You need to know it's locked when you open it. Which means you need plugins for popular software. Photoshop, Maya, Unity, 3DSMax, Blender, etc.
P4 has many of these integrations so that artist and other non-technical people will know the moment they open the file that if they want to edit it they need to check it out. Similarly they can choose to check in the changes directly from their asset editing app, not from some separate app. They also need an easy way to find out who has it checked out so they can go over to that person and ask when they'll be able to edit it or if the person forgot to check in their changes.
I've written some in the past as well (http://mayasvn.sourceforge.net/) that would not just check in a Maya file but also check in all the referenced files (otherwise an artist checks in the asset but there are lots of missing textures).
On a subnote: Asking the artist "check this in?" on each save is a bad UX. I tried that and the artists complained since they save all the time (in case their app crashes).
P4 has many of these integrations so that artist and other non-technical people will know the moment they open the file that if they want to edit it they need to check it out. Similarly they can choose to check in the changes directly from their asset editing app, not from some separate app. They also need an easy way to find out who has it checked out so they can go over to that person and ask when they'll be able to edit it or if the person forgot to check in their changes.
https://www.perforce.com/product/components/perforce-plugin-...
I've written some in the past as well (http://mayasvn.sourceforge.net/) that would not just check in a Maya file but also check in all the referenced files (otherwise an artist checks in the asset but there are lots of missing textures).
On a subnote: Asking the artist "check this in?" on each save is a bad UX. I tried that and the artists complained since they save all the time (in case their app crashes).