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MAYA - setting the project
Some time back I asked if prism could set the project automatically. That have been a huge help, but also caused a lot of problems because when the freelancers are working on other projects they open maya - prism open automatically (and sets the project) - then they close prism and go on with their other projects, not setting the project path to something else. So quite quickly the shared folder get polluted with all sort of stuff - autosaves, playblasts, caches etc.
I was thinking maybe it could work better if prism set the maya project when opening a scene from the project browser? I think it could limit a lot of those issues I mentioned above.
Also, now that we started using the virtual drive, it's actually not necessary for us to use the set project feature, but it has saved us whenever one of the animators already had that drive mapped and therefore was unable to use the same filepaths as the rest us. Setting the project actually worked as all the references are inside the maya project.
Are you sure they always change the Maya project manually before they work on a different job? If yes, your suggestion makes sense, but I guess there will be situations where they forget to change it.
I could make the "Set Maya project to Prism project" setting an option in the Prism project settings, which can be turned off.
Another way could be: When the Maya project is set to the Prism project and a scenefile outside of the project folder gets opened, a messagebox pops up and reminds the user that the Maya project should be changed.
Yes exactly, I don't think any of them are changing the project themselves. The setting sounds good. The messagebox even better! Maybe there could be a button to set the project back to the default one?
If they never change it manually it doesn't help when Prism sets the project when opening a scene. Even after a Maya restart the Maya project would be set to the Prism project from the previous session.
A popup message with a button to set it to the default location would be easiest way for the artist.
I'll add it to the feature idea list.
Ah I see. I agree a pop-up would be a great solution. Adding the setting as well. Could individual artists change the setting when sharing prism on google drive, or would that change be 'global'? I'm thinking that I would turn it off by default, but then if someone can't use the virtual drive, then as a backup they could have prism set the maya project so that the references will load.
Could be a per user setting.
Do you use relative paths in all your scenes for your references? If you turn off that Prism sets your Maya project, then the relative paths would break.
I'm not using relative path, but found out by accident that if you set the project, and all referenced assets are within that project, Maya will remap those paths - so it actually works somehow.
Ah ok. But it's not possible for you to open a scenefile from an artist, who used that conversion, right?
Yes, it works as long as both have the project set. The paths in the reference editor are all wrong when I open the scene from the animator, but the references load on both my and his computer. Not sure why, but it works... However textures does not work, so there must be a different code for handling the reference paths I think.
I think the cleanest way to work is to use the virtual drive, and not set the Maya project... but this is a good workaround when that is not possible.