Project Manager ADDON development & ideas

[draguu]

Hey guys ,

i am Pratik solanki , Co- founder of Weybec studios , me and my team has been working on blender since last 8 -9 years ,
and i felt one of the most important feature which is missing in blender which is Project management ,

at first i tried it my self to develop some kind of addon for managing folders ,files ,textures ,and entire project , which didnt workout well ,
so i approached to amazing jeremy(AKA Pistiwique) and he was happy to help me out with it ,

so me and jeremy are working on this addon called Project manager , which helps you to manage your folder structures and help you through out the project ,

here is my initial idea how the project management should be ,

this was first thought on this addon , it should have features like , you can assign task , you can tag which file is pending and which file is completed, multiple folder creation from panel , automatic file saving at tagged location ,etc … etc …

please share your views and let us know if you like it or not ,
take a look at some of the in developement features of the addon ,

1- hierarchy structure in Panel

with this you can navigate to your project folders from the T panel , and it comes very handy

2 - folder creation and templates
ability to create multiple folders from the panel and a Template editor , add some default folders( like , model, texture , animation, rendering ) in your template and so when you create new project no need to create manually folder structures , just select from template and you are done , ( for example you can save structures for sculpting projects , animation projects , modeling project ) this way you will have proper manage pipeline throughout the project ,

3 - Rename folders
you can directly rename your folders from the panel ,

4 - Global directory
its useful when you are saving all your project at one place , for example , you can set something like " D:/blender projects/ " after saving global directory ,when you create new project , then it will create that new project’s folder directly in global directory , and there is an option to turn it off , so you can create new project anywhere

[video]https://i.imgur.com/OYrEW2s.mp4[/video]

5 - Show blend files
one of the most useful feature is to show blendfiles in hierarchy, this way in future updates , you can open, close , check notes which you saved on blend files, you can check at which level is your blend file , ( wip, done, in progress) ,

6 - Save popup,

after folder hierarchy one of the main useful feature is Save popup window ,
with save popup as you can see in the image ,

when we press ctrl+s and it will show that window , you can directly save increment from there ,
now for saving new file here is my idea,

file should have proper naming , and it has to be saved at proper place , for that we can have options for bookmarks and stage
addon will have possibilities to add bookmarks places ,

write name of you file … eg. “mickey” , select what type of file it is , (model, anim , rig, etc etc ) and select stage ,what is the current stage of your blend ( wip, done, progress , extra)

so suppose you have selected model in type , and “wip” in stage ,

so addon will save your file in “model” folder with name " mickey_wip.blend "

this way you will not going to mess up with your structure and naming

moreover , it can show file thumbnail in the save popup , same goes with the open popup in future updates ,
and you can write notes on every file , so when you navigate in the panel . you can check which file was that and what notes are on it

7 - bookmark system,
add bookmarks to your folders so instead of navigating there always you can directly save your blend file without even going there ,
here is what initial thoughts are and its yet to be done

after that , some of the remaining features will be , openfile popup, linking files , checking notes , and importing other libs,

So we are still working on it , actually jeremy is working really hard on it , and i hope it will be useful for everone ,

Please share your views in the comments and let us know if you guys want any extra features or if you think something should not be there then

Happy Blending

Regards
Pratik

Attachments

[kilon]

Your ideas sound reasonable enough for me

There is a problem though , a very large problem

it has a name

its called

“Blender 2.8”

See Blender 2.8 is going to be a major update, according to Ton (Blender big boss) is going to be bigger even compared to 2.5

2.5 was a huge update that brought a ton of new features to Blender and almost complete redesign to the Blender UI

Most people do not realize this because they are too busy being mesmerized by the new real time rendering engine Eevee , which is intended to replace the existing extremely outdated viewport.

Even though I have to agree Eevee is indeed by far the most exciting feature coming with 2.8 , its just the tip of the iceberg because 2.8 will bring some very radical redesigns for many areas of Blender. By radical we mean fundamental features of Blender are removed and completely replaced.

I am talking from experience because I am also developing an asset manager and possible a project management addon, so we are in very similar situation.

In my case, Blender 2.8 comes with a new API just for asset management in your case Blender comes with new layer system, collections, and workspaces. There a lot of things that have changed and a lot that are planned to change even further. So basically that is the absolute worst time for both us to develop our addons.

