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Hey all you viz people, I was wondering if anyone has any tried and true methods for organizing your material library images. Do you just use folders with a certain naming convention for the files? Or do you use a software to navigate and organize the images? (like Lightroom maybe?) Right now I have a number of main category folders and organize the materials via a numbered system within them. For example - carpet_001, carpet_002, carpet_002_bump, etc. Also do you generally keep your images as jpeg's and only convert to png when you need transparency? Right now my library is made up of free materials I've acquired through websites or searches. I realize that I need to invest in high res materials, I just don't have the finances to do so yet. Any other tips for library organization would be greatly appreciated. -- Luke Holdmann

I usually correspond with clients over emails, send an Image with a question, get an answer etc. sometimes there are so many emails replays, forwards and attachments its hard to find a specific task or comment. sometimes projects are halted for a few months and later on I try to see where we stopped and its almost impossible. I'm trying to figure out how to better organize this process. If I could organize the correspondence in a forum of some sort, where I can upload a post with an image send a link to the client where he can replay - keeping everything in order under the same topic - and allowing me to back-track and see what lead to what etc I think that could really help my workflow. I thought about creating a wix site / forum just for that purpose but I'm thinking there must already be a service like that right? or maybe even something better? what do you do? Thanks!

I started working at a studio as a texture artist, organizing the textures/materials is part of my job. On my PC I dont have a lot of textures, so I never really thought about how to do this. In the studio there's a folder for wood, concrete, brick etc, but there are probably a few thousand different textures. How should I organize that? Should i create subfolders for wood planks, rough wood, fine wood etc, and same for the other textures as well, or is it better to have them all in one place, like here, just a folder named wood and that's that? The other question is: How to name the textures? I think it doesn't matter while you don't use them, but after I create a bump map and reflection map, how do you name those? OR do you use a project folder and copy every texture and asset you use in the scene there? Never worked in a studio before and I was curious how you deal with your assets. Thank you!