Asset Naming & Folder Conventions¶

Audience: Everyone who creates or imports assets — artists, technical artists, engineers, designers.

Owners: Emman (Lead Artist) owns all art-asset naming (materials, shaders, meshes, textures, VFX). Amera (Tech Lead) owns the engineering boundary (prefab names, ScriptableObject names, folder structure that Addressables depends on).

Status: Living.

Golden rules¶

No spaces, no special characters — including slashes. PascalCase only. (See the two violations to fix in Emman's current list, below.)
No version words. No _final, _v2, _FIXED. Source control is your history.
Prefix = type. Owner token = who it belongs to. Folder = where it's grouped.
Numbers zero-padded to the expected max: Lvl03.
Match an existing sibling exactly when unsure.

Naming pattern¶

<Prefix>_<Owner>_<Descriptor>[_<Variant>]

Prefix = asset type (M_, SH_, PF_, SK_, …)
Owner = GEN (generic, used by every faction) or a faction code (KL, SM, FA, BT)

Materials & shaders¶

SH_ = Shader Graph (the master). Controls every material built on it.
M_ = Material (an instance of a master shader; edit it without touching siblings).
Materials are grouped under the master shader they derive from:

`SH_Opaque_TrimSheets`	`SH_Opaque_Tileable`	`SH_Transparent_Masked`
`M_GEN_Metal_Trims`	`M_GEN_Soil`	`M_GEN_Grass`
`M_GEN_Planks_Trims`	`M_GEN_Cobblestones`	`M_GEN_Leaves`
`M_GEN_Wood_Trims`	`M_GEN_Bricks`	`M_GEN_Bushes`
`M_GEN_Stone_Trims`	`M_GEN_Grasslands`	(only when necessary)
`M_GEN_Fabric_Trims`	`M_GEN_Sand`
`M_GEN_FabricElegant_Trims`	`M_GEN_Fabric`
`M_GEN_Crystals`, `M_GEN_Gems`	`M_GEN_Metal`
`M_GEN_Glass`	`M_GEN_Mortar`
`M_GEN_BonesHorns`	`M_GEN_Wood`

Faction code table¶

Code	Faction
`GEN`	Generic / universal
`KL`	Knights of Light
`SM`	Storm Mages
`FA`	Forest Archers
`BT`	Barbarian Tribes

Adding a faction = adding a row here first, before any asset uses the new code.

Prefix table¶

Type	Prefix	Type	Prefix
Material	`M_` ✅	Shader Graph	`SH_` ✅
Prefab	`PF_`	Static mesh	`SM_`
Skinned mesh	`SK_`	Texture	`T_`
Sprite	`SPR_`	Animation clip	`A_`
Animator controller	`AC_`	ScriptableObject	`SO_`
Scene	`SCN_`	VFX / particle	`FX_`
Audio – SFX	`SFX_`	Audio – music	`MX_`
UI element	`UI_`

Texture suffixes¶

_BC base color · _N normal · _ORM occlusion/roughness/metallic · _M mask · _E emissive.

The engineering boundary¶

These names are referenced by code or load systems — renaming them silently breaks the game. Changes here go through Amera, not just art:

Prefab names loaded by Addressables
ScriptableObject names/paths referenced as config
Addressables group names, which should mirror the folder zones above

Validator¶

This doc is the spec; enforcement is a Unity editor validation tool (menu item or pre-commit hook) that flags violations. Until it exists, names will drift. Budget a day to build it.