Codex

Introduction

Mother — out of the box Houdini Pipeline Toolkit under control of Shotgun management system.

This section is on the early stage of developing, it does not intend to have valuable public content. I mean, skip it!

Despite the Houdini data management part is not developed yet, the whole VFX pipeline structure is based on Animation DNA ideas, so we have a concept for the project folder structure, assets structure etc.

Project setup

Environment variables allow to setup variables and values in Houdini.
List all available variables: run cmds, run command hconfig.exe -a
Check the variable value in Houdini: in Texport window run echo $<VAR_NAME>
Variables which works with paths divided into 2 types:

• Location (HIP, JOB, etc), one specific directory
• Path (HOUDINI_SCRIPT_PATH, etc), list of dirs

JOB - root for Houdini project.
HIP - path where Houdini scene is.
HOME - Houdini settings for the user
HFS - Houdini install dir

Check Houdini environment

Run Windows > Shell (which runs cmds). Enter hconfig-ap

Project structure

How we sort all project data

Film structure

The default structure of the final product (film, clip etc) is:
FILM > SEQUENCE > SHOT

For bigger projects like animation feature, it has a sense to group sequences into reels:
FILM > REEL > SEQUENCE > SHOT

The default Shotgun schema match this structure.

Folder structure

EDIT — Editing and grading brunch:

• OUT — Output of editing branch, final movie will be rendered into this folder
• PROJECT — Editing software project files (Final Cut, Premiere etc)

PREP — Preproduction brunch

PROD — Production brunch

3D:

• geo [geometry caches: FBX, ABC, etc]
• hda [Houdini digital assets]
• lib [librarys of animations, materials, etc]

lib structure needs to be developed. It does not fit into ASSETS or SHOTS structure scheme.

Pipeline developing notes

Here we will record pipeline developing process

Core concepts

All project data located in one folder on the network drive.
All project data structured as ASSETS and SHOTS. Shots are the part of one project.
All project management data and record of project data changes are located in Shotgun.

Pipeline definition and goals

What is PP
Pipeline covers:

• Communications
• Data storage, exchange and tracking

Agile and Organic Pipeline

There is a well-known VFX production structure with strict vertical hierarchy and tasks division between departments. We well research agile project management option with task division between teams.

The term "production pipeline" by itself defines our perception of movie making process. Obviously, we see the similarity between movie production and any other manufacturing where we use machines, tools and other mechanical devices. Such conception gives quite successful results.

However, we try to look at production process from the biological point of view and get some interesting ideas. The difference between machine and organism is similar to the difference between nodes and layers — the same task could be achieved differently and perception could define algorithms. Organic pipeline research is our goal here.

We are going to breed shots with Mother...

Project-pipeline relation

At the highest level, there are two options for defining the relation between a pipeline and projects:

• One pipeline driving all projects
• Each project has its own pipeline version

The first option more suitable when you have a limited amount of big and complex long-term projects (like animation feature), second fits better for a bunch of fast tasks, like commercials. Here we will design the first option.

Sure, there is a third option available, a combination of this two methods, when you have one pipeline driving all projects and each project has the ability to customize pipeline individually.

Pipeline deploy

This is basically pipeline for pipeline developing. Where you keep source code, how you modify it and track changes, how you deliver pipeline to a production for the studio and for outsourcers.

Run new project.

Download repository as a zip file, extract to any temp location and run setupProject.bat. Select directory to hold the project, enter project name and press "CREATE PROJECT" to build a project folder structure with a pipeline.

Github developer notes

Install GitHub Desktop. Clone this repo to a PIPELINE folder of a project used to develop the pipeline E:\256\PROJECTS\NSI\PREP\PIPELINE.

Create a project in PyCharm, set PIPELINE folder as root.

Exclude PyCharm project folder (.idea) from GitHub commits: go to PIPELINE/.git/info, add .idea line to "exclude" file.

Modify code, commit changes, Fetch Origin!

Paths snippets

$JOB/render/010/SHOT_010/001/E010_S010_001.$F.pic E:/256/PROJECTS/NSI/PROD/2D/RENDER/010/SHOT_010/E010_S010_v001.mov