Hi all. As I’ve been getting more and more into Unreal, I’ve been having some issues with keeping my projects organized. For the most part I use good naming conventions and folder structure. I have separate folders titled Audio, Materials, Models, Textures, and Blueprints - tileable materials go into the Materials folder, materials for specific models go into a subfolder inside the Models folder, skeletal meshes and static meshes go into the Models folder, textures for tileable materials go into a subfolder in the Materials folder, textures for materials for models go into a subfolder inside the Materials subfolder inside the Models folder, and textures used for UMG widgets as well as IES light profiles go into the Textures folder. The Blueprints folder has several subfolders, like Characters, Interactables, Vehicles, etc. I use prefixes and suffixes on file names to organize them - like T_Asphalt_001_A for an albedo texture for asphalt, or T_Asphalt_004_AO for the ambient occlusion map of a fourth asphalt texture, M_ for material, BP_ for a BP, BP_Char_ for a character, SK_ for a skeletal mesh, SM_ for a static mesh, Lvl_ for a level, LP_ for a light profile, UMG_ for a UMG widget, and so on. I use the same structure and naming conventions on my computer as well, where I store all the asset files.
The issue is though, when I get to having more and more assets, it becomes extremely tempting to just drag and drop them into the Content folder and leave them with their imported names. Sometimes, when importing from Adobe Fuse for instance, I’ll have 20+ textures, 4+ materials, a skeletal mesh, and 10+ animations imported at once. Multiply that by the amount of characters I have, and that’s a lot of files to name one-by-one. Am I just approaching this the wrong way, or should I actually take the time to organize that many assets for a solo project? As for outside of the editor, I tend to just drop all my files onto my desktop sometimes. When I’m exporting from Substance Designer/Painter, Fuse, or any other programs, I end up with a ton of new files - textures, animations, models, whatever. I set it to export to my desktop, it spits out 30 different files with whatever random naming conventions it uses, and I leave it there to clutter up my desktop.