what naming conventions do you use for your blender/3d assets…
I use “sets”, for example: vehicles, weapons, buildings. In a set there can be many objects.
So a full name of a set:
set_building_01
set_weapon_01
set_walls_01
set_miscobjs_01
Textures: _col, _nor, _spec etc.
On a texture there is many things, so the objects of the set. One texture (or material) for one object is a very amateurish thing. 
(Set: “asset”)
Can you elaborate on this, please?
Here’s how I name things:
Human thing
Boss thing
Building thing
Other thing
Dat thing
U know… things lol
Usually something like circle.001 till circle.248 and plane.001 till plane.369
I should name things …
@sick I think he means mapping several objects to the same uv sheet and using one material across several objects.
I would be interested in how others do this because I think I need a system. I have foundations of on but its not good enough.
It depends what your are aiming at.
If it’s a project that is aiming for realism, you just can’t succeed with one texture.
thanks guys,
when i say naming conventions i mean something like
Material_
Texture_
etc
for example in blenderella the artists uses GEO_(what does GEO stand for)
when i say conventiobns i mean for examplejava naming conventions…
what would this be for blender/3d artists…
i’d prefer naming conventions used for film project assets etc
I would be interested in how others do this because I think I need a system. I have foundations of on but its not good enough.
Same here, I start out naming things, but then after a while I just stop without realizing it.
Geo probably stands for geometry. I don’t think there is a formal convention on this. If you asked 100 people about this you will get 100 different answers. You just need something that is consistent, logical and something you can understand and work with.
If you can come back a year later after a project is “done” and know what’s going on and find things easily you’re doing a good job, I’m still not there yet.
For me it depends on a project.
But usually I use a abstract—>specific system, so if i am making a scene of two people playing a chess game, then here are some names I would use:
chess_board_0
chess_piece _king_0
chess_piece_pawn_0
chess_piece_pawn_1
chess_timer_0
character_chessPlayer_0
character_chessPlayer_1
character_judge_0
you get the idea.
Coming from the BGE section, I chose names that describe the purpose as much as possible.
Showing Purpose
E.g.
Cube is a form not a purpose.
Player.CollisionBox describes the purpose.
Showing Uniqueness
The next thing is to differentiate the objects to avoid confusion.
e.g.
Character implies there is only one character. How would you name a second one? Character2?
LordOfTheWoods, Hannibal, or ManCandy will give the individuals a name. You can even use “classes” as name if you do not care the person but the type of person e.g. BlackKnight, FatOrc, CommonSmurf.
Showing Relationship
Additional you can show relations between different objects that belong together or form a “virtual” group.
e.g. Skin and Armature do not show any relation but
BlackKnight.armature, BlackKnight.skin, BlackKnight,sword … show the reader these objects belong together without even looking at the 3D Scene.
If you use prefix, suffix, camelCase, Under_line, dot.qualifers or whatever naming convention is up to you. You just should keep it consistent within a file.
If you use abbreviations like plr, GEO, sdf it would be a nice help if you document them in an embedded text file. This would help you and the reader. But I do not do this either ;).
Hint: We already have a naming convention in Blender -> .L/.R for symmetrical editing.
Materials and Textures
The above was meant for objects. I’m not sure with materials and textures as I do not use them that much.
I would avoid prefixes like Tex_ or Mat_. You can’t mix textures and materials anyway.
I guess the material and a texture name can represent a purpose as well.
Actions
I usually name actions in a way that they describe themselves
e.g. walking.
If I have multiple “action players” I add a name that describe possible players.
e.g.: ManCandy.walking, Orcs.running
This allows me to use the same action with different objects, which can become quite handy.
But in most cases I keep the default name = object name + “Action” (e.g. CubeAction, MaterialAction). Luckily you can see them in outliner and change the name accordingly.
Groups and Linking
I try to be strict with groups. This is because they are planned to be used later without the need to adjust them for each single use case.
The problem is you can easily get the .001 names when instantiating a group and another object with the same name already exist. Therefore I try to avoid the name of the group as name of an object within a group.
e.g.
Group = <GroupName>
Group Object = <GroupName>.base, <GroupName>.armature …
To test an instance I name the instance = <GroupName>.test
To simulate instantiating = <GroupName>.pivot (sometimes needed to develop for the BGE).
I think it is quite handy if you link a whole scene to get all available groups of a file with one step.
To do this I need one instance of the group at this scene.
So I name the instance of this “library”-scene = <GroupName>.lib
Finally after I linked the scene _<GroupName>.lib to my file I can add an instance to ANY scene with <shift+A> -> Group Instance -> <GroupName>
I get an instance with the name <GroupName> which is what I want. (Indeed further instance will get the autoprefix .001)
At 2.49 when adding instances the menu categorized them by (library-) file name. I really miss this feature, as you might link to groups with the same name :(.
Scenes
For “library” files:
I name the library scene which holds the group instances = “<purpose>.lib"
-> ("” to make it appear at the top of the list)
The scene with the group objects is named “Groups”
-> (the purpose is to hold the groups of the file in this scene).
The Scene to test the groups is named “TestScene”
Other files usually have scenes like “Scene”, “Overlay”, “HUD”, “Level 1” etc.
And they contain the linked scenes “_outdoorItems.lib”, “_buoyancy.lib”, “_cursor.lib”
Just my toughs
Monster
Monster
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That’s why I asked. I understood he was talking about merging several objects together into one, thus having various materials in one object.