Art Tags
Based on some frequently asked tag questions lately, Kurt asked me to post a quick DOs & DON'Ts guide on how to get the most out of the tags system. Great idea, Kurt! This guide applies to both art submitters and people searching for art. This guide only applies to tags; not title, description, or other search fields. :)
The goal of tags is finding what you're looking for. Think of as many single-word ways of describing what you're submitting/seeking. Although there are situations where multi-word tags are needed, the overwhelming majority of tags are single-word descriptors. Try to enter several single-word tags instead of fewer multi-word tags. "dark, fantasy, rpg, rigged, static, mesh, lowpoly" is more effective than "rigged lowpoly mesh assets, static 3d meshes, dark fantasy rpg art".
DONT:
#hashtag- OGA tags are not linked to twitter. Please don't use hashtags when submitting or searching by tag. They just make the artwork harder to find since "#sword" will not show up in a search for "sword". They also break alphabetical sorting since #ZXY comes before ABC.Omit commas between tags- If you don't put a comma between your tags, people searching will find nothing, and people submitting will never be found. "do not forget commas between tags" is all one tag that has to be matched exaclty >:( "do not, forget, commas, between, tags" is 5 different tags that can be searched or matched individually. :)ennemy,midevil,enviroment,sord- Be sure the tags are spelled correctly for best results. (I always misspell "medieval")Over 20 different styles!,Mega-Awesome Studio Pack v1.14881b,Haha! :),boring artwork I made,I need artword that doesn't suck- Who would ever submit or search for these phrases?
free,opensource,videogame,art,asset- Everything on OGA is a free video game art asset. These words won't help narrow the search.cc0,cc-by,gpl,Creative Commons,Public Domain- Tagging the license is unneccessary. There is a separate field dedicated to searching by specific licenses.texture,3dart,2dasset,music,sound effect- Tagging the art category is unneccessary. There is a separate field dedicated to searching by specific art category. Don't put "string music, dark 2d art". Just put "string, dark"- sword
s, rocks, icons, cacti- Plural tags will not show up in a search for the singular version. Searching for "sword" will not show any artwork tagged "swords" and vice versa. When in doubt, just use the singular tag (sword, rock, icon, cactus) Even if the asset contains more than one icon, many swords, a big pile of rocks, and a whole forest of cacti... the singular form of any tag is far more commonly used. You could include both forms, I guess, but it will keep things a lot simpler if you try to stick to a singular convention. The exception to this is when the singular form has an entirely different meaning than the plural. Pants ≠ multiple pant, glasses ≠ multiple glass.
- Case SEnsiTive - UPPER-CASE, lower-case, makes no difference. When in doubt, though, put everything in lower-case.
- artist/submitter name in the tags - Adding your name or your project name as a tag is unlikely to help anyone find the asset and has zero SEO impact. There is a separate field dedicated to searching by the artist's/submitter's name.
DO:
- orchestral, chiptune, trance, portrait, synth, pixelart, chibi, anime, painterly - tags that indicate the style of art are useful.
- 32x32, 8-bit, 16-bit, dawnbringer, db32, 128x64, 44.1 kHz, 110bpm, specular, bumpmap - give common technical specifications of the asset, if any apply. Being able to search by dimension, palette, sample rate, et cetera is helpful.
- 3/4 perspective, overhead, ortho, 1st person, isometric, oblique, sidescroller - include the art's perspective, if applicable. Different games have different viewpoints. Being able to find the right kind is invaluable.
- sword, dog, face, warrior, robot, grass, rock, sad, spooky, upbeat, relaxing, western, fantasy, scifi - a few one-word descriptions of what is in the asset will go a long way.
- gui, ui, animation, animated, sci-fi, scifi - Try several versions of tags with very similar meanings. Sometimes people try one and don't think of the other. This will allow the search to work either way. No need to go overboard, though. "gui, ui, graphical user interface, user interface, graphical ui, u interface, user i, gu interface" is just getting ridiculous. Just a couple of the most commonly used tags is enough. Not sure which are most used? search for the ones you're thinking of and see which one returns more results.
