Hiero Transcode Collate Ingest

Pipeline Integrations
1

Hello,

This might be a bit of a meaty one for the forums…

The outcome of what we’d want is an ingested shot folder that contains all of the plates we need to do the work.
All the plates will have been transcoded into linear (or ACEScg) .exr sequences regardless of original formats and placed within the editorial/plates folder in the shot root.
An example of the structure:

.
└── Sequences/
    └── {sequence}/
        └── {shot}/
            ├── comp/
            │   ├── publish
            │   ├── reference
            │   ├── review
            │   └── work/
            │       └── nuke/
            │           └── renders/
            │               └── ...
            ├── editorial/
            │   └── plates/
            │       ├── {sequence}_{shot}_PL01_v001/
            │       │   └── exr_sequence_here
            │       ├── {sequence}_{shot}_PL02_v001/
            │       │   └── exr_sequence_here
            │       ├── {sequence}_{shot}_EL01_v001/
            │       │   └── exr_sequence_here
            │       └── {sequence}_{shot}_EL02_v001/
            │           └── exr_sequence_here
            └── ...

So if we were to lift that shot folder out, we would have everything we need to render the shot off grid so to speak (for simple comp work at least).

Currently, using the out of the box shotgrid transcode shot processor, when collate is enabled, it will only process the selected track item and transcode that, leaving all other shots in original formats and locations.

Is there a way (preferably without writing a new shot transcode exporter and collate functions.) That I could get the out of the box solution processing all overlapping track items via transcode, move them into the desired location and link them all up in the generated nuke script?

Any help would be awesome.

Cheers!

2

Can you share a screengrab of your export settings?
I assume you have each element in a separate track within the same sequence?

3

Hi Patrick,

Sure thing, here’s our export structure and timeline.
Each separate element type (Plate, Element, Asset, Reference, etc) has it’s own track within the same sequence.

image
image2145×1262 261 KB

The black boxes are where I’ve had to omit things like project name, shot name, etc.

Cheers.

4

Have you tried with collate off?
I imagine your shot cut-in and cut-out just needs to be from the REF or PL01 track items?
In regards to getting all the elements as read nodes in the final nukescript, I’m not sure about that. You’ll have to play around with the read options in the nuke exporter.
Also worth noting with collate active, you won’t get a sg cut and cut-items I believe.
Help | Hiero/Nuke Studio Export | Autodesk
You may want to set up a different preset for the PL01 items, and another for all the other references (eg without a nukescript being created).

Sorry, that probably isn’t much help!

5

I appreciate the reply, thanks for taking a look!

That’s pretty much it, the cut-in and cut-out are informed by the REF (usually, there’s always these pesky edge cases!)

I’ve had a play around with collate on / off, the read options for the nuke script and not yet managed to get a working combination.

I did think as a stopgap doing what you mentioned splitting the process, so PL01 is ingested and informs the shotgrid cut and the nuke script, then as a 2nd process the remaining elements are transcoded into the desired location.
Following this I was think I could write a script that’ll use the export template to get the plate locations and generated script location, then add the nodes to the bottom of the .nk file and leave it to the artist to organise the script accordingly.

Or the meaty option would be to subclass the current shotgrid / hiero exporters and write our own custom exporter that enables this functionality… but I’ll need significantly more coffee before venturing down that road.

Appreciate you taking the time to have a look though.

6

You can probably get quite far with just the hiero export hooks.
Also worth noting: The SG Cut will get replaced with any subsequent exports (eg the additional elements).
I usually create a preset with a single item with no exporter selected. You can run that on the PL01 once you’ve finished exporting everything to trigger the creation of a new Cut without needing to do any repeat exports. The cut itself will have no Versions linked to the cut Items, but when you view a version in the SG website, you can view it in the cut no problem, and with a little fiddling, update the filter so it pulls in all the latest versions for the other shots.

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