folder heirarchy script

[itriix]

hello everyone, i'm going through the cmivfx python dvd and it inspired me to write my own python tool to populate a project folder heirarchy.

i would like input, *since i know it's basically company specific* on folder heirarchies. but the more information i can gather, the better for my tool. i'm going to give this to my school so that they might be able to implement it and use it to construct a pipeline there, allowing this tool to unify everyones work together.

so here are my thoughts:

there are a few different ways i thought about doing the script but i thought it would be better to consult you guys first. first off, you could run the script, and by inputting a few parameters, it would create a folder heirarchy for your project. it would contain essentially whatever you specifically needed. so you could input that you are doing compositing, and it would create a heirarchy of common folder structures for a compositor type project folder setup. *maybe including stuff like ae, shk, nuke, maya...*

or you could do 3d, and it could have houdini, maya, nuke, shk, ae.... just thoughts. Possibly could be JOB specific... so Modeler, Compositor, FX, Lighting - it could be user friendly enough to satisfy whatever you really need. but simple enough so that you don't have to specify a million parameters. Maybe could have the choice to have a default quick setup, or customize it as much as you wanted.

as of now here is what i'm thinking:

project name:

animatics:

assets:

footage:

rough cuts:

concept art:

notes:

reference:

shots:

proj_name_## (example, nike_soul_01)... (nike_soul_02)..... etc etc....

ae

same as shake...

dailies

elements (footage and sequences)

houdini

digital_assets

geo

renders

scenes

sim

scripts

textures

shaders

caches

maya

scripts

scenes

objects

particles

paint fx

textures

shaders

movies (such as final renders, test renders)

notes

pftrack

matchmover

psd

reference

shk

scripts

clr

diff

spec

amb occ

depth

textures

nuke

haven't really used it yet so..... just assuming something like shk tho

storyboards:

so i guess i'm kinda looping back and forth however about where to PUT specific folders and which folders to include. thoughts are:

should i have an external textures folder for example in the root level, or should each folder, houdini, maya... etc. each have their own textures folder? they both have their ups and downs. by having it on the root level, might make it a bit more complicated for students to set up their paths within maya or houdini for example. if the scene file is within the houdini directory for example, and the texture is that, then students would have to set up their own "variables" that contain the outer heirarchy root folder, texture folder as a path. so to keep it SIMPLE, could just have texture folders for each software package instead. that way, you can just work as normally....

also, renders folder... should be at root level? or within the software package folder?

the reason why i'd like to ask you guys, is because you have more experience with PIPELINES, whereas i really don't have any experience with it.

i'm practicing for the real world

thanks for your time

Jonathan Gilbert

Edited June 14, 2009 by itriix