Nebula Pipeline Toolbox¶

Introduction¶

This document attempts to give an overview of the Nebula Pipeline and some of the functionality it offers.

In order to get an overview of the toolbox you can also watch the following youtube video

Nebula Pipeline Introduction

What is Nebula Pipeline?¶

Nebula Pipeline is a collection of tools that deploy at different stages of the pipeline in order to effectively manage a CG production by the use of a central database.

The pipeline has evolved from automation attempts done in production. Therefore, The advantage that these tools offers is more due to the fact that it has been used to produced many hours of animated content across artists of various roles and skillset.

Due to the nature of the projects it has been developed to support it is most well-geared towards supporting episodic animations while it has also been used effectively in creation of shorts and VFX features.

How to Read¶

This document briefly describe the various tools that make up the Nebula Pipeline.

In order to put all the tools in context the Background chapter gives an overall view of the pipeline that the scripts can be used together to implement.

The next chapter, The Tool Box, goes on to describe each tool briefly. Each description is aided with screen shots of the UI alongwith a listing of its feature and small description of its usage along with the required software. Each tool description is placed within the context of its use in the production process so a fair idea can be developed of the value it offers.

The chapter History is more like a behind the scenes view of how the pipeline came into being. It could make for interesting knowledge of those who want to have a view of the rather small Pakistan CGI production industry.

Purpose and Audience¶

This document is intended to give an introductory insight to someone who would like to employ the pipeline tools at their studio. However, the brief usage descriptions can also be used by its users to get an idea about the normal operation of each tool.

History¶

Legacy of ICE Animations¶

ICE Animations has been an important contributor to the local animations and VFX industry in Pakistan in a variety of ways. It is one of the few institutions that has actively spent its time and resources in experimenting with growth models.

For example, it has held the reputation of being the place where young aspirants in CG get professional training and their first exposure with local and international clients. Many have moved on to creating their own businesses and on to jobs in international studios.

Similarly, ICE Animations was also the only local studio to train and support a number computer engineers working on various aspects of CG. The pipeline team was also a part of such experiments laid out to improve quality and velocity of production.

Influential Projects¶

On the outset the financial and professional motivation of working in CG is towards the movie and gaming industry in the west, and there have been some VFX features executed locally that address that motivation. But, technically some of the projects that originated closer have been more Influential.

Bankay Mian was a TV show of temporary local fame because it addressed politics via a comical cartoon character, however, there were some technical achievements behind it. Firstly, it involved use of a state of the art motion capture system at that time. However, its pipeline was an important piece of the puzzle. The repetitive and limited scope of the production meant that automation could deliver many minutes of quality content per day with limited computing and human resources.

Mansour was a emirati TV show which required use of same assets over many episodes and several seasons. As more episodic animations project were acquired, the need for a production pipeline emerged to solve the recurring issues. This was a classic opportunity for developing a pipeline and remained the main motivation behind building of a new team.

The Pipeline Team¶

Back in 2012, A new team of raw computer programmers was given the mandate for getting trained in CG software and aimed to address production issues using agile development practices.

The pipeline team started with delivering tools for workflow and automation, addressing specific intra departmental issues. Later the effort focused on creating systems and addressing the pipeline as a whole by arranging tool menus and developing a digital asset management system.

The nature of software projects is such that they are perpetually under development. It requires experimentation and working through failures. So, it is during the course of the last three seasons of the Mansour and other similar projects a pipeline evolved which had a noticeable positive impact in the effective utilization of resources and helping artists focus on creativity.

The Way Forward¶

The local industry in Pakistan has now moved to newer model where the core teams are small and the type and size of projects has either remained unchanged or increased, and there is more reliance on project-based contracts and freelance artists.

While, in the current scenario the need for a permanent team to look after the pipeline has increased, the studios are unable to afford such a team on their own.

One solution could be the model of the electric company where one dedicated team can be used to address the issues faced by many different studios and production teams, and build on the work done over the years. The Nebula Pipeline initiative is an effort that hopes to address this gap of needs with this newer business model.

Background¶

Each tool contributes to a specific stage in the pipeline and some of them are dependant upon the design assumptions and output of the other. Therefore, it is necessary to have an overview of the production pipeline and the context for their development.

This is intended to give an insight to the reader of how the various tools in the pipeline depend on each other and can function together to deliver a production.

