Better Object AUTO Naming System
I have been wanting this change for ages and I'm interested to see who else want it.
As an asset modeller, I find myself creating lots of models with variations, such as a series of book models and as apart of my workflow ill model one base model, duplicate it and make tweaks, duplicated another and make different tweaks until I get a series of that one model and all the required variations. Frustratingly I then have to go through and rename every model.
From:-
Book_01
Book_01.001
Book_01.002
Book_01.003
Book_01.004
Book_01.005
To:-
Book_01
Book_02
Book_03
Book_04
Book_05
Book_06
Could it be implemented that if when duplicating an object that contains a number value in its name that the new objects name number is incremented up one? This would be extremely useful and could be applied to all naming such as for Materials, Texture and the mesh data name.
In addition, Linking the Object name and Mesh Data Name would be extremely useful. So that you only have to name one and then say press a "Link Mesh Data Name" button to change the "Mesh Data" name too.
My knowledge is limited in whether this is difficult or even possible to implement but I'd love to see some kind of solution so I don't have to rename hundreds of assets.
13 Comments
Working in a pipeline where Blender isn't the only tool it is important to have the ability to choose what ever naming convention that is needed to integrate well. My suggestion is to ADD the behaviour to try to find out if the last characters are digits and conform to that pattern (keep padding zeros). If no padding is used or insufficient for the number of copies, add digits. If no digits are used stay with the current behaviour.
As a makeshift solution, instead of naming your object Book_01, name it Book.000 The next duplicate will still be .001, etc., so you get better continuity.
However, considering that the system already recognizes a LOT of stuff when it comes to armature mirror naming (r, l, right, left, all case independent. with no separator, space, underscore, dash or a dot) I really think this should be implemented.
@Viktor Georgiev: Hey Thanks for the tip, I do already use the method as a current workaround plus a program called Bulk Rename to convert the suffix. I use the naming mostly for exporting assets to Unreal and other software so it would make that process easier. And as you said about the Armature axis renamer looks like it has the codes already there in some form so might be a starting point.
You can already let blender increment if you use his way of incrementing.
Instead of using " Book_01 " and expecting Blender to increment that, try " Book " and let Blender do the increment from that.
It may look annoying, but it has an advantage: you can use the object without ".xxx" as a master object. (Maybe you don't need this, but it's there and you still have the increment anyway).
When you're linking your object elsewhere, you would link the " Book " object and keep the " Book.xxx " as versions. That way you just have to "save" your latest object version as the " Book " object and don't have to re-do your link every time you update your object.
It's a workflow among others.
IMO the most interesting thing would be to let the user choose how Blender behaves, and even let the user choose the increment syntax: not everyone to have a dot separator, some prefer underscores, etc... And Some people would envoy more digits, or less, or letters, and maybe other kinds of increments...
For the linking between object and data names, that would be nice to have it. In the mean time, there's an addon for that .
@loic.dautry: Yeah, my idea was more in relation to syntax, I am already aware of the increment method and its a good method but what i was thinking is it would be great if the auto-renaming took into account the current syntax you are using in your naming like it does when you "Save As" and press the + key to increment the version.
@loic.dautry: Also cool thanks for the addon link i didn't know there was one for it so that's gonna be super handy.
Well, I guess that shouldn't be done, because people also want the possibility to have subversions, meaning a manual and static increment on top of an automatic dynamic increment, which would be impossible with such adaptative increment syntax because he will turn the static into dynamic and ignore anything else.
IMO, The best thing should be to be able to set whatever we want in the user preferences.
I'm not a big fan of dots, especially when I have to export models as files, some softwares don't like dots as they are like file extensions dots.
Still a problem for me, i need underscore and digit, first digit is not no digit at all, and not .001 I use blender in a precise workflow and i have to do all the work by hand. autorenaming at import is also a problem
Why isn't this implemented yet ?? it's been 2 years
* @syborg64 * Although my proposal hasn't been added there was a Batch Renamer added into blender that can be used for most of the issues i had and is now what I use. You can find it by searching for batch rename puu.sh/FY3cE/afc4364de1.png
I would like to see new additions added to the renamed however and am going to make a proposal once I work out all the additions
* @TheWizardLord * Cool, and thanks!
I would like to see this feature. It is a must for Blender, to be more useful for people switching from max or maya. Or if ti cant be easily done, then please add multi renamer. It will save lot of time.