[Packager] Workflow

Design

by @quentin

User story

We want to go from a maya playblast approved to a usable animation in modo.

This will involve two people, an animator creating a playblast using the packager and a data wrangler exporting all animation from maya from the scene linked to the animator playblast.

Expected result

MDD and FBX pipelined and ready to be imported in modo

Scenario

An animator in maya

• Selects all the assets he wants to see in the playblast
• Hits playblast
• A quicktime is created and added to dailies and movies
• A matching package is created and added to the server

Supervisor

• Ask to add quicktime in edit
• Approves edit (Orally)

Data Wrangler on a tramway machine

• In UI
• Drags and drop package
• Can see the quicktime and check it matches the one approved
• Click open scene in maya
• Maya opens the scene linked to the quicktime
• Launch the animation packager
• The asset needing to be baked are selected
• Click export
• Point cache, Point track, controllers, Camera get exported on the server right away

Interrogation

• What happens if the server is not available to copy the quicktime to dailies and the package to the server

Suggestion

• animator sends package via email

• package get unpacked in dailies, movies and gets copy to package

• What happens if the animator scene is a mess (badly named asset, asset is a proxy and other mandatory stuff)

Suggestion

• Scene gets packaged anyway and if the exports failed the data wrangler sorts the scene out or passe the scene to an animator to sort it
• A sanity check is performed and the scene is tagged as "Dirty" but is packaged anyway
• A sanity check is performed and the playblast is aborted
• Only the asset passing the rules get playblast and the playblast doesnt get approved if things are missing FAVORITE

Possible issue

• Asset badly named
• Mesh renamed
• Controllers renamed
• Wrong scene organisation

Tasks

• Implement export from packager

Reference