Good day! I’ve used and experienced Shotgrid plenty over the years and on many projects - and now I’m with a studio who has never set one up. If anyone can shed some light on any of these questions , that would be much appreciated:
1) I understand that I can upload ‘characters’ , ‘sets’ , ‘vehicles’ etc. all under ASSETS - then filter out each type to create their own page.
I’ve even explored under ASSETS, going into DESIGN PAGE to create ‘new view’ for each one of those (character , sets , vehicles etc) so that they have their own ‘tabs’ within the ASSETS page.
I’ve also created those (character , sets , vehicles) as a CUSTOM ENTITY so that I can add each one of those on the main project navigation which is my preference for design - and what I’m accustomed to. I do realize I have to link them in this mode to everything.
Which first question is : would that be using the LINK column? if so , I notice that the linked item gets removed from the ASSETS page - but maybe I have to chose one or the other?
Second question - with all 3 options mentioned above with organizing assets , is there one better than the other? Is there something I should know about one and why not to go that route?
2) I’ve created a nice list of TASK TEMPLATES - they are tasks within a type of build. it is not a character - it is a type of build that will be used over and over for multiple characters. Why does it show up on the ASSETS page? Is the only way to remove that be filters?
3) SEQUENCES page - Why can’t I get the THUMBNAIL to be a hovering scroll (as the SHOTS page naturally does) - and how do I get the THUMBNAIL to remain the same VIDEO and not be the latest upload?
4) SEQUENCES page - How do I get DROPDOWNS in this page as it does on the SHOTS page naturally?
Hi Claudia, if you are going to represent Sets and Characters and Vehicles all as Asset entities, you will probably want to look at the “Asset Type” field and have “Set” and “Character” and “Vehicle” as available choices. That field is probably just a right-click to configure its list. Then you might want to use the Site Preferences > Detail Pages option to “Enable unique detail pages per Asset Type” – that would allow you to have a different layout of the detail page for an Asset of Type “Set” vs an Asset of Type “Character”.
You could get the same behavior by having different CustomEntities for each of these types – each CustomEntity gets its own detail page config. (Only Assets have that option for different-detail-page-per-type.) But then you’ll have to wire up your own link fields to link to your CustomEntity02s (maybe Sets), CustomEntity03s (maybe Characters), CustomEntity04s (maybe Vehicles) – in other words you can’t make the native “Assets” field on a Shot also point at multiple CustomEntities.
But maybe that’s a good thing, having separate fields for (CustomEntity) Sets and Characters and Vehicles – because then you can use SG’s autocomplete feature to “automatically suggest the first 25 matches”, for easier and faster filling-in those fields. If you wanted to use Assets, technically you could construct something similar on Shots like having a “Sets” and a “Characters” and a “Vehicles” field on the Shot schema, but current existing cloud-based Shotgun does not provide the ability to write your own custom autocomplete-rule to filter the possible Assets suggested (local installs with ruby console only…)
So if you go with the approach of using CustomEntities to represent each Type of Asset, instead of having all the types as Assets just of different sg_asset_type, you will end up having to do more of your own field configurations to connect to your custom entities instead of using SG’s defaults.
You’ll then pretty quickly need to consider how to wire these CustomEntities to TASKS. Like if you are going to track the Tasks to produce a Set and you choose to use a CustomEntity## for Sets, you’ll need to right-click and tweak the Link field on the Task table to include your CustomEntity Set type. Ditto Character and Vehicle.
Questions 2 + 3 + 4, I think you’ll need to provide screenshots.
2: sounds like you might have edited the default Assets page and added a TaskTemplates tab.
3: right-click on the Thumbnail field and see whether it’s set as a Manual thumbnail vs a Query thumbnail. Either use Manual, or edit the query thumbnail filter.
Tony thanks so much for the explanation for the first part. It gave me clarity and understanding for different routes to take. extremely helpful.
as far as the TASK TEMPLATEs showing up on my ASSETS page - what it actually was, was my TASK NAMES showing up in the ASSETS page.
When I go to TASKS > ADD TASKS , I add a LINK so that it properly gets named with a drop down. but what that does - it prompts me with a mandatory choice of ‘asset’ , ‘element’ ‘sequence’ or ‘shot’. naturally, I pick ‘asset’ - and that automates it as an actual asset on the ASSETS page. I find it odd - as I just want to use it as a task to track (it’s not a character or a vehicle etc - it’s a type of BUILD I want to track as its own. bandaid for that is filtering it out on the ASSETS page - guess there are worst things in life.
