Anima

Anima is a VFX & Animation pipeline library designed for and used in Anima Istanbul and written purely in Python.

It is also an example of how to use Stalker and build a pipeline on top of it.

Anima, supplies PyQt4/PySide/PySide2 UI's for Maya, Houdini, Max, Nuke, Fusion, Blender, Motion Builder and Photoshop and the UIs can be used in standalone mode where users can upload their files to server and automatically version them.

How To Install

First of all, Anima uses Stalker. So you need to have a running PostgreSQL database. Stalker can work with other databases too but the preferred database is PostgreSQL and it is developed and tested against a PostgreSQL database.

To manage your database settings from one place, you need to create a config.py file in a location that all of workstations and farm computers are able to read from. The bad side of it is that it exposes your database user and password. But because it is going to be seen only by the studio workers (and only by the tech savvy ones) it should be safe.

In this config.py file you need to enter the following configuration variables:

database_engine_settings={
    "sqlalchemy.url": "postgresql://user:password@address/db_name",
    "sqlalchemy.echo": False
}

Then you need to create an environment variable called STALKER_PATH in every computer that you want to use stalker and then set it to that path (directory) that contains the config.py file. Or you can create a script per applicationn that first sets the STALKER_PATH and other custom stuff you might need in your studio then runs the application.

For Windows, it is a good idea to create another folder in a network storage, copy anima and all of its dependencies to that folder. Then install a local copy of the pyscopg2 library and copy the installed pyscopg2 files (under python/Lib/site-packages) to that network drive again. So you do not need to install all of the libraries for every single computer in your studio. And update your PYTHONPATH environment variable to point to that folder.

With these steps you will be able to use:

from stalker import db
db.setup()

instead of:

from stalker import db
db.setup({"sqlalchemy.url": "....."})

So all of your computers will now be able to reach the database without having too much information about the database. After that, setting up anima should be pretty straight forward:

Clone anima to a network share so everyone can see it. Setup the PYTHONPATH environment variable to include the path that contains the anima library. Then you should be able to run the following inside Maya for example:

from anima.dcc import mayaEnv
m = mayaEnv.Maya()

or better:

from anima.ui.scripts import maya
maya.version_dialog()

It is a good idea to create a Studio instance in your database, with all the details needed (ex. working hours, the studio name), you can run it in Maya for example or in anywhere that has a Python consoles:

import datetime
from stalker import db, Studio
our_studio = Studio(
    name='Studio Name',
    daily_working_hours=8,
    timing_resolution=datetime.timedelta(hours=1)  # needed for task schedules
                                                   # if you plan using
                                                   # stalker as a project
                                                   # management tool
)

db.DBSession.add(our_studio)
db.DBSession.commit()

You should create users:

from stalker import db, User
user1 = User(
    name='User1',
    login='user1',
    password='secret',
    email='[email protected]'
)
db.DBSession.add(user1)
db.DBSession.commit()

And then you need to create Projects and Tasks etc. but lets do them later after you successfully come to this stage.

These should be enough to kick start your pipeline.