In the course of climbing this learning curve I have occasionally painted myself into a corner. And so I learned — the hard way — that a complete history of my work is invaluable. Not just the last two or three or ten versions, but everything. If, like me, you are new to all of this, do yourself a favor and learn from my mistakes.
Your work history can be as simple as copies of the file made at regular intervals and stuffed into a folder somewhere. Giving your copies descriptive names like “Finished box setup” or “Ready to start texturing” will make it all the more useful. If you are diligent about taking snapshots you are going to end up with a lot of files, which can be hard to keep organized. Splitting them into dated subfolders, maybe one for each week depending on your pace of work, can help.
In the software development world we use revision control software to do the work for us. You add your file to a “repository”, which is a bit like a database. You then take snapshots of your work (the more the merrier!) by “checking in” or “committing” the file, at which point you can enter a complete description of what you’ve done to it since the previous snapshot. If you find yourself in a bind, you can revert back to the last snapshot with a click of the mouse. Or, if you find yourself at a dead-end, you can browse the full history of your work to find a good place to restart.
For my own work, I set up a Subversion repository on my MacBook, and I put everything in it. Subversion is available for just about every platform out there, and it’s free. Windows users can even go one better and use TortoiseSVN, which makes it all almost as easy as managing your local files. Mac OS X users have SCPlugin which, while coming along nicely, has a ways to go to catch up to Tortoise.
(Linux users, of course, don’t need no stinkin’ UI. The Subversion command-line client is available in every major distribution.)
For more information, see:
- Version Control for Non-Programmers with Subversion
- Version Control with Subversion (the complete book)