Naming Conventions in Autodesk Maya

 When I was first learning maya, my classmates and I messed up the naming conventions a lot.  Especially when we were leaning animation and tried to bring reference into the maya scene.  I have spent hours troubleshooting why my reference won't appear in maya to learn that it was simply because it did not like what I named all of my tiffs. 

So what does maya not like in naming conventions? It's very simple once you know what to use and what not to use. 

1. DO NOT have slashes.  PC and One Drive do not like slashes and it will not sync
2. ONLY use underscores!
1. Quick note about underscores, some maya naming conventions cannot have underscores either such as bringing in an image sequence.
1. For image sequences use something like this: Project1ref
3. NEVER name an objects or cameras Render.  This is more for in your actual maya scene but if you name something Render and you go to render your scene it will crash.  This happens because the code to render gets confused since it uses render to render.