- .png, .blend, .obj, .wav, unity3d, .svg, .flac, .xcf - tagging the file format is often useful for people working with specific software suites or working with specific programming constraints. For the sake of conformity and ease-of-searching, please always include the dot before file extensions. Otherwise people searching for Photoshop ".psd" files will never find the asset tagged "psd".
- Edit your submission - Don't be afraid to click that "Edit" tab at the top of your submission. If you misspelled something or forgot the commas (I always do), no need to delete the submission, just click edit, fix whatever doesn't look right, and click save. easy peasy.
TL;DR: A good rule of thumb I use to test if a tag of mine is good or not: If I search for any single tag I've used, but my submissions- no one elses- are the only results... It's likely no one will ever find my submission using that tag. I should probably change or remove the tag from my submission. If I'm the only person that thought of this tag, I'm the only person that will ever find my art.
Comments
Good work! Thank you very much. The lack of any guidelines always made me unsure of how to tag my own stuff, and that in turn likely made it hard to find. Now I can go revise them.
Thanks for the hints! I'll edit the tags of some of my owrks to follow these guidelines more closely.
It'd be nice is the tags drop-down list only would only show good examples of tags (or give good tags priority). Ideally from an officially curated list.
As it is, it is flooded with the worst malformed tags which doesn't help matters any.
eg. trying to add a pixel art tag, an official pixel art tag should be first, should it be "pixelart", "pixel art", or "Pixel Art"?
Ugh. I hate that. I agree that would be better. I'll see if I can get one of the other code-access admins to do something like that. In the meantime, i've been trying to manually curate the tags myself. I've made some good progress, but there are literally millions of tags, so it's slow going.
P.S. Per the guide above, it should be pixelart; "single words are more common than multi-word tags". "When it doubt use all lower case"
If having "official" tags show up first is too difficult to implement, I think it would be beneficial to at least have a list somewhere that people could look at for common tags/tag ideas. The list would also give ideas on what tags to search for since people would be using those tags.
Fantastic demonstration and article! I should go and tag some of my older works.....I didn't know what I was doing, and didn't even bother with some!
Just want to say this is awesome! Thanks for putting in the work to clean up all those tags!
Any hope of seeing this tags write up appended to the game faq or submission guidelines? Am afraid it'll get forgotten quick if it only lives in your blog.
Good point, capbros. I'll see about including something like this in the submission guidelines or something. However, I don't currenly have access to that page's code. Once I do, I'll see about making some other improvements to it at the same time (like your suggested revisions).
I am finally able to modify the submission guidelines. What do you guys think of the following addition to https://opengameart.org/content/art-submission-guidelines ?
Art tags
Looks about right. I notice the requirement on puttings tags in their singular form has been dropped, and maybe it's better this way. Are there any other changes planned for the guidelines?
Eh, that one wasn't ever a requirement, just a suggestion for more effective tagging since most existing tags are already singular. My main intent for this change is to be helpful, not law enforcement. I think there were some other things that capbros was suggesting, but now I can't remember where the thread was.
Well something isn't working quite right because I posted a model on January 19th, but it doesn't show up in a 3D art search sorted in descending order by post date. I do find it when I also click on the CC-BY 4.0 check box, along with some other models that don't show up in the general list
If that's the only license you have listed for the submission, that makes sense. Gotta tell it what licenses you want to find too. :)
The 4.0 licenses are not currently searched by default, but we're working on that. In the meantime, I recommend also releasing the asset under the 3.0 licenses as well. That will allow it to show up in tag searches without specifying the license since it will get either 3.0 or 4.0 licenses.
Thank you. In that case it would be nice to have an "Any" license option that is selected by default.
We're done working on that: Searches now include CC-BY 4.0 and CC-BY-SA 4.0 by default, which means the default licensing search is effectively "Any license" now. :)
Thanks.
Hi,
Can I ask why the tag "castle game engine" was just deleted?
Explanation: I'm the author of open-source Castle Game Engine ( https://castle-engine.io/ ). We wanted to have an ability to mark in opengameart models as "compatible with Castle Game Engine" (exported to one of our supported formats, like X3D (see https://castle-engine.io/creating_data_export.php ). And we thought about using "castle game engine" tag for it. The point is that everyone should be able to upload and mark models with this tag.
