So im really lost on what I really need the source tree program for @Michael_Bridges, and even how to use it. I have been using Google drive as my designation for my work. Do I need source tree? And what good dose it really do me?
With SourceTree, you can branch your work, meaning working on variations of your models in a non destructive way, and you can easly go back to any previous version of your work.
Using this software isn’t strictly necessary, but it helps you greatly being organised and to avoid errors.
It is really helpful, and I would recommend you to start using it.
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When you work on your mesh models, you need sometimes to do some destructive work on your model.
And without the option of Undo of your steps at a later moment. You’re stuck.
So what many people do is, before they do a destructive (unrecoverable) action, save it under a new name (with follow up number). But then you can have a lot of files, without any knowledge what really happened in the code.
Google drive will only ensure you, that these files are not lost, but the diversity of the files do still exist.
Source Tree will work with a standard approach called GIT. GIT will handle version control in a very smart way. It doesn’t harm you to have some knowledge about it. But (version) number files does also the trick, but isn’t that handy at the end.
When you store (save) a version of your mesh code in GIT, you can add text to the version you are saving. Keeping track of your progress. And go back to an old version in a well documented way.
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Hi White_Jackal,
I think the point of using SourceTree here is to allow you to simply create restore points out of your work / project. So in other words create “backups”. Every commit is a revision of that project on that point in time (little bit simplified). And doing commits allow you to possibly revert to an older version if you somehow mess up with your project. It also allows you to go back in time and take a look at the earlier stage pretty easily and then get back to the latest revision.
If you have your repository on your own hard drive then you possibly need another backup system for your hard drive but if you have say a private repository in the internet (on some service provide like GitHub) then your project can be pushed to be safe on there.
Basically this decentralized (or distributed) model makes it possible for large teams to collaborate on the same project. There are other benefits of this model but I am not going into details here.
Like @Svetlin_Balkanski pointed out branching is one of the most used features of a modern version control (like SourceTree).
If you are planning to work on the software industry then I suggest you to get familiar with the SourceTree and specially Git as a version control. You will be eventually working in a team where usage and knowledge of that will be very beneficial.
Cheers, Jax
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Yes not required but recommended.
Personally I would recommend GitKracken at the moment. I find it is more new comer friendly.
But otherwise I cannot really add any more than what people have said above it allows you to keep multiple versions of the same file / files and folders without having multiple files cluttering up it has saved my models plenty of times in the past when I’ve gone down a destructive route have saved the file and then the next day realise I’ve made a mistake if I hadn’t had it in GIT there will be no recovery and to do it I would’ve had to start the modelling again.
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