Non the less , I am carrying on because obviously 2.8 is already available for testing and the blender team has made clear what goals it wants to achieve so making an addon ready for 2.8 is not that hard. The good news is that we won’t see a stable release until October of this year but still its never too early to make sure that something is compatible or does not replicate existing Blender features.

What that means for you ?

It means you should not make any decision until you make sure you understand the Blender 2.8 features. Especially you are in the worst place than me because in my case the Blender Asset Managment API seems to be not that different to what we already have but in your case Blender will look and behave quite differently at the way it organizes the internal data of a blend file.

Links that interest you is this

Blender 2.8 Design Document — Blender Developers Blog

Overlay section may seem unrelated but it has a diagram that gives a tiny look at the importance of workspaces for 2.8

and this is a dedicate post for Collections

View Layers and Collections — Blender Developers Blog

I suspect that both workspaces and collections will be doing a lot of things you mention in your post, unfortunately, there are not many details because 2.8 is still in an embryonic state and it will take at least a year for the fog to clear and we can be sure what is what.

You may assume you can ignore 2.8 and do your own thing but that will be a mistake because the magnitude of 2.8 implies a quite sizeable break of backward compatibility , meaning any code you may make now will not work with 2.8 and may even require a fundamental redesign to your addon.

Project managment and Asset managment are two areas that are very useful for artists so its not suprise that 2.8 focuses on both. That does not make our addons obsolete , quite the contrary it allows them to go one step further by using the 2.8 API.

[sirdavid23]

Question: in 7 years why wasn´t this ported to PyQt? You´ll do everyting there, outside blender and it will still be effective even if version 3 comes around. Why? because your functions will remain the same on the PyQt libraries, because you´ve had defined custom classes everywhere. If you had reached this level of cascading explorer on blender 2.5 -onwards-(which I honestly applaude) it´s because you´ve seen deep code and how that Blender C calls and Py scripts look like intertwined. So the obvious choice would be to port a complete scene, object, class exploration outside Blender (UI development on PyQt) that way it could remain as addon, up-gradable only via Classes depending on Api. I know, hard job to “re translate” all them classes. But this is why it´s called “open source” code.
Final line: I agree with the post mentioning 2.8 api brings different flavor for the functions, so please check which classes stay and which others will be replaced in the IRC developer´s channel live every Thursday 5pm East time.

[draguu]

Hello Kilon ,

I totally understand your point , and i have seen those links too ,

your point is correct , 2.8 will bring lots of changes , but there is a long way to go , it will take some time for getting ready for production houses ,
everyone can play with eevee for now , but the collections and new api will going to change everything , but it will take some time , i am telling this from my personal experience
we have been using eevee , from some time , in new despgraph we animated first character animation with eevee , it was an amazing experience ,
its on the code.blender.org at home page

good luck with your addon too kilon , i would love to see it , please share some awesome stuff sir , and thank you for your time

i think after 2.8 release project manager may need an update , but we will keep working on it, we are mainly focusing on file management , (not on asset management ) , please give us your views on how to improve it …

@sirdavid23 , ill ask jeremy for pyqt , i donno much about it , but that is definatly something we should try , thank you for heads up ,

[burnin]

& why not nodes for UI? (‘mind map’ alike)
simple, clear, easy to examine and manage

as next chapter in Blender is everything nodes

[rombout]

I was looking if someone already made an bookmark manager for project folders. I always get click crazy when i need to assign / add textures.

My idea is not as broad as your idea. Mine simply adds a panel so a users can add, remove bookmarks per projects. So you can navigate much faster.

Does anyone know one perhaps. Ive tried looking in the code, but i get to a wall where i dont see any info on how to add custom bookmarks Most of this code is interal and i tried looking at the source files, but than i go crazy

[gilad.r.f]

Hi!
You can try the “Manage Blender projects (MBP)” addon.
It is a project manager for blender and you can easily manage all your projects within Blender, track your projects progress, and save all the project details (project status, project start, and finish date, project income, client name, etc.).
you can also open your projects files and folders from the projects panel and much more!

you can buy it from this link:

Manage Blender Projects - Mbp