File Structure/Project Setup--Best Practices

We've been trying for a couple days to put together the ideal File Structure that will integrate the work of our Maya artists as smoothly as possible, but we could use your advice. Basically we have a bunch of Maya artists on PCs, but only one cheap little Mac to run Unity on so we're trying to integrate all these guys to a central Project Directory that resides on a PC server.

One of our main concerns is that the Unity file structure is going to get extremely complex very quickly so we want to keep it as tightly organized as possible. (See File Structure sample below)

Overall, we're just barely porting our game to Unity, so we'd like to get any Project Setup tips from folks that have been using it a while.

1. The first problem we're having is that Unity appears to create a "Materials" folder along with every mesh. We'd rather have it put all the new materials into a common "Materials" folder under the proper sub-category--but maybe you've found it makes sense to store always store materials right next to their meshes?

2. The "Materials" are automatically prefixed with the individual mesh name, and we'd rather it didn't add that prefix, since our shaders will already be named appropriately.

3. It seems like you need to create any folders in the Unity Project from within Unity. If I just add a folder from our PCs it seemed to cause critical problems for Unity. But I haven't tested this much yet because we had to throw away the whole project.

4. Our main file location is on one of our PCs and everytime Unity has to update its assets we have to sit and wait a little while. It's not too long, but it's a little frustrating. Do we need to store our master project on the little Mac?

MainProjectName
--MayaFiles
----Standard Maya Files . . .
----Scenes (for meshes still under construction, multiple versions, etc.)
------Environment 1
------Environment 2 etc . . .
----SourceImages (Textures that are used to make in-game textures)
--UnityProject
----Assets
----Levels (Separate folder so all our levels don't get cluttered)
------Library
--Temp
----Textures (For all in-game textures)
------Environment 1
------Environment 2 etc . . .
----UMeshes (Final levels and objects)
------Environment 1
------Environment 2 etc . . .

Thanks--and hopefully this will prove useful to others as well.

 

That would be really nice, if you could set a materials folder(s) for a maya mesh.

I am making a space game the file structure is some thing like this:

-Ships
--Ship Name1
---Mesh
----Materials
-Stations
--Station Name1
---Mesh
----Materials
-Weapons
--WeaponName1
---Mesh
----Materials
-Particles
--Particle1
---Textures
---Material
-Scenery
--SceneryPiece1
--SceneryPiece2
-Scripts
--Ships
--Weapons
--Stations
--Particles
--Other

Im sure there is a better way to do it but I like it like that.

Bill