Naming Systems

Part of being a technical artist involves working with programming code, lists of objects and a whole wealth of assets that pass between programmers and artists.

Naming conventions are important in order for everyone in a project to work efficiently and understand what they are working with. If something is appropriately named, it can be interpreted by a software or script easily as well as tell a user what that object is or does.

I've had experience of using naming systems in the past, such as in Adobe Flash, where objects are given names depending on what type they are. Labels are often given the prefix "lbl_" whereas buttons would have the prefix "btn_".
Similarly, in Maya I will be using prefixes in the rigging process. "jnt" would be used in front of joints and "ctrl" would be used in front of control objects. "L" would represent something on the left side of the character and "R" would be for something on the right side.

For example:
jnt_L_arm_01 would be the first joint in the left arm.
jnt_spine_02 would be the second joint in the spine.

I have already seen another use for an implemented naming system, which is mirroring a skeleton onto the other side of the body. Maya can automatically name new joints by using your own system. For example jnt_L_arm_01 can be mirrored and the resulting joint would be named jnt_R_arm01. This definitely speeds things up and improves workflow.

Variables in a script need to be readable too, for similar reasons with naming things in an object.

Digital Tutors has a tutorial on naming conventions in Maya, I will take the information in that video into consideration for my project: http://www.digitaltutors.com/lesson/19390-Choosing-solid-naming-conventions

Introduction

Welcome to my blog for the Technical Art Applications module. For this module our goal is to fully rig a 3D character model and to produce one Maya script that will help in this process.

So far we've mostly worked with a character rig named "Grunt", a basic rig but a working rig that can be posed, animated and imported into engines. A rig works by having selectable control shapes which can be translated or rotated which interacts with the character model mesh in a certain way. Some control shapes have additional attributes which can do something else such as twisting or lifting the foot at different locations of the foot, rather than just moving the whole foot at once with the controller.

Some rigs work differently from others and no two are the same. For example in one rig (like Grunt) the hand controller moves the entire arm around and there is a separate object you move around to point the elbow, whereas in other controllers you rotate the shoulder then rotate the elbow, then rotate the hand.

The rig we create should be focused towards a certain area such as having a use in games or animation particularly. Rigs for games have to work with the restrictions of real time rendering whereas rigs for animation do not. This will be something I choose later depending on my rig and preference.