Naming conventions and asset management

Hi all,

Our studio is growing and one of our external advisors gave us the task to look into our naming conventions, project file stuctures and asset management. We got great team leaders and projects managers that keep everything very tidy and well organized, but since we are growing steadily we thought it might be a good idea to further refine and standarize our folder templates and how we use and move assets in projects, just to minimize any errors and such.

So my question to you with more experience is what kind of naming conventions to you work by, ie how to you name you files in order to keep them in order and searchable throughout a project and when in archives? How is your file structure layed out for a project to keep everything identical from project to project.

How does you folder structure look for a project? Perhaps a weird question but very very important for a good working environment.

How do you keep track of your assets? We use Connecter with great success. It works really well and is easy to manage for a team. But then we've seen a few examples of assets libraries with great folder structure and also been adviced to keep all assets used in a project in that specific project folder (under ..//Assets).

We really want a clean system and best possible order in our libraries in order for Max to find stuff fast and so that everyone involved in a project knows where to put new parts and where to find everything.

I know this is a fairly difficult and demanding request, but it would help us so much if we could get pointed in the right direction. I feel that this is going abit all over, but I couldn't think of a better place to ask these questions.

Sincerely,

Mike

Hi all,

Our studio is growing and one of our external advisors gave us the task to look into our naming conventions, project file stuctures and asset management. We got great team leaders and projects managers that keep everything very tidy and well organized, but since we are growing steadily we thought it might be a good idea to further refine and standarize our folder templates and how we use and move assets in projects, just to minimize any errors and such.

Always a good idea to have standards, project folder templates are a must IMO

So my question to you with more experience is what kind of naming conventions to you work by, ie how to you name you files in order to keep them in order and searchable throughout a project and when in archives? How is your file structure layed out for a project to keep everything identical from project to project.

Naming conventions for our team is basically just ProjectCode_ProjectName eg. DA001_52AlbionSt

Everything else under this has this prefix such as the max file DA001_52AlbionSt_Apt3_Kitchen_v01.max, PSD file would suit DA001_52AlbionSt_Apt3_Kitchen_v01.psd.

How does you folder structure look for a project? Perhaps a weird question but very very important for a good working environment.

Always have each folder in the same order such as

01_Project In

02_3D Files

03_PSD Files

etc

How do you keep track of your assets? We use Connecter with great success. It works really well and is easy to manage for a team. But then we've seen a few examples of assets libraries with great folder structure and also been adviced to keep all assets used in a project in that specific project folder (under ..//Assets).

We really want a clean system and best possible order in our libraries in order for Max to find stuff fast and so that everyone involved in a project knows where to put new parts and where to find everything.

Connecter is great. For Library asset management (the files directly themselves) this is always tailored directly to how your business runs, how your artists work and legacy stuff. As long as its organised in some fashion your heading in the right direction - IMO its always an evolution and Connecter is great for keeping favourite items highlighted and ready for newbies to understand the stuff they should use first.

In regards to keeping files within the project itself, my advice is this is fine as long as you are duplicating this from your current library for archiving purposes. The way we prefer is: While working on the project all files are linked to the asset library, once the project is complete the files are copied into the //Assets directory for that job and archived off the server. This way if you need to open the project a year later it has all its assets with the project, no need to hunt things down. It also gives you the flexibility to move items within the asset library or delete them if neccessary, thus giving you the ability to move your library about freely without worrying about legacy assets for older projects.