Naming conventions

A naming convention is a shared rule for what assets and folders are called. Epic's documentation gives the reason in one sentence: an early, common convention makes it "easier for you and your team to locate files and prevent potential conflicts or ambiguity" (Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation: Recommended Asset Naming Conventions in…).

Names also have technical functions. Engines find collision meshes and import options by name, and some operating systems treat Rock.png and rock.png as different files.

#The common pattern

Epic recommends this pattern for Unreal projects (Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation: Recommended Asset Naming Conventions in…):

[AssetTypePrefix]_[AssetName]_[Descriptor]_[OptionalVariantLetterOrNumber]

• The prefix "identifies the type of Asset".
• The descriptor "provides additional context for the Asset, to help identify how it is used", for example whether a texture is a normal map or an opacity map.
• The variant is "optionally used to differentiate between multiple versions or variations of an asset" (Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation: Recommended Asset Naming Conventions in…).

The community Gamemakin UE Style Guide by Michael Allar uses almost the same order: Prefix_BaseAssetName_Variant_Suffix (GitHub: Gamemakin UE Style Guide).

Epic's motivating example is a folder called "Soldier" holding a Blueprint, a texture and a model that all have "Soldier" in their names (Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation: Recommended Asset Naming Conventions in…). Without prefixes you cannot tell them apart in a search.

#Prefixes

Epic's table (a sample; Epic adds that the list "is not exhaustive, as new features can require new Asset types") (Unreal Engine 5.8 Documentation: Recommended Asset Naming Conventions in…):

#Texture suffixes

Allar's guide lists single-letter texture suffixes (GitHub: Gamemakin UE Style Guide):

Allar's list gives _M for both mask and metallic (GitHub: Gamemakin UE Style Guide). Pick one meaning per project and write it down. For packed maps, see channel packing.

#Engine-specific import prefixes and suffixes

These names change how the engine imports a mesh, so they are requirements rather than style choices:

• Unreal: UBX_, UCP_, USP_, UCX_ prefixes mark box, capsule, sphere and convex collision inside an FBX (Epic Developer Community documentation: FBX Static Mesh Pipeline in Unreal Engine).
• Godot: -col, -convcol, -colonly and -convcolonly suffixes on node names create collision on import (Godot Engine documentation: Node type customization using name suffixes).

See collision meshes and the export checklist.

#Letters, spaces and case

All the guides agree on the basics:

• No spaces. Allar: "Never Use Spaces" (GitHub: Gamemakin UE Style Guide). Unity: "Don't use spaces in file and folder names", because its command-line tools have trouble with them (unity.com: Best practices for organizing your Unity…).
• No special characters. Allar: "Never Use Unicode Characters And Other Symbols"; a character called Zoë gets a folder called Zoe (GitHub: Gamemakin UE Style Guide).
• Case. Godot recommends "snake_case for folder and file names (with the exception of C# scripts)" because "Linux distributions use a case-sensitive filesystem by default" and Godot's exported PCK filesystem is case-sensitive too (Godot documentation: Project organization). Godot uses PascalCase for node names, "as this matches built-in node casing" (Godot documentation: Project organization). Unity suggests CamelCase as the alternative to spaces (unity.com: Best practices for organizing your Unity…).

#Folder structure

Unity adds a version-control warning: moving assets between folders looks to many systems like deleting one file and adding another, so define the structure early (unity.com: Best practices for organizing your Unity…). See source control for artists.

#Common mistakes

• Names that only make sense to you. final_v2_new.fbx tells nobody what it is.
• Changing conventions halfway. Rename everything at once or not at all (unity.com: Best practices for organizing your Unity…).
• Collision names that don't match. UCX_crate_01 will not attach to SM_Crate_01 (Epic Developer Community documentation: FBX Static Mesh Pipeline in Unreal Engine).
• Mixed case on a cross-platform team. A file that works on Windows can break on Linux or in an exported Godot build (Godot documentation: Project organization).

#Further reading and watching