These are guidelines for keeping your project organized and allow your team to quickly find the assets they need. Games are large projects that span several months, thus having standardized conventions that make sense will avoid headaches in the long run.
Note that your team and project might have different needs, use different software, etc. Use this guide only as a base to decide on what works for your team. Every project should have its own, easy to find, style guide, so everyone in the team is up to date in the project's conventions.
First of all, no\ spaces\ on file or directory names.
PascalCase
Prefer a deep folder structure over having long asset names.
Directory names should be as concise as possible, prefer one or two words. If a directory name is too long, it probably makes sense to split it into sub directories.
Try to have only one file type per folder. Use Textures/Trees, Models/Trees and not Trees/Textures, Trees/Models. That way its easy to set up root directories for the different software involved, for example, Substance Painter would always be set to save to the Textures directory.
If your project contains multiple environments or art sets, use the asset type for the parent directory: Trees/Jungle, Trees/City not Jungle/Trees, City/Trees. Since it makes it easier to compare similar assets from different art sets to ensure continuity across art sets.
[PascalCase]
This signifies that the folder only contains assets that are not ready for production. For example, having an [Assets] and Assets folder.
Use the naming convention of the programming language. For C# and shader files use PascalCase, as per C# convention.
Use tree_small not small_tree. While the latter sound better in English, it is much more effective to group all tree objects together instead of all small objects.
camelCase where necessary. Use weapon_miniGun instead of weapon_gun_mini. Avoid this if possible, for example, vehicles_fighterJet should be vehicles_jet_fighter if you plan to have multiple types of jets.
Prefer using descriptive suffixes instead of iterative: vehicle_truck_damaged not vehicle_truck_01. If using numbers as a suffix, always use 2 digits. And do not use it as a versioning system! Use git or something similar.
_snake_case
Use a leading underscore to make object instances that are not specific to the current scene stand out.
[SNAKE_CASE]
Enclose objects that are only being used for debugging/testing and are not part of the release with brackets.
Root
+---Assets
+---Build
\---Tools # Programs to aid development: compilers, asset managers etc.
Assets
+---Art
| +---Materials
| +---Models # FBX and BLEND files
| +---Textures # PNG files
+---Audio
| +---Music
| \---Sound # Samples and sound effects
+---Code
| +---Scripts # C# scripts
| \---Shaders # Shader files and shader graphs
+---Docs # Wiki, concept art, marketing material
+---Level # Anything related to game design in Unity
| +---Prefabs
| +---Scenes
| \---UI
\---Resources # Configuration files, localization text and other user files.
Assets
+---Art
| +---Materials
| +---Models # FBX and BLEND files
| +---Music
| +---Prefabs
| +---Sound # Samples and sound effects
| +---Textures
| +---UI
+---Levels # Unity scene files
+---Src # C# scripts and shaders
| +---Framework
| \---Shaders
Use namespaces that match your directory structure.
A Framework directory is great for having code that can be reused across projects.
The Scripts folder varies depending on the project, however, Environment, Framework, Tools and UI should be consistent across projects.
Scripts
+---Environment
+---Framework
+---NPC
+---Player
+---Tools
\---UI
Separate files from the modelling program and ready to use, exported models.
Models
+---Blend
\---FBX
File extension: FBX
Even though Unity supports Blender files by default, it is better to keep what is being worked on and what is a complete, exported model separate. This is also a must when using other software, such as Substance for texturing.
Use Y up, -Z forward and uniform scale when exporting.
File extension: PNG, TIFF or HDR
Choose either a Specularity/Glossiness or Roughness/Metallic workflow. This depends on the software being used and what your artists are more comfortable with. Specularity maps have the advantage of being having the possibility to be RGB maps instead of grayscale (useful for tinted metals), apart from that there is little difference between the result from either workflow.
| Suffix | Texture |
|---|---|
_AL |
Albedo |
_SP |
Specular |
_R |
Roughness |
_MT |
Metallic |
_GL |
Glossiness |
_N |
Normal |
_H |
Height |
_DP |
Displacement |
_EM |
Emission |
_AO |
Ambient Occlusion |
_M |
Mask |
It is good practice to use a single texture to combine black and white masks in a single texture split by each RGB channel. Using this, most textures should have:
texture_AL.png # Albedo
texture_N.png # Normal Map
texture_M.png # Mask
| Channel | Spec/Gloss | Rough/Metal |
|---|---|---|
| R | Specularity | Roughness |
| G | Glossiness | Metallic |
| B | Ambient Occlusion | Ambient Occlusion |
- For character materials use the
Bchannel for subsurface opacity/strength - For anisotropic materials use the
Bchannel for the anisotropic direction map
File extension: INI
Fast and easy to parse, clean and easy to tweak.
XML, JSON, and YAML are also good alternatives, pick one and be consistent.
Use binary file formats for files that should not be changed by the player. For multiplayer games store configuration data on a secure server.
File extension: CSV
Widely used by localization software, makes it trivial to edit strings using spreadsheets.
File extension: WAV while mixing, OGG in game.
Preload small sound clips to memory, load on the fly for longer music and less frequent ambient noise files.
The point of having style guidelines is to have a common vocabulary of coding so people can concentrate on what you're saying rather than on how you're saying it. We present global style rules here so people know the vocabulary, but local style is also important. If code you add to a file looks drastically different from the existing code around it, it throws readers out of their rhythm when they go to read it. Avoid this.