No Panacea!¶

There can be many ways of solving a production into a pipeline, while no one solution is good enough for everyone. The effectiveness of the structure of a pipeline depends upon the business model and culture of the organization, its size and the history of the type of projects done under it.

With these factors in mind we shall now have a look at the proposed pipeline.

The Production Pipeline¶

The underlying pipeline can be schematically represented by the following diagram.

Schematic View of the production pipeline¶

Each phase of this image is represented by a circle. The blue boxes represent the artifacts produced in the phase and the grey boxes represent the processes involved to produce them.

Symbol	Meaning
	Pipeline Phase
	Pipeline Process
	Artifacts

Observations¶

Now we shall have a look at some important observations about the pipeline view that this figure represents.

Business Model¶

The image shows the division of the complete production process into three main areas. Pre-production, production and post-production. Moreover, the assets, and production planning have been placed under the production area. This is due to the nature of the projects done at many studios who integrate into the industry as a production service company. This means that the pre-production is done separately either outside the studio or in an art department which employs the services of the production department to get the project executed.

Considering asset development process as a part of production is very useful in this business model. Even in the case when asset development is carried out upstream, there is always some sort of prepping to be done for production. Securing your assets is a good exercise of this business model and helps the standardize the transition into production.

Medium Size Studio¶

The production pipeline that the current batch of scripts supports have been developed for a medium-sized studio.

This meant that teams were organized into departments according to their function in the production process. Each department has a supervisor who is responsible for seeing through their portion of the production with the limited hands at his disposal. One departments output is the input of the other and standardization is needed. This also presents a requirement for departmental review Such a studio is required to develop a pipeline which can be used over several projects of often similar nature.

The second observation of note is that the assets processes are placed separately from the movement and imaging section of the production. This actively facilitates an episodic production where the assets may be finalized once and may be used repetitively inside episodes after relatively.

Type of Projects¶

Types of Projects¶
Type	Animation	VFX
Short	✓	✓
Episode	✓
Feature		✓

Animation vs VFX and Live Action¶

VFX projects are different from animation projects because of their requirement for photorealism. While photorealism brings a certain standard for quality into play it also makes production complex because it is still difficult to achieve.

Production wise it is different because of the dependance on plates i.e. the footage from shooting of live actors or environments. This shifts the focus towards post production as the goal is convincing integration of the plates with the VFX. This means that much of the work is dictated by the look of the final blended frame and many assets may just be 2-Dimensional in nature. This entails a need for fluidity towards the end of production in the hands of the compositor while any rigidity introduced by 3-Dimensionally synthesized assets should primarilly cater for that need.

Episodic vs Feature and Shorts¶

Although animation productions whether Episodic or Feature length will have the same type of skill required from its artists but their production cycles especially related to asset development will differ.

Episodic projects will have assets created once per many episodes or production cycles. Most assets are produced without the knowledge of the role in the script and many times they are used again without many changes across episodes. Moreover, many versions of the same asset may be required in different productions in parallel. While this scenario might be a source for complications, it also provides opportunities for more reuse and thus increased efficiency in utilization of the asset team.

Assets in Shorts and Features on the other hand maybe tinkered with deep into production. Many assets, especially sets and environments, may only be used in once or sequence and thus may constantly require improvements even after being brought into productions, blurring the boundaries between assets development and production processes. This is the reason why we may not find a lot of emphasis on this distinction with shops who are focused on features.

Nebula Pipeline gives importance to the boundaries between asset development and production as it provides an opportunity to formalize handing over of tasks downstream. It also recognizes the requirement for supervisor review and approvals these points.

Timely reviews and approvals will limit redoes to a small stage in pipeline and result in a more efficient production cycle even in a feature scenario. This might mean that an asset becomes less modifiable down stream in production, and thus dictates the need to finalize them before being used in production.

Environmental Effects vs Character Effects¶

Effects that introduce real complexity into a production are the 3D effects that involve physical simulation. To deliver these convincingly requires focused expertise and capable hardware, this is the reason they are expensive.

The software that are required to do these tasks integrate into the pipeline through use of common formats such as fbx and alembic, and thus make the task trivial on the outset. Moreover, the small number of jobs seen alongwith the involvement of the major amount of effort to execute the task itself, it is difficult to lockdown a common strategy of dealing with it.

