How do you organize your projects on your computer?

MarkIsSleepy

Hi all,

This is a question that's been plagueing me since I started in 3D and I've gone through a large number of complete reorganizations trying to come up with a good solution: when working on a large-ish project that may move from program to program at various stages, how do you organize all the pieces?

For example, for a project I am working on right now, I am modeling parts of it in Blender and parts of it in Carrara using a mix of sketches and photo references, mostly doing the UV mapping in Blender, rigging in Carrara, creating textures in Photoshop (sometimes from scratch, sometimes by modifying photos - either stock or my own, usually a mix of those and some FilterForge filters), rendering in Carrara, then doing post-work in Photoshop.  This creates a lot of files!  How do you organize them so you can keep track and easily find things when you look for them?  

My current setup looks something like this:

• Top Folder: "Carrara Projects" (I've also got a Blender Projects, Photoshop Projects, Sculptris Projects... the top folder I use will be whichever one I plan to do most of the work in)
  • Folder: "Current WIP"
    • Folder: "Rocket Penguin"
      1. "BLEND files" - all my incremental Blend files used for modeling and UV mapping
      2. "CAR Files" - all my incremental CAR files
      3. "OBJ Files" - all the OBJ files used when moving between Carrara and Blender, named <step in process> <item> <program exported from> <date>.OBJ
      4. "Reference Images" - images and drawings used as reference for modeling and texturing
      5. "Renders" - renders, obviously, usualy named WIP### and a decription of why I did a test render at that step
      6. "Textures" - any photos or images used as sources, Photoshop working files and all final texture images, and copies of any HDRI's used in renders
      7. "UV Maps" - the exported UV maps (usually from Blender) at a high resolution 
      8. "Notes" - a couple text documents with notes on lighting, what I've done so far, next steps
      9. "Postwork" - empty right now but this will be the final Photoshop file when I get to render

 When I'm done I'll zip everything except the final CAR and Photoshop files and move the entire "Rocket Penguin" folder from the "Current WIP" folder to the "Completed Projects" folder.

Am I going overboard here, or is this something other people spend time thinking about too? 

Roygee

I organise mine the same way and also have separate  folders for obj's and UV maps.  I make sure they are named so that I can identify them a couple of years later and once the project is complete, delete all the surplus stuff and zip what is left.

evilproducer

My current animation project could be organized a bit better.

I have the main project folder. Sub-folders within the main project folder include:

Reference Images, Still Image Assets (rendered still images used for the video project such as backgrounds).

Rendered video (sub-folders contain various rendered image sequences, which are compiled and then stored at the top level of the Rendered Video folder for easier access).

Composited Video (for clips where various elements have been composited together and can be integrated into the main project's time-line.

Completed Sequences (which are the live action sequences or scenes of my video which have been edited together and can be integrated into the main project's timeline).

When I get to that point, I'll either add a sub-folder for DVD assets, or I may create a specific DVD project folder similar to what I described above.

Some areas that I could do better on, are the Carrara scenes sub-folder and the Still image assets sub folder. They're both kind of catchall folders in that the Carrara folder has scene files that are meant to be animated and also scene files where I was building assets. The still image folder contains image for the video editor and also still images for the Carrara scenes, such as image maps, height maps, etc. I should have separated them better.

DrunkMonkeyProductions

Looks good to me.

Most of us that use any kind of pipeline micro manage the files to this point and in some cases the OCD among us actually break it down further.

The key thing is to always back up the working files, while working on them, either to an external drive or to an offsite storage option.

 

TangoAlpha

Very similar. In :CurrentProject

/CA
/CA/Textures (possibly also folders for leaves, trees etc)
/DS/(library & runtime folders. too lazy to list them ;))
/Reference (photos & other source material)
/Renders (finished images)
/Extras (all the .duf and .car files used for renders - actors, characters, props, scene setups etc)
/OBJ (also .fbx files, for going between Carrara and Modo/Mari/Substance etc. and for import to DS)
/UV (maps)
/TextureSrc (photoshop files & other texture resources)

FifthElement

I ususally use this template (Renders folder usually has stills and animation seqences renders (in subfolders)) unless it's something simple, SceneFiles are 3d software scenes (be that Carrara,Vue or Lightwave), compositor files are in FinalAnimations folder and native Silo files, OBJ and FBX files are in Models folder.

Models I'm modeling for the current project are backed up on private side of my GoogleDrive...

When I'm done I back up entire project on my own NAS drive, minus rendered frames, of course