Thought I’d take some time to detail the basic naming conventions I used to organise the model – dry stuff I know, but very useful.
I started by grouping the model into what its key repeating sections were, along with misc/unique sections, namely:
- ArchSection (AS for short in naming)
- SlopeSection (SS for short – the section inbetween each ArchSection with many sloping roofs)
- DomeSection (DS)
- Floors (pretty self-explanatory – the smallest section as it contains effectively only the main building floor)
- ExteriorSection (when I finished the modelling of this area)
These were further broken down into groups for each individual repeating element, which were further broken down into sub-groups if they appeared multiple times in different locations – such as the square windows in the ArchSection. For these, the same model was being used but multiple times within it’s own larger section.
As most sections had clearly definable sub-sections (such as DomeTop, DomeMid, DomeLower), appropriate subsection names were used for the objects.
The naming convention for each object therefore followed:
SubSection/Section_Modeltype_ModelSubType_Location(if applicable)Section#
For example, for the window objects that appear in the DomeTop section, these would be called:
DomeTop_Windows_1
In this case, there was no sub-type. An example of one with a sub-type would be the top one of the outer arched roofs for the ArchSection. This would follow:
AS_ArchRoof_Outer_Top1
The section is ArchSection (AS), it is an ArchRoof, it’s the variation found on the Outside (Outer), and it appears at the Top, within the overall Section 1.
For where there were multiple locations of the same physical model type, a suffix of ‘A’ in the Location slot was taken as the lowest to the ground, proceeding through the alphabet for each one higher. For example:
AS_ArchWindows_A1, would be at the bottom, with AS_ArchWindows_B1 immediately above it.
This may all seem very confusing, but in practice, it was very straightforward (if time-consuming) to implement and allowed me to keep track of each of the many individual building elements – invaluable when it came to UV mapping.
Stuart McInnes 