Configurable naming Convention Suffixes for new Objects and Data
When creating new data in Blender with the same name the usual way they named it is something like material, material.001, material.002 ... I would prefer somewhere an option where I can set a string like "_##" and after that, it's going to be material, material_01, material_02 .... material_101 etc. There are a lot of places where that could be used, like new objects, textures, node groups, saved renders, and much more.
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Why this hasn't been made a thing after so many years still baffles me.
Several aspects of blender are able to work with multiple suffixes (ie, bones and L/R mirroring); you're able to specify render output (ie:
myMovie_frame-####).Yet duplication/extension still hard limits you to a
.###suffix!You just don't like periods? Can you give more info on why this would be of benefit?
Yes I don't like periods
Not OP, but when I was exporting files from Blender the . would confuse the OS into thinking that each model had a separate file extension: e.g.: instead of seeing a .fbx as a .fbx file, it would instead see it as a .001.fbx, (.002.fbx, etc) file.
I wrote a python script to replace all the dots with underscores (as OP suggested) and the export process was easy after that, and the OS recognized the files as .fbx
It is similar to using \ as a filepath separator, other programs will interpret that character differently and give you results you don't want.
Underscore is (AFAIK) a platform and language agnostic separator, while Dot is used to delineate folders, filepaths and file extensions
Just as an example: Exporting to Maya will wreck the naming in this case. Maya exclusively accetps name conventions with ASCII characters, digits and underscores. Nothing else. Importing "hammer grip.001" into Maya would result into something like "hammerFBX004355450688454gripFBX9945772387434001". Goes for everything imported. Objects, Materials ...
Yes, it can be changed easily with the Ctrl-F2 menu. Yes, you could script it. But really, it would be nice if the user just had the option to specify naming themselves or at least gave a few more options than just the single hardcoded one. I imagine other programs and such might have compareable limitations.
People using blender as PART OF their pipeline have to consider other software.
In my case, Unreal utilises a
_###suffix in many cases. Particularly if you're adding custom collision to an object, which REQUIRES:[CollisionType]_[EXACT Object Name]_###Now picture how infuriating it is to have duplicated some collision objects, leaving you with a bunch of object names like:UCX_Boat_00.001,UCX_Boat_00.002,UCX_Boat_00.003which you then have to manually faff around with to rename them.Additionally, most people follow naming conventions (whether personal or from their company), and generally prefer underscores and dashes to periods.