This way users of opengameart would be able to find models compatible with Castle Game Engine, and we could even link to them by a stable link https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?field_art_tags_tid=castle%20... (we already had 5 models there). So, the tag would be useful for both people who submit models and download models.
Can you restore the tag existence, or just not remove it again?
Or can you propose other approach for us to do this? We thought using a tag like "castle game engine" would be cool with everyone:)
Thank you!
Tags are used for searching art by ubiquitous desciptors. The castle game engine is not ubiquitous enough to be explicitly searched under. If you are the only ones submitting castle game engine compatible content, it isn't really a globally understood search term. Admittedly, format and compatibility are reasonable terms to tag art with, but in this case, "castle game engine" does not describe compatibility nor format. X3D does this, as does collada, 3DS, and OBJ, but the castle game engine is not the only application that supports these formats.
It's possible the openness and popular adoption of the castle game engine would suggest such a term be a tagged descriptor, but that point has not yet been reached. Very few game engine names make sense as descriptions for artwork, especially not for art that works on more than one game engine. For example, the Unreal engine is a very well-known and popular engine, but that tag is also not found on art descriptions because 3D art is rarely formatted exclusively for the unreal engine, and if it were, it wouldn't be much of an open asset.
There are many new submissions that include the submitter's handle, or project name, or internally created product. All such tags are routinely removed; it makes sense to talk about your project/product in the description, but tags are for searching universally-known terms that describe the art itself, not the software you could use it with. Thus, the text above saying:
P.S. You are welcome to mention your game engine (and even link to it) in the description of the assets you're submitting. One thing many users do to brand their submissions is to change their username to match the product or service name they wish to promote. For example having a username "Castle Game Engine" instead of "michalis". If you want a way to link your customers to a set of submissions compatible with your game engine, there are already several options: Linking to your profile page already lists all the assets you've submitted. Alternatively, you already have a collection of assets used in Castle Game Engine games and demos. If you want a way for any user to indicate the format of the art, they (and you) should be using the file extensions or format names as tags instead of the engine name.
Thank you for the answer! Let me explain my reasons in more detail:
The idea is that others (not only me) can upload a work tagged "castle game engine". So changing my profile name to "Castle Game Engine", or using my collection for this, is not a viable solution.
Two such models were already uploaded ( https://opengameart.org/content/low-poly-paintings , https://opengameart.org/content/low-poly-books ) not by me, in addition to 3 models by me. Other people in CGE community responded today with enthusiasm and promise to upload more :)
Using format names for this, like "x3d", is not comfortable. Castle Game Engine supports X3D, castle-anim-frames, Spine JSON and a number of other formats (see the list of formats supported by view3dscene, https://castle-engine.io/view3dscene.php#section_features ). One of these formats (castle-anim-frames) is specific to Castle Game Engine. All others are generally useful... but there are a number of Castle Game Engine extensions to X3D (for example to add bump mapping and shadows), our most adviced format. So, tagging a model "x3d" is both less specific than we need (it doesn't clarify "Does it use Castle Game Engine Blender->X3D exporter? Does it use Castle Game Engine X3D extensions?") and more specific than we need (other model formats are supported by CGE too, not only x3d).
Thus the idea of "castle game engine" tag, with a precise meaning "This model was tested with Castle Game Engine (in particular, with view3dscene, our model viewer). Thus it will work cool in CGE applications right away.".
The point I'm making is that "castle game engine" tag *could* be useful for people to search for. I planned indeed to place a link from main CGE website to https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?field_art_tags_tid=castle%20... , i.e. a persistent link to all models tagged with "castle game engine".
Do you think this changes the position on "castle game engine" tag?:)
No. I'm sorry to say I do not think this changes the position. The fact remains file formats (even tagging all the formats in the submission) is more appropriate than tagging the game engine itself. I understand Castle Game Engine supports more than just the X3D format, but the tags aren't intended to describe software, they're for describing the submitted art. If the submitted art includes multiple formats, you should tag all those formats. Any features in the assets being submitted that are not described specifically enough by a format tag, should aslo be tagged. "bumpmap", or "shadows" for example. You'll find these are tags already in use for other models with such features.