Character Effects such as cloth and hair simulation on the other hand are recurrent and more fundamental to the asset development process and the production pipeline. The pipeline needs to adapt to the requirements of such effects across all asset and production phases. The tools currently leave space for character effects by allowing multiple geometry sets and standardizing exists only for hand-animated geometry. However, there is room for automation here if such protocols can be agreed upon.

Deployment Architecture¶

The pipeline deployment comes between the users and the Network Attached Storage. The degree of completeness of the pipeline is inversely related to the number of times users need to manually access the data in the Network Attached Storage

$digraph deployment { nas [ label="Network Attached Storage", shape=cylinder, ]; tactic_database [ rank=min, label="Tactic Database", shape=cylinder, ]; tactic_server [ label="Tactic Server", shape=box3d, ]; nebula_toolbox [ rank=max, label="<tb> Nebula Toolbox|{<standalone> Standalone Tools|<dcc> DCC Tools}", shape=Mrecord, ]; dcc [ label="DCC Software", shape=rect, ]; users [ label="Users", shape=circle, ]; {rank=min nas}; {rank=max users, dcc}; subgraph cluster_0 { {rank=same tactic_database, tactic_server, nebula_toolbox}; label="Nebula Deployment"; tactic_server -> tactic_database [constraint=false]; } nas -> nebula_toolbox; nas -> tactic_server; nebula_toolbox -> nas [constraint=false]; tactic_server -> nas [constraint=false]; users -> dcc [constraint=false]; nebula_toolbox:dcc -> dcc; users -> nebula_toolbox:dcc [constraint=false]; users -> nebula_toolbox:standalone [constraint=false]; dcc -> users [constraint=false]; nebula_toolbox:dcc -> users; nebula_toolbox:standalone -> users; }$

Deployment Architecture¶

The Nebula Pipeline makes use of the Tactic CMS to manage its database and to provide production tracking.

Required Software¶

The pipeline tools require the following software to run

Windows OS

Autodesk Maya

Redshift 3D

The Foundry Nuke

The Foundry Hiero

Thinkbox Deadline

Southpaw Tactic Open Source

FFMPEG

Image Magick

The Tool Box¶

The descriptions of the tools has been arranged to be grouped under the stages of the pipeline they address. This can be useful in getting a context for the problem that the tool addresses during production.

Production Planning¶

Planning Phase¶

Episode Planner¶

Episode Planner is a Production Planning tool used for population of episodes from a folder whose hierarchy describes the various shots and sequences of an episode.

Features¶

Populate the tactic database with sequence, shots and frame ranges from

scanning the filesystem

Screen Shot¶

Episode Planner Screen Shot¶

Usage¶

Note

This tool assumes a specific hierarchy which can be achieved from use of templates in conforming software such as Hiero or Nuke studio.

Cut the animatic into shots and sequences, and perform an export operation.
Specify the project and episode from the drop-down list.`
Provides the output path from the conforming software
Hit Populate

Warning

Do not perform this operation after the episode has gone into production. This may make you lose data related to production.

Tip

Use this tool only when the episode is being initiated.

Requirements:¶

Sequence Planner¶

Sequence Planner is an Production Planning tool that runs as a standalone application that helps to associate assets to sequences. This is a necessary step to perform before creating layouts using the Create Layout tool.

Screen Shot¶

Sequence Planner UI¶

Features¶

List all the assets and sequences related to an episode.
Add the required assets under the relevant sequences

Usage¶

Select project and episode from the drop down list on top to populate assets and sequences the top and bottom boxes.
Select a number of assets from the list above and click the + button on the relevant sequence to add the assets to the sequence. The changes are stored in the database immediately.

Requirements¶

Assets Development¶

Assets Phase¶

Assets Explorer¶

Asset Explorer is a comprehensive Assets Development tool that can be used to Create, Read, Update and Publish Assets.

The Asset Explorer is intended to run inside of Autodesk Maya but it can also run on Microsoft Windows as a standalone application.

Screen Shot¶

The Asset Explorer UI running inside of maya¶

Features¶

List all assets, contexts and versions related to a project.
Import, Reference or CheckOut any asset version along with dependencies.
Save assets to the Tactic server along with texture.
Pair assets which quality for cache compatibility.
Publish assets to episodes etc. for use in production.

