Problem

When no label is specified in the project config, the name of the application is used.

Solution

Often a label is defined in the toml files which can be utilized as well.

Goal

shorten the time taken to find the wanted asset and lay the groundwork for browsing assets remotely.

Implementation

Grey out or otherwise indicate that an asset is (1) unavailable or (2) not yet created.

Goal

Simplify clutter by utilizing visualParent data member.

Motivation

With lots of episodes/shots, the navigation can become difficult.

Implementation

Similar to walking the hierarchy of;

project > silo > asset

We would need to include the visual parents;

project > silo > visualParent > asset

The issue might be implementing the potential of unlimited visual parent levels.

Goal

Save the user time and grief when having to restart the application.

Implementation

Save window size, location and the current selection. E.g. having browsed your way to a particular task and exited the GUI, maintain this selection when booting it back up.

Goal

Reduce the need for Launcher restart and lay the groundwork for additional background processes to run alongside the Launcher, such as SyncThing.

Implementation

Upon closing the GUI, hide it from view and enable showing it from a taskbar icon next to the current time.

Goal

Enable customising the GUI and advanced launcher options.

Implementation

Add a menubar to the top of the window with various options.

• Window
  • Increase/Decrease font size
  • Show Terminal
  • Show Attribute Editor
• File
  • Save as favourite
  • Load favourite
  • Refresh
• Help
  • Open website
  • About (with version information)

Goal

Enable configuring of the project, such as thumbnail, title and description.

Implementation

The projects deserve a greater spotlight than just the name.

Difficulty

Currently, shot, task and application metadata is stored within a project and is loaded upon entering the project. The project metadata is also located within the project, but isn't available until after entering it. The brute force approach would be to load all metadata for every project upon listing it, but it would come at a performance penalty.

Best to hold on until the implementation of the remote asset service, at which point we could do exactly this, but cache the results server-side and save on performance that way.

Goal

Save the user some time attempting to run unavailable software

Implementation

Visually indicate that a given application isn't available in the local environment.

Goal

Save time browsing for assets.

Implemenation

Mimic the Windows Explorer mechanism of browsing to an arbitrary level in any of the currently selected levels.

Goal

Avoid accidental launch.

Motivation

At the moment, an application is launched by pressing the name. If you double-click, you'll launch two applications. Since some applications take a minute to appear running, one may accidentally click many times and cause many applications to launch all at once.

Implementation

Implement a press-and-hold type mechanism, such that you press-and-hold on your application for a second or so in order to launch it, along with some visual indicator of how long you need to press and whether you've pressed long enough.

Goal

Optimise time to start task.

Goal

This can safely be hidden.

Goal

Help the user understand when something goes wrong.

Motivation

At the moment, an error may occur or a warning may appear in the terminal, but the user has no way of knowing, causing potential confusion in such situations.

Implementation

Add a warning message in the footer of the window, shake the window or otherwise notify the user when something has gone wrong.

Issue

Currently the only way in Avalon to set up a project's environment is to actually launch into the application through the Launcher. I believe this should be simplified and separated so that it becomes trivial to initialize an application's environment for an asset in code, e.g. when trying to batch prepare a lot of assets.

This would also increase the readability of launching an application itself, since it would just rely on the library functions for initializing the environment, like lib.create_environment(asset, task, app).

This is not reliable pseudocode, but would present the idea.

# pseudocode
import os
import errno
import traceback
import shutil
from avalon import io

# A mockup maya application (should be loaded from .toml)
app = {
    "default_dirs": [
        "scenes",
        "data",
        "renderData/shaders",
        "images",
        "sourceimages"
    ],
    "copy": {
        "{AVALON_CORE}/res/workspace.mel": "workspace.mel"
    }
}

asset = io.find_one({"type": "asset"})
create_environment(app, asset, task="model")

def create_environment(app, asset, task):
    """Create a work environment for application in asset's task.

    Arguments:
        app (dict): Application specification.
        asset (bson.ObjectID): The asset database id.
        task (str): The name of the task to operate in.

    """
    # todo: actually get the workdir using project's config and the asset itself
    # this would format the template for "work" files.
    workdir = _get_workdir(asset, task, app)

    try:
        os.makedirs(workdir)
        log.info("Creating working directory '%s'", workdir)

    except OSError as e:

        # An already existing working directory is fine.
        if e.errno == errno.EEXIST:
            log.info("Existing working directory found.")

        else:
            log.error("Could not create working directory.")
            log.error(traceback.format_exc())

    else:
        log.info("Creating default directories..")
        for dirname in app.get("default_dirs", []):
            log.debug(" - %s",  dirname)
            os.makedirs(os.path.join(workdir, dirname))

    # Perform application copy
    for src, dst in app.get("copy", {}).items():
        # Format source by environment
        # TODO: Formatting shouldn't be done here!
        src = src.format(**os.environ)
        dst = os.path.join(workdir, dst)

        try:
            log.info("Copying %s -> %s", src, dst)
            shutil.copy(src, dst)
        except OSError as e:
            log.error("Could not copy application file: %s", e)
            log.error(" - %s -> %s", src, dst)

I might even want to propose to have this logic be part of the avalon's core API, which would also make it an issue for avalon core.

