User Interface
A user interface provides functionality for users for a specific program. Most programs provide sufficient functionality, but often custom tools need to be developed to provide greater use and/or ease.
As of Winter 2014, the two main programs BYU Animation uses for our films are Autodesk Maya and Side Effects Houdini. This page will describe the additional functionality for the user interface developed in our production pipeline. More to come soon. These are saved in current versions of Maya and Houdini called Ramaya and Ramdini, respectively.
Within Ramaya, the production pipeline has created a number of tools to use:
- Brent Button (Brent's face): gives you an inspirational quote from Brent. Now get back to work.
- Check Out Button (Down arrow): takes you to a list of assets that are available to checkout.
- Check In Button (Up arrow): takes the asset that is currently checked out, saves the changes in the repository, and releases the asset for others to use.
- Discard Button (Trash can): releases the asset for others to use without saving the changes in the repository.
- Rollback Button (Cinammon roll?): rolls back the current asset to a previous version. More on this later.
- Bug Button: Creates an window to send an email for bug reports.
- Tag Alembic Button (Alembic logo): tags object for alembic export. More on this later.
- Untag Alembic Button (Alembic logo with "no" symbol): untags geometry for alembic export.
- List Alembic Button (Alembic logo with "LS"): Lists the objects in the scene available for export.
- Export Alembic Button (Alembic logo with "EX"): Exports alembic for selected objects.
- Playblast Button (Camera): Creates a playblast, either simple or GL.
- Asset Issue (Garrett Hoyos): Submits an email to Garrett for asset issues.
- Rename/Delete Shots/Copy Animation from Previs (Radioactive symbol): Allows shots to be renamed/deleted, and also copies animation from previs shots to animation shots. More details soon.
Each film has a repository that stores all of the film's assets: geometry, textures, sounds, shots, lighting, etc. To prevent two people working on the same asset at the same time (and causing all kinds of problems), only one copy of an asset is available to work on at a particular time. This is where the Check In/Check Out buttons comes in.
When someone presses the Check Out button, this menu appears:
This is a list of all of the assets being produced for Owned. Notice that there are options near the bottom of the menu to switch being lists of geometry, rigging, and animation. The Get Info button displays a window that describes if an asset is currently checked out, who last checked in the asset and at what time.
If an asset is currently checked in by someone else and it is necessary to grab the asset, the Unlock button will force the asset to be unlocked so it can be used. Currently this tool is not fully developed, so the Unlock button should not be used. Do your best to communicate with those who have checked out the asset if it is needed.
When an asset is selected, the asset will then be loaded into Maya.
This also tags the asset so it cannot be checked out by anyone else until the asset is checked back in. Notice also that the Maya .mb file is saved in your users file in the repository. This is one way to retrieve a file when working on it later. When an asset is checked back in, an empty folder remains in the sub-directory. (That is the case in the below image.)
Multiple items can be checked out at any given time. For the sake of everyone else, be judicious and timely with what you have checked out so it is available for others to use. If two items are checked out after another session, clicking "Check Out" will return the asset back to Maya, albeit without any changes that were made after its' initial checkout.
When you are finished working on the asset, clicking the Check In button will commit a version of the asset to the repository, release the asset for others to use, and update the information for who last checked out the geometry (you). For your edification: notice in the image below that when an asset is checked in, that version of the asset is saved in a new folder in the repository. ("v20" was created when Abbey's controller was checked in.) This allows us to reference past versions if something in the future goes wrong. See the section on the Rollback button for more information.
![Example of source folder version being saved.] (https://students.cs.byu.edu/~beisbeis/owned/wiki/images/mayaToolbar/checkOutVersion.png)
The Discard button discards the changes made to an asset, and releases the asset back to the server.
The discard menu is fairly self-explanatory. Pressing Brent provides an inspirational quote to get your head back in the game. Pressing No exits the menu if you have a change of heart about your work. Pressing Yes discards the changes.
Every time an asset is checked in, a new version of that file is created. For everything but rigs and animations, only the five latest versions are saved. The Rollback tool allows you to browse through these versions. An asset must be checked out to use the Rollback button.
Once you click on the Rollback button, a window displaying a list of all the saved versions of that asset pops up. From here, there are a couple of things you can do. The Help button in this list gives a similar description to the buttons below.
The Open button allows you to view a read-only file of that version. This feature is meant to allow you to look at a version before you decide whether you want to use it or not. Do not try to edit or check in this file!
The Checkout button allows you to checkout an older version, which can then be edited and checked in as the latest version.
The Rollback button deletes all the versions newer than the one you selected. You can then use the regular checkout button from the Ownaya shelf to check out that version. You should only use this when you are absolutely certain that the newer versions are garbage.
Press Cancel to close the Rollback window and reopen the file you had previously checked out.