Publish Playblast in Maya as image sequence

Pipeline Integrations
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1

Hi,

We need to publish Maya playblast.
I’ve found out that the default behaviour of tk-multi-publish is great with mov playblast. But unfortunately, we are using image sequences and I’m having trouble falling back to the default behaviour.

Generating the playblast as png sequence and an item through the collector is ok. But which argument do I need to pass to trigger the default behaviour of Shotgun to publish the file sequence, generate a thumbnail and a version to review?

Currently, I have a function in my collector that search for playblast sequences in the folder matching this specified template and then create item:

    for seq in pyseq.get_sequences(files):
        item = super(MayaSessionCollector, self)._collect_file(
            parent_item,
            seq[0],
            frame_sequence=True
        )

So my question is: is there a documentation with all possible arguments for publish item? (create a version, thumbnail, …)
Also, which format is expected for the sequence? “%04d” or first frame?

Thank for the help

3 Likes
2

Hi Kevin,

Unfortunately there isn’t a standard way to do this since Shotgun doesn’t supply a standard version renderrer.

You’ll probbaly be best of by either:

  • creating a hook which runs some ffmpeg command to generate a movie file from the image sequence, creates a Shotgun Version and then uploads the renderred movie to the shotgun version.
  • If you have a renderfarm, create a hook like above but send the transcode job to the farm and let the farm handle the transcode and upload.

%04d or ####

3 Likes
3

OK. Thank you for this answer. I’ll do as you’ve suggested.

Nevertheless, I’m quite surprised that Shotgun publisher doesn’t have a basic publish of file sequence with linked version.

1 Like
4

Hi Kevin

The reason it doesn’t do this by default is as @Ricardo_Musch mentioned, it doesn’t have the ability to transcode the image sequence into a movie that can be uploaded as a Version.

Version entities are intended to be reviewable in Shotgun, so whilst a Version can link to the frames on disk, the playable bit in Shotgun will be an uploaded movie or still frame. So we don’t create a Version unless there is some media that can be playable in Shotgun.

The publish app will create a PublishedFile by default from an image sequence however.

I would recommend putting in a feature request around enabling the publisher to transcode image sequences.

Best
Phil

3 Likes
5

Yeah I guess it could be great to include a basic transcoder (ffmpeg?) that attempts to transcode the image sequence.

However obviously if you want more functionality/colorspaces/lookups/burnins etc. it’s really up to the user to make it their own.

1 Like