Work Flow ?? :: map folders

[Linus Ericson]

Folders, the big problem for me too :eek: , I usaly start nice but in the end of a project there are so many files (fil001->fil100). I am intrested too if someone can give some proposals how to get nice work flow. :shrug:

[Marcel]

Folders...GOOD! At my first job I quickly learned how important organizing your stuff is, especially when more people work on the same project. I mostly divide them like this (stating the obvious :) ):

max
reference
textures
renders

When it's a big project there are also subfolders in the 'max' folder, and I always use seperate folders for the textures for each object. I save out the flattened copies in the same folder as the PSD files. (Dividing PSD and flattened textures in different folders can be nice when you have to copy the textures to multiple computers a lot)

Having your stuff organized means clicking through more folders (more work), but it also means you can find your stuff much much easier (a LOT less work).

[Schnupps]

We usually work like this: All the textures of an project go into the same folder as the scenes, since max is looking there always for the texures first, without having to add pathes. If the project has lots of maps this is of course very messy, so textures get sorted into subfolders, then you have to set the pathes again.

I was wondering if there is a way to tell max to always look for the textures in the subfolders of the scene folder.
Anybody knows?

Schnupps

[EricChadwick]

If you're on a shared network, use absolute paths. Works pretty well here.

\\server\artdrive\project\foo\textures\foo_d.tga


Or if no network, have people use the same drive letter and folder structure. You can also Zip the files, storing paths in the zip.

A couple ideas.

[gaggle]

In addition to the nice tips already given, I wanted to mention the usefulness of making an "old" folder and regularly placing files in there that are no longer directly relevant or to be used. Ie. chicken_model_v01 -> _v14 can be safely stored in there, so only _v15 is left available. I guess that's not a very ingenious tip, not exactly rocketscience, just thought I'd mention it nontheless.

I dream for a proper piece of software that would allow for higher-order access to projects, and it would do the actual lowlevel stuff of naming files and whatnot. Ie. a proper project management program that would abstractify the whole filenaming-scheme into just describing the content of the files, and a visual way to represent how each file is interlinked in forming the final project. And if possible without it costing a whole bunch of money of course :).

I've heard a bit of a supposedly super-nice program called "Alien Brain", but Idunno much about how it specifically works.

[Jon_Pran]

Thanks for the repsonses.

It seems that I am doing it correctly, then. I put the specific maps in the project folder, under a Models > Max > Textures. I also have a drive dedicated to models and maps, but the maps are becoming almost unmanagable (200 wood samples doesn't help when I have to search all each time).

Do people regularly archive their files (as .zips)? I have yet to try this (I am always just archiving the whole folders, with the 200 model files). This seems like an idea way and it'd be nice if there was some way to do it without zipping it all.

And while we're on the topic of organization, I run into problems with maps that Max can't find all the time (downloaded models, mostly), and have to hit 'continue' each time I render. Is there an easy way to find and change the materials (without going through each one and looking for it's maps or changing them to 'none'), similar to the light lister?

[EricChadwick]

Try the Bitmap/Photometric Path Editor in the Utility panel, to remap the directories where a file's textures should look.

Also set things up in the Customize menu, Configure Paths, Bitmaps/Photometrics, adding paths to your commonly-used bitmap folders.

Max has a certain order it looks for bitmaps. From the help file:


When you load an image or photometric file, the software saves the full path name of the file. When the software needs to reload the file, it searches for it in the following order:

1. The full path saved with the file

2. The directory of the current scene

3. All subdirectories below the current scene

4. The paths listed in the Bitmaps/Photometrics panel, starting at the top of the list

[spacefrog]

Schnupps:

Max not only searches for maps in the folder
where the max file resides, but looks in a subfolder "Maps" (relative to the max file)
without any need for pathsettings in preferences

;-)

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