Usage¶

The typical workflow of the asset explorer can be as follows:

The user selects a project from the listing to get a list of assets from the tactic server.
Filter the assets using the search box on the top of the left most column
Select the context of the asset you need to work with such as model, rig or shaded to show the various versions published to the context.
Select a version and hit the import or reference button to import or reference the required version.
While a context is selected you can use the save button peform Asset Saving.
Right Clicking on a version will reveal the context menu which can be used to either perform Asset Pairing or Asset Publishing

Asset Saving¶

When the save button is pressed this reveals the Asset Check In dialog which can be used to create a new asset version in the selected context from the current maya scene.

The Check In dialog that allows you to save the current maya scene file to Tactic¶

Optionally the user can select geometry from the open scene to export as a Redshift proxy or a GPU cache (alembic) file.

The following behaviours are also associated with file saving:

While saving a file it must contain a geo_set which is a maya set containing geometry nodes which must have a suffix of geoset in its name. The absence of such a set or a presence of an empty set renders the scene invalid and the asset explorer will show an error dialog.
While saving files in the shaded context all the textures referenced in the current scene are also uploaded to the tactic server in the assets texture with their paths being updated to reflect their new location on the server.

Asset Pairing¶

Asset Pairing is the process of finding out if a particular version of asset rig file is cache compatible with a certain version of asset model or shaded file.

Once an asset pairing is performed this information is stored into the tactic database and the asset explorer can then be used to publish the asset to an episode in production.

Note

Asset pairing is not required and unavailable for environment and vegetation asset categories

Asset Publishing¶

A publishing interface showing if the current asset is publishable in the selected episode¶

Asset Publishing is the process of saving a version of an asset for use in a particular element of production most typically an episode.

Note

When an environment is published all the GPU and proxy references containing are also published along with it.

When an asset is published all the files related to that versions are copied to the directory of the particular episode and a versionless current version is made available for use in production.

Note

When a shaded model is published all its referenced textures are published along with it

Requirements¶

Remap Textures¶

Remap Textures is an Assets Development tool that runs inside of Maya that helps artists to adjust paths of texture nodes after they have been relocated to a new path.

Screen Shot¶

$_images/remap-tex.png$

Remap Textures running inside Maya.¶

Features¶

List all the paths in the scene referring to texture nodes.
List all the paths in the scene referring to redshift proxy nodes.
Highlight the missing texture from the paths
Change the path of all the textures to indicate change of location.

Usage¶

Make sure to hit Refresh to show status of the current scene.
The missing texture paths are highlighted.
Provide the new folder locations for the path you want to modify.
Hit remap to chane the paths on the nodes.

Requirements¶

Shader Transfer¶

Shader Transfer is an Assets Development tool that runs inside of Maya which helps in transferring shaders from one maya object to another.

Screen Shot¶

Shader Transfer UI from Inside of Maya¶

Features¶

Transfer shaders and UV sets from single mesh to multiple single mesh
Transfer shaders and UV sets from members of a set to members of multiple sets.

Usage¶

Select Transfer Policy from the drop down list either Single to Single or Set to Set.
Select the source mesh or set and hit Add Source button.
Select the target meshes or sets and hit Add Targets button.
Check the Transfer UVs button if required.
Hit Transfer to start the process.

Note

The number of faces on the source and target meshes should be the same if the shaders are assigned to individual faces.

Requirements¶

Autodesk Maya

Proxy Cache Switch¶

Proxy Cache Switch is a generic production tool that runs inside of Maya that helps users in switching from proxies and gpu caches or changing them from hi-res to low-res.

Screen Shot¶

Proxy Cache Switch running inside maya.¶

Features¶

Switch between proxy and gpu-cache versions of the same object.
Switch between hi-res and low-res versions of the same object.
Change properties on proxy and cache nodes.
Export proxies and paths from the scene.

Usage¶

In order to switch from gpu-cache from proxy, hit the G button in front of it.
To switch from proxy to gpu-cache hit the P button.
To switch between hi-res and low-res, hit the H/L button.

Requirements¶

Autodesk Maya

Asset Categories

Assets can be classified into the following Asset Categories:

Characters
Environments
Props
Vehicles
Vegetation

From the above asset categories only Characters, Props and Vehicles require a rig for animations while Environment and Vegetation only require model and shaded contexts.

