Windows 7 - Tagging Files - Images

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I was wondering what do you guys use to Tag or organize files in a manner that would make sense or even works.

I have been trying to Tag and organize my files in general folders (this way, when referencing textures from workstation to another with shaders becomes easier to control), plus with Tags I can do group organizations in one folder per scene/file, but for everything that is holy I cannot seem to find the option to Tag any of my files.

I find it abit strange that I cannot tag or modify anything (even names) of my Max/Photoshop/Texture files, but am able to do so for my Musica and Porn JPG's.

I guess the summary of my post is: Help, I need to Tag my files to keep them organized in one folder as opposed to 200, can anyone give some input.

Cheers and ciao.

renderhjs

file name conventions perhaps? That's what I do when I need more grain but don't want to create to many folders or sub folder structures. I never trusted tagging systems because they always require additional files stored somewhere central, and if you move or copy folder it can get messy.
At work we have a Wiki for project related things such as where things are located, maybe create your own wiki or list of things?

Ace-Angel

Thanks guy for the feedback, this helps me narrow down how I will organize my files for future reference, much appreciated.

I should mention also that I'm trying to keep the Group's system in check, meaning I would like to know if using Groups is possible to keep my files a separation hierarchy to make things even more streamlined.

To give an example of what I mean even further just incase, I have a Vertex Blended shader for Max, I have about several shaders for my 'buildings' and 'terrain' meshes (2 between each I would say).

Each shader has 1 base texture (diffuse, nrm, spec, gloss, emissive) followed by 3 RGB texures (diffused, nrm, spec, gloss, emissive). So each shader has about 16 textures, not counting 'universal textures' (ones where I keep Gloss for example in the channels instead for optimization reasons).

As long as I have the textures in the same folder as my shader when I load it, everything should be loaded fine, hooray for that point.

However, the closest method of organization for the textures themselves incase I need to access them and change them, or easily pickup and change what my shader loads is through groups.

An example image:


TT01 = Terrain Textures 01, and if I have buildings, they will be named BT XX (Building Textures XX) and etc.

The example image is for one material/shader, between 2-4 shader I already start losing my ability to track them down quicly incase I need to change slots or change them in PS.

I'm not exactly sure how I can keep the names in a logical manner but also flexible. I'm pretty sure it's something really simple which I haven't thought about and most likely complicating the entire process.