Use lists as an attribute and expressions using children of a shot

[pierre]

Hey guys
We do use versions lists extensively in Ftrack, and we find some limitations that seem to be a question of design.
Let me explain:
we put some versions of shots (rendered images) in lists so we have grouped action on them:
-we do lists for previz, for review with customers, and for temporary and final delivery ( each action has a dedicated list type).
-we have some dedicated tools that load lists versions, and do some tasks : generate copy scripts, batch encode quicktime with specific parameters and luts, generate delivery scripts.

Finally, the lists tends to be the memory of past actions on the versions.

Based on that we would like to be able to do multiple things that seem impossible:

On the versions spreadshhet, we would like to be able to easily get in which list each version appears, by list type, to know if a version has been reviewed or delivered for example.
->there seem to be no direct link beetween the versions and the lists they appear in, we need to query the lists and check if the version is in it, not very efficient, and totally needs external code analysis
What would be fine is the lists that include a version would appear as built-in attributes of the version (so we could filter on it) directly in the speadsheet

On the shots level
There is something we'd really like to do is to be able to display on the shot level, stuff that is the result of analysis on children versions or tasks taht are in the shot.
For example, on the shot level we would like to be able to display the latest version of 2D compo that is part of a "delivery" list 

More generally, on the shot level spreadsheet, we would like to be able to display information that is the result of an analysis on shot children (latest version of a give task type, status of a give task etc..)

Our goal is to be able to display on the shot level all relevant informations to know, what was reviewed last, what was delivered last, and what is the latest published thing...

 

So far our tools are designed to write  text information on some shot's custom attribute each time an action is performed, but it sounds odd to create text items instead of dynamically linking on real database assets.

[Mattias Lagergren]

Hi Pierre,

There are some features that has recently been released and some that we are currently developing/discussing:

* With 3.3.17 came the ability to write advanced custom filters that take advantage of our new api syntax. With this you can e.g. filter out versions that are in a certain list or in no list: "not lists any ()". As you can see it is rather technical but you can save these filters into views and share the views. 

* We're also discussing a new type of custom attributes that uses ftrack events to calculate values remotely. This could be used to do custom things like "display the latest version of 2D compo that is part of a "delivery" list".

 

[pierre]

Hey, thanks for your reply

I've been testing the "Api-like" like filtering on 3.3.16 on my staging server but didn't manage to access the list filtering you mention, i'll upgrade to 3.3.17 and check again.

The filtering is cool, but it will only filter (i mean it won't let us return the lists names), so we'll know the version is in a list, but not in which list..  pretty frustrating

About the second part, I know this will be ressource demanding, but clearly the shot lacks of "global information" coming from its children, calulating it remotely may be the solution.

 

Today we use an external app we've built, only to gather stuff from ftrack and build a display that perfectly fits our needs on the shot level, this is very slow as it goes trhough api and mono-threaded connection, we can only use it as a "reporting" tool.

Our goal is to get rid of this (we don't wan't o build another ftrack that sits next to ftrack    )

 

Edit: staging was on 3.3.17 already, "not lists any ()"   works,  is there a reference of the hierarchy of items available though the new API ?

[Mattias Lagergren]

Quote

About the second part, I know this will be ressource demanding, but clearly the shot lacks of "global information" coming from its children, calulating it remotely may be the solution.

Yes, hopefully this can provide enough flexibility for you! This is something we're still discussing internally.

Quote

Today we use an external app we've built, only to gather stuff from ftrack and build a display that perfectly fits our needs on the shot level, this is very slow as it goes trhough api and mono-threaded connection, we can only use it as a "reporting" tool.

Our goal is to get rid of this (we don't wan't o build another ftrack that sits next to ftrack   )

We're currently looking into better ways to do more powerful custom (iframe) widgets in our UI and also in the future a Javascript API (same endpoint and operation support as the new ftrack-python-api) that you can use. With the API you get the same tools as we have when we build our application.

[pierre]

Thanks

Staging was on 3.3.17 already, "not lists any ()"   works,  is there a reference of the hierarchy of items available though the new API ?