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mikedatsik / tk-cinema

Shotgun Toolkit Engine for Maxon Cinema 4D https://www.maxon.net
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Cinema 4D Shotgun toolkit engine

Cinema 4D Shotgun toolkit base on Diego Garcia Huerta Clarisse Shotgun toolkit.

tk-cinema_screenshot01

Overview

Implementation of a shotgun toolkit engine for Cinema 4D. This engine is based on the tk-clarisse engine adapted to Cinema 4D. It supports the classic boostrap startup methodology and integrates with cinema adding a shotgun menu in it's menu bar.

With the engine, hooks for most of the standard tk application are provided:

(Also included a hook that allows to take a thumbnail of cinema window, useful for configuring tk-multi-snapshot for example.)

Note: This engine has been tested in Windows using Cinema 4D R20

Engine Installation

When I started using shotgun toolkit, I found quite challenging figuring out how to install and configure a new tk application or a new engine. Shotgun Software provides extensive documentation on how to do this, but I used the get lost in details, specially with so many configuration files to modify.

If you are familiar with how to setup an engine and apps, you might want to skip the rest of this document, just make sure to check the templates and additions to the configs that might give you a good start.

If you are new to shotgun toolkit, I recommend you to read at least the following shotgun articles, so you get familiar with how the configuration files are setup, and the terminology used:

Here are detailed instructions on how to make this engine work assuming you use a standard shotgun toolkit installation and have downloaded shotgun desktop.

Shotgun Desktop Download Instructions

Configuring your project for Shotgun Toolkit

If you haven't done it yet, make sure you have gone through the basic steps to configure your project to use shotgun toolkit, this can be done in shotgun desktop app, by:

Modifying the toolkit configuration files to add this engine and related apps

Every pipeline configuration has got different environments where you can configure apps accordingly. (for example you might want different apps depending if you are at an asset context or a shot context). The configured environments really depend on your projects requirements. While project, asset, asset_step, sequence, shot, shot_step, site are the standard ones, it is not uncommon to have a sequence_step environment or use a episode based environment either.

I've included a folder called 'config' in this repository where you can find the additions to each of the environments and configuration yml files that come with the default shotgun toolkit configuration repository (as of writing)

configuration additions

These yaml files provided should be merged with the original ones as they won't work on their own.

As an example, for the location of the engine, we use a git descriptor that allows up to track the code from a git repository. This become easy to update whenever a new version is released. So in the example above, you should modify the file: .../game_config/config/env/includes/engine_locations.yml

and add the following changes from this file: engine_locations.yml

# Cinema 4D
engines.tk-cinema.location:
  type: github_release
  organization: mikedatsik
  repository: tk-cinema
  version: v1.0.0

Or in your environments you should add tk-cinema yml file, for example in the asset_step yml file: /configs/game_config/env/asset_step.yml

Let's add the include at the beginning of the file, in the 'includes' section:

- ./includes/settings/tk-cinema.yml

Now we add a new entry under the engines section, that will include all the information for our cinema application:

  tk-cinema: "@settings.tk-cinema.asset_step"

And so on.

Finally, do not forget to copy the additional tk-cinema.yml into your settings folder.

Modifying the Templates

The additions to config/core/templates.yml are provided also under the config directory of this repository, specifically:

templates.yml

Add additional App into Engine

To load Cinema preload plugins, when you add additional applications you must add line with new app name, id, pace in menu.

In file python\tk_cinema\constant_apps.py add following string:

["app name", "id", "pace in menu"]

Example:

["Sync Frame Range with Shotgun", "3366874", "main"],

Configuring Cinema 4D in the software launcher

In order for Cinema 4D to show up in the shotgun launcher, we need to add it to our list of softwares that are valid for this project.

If you want more information on how to configure software launches, here is the detailed documentation from shotgun. Configuring software launches

Caching and downloading the engine into disk

One last step is to cache the engine and apps from the configuration files into disk. Shotgun provides a tank command for this. Tank Advanced Commands

Cinema 4D engine should be ready to use

If we now go back and forth from our project in shotgun desktop ( < arrow top left if you are already within a project ), we should be able to see Cinema 4D as an application to launch.

tk-multi-workfiles2

This application forms the basis for file management in the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit. It lets you jump around quickly between your various Shotgun entities and gets you started working quickly. No path needs to be specified as the application manages that behind the scenes. The application helps you manage your working files inside a Work Area and makes it easy to share your work with others.

Basic hooks have been implemented for this tk-app to work. open, save, save_as, reset, and current_path are the scene operations implemented.

tk-multi-snapshot

A Shotgun Snapshot is a quick incremental backup that lets you version and manage increments of your work without sharing it with anyone else. Take a Snapshot, add a description and a thumbnail, and you create a point in time to which you can always go back to at a later point and restore. This is useful if you are making big changes and want to make sure you have a backup of previous versions of your scene.

Hooks are provided to be able to use this tk-app, similar to workfiles2.

tk-multi-loader2

The Shotgun Loader lets you quickly overview and browse the files that you have published to Shotgun. A searchable tree view navigation system makes it easy to quickly get to the task, shot or asset that you are looking for and once there the loader shows a thumbnail based overview of all the publishes for that item. Through configurable hooks you can then easily reference or import a publish into your current scene.

The hooks provided support all the input reference and import formats from Cinema 4D.

tk-multi-publish2

The Publish app allows artists to publish their work so that it can be used by artists downstream. It supports traditional publishing workflows within the artist’s content creation software as well as stand-alone publishing of any file on disk. When working in content creation software and using the basic Shotgun integration, the app will automatically discover and display items for the artist to publish. For more sophisticated production needs, studios can write custom publish plugins to drive artist workflows.

Only the basic publishing of the current session is provided with this app.

tk-multi-breakdown

The Scene Breakdown App shows you a list of items you have loaded (referenced) in your scene and tells you which ones are out of date. From this overview, you can select multiple objects and click the update button which will update all your selected items to use the latest published version.

tk-multi-setframerange

This is a simple yet useful app that syncs your current file with the latest frame range in Shotgun for the associated shot. If a change to the cut has come in from editorial, quickly and safely update the scene you are working on using this app. Towards the end, it will display a UI with information about what got changed.

This app has been forked so it can include it's own hooks. The original implementation from shotgun software had the engines logic hardcoded, so I went ahead and refactored it to be able to support hooks per engine. You should configure this app from the following repository and branch: tk-multi-setframerange enable_hooks_for_app

The location section for this app should look like:

      location:
        type: git_branch
        branch: enable_hooks_for_app
        path: https://github.com/diegogarciahuerta/tk-multi-setframerange
        version: b24a977

where version represents the commit id. (at the time of writting the latest commit) (note that the hook for cinema is however included with the tk-cinema engine)

For completion, I've kept the original README from shotgun, that include very valuable links:

Documentation

This repository is a part of the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit.

Using this app in your Setup

All the apps that are part of our standard app suite are pushed to our App Store. This is where you typically go if you want to install an app into a project you are working on. For an overview of all the Apps and Engines in the Toolkit App Store, click here: https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/entries/95441247.

Have a Question?

Don't hesitate to contact us! You can find us on support@shotgunsoftware.com