okikoulpa wrote:Thank you for your quick answer.
It's quite hard to tell/ show how we've done. Probably too much unspecific rules as you said.
We're about to assign manually each material to each asset in each shot. Quite long unfortunally, but we don't have time to do more researches. But maybe there's a way to avoid this long work.
Is there a way to apply shading layer to a scene ? In other words, can we, with a shading layer, transfer all its materials to objects (with corresponding names) and then delete it ?
Shading layers can be nested. So a scene shading layer should be just a top parent "master" shading layer that has a list of children shading layers, each one representing some "group" of assets. Be that a group of geos making a character, or a library of assets making up a project you want to use to scatter street furniture.
This is just a suggested workflow but it works well for us. I've attached a template set of 2 projects.
1 project is the asset library, inside it has 3 contexts.
ASSETS
Raw assets, this would be an ABC or OBJ, it could be one part of 100 parts
LOOKDEV
Raw assets are INSTANTIATED, with their translations localized so I could place my obcects for doing look dev. This includes
assembling, in this case, 3 raw assets, into little "objects'. But what's important is that they are instanced into this context
that way if the original "raw" asset is updated, your look dev version is also updated since it's just an instance
This is where you make materials, and drag and drop them to your objects to attach materials. When your done and happy
You shift + select all the individual geos that make up a "character"...in my case here I have 3 "characters.
Edit>Create Shading Layer in this case I'm using the full path so there is little to know "evaluation". And the Shading Layers
are automatically created for me.
PUBLISH
This is where I take the objects I've look dev'd.....put them in combiners, and put them here. These assets are ready for use by
anyone on my team. And since a combiner is just a list of objects...which themselves are instances of the raw assets, if the original
raw assets update, your combiner internal assets will also update. Also notice the combiners are then moved back into the center of
the world as they should be for scattering or any use case where the pivot is gonna matter to you.
I also put the shading layer that we created in the LOOKDEV context here as well.
That's it, all I need to use these characters in my scene is now in the PUBLISH context of my asset library project.
2 project is the SHOT file. Inside it has 2 contexts
Asset_Library
This is the file from above, with it's all important PUBLISH context
SHOT_001
This is my shot....in this shot I need to take my 3 characters and scatter them on a grid.
This is easy, just point the scatterer to the objects in the PUBLISH context of my Asset_Library
Now to shade my "SHOT" all I need to do is create a new shading layer, which I call MASTER_SL. And in it's Children Shading Layers attribute
I will put a group I'm calling SHADING_LAYER_GATHER. Why a group, well what if we add more objects and shading layers to my shot? I could
manually add each of the 3 shading layers here, that's fine. But instead I made a group, that is looking into the PUBLISH context of the asset
library, and with a very simple rule, list all the shading layers it finds. So as shading layers are added and removed from the PUBLISH context
they will be automaGICally added and/or removed from the SHADING_LAYER_GATHER group, which is what is driving the MASTER_SL which is
shading our ENTIRE scene.
So that's a good workflow to use with Shading Layers. It keeps a nice instance workflow in the look dev, and creates the Shading Layer
workflow that keeps your shading assignments super flexible with object specific shading assignments totally abstracted from the actual
shot your rendering itself.
Of course, because you can "export current context as project" you are free to localize the entire asset library project FROM your SHOT project
and tweak some shaders for your particular shot.
Of course, as the shot lighting artist, maybe you should make sure to have a PUBLISH context for your lighting setup, so if there is a look dev artist
working on your sequence, he could reference in and use your lights so you wouldn't have to tweak shaders?
Let me know if you have any questions and I hope this helps