Every time that I’ve started working on a production, be it a film or video game, the issue of naming comes up. Nobody likes the way things have been named on previous productions, and yet no one wants to be the person that creates and enforces a naming convention. Can you blame them? It’s never fun to be the person who has to put the figurative “smack down” on a production team to get them to name things correctly.

Naming conventions can have various levels of stringency. The most basic of naming conventions covers just the characters used to name files and directories in a production tree. A step beyond that could be setting some rules for naming files of a specific asset-type. And so forth. I imagine with some effort you could cover most every file in the production.

So what is a good balance between the chaos of having no naming conventions and the draconian restrictions of too many? 

Why Have A Naming Convention?

Here’s my answer; so that the production can run smoothly, efficiently and focus on the creative issues of the product instead of the minutiae of the production processes.

Does a naming convention really do all that? No, not by itself. However it can help to create an environment in which you can have an efficient, smooth and creatively satisfying production experience.

The most basic benefits of a naming convention include:

   1. Makes the naming of files and directories easy and predictable.
   2. Becomes easier to deal with a large numbers of files and directories in an automated fashion.
   3. Facilitates the transfer of assets between productions.

For a large production the second benefit would be reason alone. The automated processing of data is critical. Whether you think you will or not, you will be, at some point, automatically processing some or all of your production data. A naming convention will greatly simplify the scripts that you will have to write to perform the automated processing.

There you have it: a strong, compelling reason for instituting a naming convention. The next step? Figure out exactly what the naming convention should be!

What Should The Naming Convention Be?

All files and directories should contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores.

This is the minimum basic convention that you should employ. Even this simple convention can help considerably for technical tasks, like those involved in the automated processing of data.  

This can also have a positive impact on your production team.    

• Separation of words by underscores is easy to read. It is a natural mapping from words being separated by spaces.
  
• It is easier to deal with a large volume of files visually. 
• It is easier to navigate directories of files for someone whose first language is not the same as the production team’s predominant language. In the realm of video games this can have considerable impact on the effort it takes to localize the game for another country.

For the productions I’ve been a part of, this simple convention, coupled with asset organization conventions (more on those in another article), make the development of production scripts straightforward. Wouldn’t you rather spend your time working on a practical production issue instead of figuring out how to locate the data?You can extend this convention beyond what characters can appear in file names. However, you should have a solid reason for anything beyond the basic convention. The danger is in having so many conventions that people can’t remember them all. You can publish the conventions all you like, but if a majority of people can’t keep them in their heads then they won’t get followed.

One of the most common places for extensions to the naming convention is in the various production disciplines. Modelers, animators, lighters, texture painters and FX developers all have workflows that are tailored to what they work on. It follows that you would build upon your basic convention differently for each discipline.

When you want to extend your convention ask yourself these questions:

   1. Does it make it easier to write production scripts and tools?
   2. Does it address an area where asset naming is inconsistent or inefficient?
   3. What effort would it take to deploy the convention? Don’t forget about the time required to train the users on the new convention. There will also be additional support issues during the transition period.
   4. Do you already have more than 5 or 6 conventions in place for a particular production discipline?

Answering these questions should help you to refine your reasons. There are no hard and fast rules. Trust your instincts. Only you know your production and the people involved with it.

If your production has never had a naming convention, start with the basic convention. Just getting your production onto that convention will be challenging. Once you have that solid base you can begin extending your convention where it makes sense.