I explored some of the documentation and your blog, yet I am still left a little puzzled. I know you’ve explained the directory structure and such many times to reviewers, but if you could please indulge me a bit here:
Why the decision to develop this workflow and structure?
I personally am always looking for ways to optimize/enhance workflows both in general and in focus concerning the processes and tools in my toolchain. I have a monolithic large project/repository that ends up being the “home”, or foundation to build upon for resources and documentation on the various workflows and final asset results for game development. Hell, even the act of writing documentation itself has documentation. This project serves as a template and reference for new projects and as it evolves, so too does the efficiency of workflows and final result qualities…
One area that I’ve neglected are creatures (this includes humans), and their related resources. This is an expansive area of game development and there are a myriad of approaches concerning the workflows and semantics within this area. My ground truth is always engine documentation, studio talks (e.g. GDC talks), game design documents (graciously shared by respected studios), and so on. It’s rare that I’ll absorb an approach from a random YouTube tutorial by an inexperienced grifter, or through auditing marketplace assets. That being said, your approach here seems thought out and peer reviewed, so it caught my attention.
Is your approach to satisfy the ease-of-use for the end user, and simplify packaging on your end? Or does it ultimately serve a better best-practice element within a tangible game development project? I’m curious because it may clash with established structures and workflows you’d find in actual games released to the world. So if it is just for easier tinkering for customers, that’s fine… I’m just curious if it’s “a better way”, and worth studying and developing into a documented workflow.
With my foundational template project (the “home” I spoke of above), care is put into wide compatibility and synchronicity with best-practices and “correct” approaches that function as expected, end to end (for example, creating a mesh in Blender and getting it into Unreal Engine with minimal fuss and parity between the two). If I download an asset such as a Megascan surface, it just works. If I download a surface texture from another source, they may follow similar semantics, and it also, just works. However, I could download a surface texture from yet another source, and they follow their own semantics and workflows, and suddenly I have adjust for their unique decisions. This is generally not desired.
Now the same logic applies to creature skeletal meshes, animations, etc. Should the accepted semantics follow your approach, and all the other assets in the wild be considered special, or vice versa?
Anyhow, thanks for sharing some of your assets. They’re neat! Keep up the good work.