Layout and Animation Tools¶

The Layout and Animation Phase¶

Create Layout¶

Create Layout is an Animation tool used for initiating animations the sequence level.

Screen Shot¶

The Create Layout GUI docked inside Maya¶

Features¶

The most prominent features of the Create Layout tool are as follows:

Create the layout file for the sequence by referencing all the required assets from the published stream.
Save the layout Autodesk Maya file to the sequence in the tactic server.
Conform the frame ranges for the scene cameras to sync with those stored in the Tactic database.
Export stills from each shot in layout as preview.

Hint

The Create Layout tool lists and references all the assets published to the episode of selected layout.

Usage¶

The typical workflow of the create layout tool can be as follows:

Select the project, episode and sequence from the drop down list to list all the assets published to the selected episode.
Select all the shots for which the layout needs to be created.
Select and add all the required assets to each shot where they feature.
Hit the Create button to import all the required assets including the environment.
Place the camera and assets on the required location in the environment by moving and keying them in place. Pose the characters, if required.
Hit the Save button and specify the suffix for the name of the layout.

Tip

Selecting all the shots from the drop down list is a standard practice when creating a single layout file for the whole sequence. It works generally because the assets throughout the sequence remain the same.

Tip

Often more than one layout files are created if the environment through the sequence changes. e.g. Interior and Exterior.

Requirements:¶

Multishot Export¶

Multishot Export is a Layout and Animation Tools tool that runs inside of Maya that helps in exporting animation info from sequence level scenes or scenes that contain multiple shots. It works best when it is used on scene which have been created using the Create Layout tool.

Tip

Multishot Export works best when dealing with scenes created by the Create Layout tool

Screen Shot¶

Multishot Export tools running inside maya.¶

Features¶

List the shots present inside the current animation scene.
Switch from one shot to another
Export the following from all or multiple shots in your scene + Point Cache for each or selected character, prop and vehicle + Preview for each camera in the scene. + Maya and Nuke format camera

animation.
Burn overlays onto the preview showing useful information about the shot.

Output of the multishot export showing info using Overlays¶

Export the output directly to tactic server or export to a local directory.
Defer the extraction to a multshot Deadline pool to save time for artists.

Tip

Save your machine time by offloading preview, cache and cam extraction tasks to deadline

Usage¶

Fire-up the multishot export in an animation or layout scene, which has preferrably been created using the Create Layout tool. Multishot will show the project, episode and sequence information stored in the scene.
Select the shots you want to work with from the drop down list at the bottom.
For each shot select the rigs whose cache you wish to export.
For each shot select the display layers you want to make appear in the preview video.
For each shot you can choose if you want to bake and export the camera.
To perform extraction do:
- Either Hit Export to begin extraction immediately
- Or Hit submit to defer the extraction procedure to the multishot deadline tool.

Requirements¶

Moctor¶

Moctor or MOCap TO Rig is an Animation tools useful in retargetting motion capture or skeleton data from other sources onto a rig such as Advanced Skeleton

A popular use case is to use Mixamo downloads to map onto advanced skeleton <https://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton>. This functionality can be extended to other input and output hierarchies.

Screen Shot¶

Moctor (MEL-based) UI running inside of maya¶

Features¶

Prepping Rig for retargetting
Importing Motion Capture (skeleton-based) animation data into maya.
Retargetting imported animation data on to a rig using Maya’s HumanIK technology.
Baking animation data on the rig controls.
Clean up rig scene after animation import.

Usage¶

Specify the mocap mapping name from drop down menu
Provide Path for the fbx file.
hit Import Mocap to import the fbx file.
hit Goto T-pose Frame to go to frame 0
If the mocap data does not contain the T-pose frame on frame 0. You should create one by hitting Mocap Zero Out, Fix Mocap T-pose, Set Key
Specify the Rig mapping.
Provide the path for rig.
hit Import Rig to reference the scene file onto the current scene.
If the T-pose is not proper hit Fix Tpose button on the rig side to fix it.
Now we have both mocap and Rig in T-pose. Now hit Map Both to HIK to perform retargetting onto the rig. The rig should now have animation mapped onto it.
Hit Bake Animation and Cleanup Both HIK button to bake and cleanup the scene.
Now you use Delete Mocap to remove mocap data from scene.
If required use the Import Rig Reference button to import the rig and remove namespace.
Select Rig Controls button can be useful when exporting animation data for posing tools such as studio library

Requirements¶

Autodesk Maya

Lighting and Rendering Tools¶

The Lighting and Rendering Phases¶

Add Assets¶

Add Assets is a Lighting and Rendering Tools intended to be used at the time of lighting scene assembly. This tool runs inside of Maya in order to import assets into the current scene.

