Re: [GD-General] asset & document management

[Mickael P. <mpo...@ed...>]

>> The other thing I miss is asset management for large binaries -
>> stuff that we can't or shouldn't put into CVS. I know there's
>> alienbrain, but for some reason the evaluation didn't leave our
>> artists very happy. It's also not exactly cheap, IIRC. Do you know
>> anything else, are you using something that makes you say "wouldn't
>> know how I could live without it"?
>
> We did large assets ourselves through a custom system that stored
> them on a server and kept a database catalog of them. Alienbrain
> initially looked more like a tool kit than an actual application, but
> I've heard lately that it's gotten better.
>
> I'd also say that artist's opinions on data organization are highly
> suspect. It's been my experience (and yes, I'm generalizing) that
> artists have to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of
> structured data organization. They're visual people and tend not to
> care that much about silly things like textual names. The key is to
> find a system that lets you find the assets you need with minimal
> impact on artist productivity.
>
> Seems like a lot of people build their own, here.

Yep, here we also checked Alien Brain, when it was still called "NxN
MediaStation" back in 1999, and at this time it was painfully slow
(something like 4 minutes between the moment when you openned the client
view and get the data ready on screen...), and was more looking like a "Do
it yourself" package. Since we didn't had an unlimited amount of time to
invest in that, we tried an alternative solution: developping our own
minimalistic system.

Since this first version it seems that AlienBrain had been optimised a lot,
but so far I never find any review of the product made by thirdparties on a
real project that does not look like a copy of the white papers available on
their website, so I will wait for someone telling me it worked great for
them on a real product before going into evaluation again...

So back to our own product. It's minimalistic in the sense that it does not
perform archiving and cannot merge. Basicaly it's an "Exclusive Checkout"
based system that simply allow people to get/put/add/checkout/checking files
from a common network repository.

It's totaly made using Windows 2k+ shell extensions, so it's cleanly
integrated in the windows explorer (right click contextual options, addition
columns to display the status of files, property page to show the history of
file, and so on...). Among the options are a small "send message" that
appear when user select a file that someone else has in checkout. Using
windows message service so it allow the user to send a "please could you let
me the access to that file, thanks" that appear as a modal box on the screen
immediately (like network printer message feedback). Also it has a small
"view difference" option that can redirect to any 3rd party differencing
software depending of the file type (pictures using our own picture
difference program, for text types it can be windiff or araxis merge...).
Got the idea ?

Our artists are using it because it didn't force them to use other tools
than before. They can perform checkin/checkout from any explorer instance,
meaning it works also in applications fileselectors. Also, since it does not
perform archiving, the speed is similar to that of a straight copy from/to
the network, so they don't get the illusion of losing time when working.

It's not a great product, but well, it works. Been used on three products
(one beeing finished on 3 different targets) without any major problem.

    Mickael Pointier