Unreal Conventions

/Content/THS/
├── Assets/
│   ├── _Global/                     ← SHARED. Sorts first. Owned by the VFX Sup.
│   │   ├── MasterMaterials/         ← every M_ on the show lives HERE and nowhere else
│   │   ├── MaterialFunctions/       ← MF_ shared graph fragments
│   │   ├── MaterialCollections/     ← MPC_ show-wide look controls
│   │   ├── TextureLibrary/          ← tiling, trim, noise, utility — anything reusable
│   │   ├── Decals/  HDRs/  IES/     ← lighting and surface libraries
│   │   ├── OCIO/                    ← the ACES 1.2 config asset
│   │   └── LookDev/  Utility/       ← turntable rigs, debug and render helpers
│   ├── Characters/<AssetName>/     ← CHR, CRT
│   ├── Environments/<AssetName>/   ← ENV (incl. splats)
│   ├── Buildings/<AssetName>/      ← BLD
│   ├── Props/<AssetName>/          ← PRO
│   ├── Weapons/<AssetName>/        ← WPN
│   ├── Vehicles/<AssetName>/       ← VHC
│   └── FX/<AssetName>/             ← FX
├── Sequences/
│   └── SEQ<NNN>/
│       └── sh<NNNN>/               ← level, level sequence, shot-local assets
├── Levels/                          ← persistent + sublevels
├── Lookdev/                         ← turntables, calibration, HDRI
└── _Dev/                            ← RnD and tests. NEVER referenced by a shipping shot.

Ask one question: if I delete this asset, should this texture die with it? Yes → the asset's own Textures/ folder — a character's UDIM skin, a hero prop's baked maps. No → Assets/_Global/TextureLibrary/ — tiling, trim, decals, noise, utility. Shared across one modular set rather than the whole show? It lives with the kit. Master materials are always _Global; an asset folder carries its MI_ instances and never an M_.

Co-locating a texture does not duplicate it. Unreal assets reference each other by package path, so one texture under Assets/Prp/Crate/Textures/ can be used by fifty materials in fifty other folders. The duplication risk is real on Drive, where a file genuinely gets copied next to each asset; it does not exist inside /Game. So the folder choice is about lifecycle, Migrate, source-control locking and redirectors — never about copies. Type-based layouts suit games and marketplace packs, where almost everything is shared anyway; at series scale they lose on all four.

THS_ never appears in Unreal — and why

Section 6.2 restricts THS_ to whole-document names and delivery masters only. The /Content/THS/ root folder is the project namespace; it is not a filename prefix. Any Unreal asset whose name contains THS_ is a QC error and will be renamed automatically. This is not negotiable — the show code belongs on documents, not assets.

PascalCase, descriptors, variants, and forbidden characters

• ▪AssetName is PascalCase and matches §6.5 exactly. The asset called Scion on Drive is Scion in Unreal. No abbreviations, no renaming at the border.
• ▪Descriptors are PascalCase (_Body, _Skin, _Interior). Variants are a trailing letter or two-digit number (_A, _01).
• ×No spaces, no hyphens, no accents, no double underscores. Lowercase-only asset names are a QC error — Unreal names are PascalCase, unlike the lowercase file tokens in §6.1.

Canonical map tokens — the same list used on disk, in Maya, and in Unreal

ORM is expected and correct here

Packed AO(R) · Roughness(G) · Metallic(B). Unreal is where packed maps earn their keep. The channel map is: R = AO, G = Roughness, B = Metallic. For the Maya-side caveat and the decompose wiring, see scene-hierarchy.html.

sRGB warning — data maps imported as sRGB silently corrupt all three channels

ORM and every other data map (NRM, RGH, MTL, AO, DISP, HGT, OPAC, CAV, MASK#) must be imported as non-colour — sRGB unchecked. An sRGB transform on packed data corrupts all three channels at once and is easy to miss by eye. QC enforces this as a hard error.

UDIM sets — single import, no tile number in the name

UDIM sets import as a single texture named without the tile number. T_Scion_Skin_DIFF covers all tiles — Unreal handles the tile expansion automatically.

M_ is a parent material. MI_ is what a mesh actually uses.

Assigning a raw M_ directly to a production mesh is a QC warning — it defeats instancing and makes a global change impossible. Always create an MI_ from the parent material and assign that.