Ftrack Admin Docs

Ftrack is currently the main project management option for AYON. This documentation assumes that you are familiar with Ftrack and its basic principles. If you're new to Ftrack, we recommend having a thorough look at Ftrack Official Documentation.

Prepare Ftrack for AYON

Server URL

If you want to connect Ftrack to AYON you might need to make few changes in Ftrack settings. These changes would take a long time to do manually, so we prepared a few Ftrack actions to help you out. First, you'll need to have Ftrack enabled in your AYON bundle, and enter the address to your Ftrack server.

Login

Once your server is configured, restart AYON and you should be prompted to enter your Ftrack credentials to be able to run our Ftrack actions. If you are already logged in to Ftrack in your browser, it is enough to press Ftrack login and it will connect automatically.

For more details step by step on how to login to Ftrack in AYON to go artist Ftrack login documentation.

You can only use our Ftrack Actions and publish to Ftrack if each artist is logged in.

Custom Attributes

After successfully connecting AYON with you Ftrack, you can right-click on any project in Ftrack and you should see a bunch of actions available. The most important one is called AYON Admin and contains multiple options inside.

To prepare Ftrack for working with AYON you'll need to run AYON Admin - Create/Update Custom Attributes, which creates and sets the Custom Attributes necessary for AYON to function.

Event Server

Ftrack Event Server is the key to automation of many tasks like status change, thumbnail update, automatic synchronization to AYON server and many more. Event server should run at all times to perform the required processing as it is not possible to catch some of them retrospectively with enough certainty.

What you need?

1. You need a user which is used to connect to ftrack server, and it's API key.
2. A machine where the services will be running.

Which user to use?

• should have Administrator role
• the same user should not be used by an artist
• the user should have permissions for private projects you want to sync

How to run ftrack event server

At this moment event server consist of 2 processes Leecher and Processor. There are prepared docker images for each process. We do recommend to use ASH (AYON service host) to be able to control them from AYON server web. In that case make sure you have running ASH and create both services in Services on server.

There is option to run the services manually, in that case please check ftrack addon repository for more information.

Where to run event server

We recommend you to run event server on stable server machine with ability to connect to AYON server and Ftrack web server. Best practice we recommend is to run event server as service. It can be Windows or Linux. For a well functioning ftrack event server, we recommend a linux virtual server with Ubuntu or CentOS. CPU and RAM allocation needs differ based on the studio size, but a 2GB of ram, with a dual core CPU and around 4GB of storage should suffice.

---

Ftrack events

Events are helpers for automation. They react to Ftrack Web Server events like change entity attribute, create of entity, etc.

Sync to AYON

Automatic synchronization to pipeline database.

This event updates entities on their changes Ftrack. When new entity is created or existing entity is modified. Interface with listing information is shown to users when synchronization rules are not met. This event may also undo changes when they might break pipeline. Namely change name of synchronized entity, move synchronized entity in hierarchy.

Synchronize Hierarchical and Entity Attributes

Auto-synchronization of hierarchical attributes from Ftrack entities.

Related to Synchronize to AYON database event (without it, it makes no sense to use this event). Hierarchical attributes must be synchronized with special way so we needed to split synchronization into 2 parts. There are synchronization rules for hierarchical attributes that must be met otherwise interface with messages about not meeting conditions is shown to user.

Update Hierarchy thumbnails

Push thumbnails from version, up through multiple hierarchy levels

Update status on task action

When launching an action on a task in Ftrack, the status of the task can be updated. The mapping happens from the value to key, ei. if the key is Ready and the value is Not Ready, then the status will be updated to Ready if its Not Ready. The mapping happens on a first-come-first-serve basis, from the top to the bottom.

There are two special tokens that can be used; __any__ and __ignore__

__any__ - if this is in the value of a mapping, then any task status will be changed to the key (status) when launching an action. __ignore__ - if this is in the key of a mapping, then any status (case insensitive) in the values will be ignored for updating the task status.

By default any task status will be updated to In Progress when launching an action.

Sync status from Task to Parent

List of parent object types where this is triggered ("Shot", "Asset build", etc. Skipped if it is empty)

Sync status from Task to Asset Version

This will sync the status from the task to the latest asset version on the task.

note

Due to a potential infinite status update loop, the event server user and the user updating the task status, need to be different. If it is the same user, the status will not be synced.

Sync status from Version to Task

Updates Task status based on status changes on its Asset Version.

The issue this solves is when Asset version's status is changed but the artist assigned to Task is looking at the task status, thus not noticing the review.

This event makes sure statuses Asset Version get synced to it's task. After changing a status on version, this event first tries to set identical status to version's parent (usually task). But this behavior can be tweaked in settings.

Sync status on first created version

This event handler allows setting of different status to a first created Asset Version in Ftrack.

This is useful for example if first version publish doesn't contain any actual reviewable work, but is only used for roundtrip conform check, in which case this version could receive status pending conform instead of standard pending review

Update status on next task

Change status on next task by task types order when task status state changed to "Done". All tasks with the same Task mapping of next task status changes From → To. Some status can be ignored.

Publish plugins

Collect Ftrack Family

Reviews uploads to Ftrack could be configured by combination of hosts, families and task names. (Currently implemented only in Standalone Publisher, Maya.)

Profiles

Profiles are used to select when to add Ftrack family to the instance. One or multiple profiles could be configured, Families, Task names (regex available), Host names combination is needed.

Eg. If I want review created and uploaded to Ftrack for render published from Maya , setting is:

Host names: 'maya' Families: 'render' Add Ftrack Family: enabled

Advanced adding if additional families present

In special cases adding 'ftrack' based on main family ('Families' set higher) is not enough. (For example upload to Ftrack for 'plate' main family should only happen if 'review' is contained in instance 'families', not added in other cases. )