Just to make sure I understand the terminology... when you say
'versionned' referencing, do you mean a workflow that uses controlled
'resolutions'?
-Tim C.
On 5/22/2013 11:30 AM, Jeremie Passerin wrote:
I totally agree with Raff. Versionned reference is the way to go. We
don't have it here either and it's already an issue on some projects.
I am not happy with animators creating local copy of the rigs, but I'm
not with them all day long to check how they work. I discovered they
were doing that, I told them it's wrong...
Cleaning controllers and keyable parameters is my solution too for now...
On 22 May 2013 04:09, Enrique Caballero <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hey Michal,
Your definitely right. Its something we should look into
-E
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:05 PM, Michal Doniec <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
"Eventually we might do versioned referencing but it would
require some asset tracking tools that we just don't have."
I'd start with some off the shelf version control software to
do half of the work for you (perforce, maybe svn etc.), a
rather simple database on top of this and some UI usually does
the job for most cases where assets are not too complex and
relatively lightweight, ie. mesh/rig character type assets.
What I am saying is it doesn't really take much to get a
system like this going and benefits can be potentially really
big.
Sorry for being bit off topic.
On 22 May 2013 10:00, Enrique Caballero
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
We do live referencing here as we don't have much for
versioning control at this small studio. Its worked fine
for us so far as our rigs are pretty simple and eventually
development stops for them on a project.
Eventually we might do versioned referencing but it would
require some asset tracking tools that we just don't have.
We also don't have enough coordinators to keep track of
what shot gets what rig, or the development man power to
update our pipeline.
Tiny shop in Singapore, very difficult to find talented
developers.
Until then I've written a bunch of delta cleaning scripts
that can solve 90% of our issues, and what was most
important for us, was that we are very careful about how
we import referenced models so that
no unnecessary information gets written to the delta. So
if a rig change does happen, the delta wont freak out and
break the rig.
Basically via scripting, I create an empty referenced
model, populate the paths for the rig resolutions, add an
empty delta, set the proper settings, disabling the evil
ones, and then finally setting the active resolution. I
have found this technique to be absolutely essential to
making sure our deltas don't store any extra nonsense in
them that would eventually clash with a rig change.
Otherwise if the animator simply did a vanilla "import
referenced model" this referenced model would have a
delta on it thats fully enabled, and it would immediately
store a bunch of useless crap under stored
expressions/stored positions that would eventually cause
the rig to explode when we did the next rig update.
Aside from that, when something bad happens, I run one of
3 delta cleaners if necessary, but to be honest it hasnt
happened much in a very long time.
I am very open minded, but i also know the animators at
this company very well. If I gave them a local model
pipeline they would bring this studio to its knees and I
would be out of a job very quickly
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Raffaele Fragapane
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
That's only an issue with live referencing, which is a
pretty bad way to go about it.
Versioned referencing will not hold any surprises as
you control when a rig reaches what shots. It's a
matter of asset management, not of referencing VS
localized.
If anything localizing takes a liberty away from you,
it doesn't ADD security :)
On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Sandy Sutherland
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I did - and we locked everything that was not
supposed to move/key. Worked fine and it is not
so difficult to write the tools to do a model
update. Also one BIG plus to this method against
referencing is that you avoid surprises when
something changes in the rig that affects
animation and it gets auto updated in a reference,
THAT has happened to me before, largely due to the
nature of the overlapping schedules we work with
in SA.
S.
On 22/05/2013 04:48, Enrique Caballero wrote:
Jeremie, I considered letting them animate in
local mode but i decided that the risks
outweighed the benefits.
I am just 100% uncomfortable with trusting the
animators with Local models. They will start
deleting objects and changing heirarchy.
So instead I stripped down the rig of
unecessary stuff. I took all the cloth
controls away and seperated it into a
different rig, and then aggressively cut down
the amount of keyable params.
Its at least manageable now.
Are you really comfortable letting the
animators animate local models? I don't think
I could ever let it happen
--
Our users will know fear and cower before our
software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the
dogs they are!
--
----------
Michal
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mdoniec
--
Signature
