Customizable Auto-Name Suffix
When duplicating objects the names are changed to make them unique: Object.001, Object.002, etc.
Being able to chose the pattern for those numbers would save a lot of hassle in game dev where periods in object names can cause problems. So we can have names like Object01, Object_003, Object-003, etc. when objects are created with clashing names.
A simple text pattern in the preferences would do like ".###" would produce the current number.
If the developer is feeling really good the numbers can even be a custom sequence, so objects can be suffixed with an alphabetical order ( Object_AAT ) or hexidecimal ( Object{1A} ) or any other sequence the user could want.
7 Comments
Name - Number Separator Setting I suggested it 100 500 years ago.
After all this time, learning phython, coding my own addons - I have to say that this dot are really handy when u know 100% that name-number saparator is this dot. Lot of addons based on this 100% dot when duplicate and do thing based on dot search result.
This dot looks really ugly but exactly because no one use dot anywhere in name it become easy to search where name and where numbering in addon logic....
yea this would break a lot of addons. it's not impossible, the api could somehow account for it, but it sounds like a lot of work for what essentially amounts to an esoteric preference.
It's not so esoteric any more when you deal with Maya exchange for example. Maya doesn't support anything other than ASCII and underscores. Everything else gets garbled into a mess. This is not something that is annoying when you have to keep track of it three or four times. This is annoying when you have to change it over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. And yes I am talking about my day job.
It's a really important point to consider if Plugins rely on it as an expected connotation, though.
@SpookyDoom A simpler solution to your problem might be to use Bulk Rename Utility (or a similar software) to quickly tweak the names of all the blender-created files at once to names that Maya recognizes. Bulk Rename Utility gives you all the control you could ever wish for when renaming files in bulk.
I know about bulk rename and I use it for that case but it's still an extra step I have to take in every scene that I work with and with every new object that i duplicate when I make changes. The problem with this kind of feature request is not that there aren't any solutions right now. It's that it it a problem that can be very specific to individual workflows. Maya is just an example that is specific to my work in this case.
Though maybe this also means that an export type script would be more suitable in this case. I'd still rather have my software naming conventions synced up from the get go and even in the software while I am working whenever possible, though.
Dealbreaker? No. Could be better? Yes. Though I really understand the plugin problems. Something that's been established for this long isn't going to be remedied easily and it's not a high priority if the benefits aren't worth the amount of trouble, involved. :-/
You talk only about your export case, but " . " used for all types of duplication - mesh data, any data, materials, nodes... This " . " issue much wider than u probably think.
I proposed to change this long time ago, almost no one voted for this. Some guy even posted reply that he start some works on it... nothing was changed for today. When I faced this is issue for me I made custom FBX batch exporter with "replace dot" option :) Not the solution for everyone. Yeah ... good luck in waiting for this feature.
Also touching this: Display duplicate object names without actually having duplicate object names in the system.