Reference scene with Autodesk Maya using Google Drive/DropBox like websites with multiple computer.

[jesb1153]

Hello everyone,

My team and I are currently working on a school project using Autodesk Maya and we would like to set up a way for all of us to work from home using a reference scene which would update every time someone would save his work after he has modified something.

We have tried working with Google Drive and DropBox, however, we were quite unsuccessful. The pathing from the different computers would be not let us access the work from my other teammates. We looked all over the internet and this subject seems to be quite inexistant, I am even doubting if it's possible.

So, is there any of you that would have a solution to our problem.

Thank you, any help is really appreciated.
Have a great day! :thumbsup:

 

[dwatterworth]

Do you mean that you want to work concurrently/at the same exact time as others? As far as I know there isn't an application that can check the delta of a scene and only upload/download changes (like the sync function in autodesk revit). I've got a lot of experience with 3dsmax, some in maya and the two seem to have very similar options thanks to Autodesks buy it and skin it mentality.

In 3ds (stop reading here if you know maya has no archive function, but I imagine it does) there is an option to save to an archive file, which will take all of your linked/referenced assets in the scene (materials, reference scenes/models etc) and save them all into a zip file. The scene at that point is changed so all of the pathing for materials turns local instead of absolute, letting you move that archive folder from machine to machine. As long as the folder structure of the archive folder isn't changed, then the links/references etc will work regardless of how the file is transferred.

SO

If you have a master scene that all of your respective portions are loaded into I would do the following:

Make sure everyone working on the file(s) have their dropbox/google drive folder all located OUTSIDE of the user folders, so c:\\dropbox folder (which should allow for each person to interchange files etc without issue)
Save individual scene components that each person are working on, into an archive format.

Have your master reference scene which resides in dropbox etc, populated with the archive versions of each individual portion.

Then when you complete work on a portion of the scene, simply over-write that part with the updated archive file of that part and reload/refresh the links from the reference/master file.

I think that makes sense. I've used that method on local networks to render multiple iterations/views at the same time instead of having all of the assets on the much slower network storage.

 

[dwatterworth]

Do you mean that you want to work concurrently/at the same exact time as others? As far as I know there isn't an application that can check the delta of a scene and only upload/download changes (like the sync function in autodesk revit). I've got a lot of experience with 3dsmax, some in maya and the two seem to have very similar options thanks to Autodesks buy it and skin it mentality.

In 3ds (stop reading here if you know maya has no archive function, but I imagine it does) there is an option to save to an archive file, which will take all of your linked/referenced assets in the scene (materials, reference scenes/models etc) and save them all into a zip file. The scene at that point is changed so all of the pathing for materials turns local instead of absolute, letting you move that archive folder from machine to machine. As long as the folder structure of the archive folder isn't changed, then the links/references etc will work regardless of how the file is transferred.

SO

If you have a master scene that all of your respective portions are loaded into I would do the following:

Make sure everyone working on the file(s) have their dropbox/google drive folder all located OUTSIDE of the user folders, so c:\\dropbox folder (which should allow for each person to interchange files etc without issue)
Save individual scene components that each person are working on, into an archive format.

Have your master reference scene which resides in dropbox etc, populated with the archive versions of each individual portion.

Then when you complete work on a portion of the scene, simply over-write that part with the updated archive file of that part and reload/refresh the links from the reference/master file.

I think that makes sense. I've used that method on local networks to render multiple iterations/views at the same time instead of having all of the assets on the much slower network storage.

 

[jesb1153]

You are my hero, thank you very much sir!

 

[dwatterworth]

You're welcome! Glad to help!