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folder filtering for remote artists
I was wondering if it would be possible to add an easy way to filter folders for specific users. At the moment we are using the local folder, and the sharing the main folder on dropbox. The animators have to sync for example render sequences, which is of course not necessary for them to their job and it takes up a big part of their dropbox disk space.
Let's say the main project was divided in seperate folders: Assets, Animation, Renders, Comp, Edit - it would make it easy to only sync specific folders to different users on dropbox or google drive. I'm sure there is a smarter solution than what I propose though 🙂
That's a tough question. Since you sync your project folder with Dropbox, one way would be that Prism would interact with the Dropbox desktop client. For example if a new shot gets created, Prism needs to tell Dropbox that the scenefile folder should be synced to the animator and the renderings folder should not get synced. However it looks like the Dropbox desktop client doesn't allow external tools to control the selective sync:
I don't have a better idea than yours. A different folder structure, where you only need to configure the selective sync once, would be the best solution I guess.
For the future I don't want to hardcode any new structures. I think a system where every team could define their individual structure would be the ideal solution, but building such a system would be a difficult challenge.
Any other ideas how this could be solved are very welcome.
I see what you mean. A good workaround for now for us would be to use the local path when rendering (it then only outputs to the local folder right?) and share the local workspace for all the computers that are here at the office and can access the server where the local folder will be. It limits us to only do render and comp on site, but that would be fine for now, the most important remote work will always be modelling, rigging and animation.
And yeah, dropbox is really bad when it comes to custom setups. A simple ignore list by name or something like that could solve everything. I've been testing "syncthing", an open source p2p file syncing solution. It's actually really good, but I just didn't want to force the artists to learn how to use it, and opted for dropbox. Maybe this could be a future integration software for Prism perhaps? Prism could automatically share and set up sync rules per user based on the user setting (animator, compositing etc.)
Quote from Magnus on 4. October 2018, 12:14I see what you mean. A good workaround for now for us would be to use the local path when rendering (it then only outputs to the local folder right?)
Yes, then the renderings would be in your local folder on the server. This approach sounds like the best solution for now, if the animators shouldn't need configure their selective sync themselves. The disadvantage is that all the scenefiles, which will be saved in the local project folder, are saved on a server instead of the local disk, which could be a bit slower for big scenes, depending on your hardware.
I believe that only a small amount of the Prism users actually uses the "local/global project" feature and even a smaller amount would use syncthing and a feature like user dependent syncing. For me this would be more like a "professional" feature for a custom Prism version for a specific studio and not a feature which I would add to the free, official Prism version.
That's a good point, that the scenes get slower on the server. We'll give it a spin and see if it works.
I totally understand it's not prioritized, however I think there is a big market for you to sell prism to studios - and if you had an easy solution to sync files with remote artists it could one of the main selling points, as this is always a pain in the neck for smaller sized studios to handle - just sayin 😉
That's true, I'll keep that in mind 🙂
+1
+1 specially now with covid forcing studios to finally going remote, BOOM
+1
+1...
Still no changes?