Ok this is something i got from Jason Maurer(Faculty Advisor), and i know several of you have seen this but i want to put it out there so everyone can see this cause its very important.

File Naming and Directory Structure

How you name your files on your computer is absolutely essential to your success and survival as a digital based artist. You need to consider your hard drive space like your studio- a clean, orderly studio makes for easy finding of materials and tools; a messy, cluttered one... well you get the picture.

The following are a hard and fast set of rules you will be following during your senior film project. This will be difficult at first for most people, but it is a valuable tool to help you get used to adapting to a structure, which all production houses use in one form or another. The value of setting a universal file naming and directory structure comes when you need to work with someone else or on someone else's project or need to back up or find files when you are half asleep.

Since the production has been broken up into stages, our file names need to reflect those stages. Every file is required to have a version number, a name of what it is, the stage of production it is in and its extension. There are four simple rules to always follow when naming a file.

1. No Spaces EVER in names - use underscores
2. No Files named Test or Final. - Name it for what it is, keep it simple.
3. All Files names must start with a version number.
4. Only one decimal or period.

For Example - The Formula is ###_Name_Stage.ext
001_Bobby_MOD.mb or 002_Suzy_TEX.mb or 052_Shot002_ANIM.mb

Below is a list of stage naming codes for some of the stages that are required

Concept- CON Design- DES PreVIZ- PVZ Modeling- MOD
Uving- UVS Texturing- TEX Rigging- RIG Animation- ANIM
Lighting- LGT Rendering- RND EFX- EFX Fur- FUR
Hair- HAR Reference- REF Layout- LAY Color- CLR
Clean up- CLU Pencil Test- PET Motion Capture- MCP Editing- EDT
Compositing- CMP


-Nick