Issue

The issue was reported here by Gitter user anilreddyg2. The error message was:

C:\>avalon
Using Python @ 'C:\Users\Anil\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python36-32\python.e
xe'
Using PyQt5 @ 'C:\Users\Anil\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python36-32\lib\site-
packages\PyQt5'
Using core @ 'C:\avalon-setup\git\avalon-core'
Using launcher @ 'C:\avalon-setup\git\avalon-launcher'
Using root @ 'C:\avalon-setup\git\avalon-examples\projects'
Using config: 'polly'
Starting avalon-launcher
QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component
file:///C:/avalon-setup/git/avalon-launcher/launcher/res/qml/main.qml:79 Type My
Button unavailable
file:///C:/avalon-setup/git/avalon-launcher/launcher/res/qml/MyButton.qml:8 Cann
ot override FINAL property

Could not load QML file..

This seems related to an icon variable being added to Qt5.10.

Proposal

We should fix this so we are forward compatible with these versions. We could likely rename our "icon" property so it doesn't conflict with the new one implemented on AbstractButton.

Workaround

The current workaround would be to downgrade to lower than version PyQt 5.10.

Hi,
i am using Python 3.7, PyQT 5.11.1 and getting below error

Starting avalon-launcher
Warning: QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO is deprecated. Instead use:
   QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR to enable platform plugin controlled per-screen factors.
   QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS to set per-screen factors.
   QT_SCALE_FACTOR to set the application global scale factor.
QQmlApplicationEngine failed to load component
file:///E:/code/avalon/avalon-setup/git/avalon-launcher/launcher/res/qml/main.qml:79 Type MyButton unavailable
file:///E:/code/avalon/avalon-setup/git/avalon-launcher/launcher/res/qml/MyButton.qml:8 Cannot override FINAL property

Could not load QML file..

Problem

Currently you can't generate multiple actions with code.

Solution

Have Launcher run the register method when found in modules.

The idea is to run register once on initialization, so actions can be dynamically generated.

Goal

Notify user on available update, potentially perform one in the background.

Implementation

At startup, check for commits made since the currently checked out version on disk, and show comments made per commit. Like what a GitHub pull-request does.

1. Start Launcher
2. Checking for updates in the background
3. If found, pop up window
4. Update
5. Automatically restart Launcher

Issue

Registering actions derived from the studio configuration to be accessible in the launcher

Sub issue

It is debatable where to call actions.register_defaullt_actions and actions.register_config_actions. This is entirely based on the approach of calling the launcher.

Option 1
Do this in the __init__ module but this would mean it would not be relying on avalon.pipeline.find_config but on the os.environ.

Option 2
Call the functions in the Application.__init__ method of the launcher but this would require deregister_actions for both default and config related actions. The plus side of this approach would be that the user can call the launcher from python without the need of first

Motivation

At Colorbleed we want the user to be able to start a Fusion Render Node from the launcher but the location and specific commands will differ per studio it would be better call a function from within the configuration.

Solution

In our actions module we have use register_config_actions to checks for a register_launcher_actions and runs it if found.

Example of register_launcher_actions:

def register_launcher_actions():
    """Register specific actions which should be accessible in the launcher"""

    # Register fusion actions
    from .fusion import rendernode
    pipeline.register_plugin(api.Action, rendernode.FusionRenderNode)

Example of application with configuration actions:

Goal

Shorten the time taken to launch an application.

Implementation

Begin typing to select the "best match", based on both the order of character - e.g. "gr" = "Gravity" - and character content - e.g. "gtsby" = "Great Gatsby".

Use cases

“As a , I want so that .”

1. As an artist, I want to get an application up and running as quickly as possible so that I can remain in my creative zone.
2. As an artist, I'm quicker with a keyboard than a mouse and want to leverage this when starting a new shot so as to save time.

Operational modes

1. Enter name, press enter to browse to selection. Enter another name, press enter to browse to selection.
2. Enter name, hit spacebar, enter another name, and finally hit enter to browse to final selection immediately, potentially skipping several steps. E.g. "gty ran anim may [enter]"

Goal

Gain a better understanding of your (optional) user directory.

Implementation

Visualise the name of the currently logged on user, potentially provide a drop-down enabling a user to choose being a different user. Such as a shared user, like Mindbender.

Goal

Increase awareness of connectivity to Mindbender

Motivation

Remote artists can sometimes experience issues with connecting to Mindbender, if they for example suffer from severe (500ms+) latency or a slow (<1mbit) connection. We should make this information apparent in the GUI such that they can see and report these numbers to us. I'd also like them to be sent along to Sentry for a full picture of why things go wrong.

Implementation

Add a little widget in the main GUI with the following..

1. Connectivity (firewall, virus protection)
2. Latency
3. Throughput
4. Bandwidth

Goal

Reduce clutter for active projects, by letting old/inactive projects and assets disappear from view.

Motivation

Mindbender has accumulated a few past projects, along with a few misspelled projects and assets. Rather than deleting things, which is dangerous for all sorts of reasons, it's better to simply hide them. That way, no references are broken, there is no need for undo or cautious backups.

Implementation

project["data"]["visible"] = False  # Defaults to True
asset["data"]["visible"] = False