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General Tools Unity

General Tools Unity

Table of Contents

General Tools

General Tools contain the login to Ftrack and task selection, as well as some timeline tools that help you during layout amongst other things.

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Ftrack Tasks

This tool will be your first step when opening Unity. It will allow you to see the task that you are assigned to on Ftrack, and let you reload ftrack data .

Login

The Ftrack tasks tab should be docked next to the Inspector in Unity by default when opening a project, but you can also find it by going to SYNK > General Tools > Ftrack tasks.

  • You can start by typing the email address linked to your Ftrack account, and clicking Log In.

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Task Select

  • Once you’ve logged in, you’ll be moved to the Task Select tab. There, you can filter through your tasks using the available settings, and select the task you’ll be working on by clicking Set as Current Task.

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If no task shows up in this tab, it either means you are currently not assigned to a task on Ftrack, or that the Ftrack data hasn’t been reloaded in your Unity Editor since you were assigned to a task.

Click Reload Ftrack data to make sure your Editor is up to date (this can take a little bit of time) and if your task list is still empty, check with a supervisor to ensure you are assigned to a task and can work.

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Once a task is selected, it will be highlighted in green, and you’ll see the toolbar appear in your Editor.

Reloading the Ftrack data from time to time is a good practice to make sure you are working with the latest information and assets at your disposal in the project.

Task Detail

  • You can use the Task Detail tab to change a task’s status, using the Force task status to dropdown menu.
    You can also write notes to the task you’ve selected, as a way of communicating with the other users during production.

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Important: it is every artist’s responsibility to update their task status on Ftrack and attach an appropriate note. Set it to In Progress when working on it, and to Pending Review when the work is finished.

Timeline Tools

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These tools will most often be used during layout. They will allow you to make changes to a camera in a shot, as well as provide visual guides to help you create a good composition for a shot.

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Focal Lengths

While a camera is selected, you can click the focal length you want in the list, and the tool will create a key in the timeline for that change.

Anti-aliasing

Using the timeline tools from the Artist toolbar, it is possible to add a specific anti-aliasing mode to a shot camera. To do so, put the timeline marker at the point where you would like the anti-aliasing to change. Next, select the anti-aliasing mode you wish to use in the timeline tools. This will add a keyframe to the timeline with the specific anti-aliasing mode you selected.

Overlays

  • Storyboard

  • Animation Render (will show the Maya playblast render)

  • Rule of Thirds

  • Black Bars (to change the 16:9 window to Cinemascope)

  • Burn-In (showing information relative to the shot / sequence / reel)

  • Action Safe Zone

These overlays can be switched on/off, or made more/less transparent.

 

When the sequence project is created, by default, each shot gets a default camera with a focal length of 50, when you open this camera from the shot in the timeline, you should see this:

Ftrack Sanity Check

The Ftrack Sanity Check tool is used to fix issues with assets and their links in ftrack in the following scenarios:

  • The asset is present in the shot but it’s not linked in Ftrack. Create link will fix the issue. Create all missing links will do the same for every existing case.

  • The asset is linked to a shot but not present in the shot hierarchy in Unity. In this case there are two options for the asset: Add to shot, or Delete link if that link is not needed. Import all missing assets or delete all unneeded links will apply that solution to all existing cases.

  • Sequence based assets need to be linked to all shots. Usually this will be done automatically when importing via the Asset Browser, but if the links are still not there, Link sequence based assets to all shots will fix the issue.