Conventions & Patterns

The tools work out the right Material and slot for each texture from its file name. A naming convention is just the rule that describes how your files are named. Out of the box it’s set to Substance Painter, which matches Substance Painter’s default Unity exports exactly - so if that’s what you use, there’s nothing to set up.

You only need this page if your studio names files differently, or if you’re curious how the matching works.

How a file name is read

The tool looks at two parts of each file name:

• The asset name - the part that’s the same across all of one thing’s textures. For sword_BaseMap and sword_Normal, that’s sword. Files that share this belong together.
• The texture type - the part that says what the texture is (BaseMap, Normal, Roughness, …). This is how the tool knows which slot it goes into.

Common naming patterns

These are the kinds of naming the tool can read. The {name} part is the asset name; the {textureType} part is the texture type.

Naming pattern	Example file	Reads as
{name}_{textureType}	sword_BaseMap	name: sword, type: BaseMap
T_{name}_{textureType}	T_sword_BaseMap	name: sword, type: BaseMap
{name}_*_{textureType}	Wood_2k_Roughness	name: Wood, type: Roughness (the 2k is ignored)
T_{category}_{name}_{textureType}	T_wpn_bolt_Albedo	category: wpn, name: bolt, type: Albedo
SM_{name}	SM_sword	name: sword

Note

With underscores in the pattern, the asset name and category can’t themselves contain underscores. Use capitalisation to separate words instead (for example cowboyDorado, not cowboy_dorado).

Matching file endings to texture types

The tool also needs to know which file ending means which texture type. For example, files from AmbientCG use endings like these:

File ending	Texture type
Color	color
Roughness	roughness
Metalness	metallic
NormalGL	normal
AmbientOcclusion	ambient occlusion
Displacement	height
Emission	emission

The full list of texture types is on the Semantic Texture Types page.

Setting up your studio’s naming

You can add your own naming rule from Project Settings -> Art Pipeline -> Auto Material Creator using the New Custom Convention… button - it adds a ready-to-fill rule you can adjust. Give it a name, set the naming pattern, and list which file endings mean which texture type.

Tip

Setting up a brand-new naming rule, especially one with packed textures (like a single file holding several channels), is a good moment to grab your technical artist or a programmer. The naming rules are also saved in a single shareable file, so once one person sets it up, the whole team can use the same one. See the Settings File page.

Hit something annoying? Tell us.

If anything about naming conventions and patterns feels repetitive, fiddly, or just slows you down, that is exactly the kind of thing we can build a tool for. No idea is too small - a lot of what exists here started as someone saying "I wish this just did itself."

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