pipeline_level_one.md

"Pipeline by levels"

Level 0 - A filesystem with a naming convention

A minimal pipeline consists of files, following a naming convention, organized in a folder structure.

It should comprise Asset and Shot hierarchies, including Tasks, and Work and Publish Scene Versions.
For example:

• Asset type / Asset name / Task / Version / State (work or publish) / Scene File
• Sequence / Shot / Task / Version / State (work or publish) / Scene File

Level 1 - UI tool to browse and manipulate Entities, from the file system, inside the DCCs.

We call "Entity" the data that we handle (Assets, Shots, Tasks, Versions, Scene files).
A UI tool browses existing Entities and implements actions on them.

For example:

• list Assets, Shots, Tasks, Versions, Scenes
• open, save, increment a Scene
• publish a Version
• build the first Version of a Task

The Tool is usable from within the different DCCs.

UI

• We use Qt.py
• on top of PySide2

Engine / DCC

We implement "Engine" classes, one for each DCC.
A factory function returns the appropriate Engine, depending on the context.

Each "Engine" class implements actions, that are discoverable by the UI.

File system access

We implement a file system access layer, to find the files and resolve to pipeline entities.

• first we use pathlib
• with glob (Path.glob or glob.glob)
• then we use the Lucidity resolver

Resolver

A resolver is used to translate a path into a Pipeline Entity, and to format a path from an Entity.

Examples:

• Shotgrid Toolkit Templates
• CGWire's kitsu File tree
• Lucidity

Environment Handling

We use rez as the software package and environment manager.

We create rez packages:

• pipeline tool package (could be split into pipeline Core and pipeline UI)
• DCCs package (one per DCC)
• DCC Engine package (one per DCC)

Level 2 - Using a backend to manage Entities

Besides the File System, we create an API to connect to a Backend, and handle Entities from there.

Possible backends:

• Shotgrid - Market leading CG project manager, for medium to big sized studios
• CGwire Kitsu - Open source CG project manager, for small to medium sized studios
• Custom relational database - See Relational database with SQLite

We start with Shotgrid.
See Admin getting started
(Tip: use sg.schema_entity_read() to get the data schema)

Common API

We create APIs to encapsulate (abstract) the backend(s) and file system, to use them as data sources for Entities.
On top of these, a common API offers a unified access to the Entities. Depending on the type of the Entities, we connect to a different data source.

Level 3 - A flexible Action framework