Guidelines on Custom Texture Organization?

iChillum

Hello everyone; long time lurker and someone just getting started in posting in the forums here. As I have looked through the threads of custom texture projects, I note that a very common point of contention is whether or not the textures have been organized. Having looked through a few texture packages, I noted that there were some fairly common folder structures - but it begged the question in my mind on whether or not there is a guide or set of community guidelines that have been created on optimal organization structure with folders.

Long story short, I'm a long time graphics hobbyist that has spent the last 1 1/2 months working on a custom UHD texture project for Monkey Ball 2 on GameCube and rebuilding most of the textures from scratch. I've been simply focused on the textures themselves up until this point, but now that I am over 2,000 textures deep including mipmaps, I'm starting to get concerned that I should maybe start organizing now so it isn't a Herculean feat later on. I'm hoping to gear up for releasing an initial beta soon, so this is at the top of my mind. Apologies in advance if there is a thread that discusses this topic, but is there any sage advice from fellow texture creators on my question?

And not to tease, if anyone was curious below are a few screenshot comparisons on my progress to-date (and much more completed):

SMB2 WIP Screenshots: (Show Spoiler)

Admentus · (This post was last modified: 01-29-2017, 08:07 AM by Admentus.)

That depends on the game itself. But in general you could sort folders per world (or level or stage), for characters, menu's, monsters, items and so on. Expanding upon that you can create subfolders for the area's the characters are set, the area's within a world and so on. The is no limit to how many subfolders you use. I usually create a subfolder once I have enough textures to justify a new category or subcategory. I usually move the textures around as projects go on. What may seem like a few textures of a small area may soon be many enough for an entire subfolder. The key is to keep reorganizing as your projects gets larger. Don't be afraid to do so. Better have more folders than few folders, but of course it is pointless to create folders for only one texture (unless there is a good reason for, such as HUD icons or region differences).

There is not really a standard except for yours. It is your project. As long it is well structured, contributors should have no issue with teaming up.

But that is just my opinion and I am no professional.

iChillum · 01-29-2017, 07:48 AM #3

Makes sense; appreciate you taking time to respond!