Scene-name for output

[mottosso]

Provide a flag for using the current scene name for output

import capture
capture.capture(filename=capture.SCENE)

[BigRoy]

The output path defined through filename is the complete destination path and not only the file's name. So do you mean this would save the playblast next to the working file?

Something like

# pseudocode (might work as is, but haven't tested)
import maya.cmds
import os
import capture

scene = cmds.file(query=True, sceneName=True)
filename, ext = os.path.splitext(scene)

capture(filename=filename)

Also, what happens if scene hasn't been saved yet?

[mottosso]

You know, I'm not too sure what made me think of this feature initially. Possibly for it's simplicity, and generality; scripts could then be built without hard-coding any paths, and just assume the scene-name.

But you're right, what if the scene hasn't been saved? I'd probably expect an exception at that point, what do you think?

[BigRoy]

I think many will have their own naming conventions so won't use it at all. Maybe only when doing a very quick capture could it be useful?

I think it's easier to stick to Maya's default conventions as a fallback for playblast locations. By default (if a path is relative) it will put it into the current workspace's movies file rule directory. For example this could be in the workspace.mel for a project:

workspace -fr "movie" "movies";

In practice if I would save with only a filename as opposed to a full path it would fall back on this system and do that?

# pseudocode (might work as is, but haven't tested)
import maya.cmds
import os
import capture

filename = "playblast"
scene = cmds.file(query=True, sceneName=True)
if scene:
    filename = os.path.basename(scene)
    filename, ext = os.path.splitext(filename)

capture(filename=filename)

I think that should capture into the movies directory with the scene name if file is saved, otherwise playblast is used. That should be similar to Maya's default behaviour through the UI.

So we only pass the filename and not the absolute path to the maya.cmds.playblast command and use Maya's fallback.

[mottosso]

I think that sounds good, but it's hard to tell without having a solid use case.

Maybe let's find a use for it (in Magenta) and go from there?

[BigRoy]

Sounds good.

Actually to be complete. At the current stage capture will fall back on Maya's system anyway for relative paths. Though I did notice something odd:

capture.snap(filename='test')
capture.capture(filename='test')

Both of these save to a different folder. The first goes into the images folder, the other saves next to the file. This makes me think it uses the format flag to derive what type of file it is? Usually there is no file rule for qt so it saves next to it?

Even more interesting is that saving through the Maya UI with playblast to filename test generates the following mel command:

playblast  -format qt -filename "movies/test.mov" -sequenceTime 0 -clearCache 1 -viewer 1 -showOrnaments 1 -fp 4 -percent 100 -compression "H.264" -quality 100 -widthHeight 960 540;

[mottosso]

This makes me think it uses the format flag to derive what type of file it is?

That rings a bell, but can't be sure..

[BigRoy]

I think this should just be added as an example snippet in the readme instead of a global option.

Something like this:

import os
import maya.cmds as cmds
import capture

filepath = cmds.file(q=1, sn=1)
filename = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(filepath))[0]
capture.capture(filename=filename)

typed on phone, so there might be some typos

I remember there even being an argument for cmds.file to only retrieve the file's name as opposed to full path, so maybe you could even do it without os.

I think more advanced technical artists might customize it further anyway then just the filenames and as such don't use this?

What do you think?

[mottosso]

Yeah, I like this direction. Less features, more flexibility.