To supplement my previous post, here’s an example of what I’m talking about. This is the folder structure for my bundle project. This is organized, and makes finding content efficient. Everything is under the Starter Bundle folder which is what my product is. The folders have to be setup this way, otherwise 1. There’d be no way to differentiate between the different products this bundle comprises of, and 2. there would be too many textures/materials in 1 folder.
If users were to manually merge my content in their project under 1 folder, it’d look no different than this.
Just to give an analogy - Imagine you have five 1000 piece puzzles. Instead of putting 1000 pieces in each box, these guidelines want you to put all 5000 pieces in the same box. All that does is create mass confusion, and then the creator gets the blame because the product isn’t easy to use.
Now just to highlight the hypocrisy of the review sheet, this is the Elemental Demo - 4.16 version
Notice there aren’t “Textures” “Meshes” “Materials” etc. folders under the folder “Elemental”. It has folders based on asset type, more specific assets, and then it includes those folders.
This setup is not much different from @-Dev. Difference? It seems good enough for Epic to distribute content like this, but we are held to a whole different “standard”. And the reason I put quotes is because the proposed folder structure isn’t a standard, it’s preference. The method of organization shouldn’t matter so long as it’s organized. Same with naming schemes, which your own rules say. The Elemental Demo’s Maps folder isn’t even under the Elemental directory, it’s inside the content folder alongside Elemental. This is just one example out of the many Epic content examples.
Yeah maybe not the whole project structure, but that Ice_Assets folder is a perfect example of what I’m describing and have done. Inside Ice_Assets folder you find all the content related to the meshes categorized in sub folders. That’s literally the kind of setup I have without having looked at that demo and getting turned down for being more organized is a little disappointing. Thanks @ for providing an example along with images.
As the content grow larger in volume, such localized structure greatly helps keeping track of what you’re doing, what is where, what are all the dependencies of an asset, iterate on them faster and so on and that is exactly why they naturally follow that kind of structure when they create those projects. Imagine breaking all the content from Ice_Assets folder and spreading it in 5 different paths across the project, that really hurts the overall experience as you should constantly switch between folders and look for the right files instead of spending your time on using them in the viewport.
There’s gotta be a way we’d be allowed to switch to the better hierarchy. It seems reasonable to keep the current structure, until it doesn’t. Like with the Metallic issue, I really hope you consider the new structure @MikeViolette, maybe even ask for some opinions from the art department internally. Thanks.
Edit: Basically let’s imagine a project that contains 1 piece only.
Correct. “No Overlapping UVs” is primarily for Lightmap UVs. We can adjust the wording in the new TRC.
As long as your Material UVs are clean and set up correctly, there shouldn’t be a problem using repetitive space.
Even that is a ridiculous suggestion for these major reasons:
If a user wanted to extract only one of the products from the bundle, they wouldn’t be able to have a clean folder structure with the proposition you posted above. Whereas with the setup I used, everything will be in the product’s parent folder rather than scattered throughout several others.
It’s a cosmetic change, and one that makes it more difficult to find content at that. If a user is trying to change a material on a mesh in one product, under your proposition they’d have to open up 3 other folders just to find the different material whereas the way I have it setup you’re only going through one. When you have 5 different products in a bundle like this, it makes your proposed structure even more of a nightmare to work with. This results in a negative experience with the user, which gets blamed on me the seller.
Epic themselves don’t even follow their own guidelines, as I demonstrated above. The solution isn’t to get them to follow it, it’s to stop enforcing it across the board because it doesn’t make sense for every project/product. There is no one size fits all solution for anything, let alone folder structures for optimal viewing. The criteria should be organization, not an arbitrary structure that makes some product types difficult for the end user for no justifiable reason. The biggest tell here is that Epic doesn’t even structure their example content this way. And with good reason.
Good to know, thanks. I’d honestly appreciate it if you would address the my posts above where I supplied images and examples for why the strict enforcement of this folder structure is detrimental to both sellers and buyers.
Yeah, I guess I’m coming from a different viewpoint because I intend my project to be built upon, not to be migrated into another project. It makes sense for you to have your folder structure the way you described if you intend people to just migrate the assets to their project.
Yet still, I found it weird to reorganize my project to fit their standard. I too had it set up to where each weapon had its own folder and underneath were the material, meshes, and textures folders. I did this based on Epic’s own projects and templates.
