Yes, this is an interesting theme. Mission management and a clear and simple
naming convention structure is very important for a professional non-chaos
workflow. Our mission structure is simple and powerful but not perfect yet
[will it ever be?]. That means: after some missions we have to analyze what
was working good and what was bad, move a step backward and work out some
new conventions to get closer to a most simple but very powerful structure.
The idea is that - however the project looks like [number of tools, tasks,
people, complexity] - we have a minimal subfolder structure in Scenes and a
simple naming rule for all files which includes the task, a version and
variation number. All other tasks like work with After Effects, FxTree,
Premiere etc. will use this naming convention. Normally each mission uses
the same tools and number of main tasks again and again. That means if you
open a Afx project the name shows you which XSI Animation was used.
Everything is connected. Let's say I have a scene named Lego_aniA01 the Afx
project is called Lego_aniA01_afx01. Afx is internally important to show us
in a produced movie file which will be Lego_aniA01_afx01 that version A of
animation [XSI] and its variation 01 was used with AFX and 01 stands also
for a variation result of Afx [afx01 = Var01]. The client will get this
movie with this name but the header in the movie [watermark] shows: Lego A01
Var01. If we do internally some variations for client presentations we just
name them A01, A02 etc.. If the client give some comments which forces us to
do a new client version we go on with B01 etc.. The rendered passes we will
find in the same subfolder structure in Render_Pictures in eg.
Animation/A01. The structure is simple but on the other side again too
complex to discribe it 100% clear in a few sentences. The only problem which
has to be solved is that a vfx mercenary must follow those >new< rules
without problems because the whole structure will just work if all people
uses it right and with dicipline under control of our producer of course.
The experience in production shows that every user thinks different
regarding how to name something. The naming and mission covention helps but
if someone doesn't follow the rules exactly because of time pressure [which
is mostly a naming convention killer] the chaos is perfect and much more
annoying than a typical usual >structure< without conventions where every
artists just tries to finish his task in his user folder by own rules and at
the end the stuff must be connected together for a online playout.
VR's way of working is strong affected by client needs. If you work on a
14th version of a care product demo and at the end - short before deadline -
the client wants to have the bubbles and glow effetcs of D04 Comp02 Var03
combined with a packshot of E01 Comp02 Var01 plus the fluid simulation of
A01 Comp02 Var03 then you will be happy just to answer: o.k., we have to
take a look to our version archive and bring the stuff together. No one
freaks out because the rendered passes are in D04, E01, A01 the FxTree comps
and Afx variation projects files are easy to find. Well it still takes some
time but prevents some critical stress, timing or delivery problems.
Michael
virtual republic
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of
Kris Rivel
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 5:44 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Feature Request: Copy External Files under Project should take
care of folders
Yeah, I am for this too. I personally would like the project manager to see
sub-folders in the scenes directory as well. We never usually store scene
files directly under the scenes folder so in the project manager, you just
end up with this really long list of scene files which is almost impossible
to sort through on large projects.
This gets me thinking about a topic that I very rarely if ever see
discussed, project management. I am very curious to see how various studios
manage all the assets of a project and I'm not talking about how its
"technically" managed. I'm talking more about things like naming
conventions, directory structures and most importantly, how this is all
organized when several people are working on a project at the same time. In
addition, for me personally, I'm more interested to see how smaller shops
handle this. We have a rough structure that we try to follow but it would
be great to share ideas on this topic with other shops so that we could
improve this area. Perhaps I'll start a thread on XSI Base or something to
discuss this.
Kris
Michael Klein wrote:
>Hi,
>
>this is also sent to support(at)softimage.com.
>
>We use for our projects subfolders in the XSI database of course.
>Eg. for textures we create logical subfolders in pictures to keep
>everything organized.
>
>When I save my scene to another database to work with it eg. on my
>laptop I use the >Copy External Files under Project< feature to copy
>the actual used pictures in the scene to the new database.
>
>The problem is that in a bigger project a lot of folders with pics are
>stored in Pictures and I just want to get the few ones of my actual scene.
>The >Copy External Files under Project< just copies the pics and
>sequences straight to the Pictures folder and does not care about our
>folder structure which is bad. So I can't work in that way because all
>pictures have that new path in my actual materials.
>
>I didn't test it with 5.0 yet. If this is still working like in 4.2 the
>next release of XSI *SHOULD* support >Copy External Files under Project
>and Keep Folder Structure<.
>
>Thanks, nice weekend, good night!
>
>Michael Klein
>[president]
>
>virtual republic
>animation and visual effects
>reichsstrasse 57
>d-40217 duesseldorf
>
>t: +49.2 11.6 01 74 30
>f: +49.2 11.6 02 04 19
>president(at)virtualrepublic.org
>www.virtualrepublic.org
>
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