About
Download
Documentation
Tutorials
Add-Ons
Specification
Contact: rob (at) kickstandlabs.com
|
Asset Creation and Management
An asset is generally a building block within a shot or scene structure. An asset can contain many
components or parts, or be entirely self-contained. With openPipeline, you can also sort your assets
into categories, or Asset Types. For this tutorial and any others containing assets, we'll assume we
have three asset types: characters, props, and sets.
 fig. 1
- In the openPipeline window (as shown in fig. 1), select the project name that you wish to work on and click on the Asset Browser tab, as shown in figure 2.
 fig.2
- In this window, you'll need to first set up an asset type by adding it to the list on the left. As stated above, we'll create characters, props, and sets. Click the green "New" button to proceed. You will be prompted to type the name of your asset type, as seen in figure 3.
 fig. 3
- Once this is completed, you may go about adding the assets. For this example
we will make a simple asset with no Components in our props Asset Type, as seen
in figure 4.
Components allow you to have a single Asset with multiple parts referenced into it. This is particularly useful if you have a character and wish to have the rig worked on separately from the model at this stage in the process.
This process is detailed in
depth in a later tutorial.
 fig. 4
When creating a new Asset, you're given the options of:
- Start with empty Asset: This will create the Asset but nothing will be present within it. You may add to this Asset later on.
- Export current selection into Asset: Whatever is selected in the view window will become the Asset.
- Export current scene into Asset: The entire current scene in Maya will become the Asset.
- To start , we'll create a table within our "props" Asset Type and start with an empty Asset.
Since we've selected Start with empty Asset nothing exists in the asset file yet. As seen in figure 5, I've made a table.
 fig. 5
- To add this model to the "table" Asset, double click on "table" in the Assets window. The Edit Asset box will appear, as shown in figure 6.
 fig 6.
The table that I made in my current Maya window will be added to the table Asset if I select Current Scene. If you wish to start with a blank scene file for your asset, you may select New Scene here.
It can also be noted here that you can see asterisk (*) symbols around the asset in the Assets window when it is currently open.
- Now that we've finished our basic table asset and we currently have it open, we can click on the Currently Open tab in openPipeline. This will bring up a window as seen in figure 7.
 fig. 7
- This view has changed significantly now that we have an asset open. You may at this point wish to take a quick picture of the open asset in its current form for the Preview window. Simply click the Take Snapshot button under the Preview display to capture your currently open Maya window.
Click Save Workshop, and you've got your asset for the time being.
See the next tutorial for a detailed description of Workshop and Master files, in addition to more information about the Currently Open window for Assets.
|
