Finding Textures in New Directory (Maya)

I recently got a new desktop computer and moved all my SL project files. As a result, and I was expecting this, Maya no longer finds my texture files when I open a scene, because the directory has changed. I never kept my raw textures in a Maya directory, because I prefer having all my project files in one place.

So my question is: is there a way to 'tell' Maya to go find all the textures in a new directory? I'd rather not have to manually reassign all textures. I've worked with video editors before that asked for new file directories when project items went 'missing'.

To answer your question as asked, hit File -> Project -> Edit Current, and then set things up however you want for the project you're currently working on. If you want Maya to hunt for textures in My Pictures, instead of in \sourceimages for the current project, just set it to do that.

Now, for the better answer, don't do that. It's always best to keep your Maya projects self-contained. That way, if you ever need to move stuff (like you just did), you'll never have trouble finding anything. Also, if you ever want to collaborate with others, you can simply hand them the project folder as a whole, and they'll have everything. And most importantly, it's just plain dangerous to have multiple projects pulling on the same files.

Needless to say, this sometimes requires the duplication of source materials like textures, shaders, scripts, etc. But that's fine. This is how it's supposed to work.

Whenever I start a new project, one of the first things I do right after I set up the directory structure (File -> Project -> New -> give it a name -> Use Defaults), is I copy all the textures I plan on using for the project into its \sourceimages folder. If I make new texures as I go, those get saved twice. One copy goes into \sourceimages for the project, and the other goes into My Pictures for archival purposes, in case I ever it for anything else.

I use My Pictures as a library, the master archival reference for all my images, nothing more. It's not where I keep working documents. Those go in project directories.

This is perfectly analogous to how one uses a RL physical library. If you're doing a research project, and you need a copy of some New York Times article from 1864 or something (meaning there are no copies available online), you don't go grab the original. You make a photocopy, and you take it with you. Then, when you're back in your own office, you can chop the thing up, take notes in the margin, whatever you need to do, without damaging the original.

And quite obviously, you store the thing in a file folder, along with all other pertinent materials for that project, so nothing can get lost. That way, if you ever need to give the project to someone else, you can just hand them the entire folder at once. You'll never need to slow everyone down and embarrass yourself by saying, "That article's in the bottom drawer of my desk, and that picture you needed is on top of my file cabinet, and those design concepts you asked for are in my briefcase, which I'm sorry to say I left at home today." As long as everything's in one master folder, life is much easier for all concerned. And if that folder happens to have an industry-standard structure to it that everyone else in your field already knows how to follow (as is the case with the Maya default project directory structure), even better.

I'd encourage you to apply this same concept not just to your Maya projects, but to all projects you do, across all applications. For each and every project, have one unique folder that contains all its materials, regardless of whether or not some of the items happen to be duplicates of ones you've used in other projects.

Is this the most efficient thing to do in terms of storage space? Of course not. But storage space is cheap and practically unlimited these days, so who cares? What's important is that it is the most practical way to go in terms of time, organization, and safety.

That last word, safety, as I said in the beginning, is arguably the most important part of this whole thing. If you've got more than one project dependent on any one file, both projects are sunk if that file happens to get damaged, deleted, or inadvertently altered. But if each project has its own individual copy, the danger is significantly reduced. If something happens to the original, you've got lots of backups, hopefully at least one of which is unaltered. And if something happens to any of the copies, only one project is affected, rather than all of them.

Also, Maya puts some of its own files into each and every directory you ever tell it to pull an image from. Not only can this be a little annoying from a neatness perspective, but if you inadvertently delete those files, your projects could have problems. Keeping everything contained within a normal project directory structure will keep all folders outside the project directory from being polluted with these little files.


It might be a little uncomfortable at first to develop this habit if you're not used to thinking about organization quite this way. But once you do get used to it, I'm sure you'll agree the benefits far outweigh the initial discomfort of transition.

Thanks so much for your in-depth answer, Chosen

You'd actually mentioned organising into folders to me before, but back then I didn't have the need for it and didn't fully understand how to do it effectively. I'm so used, like with Photoshop for instance, to have my entire 'project' in one self-contained file.

And I have to admit, the first SL projects I did were an organizational nightmare. I didn't realize I'd end up with tons and tons of different files used for different purposes, and everything turned into one big mess. I reorganised afterwards, but those projects could probably use another overhaul. It's only since my last few projects that I made one giant project folder with subfolders for raw textures, finished textures, sculpt maps, sculpts, inspiration pics, 3D paint textures, packaging pics etc. And now that I had a look at how Maya folders are set up, a lot of those subfolders can of course be found there as well.

I now made separate Maya project folders for my latest SL product, which involves different recolors of one same scene. Reorganising didn't take that long, because I actually did organise all my colors separately. Each color had its own scene and raw textures folder, even though I reused some textures for different colors. Was just a matter really of dropping my scene and texture files into the proper Maya folder directory and I was set. My scenes now load properly again.

I will definitely take your advice to heart. I had to make another recolor of this item, and now set up a neat, separate Maya folder for it. Working like this will take some getting used to, but you're right that it's safer and better. I'll probably leave all my Photoshop psd files in sourceimages too, so I just work on my textures within that Maya project. When I'm done, I can then copy everything to my 'own' project folder as a form of backup, and to keep stuff there as well that doesn't fit into the Maya categories (like packaging pics and sculpt maps).

I'll have to go back and reorganise all my old stuff too sometime, in case I ever do recolors or rerenders. Might take a while, because with this new computer I started bringing all my (non-SL) files together from other, old computers. It'll take me days to sort through everything. Hopefully I'll have some more structure at the end, and be less prone to data loss.

If it helps, here's an image of a typical project directory of mine:



Notice I put a folder for sculpt maps inside the default data folder. You could put it anywhere, of course, but to me, data makes sense. If you export an OBJ or something, that's where it ends up by default. Sculpties are a similar kind of export, at least in my way of thinking.

Turtle, the renderer I use, adds a whole directory structure of its own to each project, which includes a bakedTextures folder. Inside that, I place a folder for each unique version of each item or set of items I bake. Notice I've got four different versions of the vendor, for example.

You'll also notice that for some of the items, I've got yet another subfolder called "resized". This is because certain kinds of baked textures come out better when they're generated at large sizes. Those textures are way too big for SL purposes, so they need to be shrunk down. But I don't want to mess with the originals because if anything goes wrong, those large images will take a long time to redo. So I first copy them to the "resized" folder, and then I shrink the copies from there.

The whole idea is to keep things as self-contained, and as non-destructive, as possible. I like to be able to retrace my steps back through a project, so I can redo just about any aspect of it at any time, without having to start the whole thing over again. Keeping everything organized in the way I've described is the best way I've found to be able to do that.

Looks very logical to me.

The resizing makes sense as well. I too render at big sizes, even if I plan on making the textures smaller for SL. I always keep my originals and let Photoshop do automated resizing, adding '(small)' to the file extension.

I usually put the actual pixel demensions in the file name, rather than descriptions like "big" or "small". I automate where I can, of course, but it's not always possible to include every last image in a batch process. Some do need to be different sizes than others.

In any case, I find the Resized folders to be handy, simply for bulk upload purposes. That way, I don't accidentally include any of the large files in the selection. I just select all in the Resized folder, and it's done.

Hmm, I might do that in the future, put the dimensions in the file name. I render all my textures at 512x512 for now, and resized ones are always 256x256. Adding another separate folder for them might be handy as well, though I can't do huge batch uploads anyway. SL crashes on me sometimes if I try to upload too much at the same time.