Improve Work Files tool aesthetics and functionality

[BigRoy]

Issue

The Avalon Work Files tool currently has the barebones functionality and I'd like to make it more trivial to use when working in a scene with many saved versions and files. And I believe it can offer some more things that one might want to use now and then.

Of course #412 is part of improving workflows too. But I think we can do much more.

Here are some ideas:

1. Remove the Duplicate button and add that under "right mouse" functionality on a file to avoid clutter.
2. Merge files of the same sequence. Say you have model_v001 to model_v114 then it would show model v114 and you could expose the other versions by right clicking or something. 95% of the time you're opening the latest anyway. Any reason to NOT do this?
3. Add "date modified" to the view (often requested by our artists). Funnily this is most useful when you don't do 2) or keep it simple to see the visual date differences between this and earlier files. Artists often told me they wanted to quickly see the date differences between different versions.
4. Allow to sort by date modified.
5. Add filter by name field.

The points 2) and 5) really are only useful if uses save with files with different names, which the workfiles currently disallows. It forces you to use a particular file path formatting. Bringing me to point 6). Should we allow work files to be saved as different steps or branches?

So like now you could have a character model that has a scene for character_model_v001.ma and character_model_v002_fix.ma where fix is a comment/description for that file. But what if someone wanted to save "another branch of work" like: "hires", "lowres", "proxy" or maybe just a part of the character "belt" or "head". I'm seeing other pipelines allowing to do so and I'm wondering whether we'd want to expose that too. It seems very logical, we often have artists saving manually outside of Work Files to allow just that.

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Any better ideas? References or design mockups are also very welcome.

[tokejepsen]

I dont really mind any of these improvements. The main purpose of the Workfiles app is to make it easier and quicker to access your work files than the DCCs "Open File"

Remove the Duplicate button and add that under "right mouse" functionality on a file to avoid clutter.

This needs to be explained/obvious to the end user somehow. Too often right-click functionality is lost to the user because its not explained or indicated.

Merge files of the same sequence. Say you have model_v001 to model_v114 then it would show model v114 and you could expose the other versions by right clicking or something. 95% of the time you're opening the latest anyway. Any reason to NOT do this?

Sounds good to me. We already have clique as a vendor to be able to do this.

But what if someone wanted to save "another branch of work"

We have worked with making another task if something needs branching. Maybe its a matter of making the Context Manager able to make tasks?

[mkolar]

1. I like that

2. I did a quick survey in the studio and artists spoke quite loudly against this. They feel it's obscuring and confusing the simplicity it has right now. I actually agree with them on this one. Moreover, what happens when you have my_file_v01, my_file_v02, my_file_v02_testingSomething? The only way to know which is newer is by date, and that doesn't mean it's the one artist wants.

3. Yes, absolutely

4. Totally

5. YES.

But what if someone wanted to save "another branch of work"

Yeah we do this quite a lot for plethora of situations. I'd rather leave this a bit loose. Actually the "snapshot" system that is used in shotgun is perfect I think. People often want to save subversions of their current workfile. Currently we use comment for this, or simple maya "incemental save" but maybe some supported way would be good, on top of comment.

maybe having version, subversion, comment? subversion and comment of coure being optional