Screen Shot¶

Add Assets UI running inside of maya¶

Features¶

List publised assets for one of more sequences according to the specified context out of rig, model, shaded and shaded/combined
Select and Reference all the required assets with multiplicity

Usage¶

The add assets tool fetches the projects and sequence from the and when the user selects a sequence to work with, all the assets available for that sequence are listed.

Select a project from the drop down, the episodes drop down will be populated from the Tactic server.
Select an Episode from the drop down to populate the sequences.
Select one of more sequences to list all assets of the given context.
Change the context from the drop down on the bottom to fetch the list of relevant files.
Select the required assets, specifying the number of instances in front of it.
Hit the reference button to reference all the specified assets into the scene in one go.

Requirements¶

Setup Master Scene¶

Setup Master Scene is an Production Planning tool that runs as a standalone application that helps to associate assets to sequences. This is a necessary step to perform before creating layouts using the Create Layout tool.

Screen Shot¶

Setup Master Scene UI from Inside of Maya¶

Features¶

Prep the Environment in the scene for Rendering
- Setup Beauty and Occlusion render layers with proper material overrides.
- Add relevant lights and meshes to the scene
- Setup parameter sets for the environment such as Env_Smooth_Set, Env_Matte_Set and Env_Vis_Set
Setup Characters for Rendering
- Setup Beauty and Shadow render layers.
- Add character Lights to the render layers
- Add passes such as Puzzle Matte object and material Ids.
- Setup environment parameter sets for interaction with environments
- Setup parameter sets for the characters such as Char_Smooth_Set, Char_Matte_Set and Char_Vis_Set

Usage¶

Add all the required assets to a maya scene using the Add Assets tool which can also be invoked from the Sequence Assets button.
Create a group called characters and add all the mesh node of the characters, props and vehicles to this group
Create a group called environment and add all the mesh node from the environment to this group.
Create a group called env_lights and add all the environment lights.
Create a group called char_lights and add all the character lights.
Choose the resolution from the drop down list and Check all the options you want in the setup!
Hit the Start button to setup the master scene.
If so required, add an optional fresnel render layer by hitting Fresnel button.

Requirements¶

Create Shots¶

Create Shots is a Lighting tool intended to help lighting artists in creating the scene file for each shot after a master file for the sequence has been created.

Screen Shot:¶

The Create Shots tools running inside Maya¶

Features:¶

Generate multiple lighting scene assembly for shots from a master shot.
Automatically find and replace available caches.
Create collage using the output of stills from the shots in order to check the files.

UI for modifying the mapping for create shots¶

Modify mapping between objects and caches found on storage.

Usage:¶

Create a sequence “Master Scene” using Add Assets and Setup Master Scene scripts.
Provide a shots dir to scan and populate shots in the drop down.
Select the shot(s) for which the scenes are to generated.
Check on Create Files and Create Collage as required.
Hit Start.
When the mapping UI shows up adjust the mappings and select the appropriate name for the layers from the list. Press OK to proceed.

Requirements:¶

Matte IDs¶

Matte IDs is a tool for Lighting and Rendering Tools artists that runs in Maya. It is useful in helping organizing object and material ids into AOV channels.

Screen Shot¶

The Matte IDs UI running inside of Maya¶

Features¶

Create New Matte AOVs of material or object type.
List Unassigned materials and objects.
Assign Material to each channel of the id.

Usage¶

Switch Mode to Material IDs or Object IDs by hitting the button at the bottom.
Hit Refresh to List all the assigned and unassigned materials / objects
Select Unassigned materials from the list on the bottom and hit Add Selection to assign redshift AOV channels to the ids
Drag and Drop in the table to shift around IDs in AOVs.

