Organize Game Art References for an Asset Family
An asset belongs to a wider visual system. Before collecting close-ups, identify the world rules it must follow: construction logic, scale cues, shape language, or condition. Keep those constraints visible beside the individual asset’s research.
Keep the collection useful
Use folders for source sets and asset work. Use tags for cross-cutting categories such as painted-metal, field-repair, or modular-wall. Separate approved project direction from reference images that are simply useful observations.
| Part of the set | What to record |
|---|---|
| World rules | Approved proportion, construction, and style notes |
| Asset identity | Views that explain the object’s function |
| Materials | Surface behavior and wear evidence |
| Variation | Which differences are intended across the family |
Build the working selection
Build a refern canvas for the asset family and a focused area for the current asset. Keep shared rules together so they are not contradicted by an isolated detail reference. Add notes explaining which reference informs which decision.
Find and use the references
Use tags and saved rules to revisit materials across assets. Paintovers and texture sources saved as PSD, Krita, or Procreate files get built-in flattened previews, and the guide to organizing digital art files covers keeping their versions and exports apart. Other file types show the preview your operating system provides, where it has one; otherwise an icon. refern has no 3D model viewer, so use it for visual references and generic file organization where enabled, then inspect models and engine assets in their authoring tools.
Check the handoff
Review the actual asset in its target engine for scale, readability, and performance. The reference library does not validate those properties. Keep approved board exports and source records with the production handoff.
Normal refern workspace indexing reads existing files in place. Imports and file actions can create or change files. Back up the source media and workspace data that preserves your organizing work.
Continue with Set Up References for a 3D Modeling Session.