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Replacing asset alembics with animation alembics
Hi Richard,
first of all - congrats with Prism 2.0, it looks amazing and can't wait to try it.
We are trying to use Prism for non-commercial short movie production as a test and to see if we could use it as our main pipeline tool. I have two questions about it:
- First of all, how do you manage shading-lighting process using alembics? Let's say we have our assets in separate shading scenes with all materials ready and animation alembics in different lighting scenes. How do we merge and transfer shaders from shading scene to lighting scene?
- Is there a way to put camera lens info on the playblast?
Thanks for the amazing job you are doing.
Hey @dovydas,
- I assume you are talking about the workflow in Maya, right? You would export your shaded asset with materials as a .mb file from your shading scene to preserve all the materials. In your animation scene you would export the animated geometry as a .abc file. In your lighting scene you would import the shading .mb first using the Prism State Manager. Then you would select the imported objects and import the .abc from the State Manager. Prism will ask you if you want to apply the .abc file to the selected objects. Then you have your shaded assets with the animation on it.
- Currently there is no option to add custom info on playblasts, but hopefully that feature will make it into Prism 2.0. However there are some MEL scripts around, which allow you to add custom text to your Maya viewport. You could use this before creating the playblast.
Let me know how your tests are going and when there's something to see from your project.
Cheers,
Richard
Hey Richard,
yes, you are right, I was talking about the workflow in Maya. Thanks for such a quick response, it is a big help! Also good idea with MEL script, we will definitely try this out.
Good luck with 2.0 development!
We have tried to follow your instructions, but after applying as cache to selected objects in state manager window, animation is not transferred, we see the same asset with materials but no animation. The process was following:
- publish asset shading scene (.ma)
- publish animation abc
- import shading scene as a reference
- select imported objects in state manager window and import animated abc as a reference
- we select apply as cache to selected objects
- nothing happens
If we import it without applying as cache to selected objects, we can see the animation. Could it be related to abc export? We did not manage to export separate assets from the scene, even if we add only specific objects instead of selecting export the whole scene. It exports the whole scene anyway.
The object hierarchy of the viewport selection and the alembic, which you are going to import has to match exactly.
You can try to import it manually using the Maya import options instead of importing it through the Prism State Manager. That way you can find out if there is a problem with the alembic file or if there is a problem in Prism, when importing the alembic.
Check the "To import an Alembic into an existing object hierarchy " paragraph with the "merge" option.
Quote from RichardF on 28. May 2021, 16:36The object hierarchy of the viewport selection and the alembic, which you are going to import has to match exactly.
You can try to import it manually using the Maya import options instead of importing it through the Prism State Manager. That way you can find out if there is a problem with the alembic file or if there is a problem in Prism, when importing the alembic.
Check the "To import an Alembic into an existing object hierarchy " paragraph with the "merge" option.
You are right, there was a problem with object selection in the scene - at first we selected the whole group and exported it as alembic. And it didn't work of course. Now it works like a charm, thanks for the help!