Requirements¶

Redshift AOV Tools¶

Redshift AOV Tools is a Lighting and Rendering Tools collection of some simple but useful important automations which help you in building redshift rendering scenes. This tool also helps in setting up rendering standards that are of great use in Post Production

Screen Shot¶

Redshift AOV Toolbar in the middle¶

Features¶

Add all the required passes to the scene as required
Add Matte ID AOVs such as Material IDs and Object IDs.
Set the AOV and filename prefixes in order to have consistency in render output naming.

Usage¶

Click on the buttons to perform the changes in a maya scene.

Requirements¶

Autodesk Maya

Pre-CC¶

Pre-CC is a tool used by rendering artists to automatically composite the render output to allow to check visually for errors and missing frames.

Note

This program invokes Nuke in the background to perform the composite.

Screen Shot¶

Pre-CC Screen Shot¶

Features:¶

Generate composited outputs from renders from sequences by scanning the file system.
Add overlays on the output describing the shot and frame #
Ability to control composite method using underlying nuke scene

Output of Pre CC played in QuickTime with overlays¶

Usage¶

Pre-CC while creating comps¶

Provide the path for a sequence for render location.
Select shots that need to be checked
hit Start.

Requirements¶

Windows
Nuke

Scene Bundle¶

Scene Bundle is an rendering tool that runs inside of Maya and as well as a standalone application that helps rendering artists to bundle their scenes by copying all its requirement into a single packet and sending them as source for rendering jobs on the deadline cluster.

Screen Shot¶

Remap Textures running inside maya.¶

Features¶

Collect all dependencies from a rendering scene to a single maya project folder called a bundle.
Create an archive from the bundle
Copy the bundle to an appropriate location ready for rendering.
Send a job to the deadline according to predefined parameters.

Usage¶

Provide a name for the bundle.
Provide a location for the bundle most suitable for collection. This location should have ample disk space to collect all the dependencies.
If you intend to bundle the current scene check current scene check else provide a list of scenes to process.
If submitting to deadline provide the project, episode, sequence, and shot information either by drop down or by clicking on the list and using the UI that appears.
Hit Create to start the bundling process.
Attend to ignore or raise the appearing error prompts if any.

Requirements¶

Post Production¶

The Post Production Phase¶

Backdrop Tool¶

The Backdrop Tool is a set of compositing scripts that help automate the process of compositing from inside Nuke.

Screen Shot¶

The Backdrop tool UI inside of Nuke¶

Features¶

The features have been presented below under Backdrop Tools and Read Node Tools according to the context of their actions.

Tip

Arrange all the nodes from one shot into a single Backdrop node in order to gain advantage of all the Backdrop Tools

Backdrop Tools¶

Replace Read Path: Given a backdrop containing the network of nodes that can render one shot perfectly, The Replace Read Path feature can either replace all the relevant knobs of the read and write nodes with the render output related to another shot or replicate this layout for other shots by scanning the render output on the provided path.
Add Write Node: Given a node under selection one can add a write node after it and replace its knobs with the appropriate ranges and output paths.
Replace Cameras in Backdrop: Given a backdrop containing a camera node, the node is replaced by appropriate camera for the given shot.
Replace Render Layer: Detects all the render layers being used in the current selection / backdrop and replace the render layers with the other ones that are available in the file system containing the render outputs

Read Node Tools¶

Select Error Nodes: Select all the Read nodes which have error.

Tip

Use the Select Error Nodes feature to select all the nodes that have error and then use them in tandem with the rest of the tools to change them all at once.

ReRead Frame Range: Update frame range on the selected read nodes by scanning the filesystem.
Set Nearest Frame: Change the on error behaviour of the selected nodes to nearest frame.
Auto Increment Save: Automatically save the current nuke script after the given interval.
Red To Default: Change the color of the red or error nodes to default.

Hint

All the tools present under Read Node Tools work selected read nodes in nuke.

Third Party Tools¶

The following 3rd Party Tools can also be invoked from this UI for easy access.

RenderThreads: This is a popular rendering scripts available on Nukepedia which can be used to perform renders asynchronously

Requirements¶

The Foundry Nuke

The Last Word¶

This guide is just an introductory documentation of the tools at hand. There is need for more literature in terms of more user and developer documentation which is required to make a complete product out of this effort.

As more well rounded efforts are done to standardize the underlying library and more back-ends are integrated, the need for comprehensive documentation is also mandatory.

Please send any questions and corrections to Talha Ahmed