api

I’m trying to build a system right now that can automatically substitute environment variables for paths on a per-scene basis. When a user opens a Maya file, I want to parse that file and set temporary environment variables called $SHOW, $SEQ and $SHOT that point to the show’s root folder, the sequence’s folder in that show, or the shot in that sequence. The variable names and paths I’m trying to get are pretty specific to the current pipeline I’m working on, but this essentially lets me use relative paths in Maya but WITHOUT using Maya’s outdated and inflexible workspace system. I don’t want an individual Maya project for every single shot and asset in the entire show, and I don’t want all of my Maya scenes to be forced to live within a single workspace, either.

I’ve solved this problem before by using symbolic links to basically force all of the Maya projects generated for every single shot and asset to link to the same place. This makes for a pretty busy-looking file system, though, and symlinks only work on Unix-based servers (i.e. not Windows). This system I’m building now looks a lot more like Houdini’s global variables… as long as I define $SHOW or $SHOT or whatever, I can path a reference or a texture to $SHOT/assets/whatever.xyz and it doesn’t necessarily have to be within a Maya workspace, and it’s also not an absolute path.

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