Conventions

From 2009 48 Hour Film Project

One of the issues we ran into last year was a lack of standards and conventions. We had problems with finding things or using rigs because we didn't adhere to any kind of naming conventions or interfaces. For that reason, this page has been created

Contents 1 File names 2 .blend files 3 Rigging 4 Shots 5 Audio

File names

• Use lower case names.
• No spaces! Use underscores instead of spaces.

.blend files

• Like file names:
  • Lower case only (except for L/R designation in rigs and possibly templates)
    
  • No spaces
• Use relative paths (exception if going to a renderfarm, but that's a prodution-time issue).
• If a material is re-usable (teeth, eye, mouth interior, wood, metal, etc.), put the material in the materials directory and link to it.
• If a material is unique to the model, linking is not necessary.
• If a texture is unique to the model pack it into the .blend.

Rigging

• Use .L and .R to indicate left and right bones, respectively.
• Use GEO_ as a prefix for geometry bones
• For other bones that animators shouldn't touch, prefix their names with an underscore (_)

• When faced with multiple bones with the same name in a chain (e.g. spine bones) numbering should be down the bone chain to its tip.
• When dealing with multiple bone chains that have the same features (e.g. fingers or more than two legs), numbering should be front to back and inside to outside.
• Bone shapes should be hidden on Layer 20 and not part of the character group that gets linked from shot files.
• Bone layers:
  • Layers 1-8 - body rigging
    
  • Layers 9-16 - facial rigging
    
  • Layer 1 - 'centerline' controls (hips, torso, neck, head, eye target)
    
  • Layer 2 - left arm (FK) and hand
    
  • Layer 3 - left arm (IK) and hand
    
  • Layer 4 - right arm (FK) and hand
    
  • Layer 5 - right arm (IK) and hand
    
  • Layer 6 - legs
    
  • Layer 7 -
  • Layer 8 (normally hidden) - body geometry bones
    
  • Layer 9 - eyes (lids, brows, pupils)
  • Layer 10 - mouth and jaw
  • Layer 11 - general deformation/stretch controls
  • Layer 12 -
  • Layer 13 -
  • Layer 14 -
  • Layer 15 -
  • Layer 16 (normally hidden) - facial geometry bones
    

We need some more bone layer conventions to stick to'. Also if any of the above conventions are unacceptable, please propose changes on the discussion list.

Shots

• Each shot gets its own .blend file in the form of shotXXX.blend (where XXX is the number of the shot).
• The shot .blend files will all be based on an initial template.blend that links in all necessary assets and render settings
• Each shot should start on the frame that corresponds with it's position in the animatic (dictated in animatic.blend)
• With very rare exceptions, everything should be linked into a shot .blend.
• Render resolution will be 720x406 pixels (we will letterbox and convert to NTSC SD at the end)
• Render framerate will be 24 fps (we will convert to 29.97 as the final step)
• Unless bandwidth restrictions dictate otherwise, background plates will be rendered in OpenEXR with at least vector and zdepth passes.
• Background elements belong in the second block of layers  (6-10 and 16-20)
• Foreground elements belong in the first block of layers (1-5 and 11-15)
• Character meshes belong in layers 1-5 while their rigs should be in corresponding layers 11-15
• Final render frames will be in PNG format

Audio

• Since our final deliverable is technically DV NTSC, the working sample rate for all audio is 48 kHz.
• Where ever possible, use 24-bit sound. This will ultimately be downsampled to 16-bit for delivery, but we want to keep greater floating point precision for as long a possible.