multiple files instead of multiple folders. When it comes it numerical listings it should be obvious that a pattern like
001
002
003
is king instead of dumb systems like
1
2
...
16
even if windows XP kind of sorts it somehow right its ugly to read and fails in almost any other tool or application so do it right from the start. In Flash renamer, XnView, Acdsee,... you can usually set a template for such renaming jobs.

SouL

I use "asdf.xxx"
More recent files have longer files names than older files. So for example:
"asdf.xxx" is obviously an older version of "adfadfafadfadsfadfadfadfadfadfadfadfadf.xxx"

Irreal

Thanks to everyone for the replies. It's been a big help.