I’m member of relatively small dev team. We have a lot of assets and the problem is - we keep redoing them accidentally. We keep forgetting what’s already modelled and we keep redoing meshes and textures and sound effects. It’s not only waste of time but also results in unpleasant situations when we need to choose between the same asset made by 2 team members. Currently we keep assets in git repo just in directories but there’s just so many directories and all maps contain universal elements which could be reused - except they’re not because we keep forgetting such item has already been made for different map.
How to successfully organize assets library to make content tracking easy?
Here is a link I found that may help you guys. You all will have to add notes in areas and or rename everything (hassle but overtime you will adapt). Tring to find that section In the UE4 wiki that covers naming conventions. Also may help in beginning that only one or 2 of you upload new assets to help cut down on redone materials or you all can takle it together as a form of leason learned to not do again. How ever helps you grow as a group is best for the group. GL
my best suggestion that really applies to any software project is Naming Conventions and then keep some syncronized file (cheapest example: a google spreadsheet) with asset name, creator, and a brief description, maybe a custom tool (a quick local webpage) to store it and add a thumbnail, maybe there is already a tool for that
Another approach which helped us a lot is to forget about hierarchical structures/file systems.
Media items typically don’t belong to a single parent (type, project, creator)
The only valid order is the creation time. Instead of folders, use multiple tags which describe your media.
A dog to me is a reference to an animal, a mammal, a four-legged (normally) creature that is considered to be man’s best friend (although I know quite a few women who would disagree with that statement).
Which folder do I stick the dog in? The Animals folder? The Mammal one? Oh wait, there’s a Canine folder, let’s stick it in there. Then it turns out to be a folder for models of canine teeth.
What you need to do as a group is get together as a group and run through the assets and agree upon where things should go, then generalize it greatly. Dog should go into the Animal folder, not the 4 Legged Creatures folder or the Canine folder.
When you get too specific on what something is, it becomes something different to each other person.
FBI could mean “Federal Bureau of Investigations” or “Facebook Interface”, be sure to clear out any bad spellings and cryptic abbreviations that can be confusing to a member of your group.
