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Managing Your Working Files the “Right” Way - Onboarding Course for 3D Game Artists

Instructional Problem

Many of the 3D game artists in a project team are currently using a different organizing mechanism for their work files. This makes it difficult for other artists in the team to collaborate on each other’s work as it is often confusing for others and takes up a lot of time to learn and adapt to each other’s organization system.

While there is a preexisting documented manual provided to the artists in the beginning of a project on the organizing convention, most of the artists neglect it or are quick to forget the content. The instruction will help raise the artists’ awareness of the importance of following the convention, and help them better remember the content through repeated practice.

Having a coherent organizing system of assets and a common workflow among the team will reduce confusion when working on each other’s assets, leading to highly increased efficiency in collaborative work.

Target Participants

The target learners will be all the game artists on a new project team. The number of artists will vary by project team.

Goal

Learners will understand how to set up their working files properly and export their assets in a cohesive manner, ultimately increasing the overall collaborative work efficiency among the team’s artists.

Objectives

Learners will be able to explain the importance of organizing files in a set order.
Learners will be able to name their files in a proper way.
Learners will be able to group material layers in a folder with proper labels.
Learners will be able to rename the default texture set names following the naming convention rule.

Diane Yang

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Preliminary Project Plan

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Overview of Proposed Solution

The instruction will be delivered in an e-learning course format at the pre-production stage of a new project team. There will be three modules in total, and each module will include multiple examples and practice questions. Upon completion of the course, a digital badge will be given to the learners that can be displayed on the company’s employee portal. At the end of the course, a summary document will be provided to the learners, which can be used as a reference in the future.

Significance of the Design

The existing instruction method of simply providing the artists with a shared document did not successfully grab the target audience’s attention, convey the importance of learning the material, and allow them enough opportunities to practice with nothing at stake. Through carefully designed instruction, the learners will be guided to first understand the significance of learning the material (grab their attention and increase their motivation to learn). Then they will go through multiple practice activities that could strengthen their memory and help them quickly apply the rules in the actual work setting.

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Proposed Learning Environment

The proposed course is a job aid in a guided instruction format. The instruction will be created by Articulate 360 to enhance learners’ interaction with the learning material. The course will be delivered by the team’s lead artist in a URL format via email. The learners will need to be connected to the internet to access the materials. They will be given a specific time period (e.g., one week) to complete the course at their own pace and share the completion badge in the team’s Slack channel.

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Project Deliverables Summary

Deliverable	Description	Proposed Timeline
Project plan	A concise plan and rationale for the instructional need will be addressed	Feb 12
Outline of the course	A specific outline of how the course will be organized	March 19
1st draft of the course	A first draft of the completed course.	April 9
2nd draft of the course	A second draft of the course - edited based on the client’s feedback.	April 30
Final version of the course	A fully developed course.	May 7

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Course Outline

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Roadmap

Module 1	Introduction	Intro to course	Welcome, purpose and goals of the course, animated scenario of why this course is important
Module 2	Folder Structure	Assets & Shared content	Understanding the general folder structure and which content should go into which folder
Module 2	Folder Structure	Practice	Drag and drop activity - locating content into the correct folder
Module 3	Naming Convention I	Scene name acronym	List of acronyms for each scene
		The Rule	Memorizing the naming convention rule
		Practice	Practice activities for memorizing the scene name acronyms and the naming convention rule - applying the scene acronyms
Module 4	Naming Convention II	Model, Material, Texture, Shader, Prefab, Animation Rig	Memorizing acronyms for model, material, texture, shader, prefab, and animation rig
Module 4	Naming Convention II	Practice	Practice activities for applying the naming convention rule with the acronyms
Module 5	Offboarding	Review	“What we’ve learned” - Summary of all previous modules
		Cheat Sheet	A cheat sheet (pdf file) will be provided and learners will learn how to read it quickly.
		Quiz	Quizzes to test learner’s understanding of the folder structure and naming conventions

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