Like I said, I’m not taking sides on this requirement, I don’t fully agree with what they have proposed but I also see the difficulty when all MP assets don’t have the same folder structure.
Also, the problem I see with this new folder structure requirement is that if people have already created their project folder structure based on Epic’s templates and projects structures, they are going to have a bad time when trying to migrate MP assets to their project as the structure won’t match. This is why I said that all of Epic’s projects and template should follow the same folder structure, whether it be this one or another.
EDIT: Please also understand that I’m a newbie to selling on the marketplace and realize you guys are experienced sellers. I’m still trying to get my first asset through the review process and it just so happened that all of this debate occurred right now, so I understand that you guys have better knowledge about what the buyers want and you know more from feedback than I do.
Yes, my products are “Add To Project” and most of the customers I speak with then migrate content from one project to another. The only similarity marketplace products should have in terms of folder structure, is parent folder. That is 1 folder typically named after the product that resides in the content folder - and everything else is placed in there. Epic’s own content doesn’t even follow that either. Otherwise depending on the product type, it isn’t always efficient to use the same folder structure. When I’m making individual asset packs, sure it works fine. But bundles? Absolutely not, for the many reasons outlined above.
The whole folder structure thing should be a guideline and nothing more.
In fact, there should be two or three desired folder structure setups we could use as a guideline and allow us to move freely between them to create the structure we deem best for our package.
We should only be warned if the whole structure is an unorganized mess, not when we spend hours structuring it, making sure it all make sense just to hear we have to adhere to one specific structure that does not make sense in all cases.
I’m not a Marketplace seller, but I have been a buyer. Like many others I’ve noticed that the Marketplace standard folder structure isn’t always that helpful. Ideally it would be great if all the Marketplace reviewers were able to use some discretion when deciding if a folder structure is appropriate for a particular product. However if Epic are taking on a number of new people to help speed up the review process (which I think we all welcome) then I can see that, at least when they first start, the newbies are probably going to strictly work to the review criteria rather than subjectively make calls on what they think is a well organised or appropriate folder structure.
So I’d definitely back what others have said here, that there could be a few different folder structures that are supported and Marketplace sellers can choose what structure best suits their products. This seems like a good compromise. Is that something Epic would support @MikeViolette ? I’m sure some Marketplace sellers (or buyers) would be happy to be consulted on the possible structures that would work for different types of packs.
Just came across this thread. I made a submission, a modular street pack, on May 30th, my last contact was a month ago when i emailed them for an update, they said my sub was in the que. I Know they’re usually pretty quick to shoot down submissions which has me wondering, as frustrating as the waiting is, is it a good sign it’s taking this long from an acceptance point of view?
Well when I first sent the download link they got back to me in like 2 or 3 days. I left some metallic and roughness material inputs blank and forgot to disable a few plugins so they were pretty quick to start testing it that they spotted that so quickly. It was after i sent the updated project that there was radio silence. Up until then it was all smooth sailing in terms of communication, If I sent an email, I had a reply by the following day, now It’s a week if I’m lucky. Are they like this all year round or could this have something to do with the Marketplace team pooling all their resources into planning and carrying out the summer sale?
Is there decent money to be made from the marketplace? When I started this project I thought it might be a quick and easy 2 or 3 hundred bucks but with the hassle of all this, I’m starting to think to myself there would want to be some decent money to be made out of it to make it all worth while at this point.
The visual quality of those assets is quite low. The materials look very flat, as if they aren’t pbr accurate. The tiling of assets isn’t hidden at all, and the trees in particular look very bad. Too few and too large leaf sheets. Because there are already assets on the marketplace that fill a similar role, but with much higher quality, my honest assessment would be for you to rework the pack and then resubmit when you are able to achieve a comparable level of visual fidelity to competing assets.
Well, just to re-share my story. After my package was accepted in May, and I received a notice that Epic was going to give me a release date, about a month later I got a message that the onedrive link wasn’t working (**** you microsoft).
And… I now got a message the the package no longer complies with the submission guidelines! Got one of them new pdfs and everything.
So yeah… I think I’m gonna give up. Even if I fix the “overview map does not contain all assets” and “pinecones have a visible texture seam”, I think in 2 months the requirements are going to change again. If anyone is interested, you can purchase the asset here:
