Hi all,
I see on github that a new official app has been created :
I didn’t find much information about it. Is it some kind of app to allow for sanity checks ? Has anyone tested it ?
Regards
Donat
2 Likes
Interesting!
From the docs:
tk-multi-data-validation (Data Validation) is a customizable Toolkit App that allowws studios to define a set of guideline rules for users to follow when working within a DCC.
I would guess there will be some announcement once its more stable.
Its nice to see some new and open development 
I guess it’s still under development. I tried to use the release version and it did not work, only the master branch did. Anyway, there is still not enough documentation to understand how exactly to create the validations. Let’s wait. Nice initiative though
I had to create my own validation algorithm for the 3ds max pre-publish phase with a plugin architecture for easy modification. I also use it partially for the scene check when opening it the first time (checking fps and units). I have to say, all the small things that you have to develop yourself before the system is actually usable, become a huge task. Having not only a pale framework but also well-constructed hooks per DCC would be extremely helpful for the studios that do not have a big dev department.
For example, I had to develop imageprocessing framework to convert exr to jpg, or sequences to mp4 files, or to get thumbnails from a sequence or a video. All this could be built in as literally everyone needs it.
So I really hope to see more shoes initiatives of adding frameworks, apps, hooks, and engines.
2 Likes
Hi everyone, Brandon here from Autodesk,
I’m glad to see you are interested in the tk-multi-data validation app!
And you are correct, this app is still in development. While we do have it running in a few engines, there is still work that needs to be done, including technical documentation.
Stay tuned though and we will update when we have a first version you can begin to use more. Thanks for the interest!
5 Likes
There are a ton of Toolkit frameworks and apps that Shotgun developed under the “Studio Tools” banner. Initially, they were created for Warner Bros but other studios adopted them. They included a framework for image processing, editorial ingestion, and a bunch of other things. They were never released publicly but GPL and Redesign got a copy of them and include them in their offerings. I wish that Autodesk would be proactive and release them publicly (without support).
1 Like
Hello Community!
We just released v0.1.2 that also includes a first pass of documentation for those that would like to learn more about this new app.
Please let us know what you think, thanks very much!
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Hi Rob,
The app looks nice and I like the documentation! We have a similar app built inhouse that I would love to move away from. Two questions:
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Is/will it be possible to run validation through the API without launching the UI? That would be really cool because that would let us run validation before publishing or submitting to the render farm for example.
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Is/will it be possible to validate a specific item rather then the whole scene/script? For example run validation on a selected Read node in Nuke to see if all frames are rendered, frame range matches range in Shotgrid etc…
All best,
Jonas
1 Like
Just wanted to say I’m really liking the recent vibes or releases and new development coming from the SG team
Hi @rob-aitchison !
This app is really interesting for us,too. I would like to get in line with the feature requests. These are the ones that would be important for us:
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As @jonas.lindfors mentioned the possibility to run the validation without GUI. So they run before the publish and only if they fail they show the results with the GUI.
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The ability to mark some of the rules as non-blocking warnings. For example: we allow publishes of proxy renderings in Nuke. However it is still a lot of hassle if the user left it on accidentally. Having that displayed as a warning would be great. Another example would be when a modeler created a mesh with some n-gons. It usually does not pose a thread, but it is still good to know when they created one accidentally.
Also wanted to say thank you for the recent changes that are happening to sgtk! Seems that some long needed changes are finally trickling in.
Cheers Fabian
3 Likes
Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and encouragement everyone, we really appreciate it!
To the questions:
Is/will it be possible to run validation through the API without launching the UI? That would be really cool because that would let us run validation before publishing or submitting to the render farm for example.
So they run before the publish and only if they fail they show the results with the GUI.
That is a definite yes, we want to work on some examples to show you how to use it without the GUI. As of now, you would need to create the GUI on an individual error as described above.
Is/will it be possible to validate a specific item rather then the whole scene/script? For example run validation on a selected Read node in Nuke to see if all frames are rendered, frame range matches range in Shotgrid etc…
You could use it but the workflow has not been optimized for this type of case. It may be cumbersome to find a single node in a very dense graph but thanks for flagging something we should examine more moving forward.
The ability to mark some of the rules as non-blocking warnings. For example: we allow publishes of proxy renderings in Nuke. However it is still a lot of hassle if the user left it on accidentally. Having that displayed as a warning would be great. Another example would be when a modeler created a mesh with some n-gons. It usually does not pose a thread, but it is still good to know when they created one accidentally.
For this scenario, in its’ current state, you can just ignore the warnings generated by the checks and carry on with the file. Again, this is another great request to identify what the core use cases could and should be. We have discussed the notion of non-blocking checks which becomes more relevant when you start to tie together checks with Publishing, etc.
We will post more updates as we have them, thanks again for your time and positive energy! 
3 Likes
Hey, as one more idea. The algorithm that I implemented in our studio.
We have validation entity. It has name, role, linked software, some additional attributes. And very importantly it has separation for shots and assets.
Each project has fields: shots’ validations, and assets’ validations where you link your validation entities.
Then your validation software, depending on the context (project and entity) can choose which validations to use and if it is an error or just a warning.
I find this approach super flexible because you can setup per project without hardcoding validation sets.
Would be great to have the same flexibility for your app.
3 Likes