Naming conventions
Respecting consistent and logical naming conventions early in the project will spare you a lot of headaches later on, whether when tracking down a naming mistake somewhere, or when writing scripts to automate things up.
Prefixes:
- L_= left side
- R_= right side
Suffixes:
- _SRF = nurbs surface
- _MSH = polygon mesh
- _CRV = nurbs curve
- _JNT = joint that is not at the end of a chain
- _END = joint at the extremity of a chain
- _ZERO = node used to keep the transformations of the nodes below it at 0
- _TOPZERO = node always containing a ZERO node for the same purpose
- _GRP = group
- _LOC = locator
- _IK = IK handle
- _CON = control
- _CLT = cluster
- _WIR = wire deformer
- _EXP = expression
- _MDN = multiply/divide node
Important: Note that each element of the name is separated by a “_” character. e.g.: L_shoulder_JNT Or L_thumb_END
Also, the reasons why I use capitals (“L_” and not “l_”) are:
- With some fonts, the lower case letter “l” can look like the number “1″ or the letter “i”.
- It can greatly facilitate your task when searching/replacing through a script.
Anyways, I’m sure you’ll come up with your own rules… 