A good asset name takes about two minutes to think of and lasts forever.
The slug is permanent. Once an asset is published, its slug is baked into URLs, file names, our API, the Blender add-on, and every project file our users have already saved. We do not rename published slugs. The display name can be corrected later; the slug cannot.
The slug is the file name and URL identifier for the asset. It's unique and unchangeable.
Display names are set automatically based on the slug, but can be overridden manually. They're a more human-readable version of it.
| Slug | Display Name | |
|---|---|---|
| Example | weathered_brown_planks |
Weathered Brown Planks |
| What it is | The machine-readable unique ID | The human-readable label |
| Used for | File names, URLs, database keys, Blender datablocks and materials | The website, social posts |
| Allowed characters | a-z, 0-9 and _ only |
Anything, including spaces, punctuation and non-Latin characters |
| Changeable after publishing? | Never | Yes, but it must always be similar to the slug |
These are not style preferences. Breaking them breaks things.
a-z), numbers (0-9) and underscores (_). No capitals, no spaces, no hyphens, no accented characters.cannon.Rule 3 has one deliberate escape hatch: the display name may add punctuation and correct characters that the slug can't carry.
comfy_cafe→ "Comfy Café" andchapmans_drive→ "Chapman's Drive" are both correct. Adding, removing or reordering words is not -food_pears_asian_01→ "Pears Asian 01" is a mistake we've already made.
A good name is simple, descriptive and future-proof.
The test: if someone saw only this name in a list of five thousand, would they know roughly what they were getting, and would the name still make sense when we publish thirty more like it?
Names follow ordinary English grammar. Adjectives before the noun, in the order a person would actually say them.
| ❌ | ✅ | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Watering Can Metal Dirty 01 | Metal Watering Can | A name is a phrase, not a pile of keywords |
| Pears Asian 01 | Asian Pears | Same words, correct order |
| Wall Brick Red Old | Old Red Brick Wall | Read it out loud - if it sounds wrong, it is |
Everything descriptive that doesn't fit in the name belongs in the tags. Tags are searchable, unlimited and free to get wrong and change at any time.
Names appear on thumbnails, in search results, in the add-on's browser and on our socials. Long names get clipped.
Two or three words is the sweet spot. Four is occasionally justified. Five means you're describing, not naming, which is sometimes okay, but avoid it.
Use one adjective. Use a second only when it's doing real work, or to differentiate from another:
peeling_painted_wall - "peeling" and "painted" each change what you'd expect to seedirty_old_rusty_metal_bucket - pick the one that matters, tag the restThe page, the filters, and the metadata already tell people the asset type, resolution, license, and capture method. Putting them in the name wastes your character budget and dates the asset.
Leave out: texture, hdri, model, scan, v2, new, final, final_final_final.
This one is boring, and it is the single most common permanent mistake in our library. We have forrest_ground_01, denmin_fabric_02 and castle_wall_varriation live right now - the display names were fixed, the slugs are stuck that way forever.
If the word is a plant, animal, material, or place you're not sure about, look it up.
These are starting shapes, not rigid templates. Drop any part that doesn't apply.
[Place]+[Subject]+[Time or Condition]
At least one part must tell the viewer what they are actually looking at. A bare place name means nothing to someone who has never been there.
cape_recife_lighthouse, alkantstrand_breakwater, ingwe_beach_dawn, jongersfontein_night, moulton_station_train_tunnel_westBare place names are fine in two cases:
herkulessaulen (Herkulessäulen, the Pillars of Hercules), immenstadter_horn (Horn is the peak), ahornsteig (Maple Path).Indoor and studio HDRIs usually have no useful place name at all. Describe the room: hospital_room, ballroom, abandoned_workshop.
[Modifier]+[Material]+[Surface form]
herringbone_brick, weathered_brown_planks, japanese_stone_wall, stony_dirt_path, teak_veneer, peeling_painted_wallconcrete, dirt - real slugs of ours, and now nobody else can ever have themThe surface form (wall, floor, path, planks, pavers, veneer) is usually what separates your texture from the forty others made of the same stuff. Don't drop it.
[Modifier]+[Object]
cross_pein_hammer, wild_rooibos_bush, digital_wrist_watch, hand_truck, ceiling_fanrock_07, stone_01 - a name that tells you nothing except that there were six before itBe specific about what the object is before you reach for adjectives. "Rocking Chair" beats "Wooden Chair 04", because a rocking chair is a different thing, not a different finish.
Before adding a number, try much harder to find a word. Almost every
_01in our library is a name someone gave up on.
More than a third of our assets carry a number, and 179 of those numbered families consist of a single lonely _01 that never got a sibling. It looks like an unfinished library.
Look at the asset and ask what actually makes it different from the ones we already have. Colour, material, age, style, condition, origin, form.
Sometimes it is. Sixteen rock walls from the same quarry really are just rock walls. When you're there:
rock_wall, not rock_wall_01. The lack of a number means it's the first. Jurassic Park was never called Jurassic Park 1._02, the third _03, and so on. The first is never renamed retroactively - its slug is already published._02, not _2 or _002. We have all three spellings live; only the middle one is correct going forward. If we have more than 99 of the same name, it's probably just a bad name."Chair 005" is a bad name.
"Wooden Chair 02" is better.
"Vintage Wooden Chair" is what we're after.
| Avoid | Example | Instead |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword stacking | oak_wood_floor_planks_brown_interior |
Name it oak_floorboards, tag the rest |
| Brand and trademark names | canon_5d_camera |
vintage_slr_camera - we can't publish someone else's trademark |
| Collection or project prefixes | smugglers_cove_barrel |
tar_barrel - collection membership is metadata, and the site already shows it |
| Capture or technical detail | brick_wall_8k_photoscan |
clinker_brick_wall |
| Subjective or marketing words | beautiful_sunset, best_concrete |
Describe it: coastal_sunset, polished_concrete |
| Version and status words | rock_wall_v2, rock_wall_new, castle_wall_variation |
Say what's different, or use _02 |
| Abbreviations and codes | ind_bg_wall_a |
Write the words out: industrial_back_wall |
| Over-generic single words | rock, wood, fabric |
You're claiming a name a thousand future assets could have used |
| Capitals or hyphens in a slug | ArmChair_01, horn-koppe_snow |
arm_chair, horn_koppe_snow - both of those legacy slugs actively break tooling |
Plenty of our assets are named after places and things that aren't English, and that's good - it's often the most accurate name available.
phalzer_forest, immenstadter_horn, comfy_cafe.Transliterate rather than strip where there's a convention for it (ä → ae or a, ß → ss). Either is acceptable; being readable matters more than being systematic.
Capitalise each word in the display name, except short articles, conjunctions and prepositions in the middle: "Hole in the Wall", "Cape St Blaize Cave", "House of Glass".
This is why the slug is the part worth thinking about. A published slug lives in every URL, download, API response and saved project file that references the asset.
Plenty of existing assets break these rules. They stay as they are - the cost of renaming them is far higher than the cost of the inconsistency. Use them to see what we're trying to avoid, not as a precedent.
a-z, 0-9 and _ only_01, and you tried hard to avoid itNot sure? Suggest a name anyway and flag it during review - it's much easier for us to discuss a name before publishing than to live with it afterwards.