Ok !! It’s much more clear now !
Indeed that’s definitely not something Kitsu will do, it can only keep track of the files and maybe manage dependency between them : if someone update the mesh, the rig and shader needs to be updated as well, stuff like that.
BUT, to my knowledge that’s really not how you should work with blender.
Having one mesh file, that is linked in one rig file, and in a lookdev file, all that put together for someone to animate it , it’s really not the way how blender is designed to work.
Best is to have only one character file, and it goes from hand to hand between modeler, rigger and lookdev. At some point it’s linked in anim file, so it’s possible to finish it while some people still work on the model. But I strongly recommend you to keep only one asset file, and not split the asset into various file per department.
If I understand correctly Maya allows to do that, but as said it’s not how blender was designed.
Unless I completely mis-understand what you were talking about !
Maybe it’s worth taking a blender cloud account and download some project file to see how BF structure their projects !
Funny enough, I think that is actually how the Blender Studio do it, at least they did with Sprite Fright. They have an add-on that then pulls it all together.
Personally, that would scare the hell out of me, I can think of so many ways that it could all fall apart and just be a total nightmare.
As for the general Kitsu stuff.
You can manually upload/update files to Kitsu, be it .blend files or images, videos, etc but by default it would just add it all to the storage location define for Kitsu Data.
Having said that, I get the feeling that the Blender Studio do it a little different and using SVN with Kitsu and their own Kitsu add-on for Blender, I think they use the add-on to actually check in and out files via Kitsu, which in fact are stored and managed by SVN. But when they make changes, they can update the status/comments, etc which go into Kitsu, which then also references the actual files stored via SVN.
This means one still only has 1 set of files being stored, rather then one in SVN and another in Kitsu storage. Needless to say the setup is of course a bit more complex and having never used SVN I don’t really know how it all works.
Can’t help there, I did my Kitsu test using a full VM of Linux and installed Kitsu in there. I think if one plans to really mess around with Kitsu and customise/set it up like the Blender Studio, one would need a proper server. A Docker setup is really just a way to have a look at it.
That’s interesting ! do you have a link or something that I can look by myself ?
To me that kind of workflow might be a necessary evil on really huge productions but it looks super overkill for a small team like blender animation studio. But they may have setup a middle ground workflow where each department works on their own files and they have scripts to cleverly manage changes.
That’s probably that ! Kitsu is used to keep track of files, changes and tasks, but the actual files are handled separately. Which is probably better so you are not completely dependent on how Kitsu handle files. And ultimately you need to have a snapshot of the project either on a network or on each users computers, so storing these files on Kitsu doesn’t make things simpler anyway.
Thanks a bunch @thetony20 ! I think I completely missed that video.
What they do can make sense, especially since they work after final model at a stage where rigging is already advanced from what I understand …
Doing that is probably a good idea on a project like Charge, since there is only one character that needs a lot of work on both material and grooming. There isn’t a lot of shots to animate so saving time there is clever.
But in general I’m sure it’s better to organize the production in a way that each assets goes from one artist to another without the need for them to work in parallel. If the movie got 10 character it’s possible to have the grooming team to work on character A while the shading work on character B, and the rigging on C.
Once the rig is done, layout can start and so does animation. I’m not sure such a system is worth it unless you know that each departments is going to spend mount on each character. Then having multiple grooming artist working in parallel of multiple shading artist might do !
thanks a tot for taking time to answer
Totally understand that part, sadly for me Im not able right now to have other system running kitsu (just because I don’t have any other system to use lol).
I’ll state my context and intentions looking for help.
My goal with that comes from understanding that being students, most of my peers and I would have a very limited storage on our laptops and PC’s.
So for example when working on any project we usually manage our files pretty manually, let’s say I’ll be working on Shot 030 in Scene 010, which needs 2 characters, 1 prop and 1 enviroment; every asset is a different .blend file that will be linked into a .blend file for the shot or scene (depending on the case). So in order for me to work on my pc we usually copy all the files that will be needed in to it using a usb or by sending them on the mail. so far it’s normal (as I see it lol, we haven’t tried anything new so thats seem as normal), but the catch here is that it usually leads to us having duplicates of every asset file for every Shot or Scene that it gets used in, and also when we make changes to any prop or enviroment we have to manually share and link them. then what I’m looking for is a way to:
sync all asset and shot files into a main pc.
be able to sync to and from that pc only the asset files that will be used on any pc in which we will work.
keep the sync from Work PC to Main PC and from Main PC to any other Work PC in order to be able to make changes to props and characters and it being reflected in every file that those are used
I’m aware that maybe using coustom addons and even learning programming and server development is just Dunning Kruger on full effect from my side, im not speaking my language on two levels here (english and even technician), but im sure that there’s a way to get to do what i intend to do with those deficiencies.
thanks again for any help, im looking into learning stuff I’ve never knew about on the first place so this is exciting.
Yeah, I’m not sure that Kitsu is really going to help with that sort of requirements. It really is more a production tracker, think of it as an online whiteboard version of Microsoft Project, designed around film/video production. Where various people can update the status and show the progress of tasks throughout the whole production.
However, that does mean having a central server, running SVN, which stores all the data, along with a local client to access the SVN project and if not a constant connection to the server, then at the very least the ability to connect regularly to update/sync any work files on each PC.
Now I don’t actually know SVN, but on having a quick look at the website, it seems that it would do what you want, but yeah, going to take some setting up and commitment to use it (as in no bypassing it with a USB drive because its ‘easier’).
you can look into resilio sync to share a project folder across several computers.
It’s similar to dropbox but there isn’t a central server, when some computer are online the sync process begin. Because of that there isn’t some space restrictions ( unlike 2Gb free dropbox account)
You can probably manage your project with the free version that is already quite capable.
SVN is much more advanced but it’s much more technical. The main advantage is that you get project history. On one project I was able to restore the whole project to a specific day ( months earlier) and that would be probably impossible with other tools.
But there is a learning curve and it’s difficult to setup.
But you can use both, resilio to sync accross computer, and SVN on one of these computer to backup snapshots of the project each days.