Getting started with Connect/ftrackplugins

[mottosso]

Hi FTrack!

 

I've just gotten started evaluating FTrack and in particular its integration with Maya and I've got a few question marks that I couldn't find any help for in the documentation (here).

 

ftrack version: 2.6plugins version: ftrackplugins-win64-2.6v5.zip

 

Overall, how complete do you consider Connect? I.e. is it production ready? Are there discussion about it taking place elsewhere? What is the target market for Connect, in terms of studio size, production types (commercial, visualisation, film etc.)?

 

Configuring software

 

I noticed that upon launching ftrackLauncher, it could already figure out where to find Maya. I found that the reason it knew about it was due to presets in the apps.xml file (which by the way contains a few details internal to FTrack I would think, such as <location>C:\Users\Erik\Downloads\14.041_RC75733\CINEMA 4D 64 Bit.exe</location>). This is a neat trick, however due to this centralisation I haven't been able to wrap my head around a method of specifying certain versions of Maya to certain projects or assets. Is there a way of doing this or do you have plans to support it?

 

Naming convention

 

Once in Maya, I noticed a particular naming convention taking place on the assets I imported (by pressing the blue import button).

E.g. GEO_Ben_Geometry_AST

Is there a reasoning behind it, can it be changed and should it? I'm thinking it may be related to the assets within the Web interface of FTrack, but haven't yet dug deep enough to find out. How about publishing, can I specify where my assets go and how they are named? In terms of casing, I'd vouch for sticking with either camel_case, mixedCase or CamelCase as opposed to a mixture of them.

 

Import Asset

 

I noticed that whenever an asset was imported/referenced, there was an error in the script editor.

 

# Warning: GEO_Ben Geometry_AST is not a valid DagPath # # Traceback (most recent call last):#   File "C:\Users\marcus\Desktop\ftrackplugins\ftrackplugins\libdir\ftrack\ftrackplugin\ftrackDialogs\ftrackImportAssetDialog.py", line 157, in onImportComponent#     message = ftrackConnector.Connector.importAsset(importObj)#   File "C:\Users\marcus\Desktop\ftrackplugins\ftrackplugins\libdir\ftrack\ftrackplugin\ftrackConnector\mayacon.py", line 178, in importAsset#     result = importAsset.importAsset(iAObj)#   File "C:\Users\marcus\Desktop\ftrackplugins\ftrackplugins\libdir\ftrack\ftrackplugin\ftrackConnector\mayaassets.py", line 26, in importAsset#     self.linkToFtrackNode(iAObj)#   File "C:\Users\marcus\Desktop\ftrackplugins\ftrackplugins\libdir\ftrack\ftrackplugin\ftrackConnector\mayaassets.py", line 217, in linkToFtrackNode#     mc.addAttr(iAObj.assetName, ln="ftrack", sn="ft", at="message")# ValueError: No object matches name: GEO_Ben Geometry_AST

 

Perhaps this is the reason for the next paragraph:

 

Asset Browser

 

I haven't yet been able to get this to display anything, but instead got a message in the script editor whenever I hit "Refresh" (a non-warning by the way, which makes it non-visible unless you explicitly look for it, maybe this should be a warning? E.g. cmds.warning())

AssetLink broken for assetNode GEO_Ben_Geometry_AST_ftrackdata

Editable fields

 

I noticed that I could change the values of various fields in the Import Asset window. E.g. changing the date-value to badly formatted date, or altering the version number to letters etc. It didn't seem to have any effect however; is this a bug or planned feature?

 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 

Best,

Marcus

[Martin Pengelly-Phillips]

Hi Marcus,

 

Some of our clients currently use the integration plugins in production, though many of them fork and extend them. Our end goal is for Connect to be simple to get started and support common useful workflows without much, if any, configuration. The target audience is smaller studios that might not have dedicated development teams (though we plan to make the underlying architecture scale for larger studios as well).

 

However, as you have seen, we are not there yet! We are currently in the process of refactoring the integration and you will start to see new things appear once 3.0 is released later this year. The Connect plugins will also be separated out so you can pick and choose which bits you want and the documentation will be greatly improved.

 

Right now, your main option to solve your specific questions is to fork the code and change it to achieve what you want. If your timescale allows for it though, I would recommend waiting till we can get you a refactored Connect beta to play with.

 

In the meantime, I'll dig into the specific errors you are seeing.

 

Finally, if you have thoughts on how you would like the Maya plugin to work we'd love to hear them!

 

cheers,

 

 

Martin

[Martin Pengelly-Phillips]

Did your asset name have a space in it? Seems that that is not handled properly at present.

[georgea]

Hi,

 

Sorry to barge in but I am getting a similar error when i try to import an asset into Nuke. I received the same error while importing scripts and gizmos

 

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect\ui\widget\import_asset.py", line 211, in onImportComponent

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect_nuke\connector\nukecon.py", line 70, in importAsset

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect_nuke\connector\nukeassets.py", line 375, in importAsset

RuntimeError: P:\000_Jonathan_workflow_v001\Shot0010\nuke\script\Shot0010_comp_v1.nk: Unknown command

 

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect\ui\widget\import_asset.py", line 211, in onImportComponent

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect_nuke\connector\nukecon.py", line 70, in importAsset

File "C:\Program Files\ftrack-connect-package\common.zip\ftrack_connect_nuke\connector\nukeassets.py", line 323, in importAsset

RuntimeError: C:\Users\georgea\.nuke\gizmos\AdditiveKeyer2.gizmo: Unknown command

 

does this line of have anything to do with it? :

 

resultingNode = nuke.createNode(iAObj.filePath)

 

Many thanks,

George