Using Prism in your DCCs

Introduction

In this guide we’ll take a look at using Prism in DCCs like Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max or Blender.

The following steps assume that you followed the Getting Started guide, where you install plugins, create a project and create some shots.

Opening your DCCs

You can open your DCCs by double clicking a scenefile in your Prism standalone Project Browser.

Inside of your DCC you can find a “Prism” menu in the main menu bar.

Saving a scenefile

To save your currently open scene into a specific task, navigate to the task in the Project Browser and select “Create new version from current” from the context menu.

Versioning and opening scenefiles

After you made modifications in your scenefile you can save it as a new version.

In most DCCs you’ll find a “Save Version” option in the Prism menu.

To open a previous scenefile version you can double click it in the Project Browser.

Exporting objects

Prism exports objects using a tool called “State Manager”.

You can find it in the Prism menu.

In the State Manager you can click the “Export” button to create an export state.

In the settings on the right side change the “Productname” to “geo”.

Select an object in your scene and click the “Add” button in your export state to add the object to the list.

At the bottom of the State Manager enter “Export Kickoff” as the comment and press the “Publish” button to export the object.

You can see all your exported files in the “Products” tab of the Project Browser

Importing objects

Create a new department, task and scenefile under your shot in the Project Browser.

Open the State Manager, expand the Import section and click the “Import” button.

This will open the Product Browser, where you can navigate to your shot and the “geo” product.

Select your shot, the “geo” product and double click the master version or v0001 to import it into your scene.

Creating a playblast

You can animate your object now if you like.

In the “Export” section of the State Manager, click the “Playblast” button to create a playblast state and change the identifier to “anim”.

At the bottom of the State Manager enter “Playblast Kickoff” as a comment and press the “Publish” button to create and save the playblast.

You can view the playblast in the “Media” tab in the Project Browser.

Creating a render

Click the checkbox next to the playblast state to disable it.

Click the Render button to create a new render state and change the identifier to “lighting”.

At the bottom of the State Manager change the comment to “Render Kickoff” and press the “Publish” button to create and save the render.

Like the playblast you can also view the render in the “Media” tab in the Project Browser.

Submitting a render job to Deadline

You can submit render job to your renderfarm if you have Amazon Deadline installed on your workstation.

Install the Deadline plugin from the Prism Hub and restart your DCC.

You will see an option in the ImageRender state to submit the render to Deadline.

At the bottom of the State Manager change the comment to “Deadline Submission” and press the “Publish” button to submit the render job to Deadline.

Conclusion

This concludes the overview of the basic workflow with Prism.

But you only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

Check out the General and Plugins section for details about more features.