Furthermore, the issue of ubiquitousness still stands. When Castle Game Engine gains a more prolific adoption, I may reconsider, but again, even extremely popular game engines like Unreal are not appropriate tags for artwork that is engine-agnostic.
Using a proprietary file format would not really resolve the issue either, though. If you have art that only works with this one game engine, the community here would ask for it to be provided in a more ubiquitous format like X3D or OJB so that it may be used by more than just a single engine.
This is not a targeted decision against just Castle Game Engine. We are regularly flooded with tags referencing very specific products and projects as an attempt to promote the submitter's proprietary product. Promoting your project is encouraged, but in order to keep the tags useful, managable, and not completely mired in terms that none of our users search for, we have to curate these tags and keep all terms reduced to non-proper nouns and descriptions that do not refer to narrow products. Even then there are hundreds of thousands of general-scope tags describing the art here on OGA.
I know you are not satisfied with the collection solution, but for what it's worth, you are able to add as many collaborators to your collections as you want. Any CGE community members can also curate such a collection.
@michalis: Why not just tell folks to put [CGE] in the title of all the castle game engine compatible submissions?
Then your search link becomes:
https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&title=%5BCGE%5D
that's what the LPC people do for their project.
https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&title=%5BLPC%5D
Seems to work for them.
OK, I understand this decision. I do understand and respect that it's not something directed at Castle Game Engine, it's a general rule.
I see some models using "unity" tags, https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?field_art_tags_tid=unity . But (at least some of them, though not all) indeed provide models in *.unitypackage format.
Many other models are found searching for "unity" / "unreal" ( https://opengameart.org/art-search?keys=unity https://opengameart.org/art-search?keys=unreal ) and they seem to use general formats (e.g. Blender sources and exported FBX; in theory they could be exported to other engines too). But they do not use "unity" / "unreal" tags, they are just found by searching "unity" / "unreal" terms. So this is consistent with your decision, I appreciate that.
I was testing possible solutions (something that would be satisfactory to OGA, and also allow *anyone* to submit models that can be easily found as "this works with Castle Game Engine"):
1. I tested OGA searching for "castle game engine", but the results are unsure:
- Searching for "castle game engine" using the form on the main page, https://opengameart.org/art-search?keys=castle+game+engine , yields 4 models with "castle game engine" in the description. It is almost what I was looking for, but it doesn't find the 5th model with "castle game engine" in the description. Can you shed a light why it's omitted from the search results?
- It is a little weird that searching for "castle game engine" using the "advanced search" behaves differently, it finds > 500 assets that (I think) use of the words castle, game or engine in their title or description: https://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=castle+game+engine&titl...
- So searching for "castle game engine" from the main page returns 4 models, and then if you press again "search" on the resulting page you get > 500 models :)
- Looks like there are 2 search algorithms, and I'm not sure is this something to rely on in the future. Esp. since clicking "search" from simple seach results (4) changes the results to "advanced" (> 500).
Can you comment which search results for "castle game engine" are to be relied-on in the future?
2. For clarity: if the asset includes a version exported to the castle-anim-frames format (in addition to Blender source), then tag castle-anim-frames is OK? Or even something like "blender, castle-anim-frames"?
If tags like x3d, castle-anim-frames, spine are OK -- then it is some solution.
Although I already see that one model uses "spine" tag while in fact it only contains "fbx" ( https://opengameart.org/content/2d-raptor-running-fbx-animation ), but that's just a problem with this particular model.
Thank you for the answers!
@withthelove @MedicineStorm If this solution (using "[cge]" in title) is OK with OGA administrators, then cool. Thank you.
Is this OK? Using tag "castle-game-engine" is not OK, but placing an (effective) tag in the title, using "[cge]", is OK?
@michalis: You're not crazy, the default search is pretty much hopeless. It's some kind of bizzaro-land amalgam of stuff from the description plus comments, plus who knows what else, but very often not stuff from the title. You'll want to stick with title searches to get any kind of consistent results.