Avalon Examples

Creation, distribution and testing of Avalon example projects.

These projects are used in the Getting Started guide, along with during continous integration for end-to-end tests. The repository contains functionality for generating projects per "recipe" under varying configurations.

Usage

Data in Avalon is partitioned into files on disk and documents in a database. Files are available as-is, whereas database documents are stored in a serialised form which requires uploading.

$ python import.py batman

The above command will import the batman example project into your database such that you may use it like any normal project.

Create a New Project

Projects are created by (1) creating and publishing assets and (2) exporting the corrseponding database.

Thing to keep in mind.

1. Avoid referencing absolute paths. Instead, utilise the AVALON_PROJECTS environment variable, referencing the global directory in which all of your projects are stored.

Once you have created a project you would like to distribute, we'll do an "export" of the contents within the database.

$ python export.py my_project

Congratulations, your project is now ready for distribution!

Procedural Projects

A project can be procedurally generated by automatically publishing application-files.

As opposed to merely exporting/importing a given (fixed) database, a procedural project takes into account your .config.toml file and publishes files according to the given configuration.

In a procedural project, application files are known as "resources" and reside within the resources/ directory. Each project contains a .recipe.json detailing the process of generating a given project.

Example

Here is what a recipe might look like for a project called "batman".

[
    {
        "message": "Modeling..",
        "session": {
            "app": "mayapy2016",
            "asset": "Bruce",
            "silo": "assets",
            "config": "polly",
            "task": "modeling"
        },
        "resources": [
            "model_v001.ma",
            "model_v002.ma",
            "model_v003.ma"
        ]
    },
    {
        "message": "Rigging..",
        "session": {
            "app": "mayapy2016",
            "asset": "Bruce",
            "silo": "assets",
            "config": "polly",
            "task": "rigging"
        },
        "resources": [
            "rig_v003.ma",
            "rig_v006.ma"
        ]
    },
    {
        "message": "Animating..",
        "session": {
            "app": "mayapy2016",
            "asset": "shot1",
            "silo": "film",
            "config": "polly",
            "task": "animation"
        },
        "resources": [
            "anim_v002.ma",
            "anim_v006.ma",
            "anim_v012.ma",
            "anim_v034.ma"
        ]
    }
]

Each item in this list is known as a job and each job is run sequentially via build.py.

$ python build.py batman
# Modeling..
#  processing 'model_v001.ma'..
#  processing 'model_v002.ma'..
#  processing 'model_v003.ma'..
# Rigging..
#  processing 'rig_v003.ma'..
#  processing 'rig_v006.ma'..
# Animating..
#  processing 'anim_v002.ma'..
#  processing 'anim_v006.ma'..
#  processing 'anim_v012.ma'..
#  processing 'anim_v034.ma'..

In order to create a procedural project, you'll first create your project as per usual, and then "lift" the contained files into a resource directory, such as `resources/my_project/my_file.ma".