A bit of a noob question I know, but I’m a little confused by what you can class as doing “pipeline” work.
I’m doing this sort of stuff at work at the moment… I think. Essentially I’m setting up the pipeline for getting characters into Max, MotionBuilder, and game engine, and trying to make it all as smooth as possible.
This process however hasn’t requried me to do any programming or scripting of any sort, so can I class it as pipeline work ?
I’m just a bit unsure of the definition, and as I want to pursue being a technical artist, I’d like to make sure that I’m performing the sort of tasks that would bring me closer to that goal, so I can put the sort of things I’ve done onto a CV.
you can work on art pipelines without being a programmer/scripter.
however you will quickly find that many of the steps are error-prone, and probably very slow or repetitious to be done by hand. Improving and solidifying the pipeline often requires a good tools programmer. but not always.
Your starting down the pipeline path by figuring out how data flows in and out of the various programs and your engine. I would qualify your work more as “Workflow”.
Pipeline is a broad-term but it often means a set of tools, code, exporters, and importers that make the Workflow flow smoothly. Minimizing errors, automating tedious steps, batching processes, etc.
yeah, we use a maxscript for motionbuilder and max. Basically heres a run-down on a basic motionbuilder >> max >> game workflow.
save all your characters’ animation as takes in MB (motionbuilder), so you have one ‘master’ animation file for that given character containing the multiple takes. Name each take what you would name the final animation (eg knight_run_2_idle). motionbuilder is great for this file management as everything is in the same file.
Once you are happy with the animations go to ‘save as’. In the save options select ‘Save one take per file’ and ‘Use Take name’. save these files to a folder (eg ‘FBX_BATCH_DIR’).
Create a Maxscipt, along the lines of:
import fbx files from ‘FBX_BATCH_DIR’.
save as max files.
export using file name into game (eg havok animation files).
run this script everytime you need to export the characters animation.
This is a very basic script but it means 1 animator can multi manage a character with over 100 animations with relative ease. Ours is a lot more complicated now, but you should get the jist…
you can build on this to have options like ‘submit files into perforce’, ‘print out length of frames of each animation’ for debugging ect.
Thanks very much for the help guys (and or gals), you’ve helped to clear up some of my misconceptions.
On another note, is it worth me learning C++, or other coding languages? If so what other coding languages, and where should I start? I’m quite an ambitious person so don’t be afraid to be honest and tell me how difficult / time consuming it would be.
[QUOTE=BadSpleen;4339]On another note, is it worth me learning C++, or other coding languages? If so what other coding languages, and where should I start? [/QUOTE]
Python and C# are almost must-learns at this point.
Package specific : MEL, Maxscript, or any other script
Non-specific : Python, Perl or C#, based on studio’s preferences(Python is being used most widely though, then C# and so forth)
C++ : Mainly used by Tools programmers for writing Maya/Max plugins/file exporters or other game specific tools/pipelines
I would say ability to at least read C++ code comes handy when you need to write an interface around or batch any existing C++ written pipeline with your choice of scripting language. Makes you more independent, :):
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