In early 2006 I started to rethink the build-process for 3DVIA Virtools projects. It's a topic where many people from the Virtools community dive into one day or the other.
The problem
The standard method of doing an assets update for your project is, to let the 3d artist export the new assets versions, then a Virtools developer drops them into the CMO from the resource database and chooses what to replace and what to keep. One by one….
Some developer used custom scripted loading processes and so did we. We used text files and assets loading buttons for some projects. Text contained data of what material or mesh uses what shader and what attributes. But it came out that updating/maintaining those text files was quite error-prone and somehow not really artists friendly. Moreover building the final product for testing still required a bit of the time of a Virtools developer … time that was better spend on bug-fixing or adding features.
The solution
So, the new iteration was a command-line tool we created. Currently I am thinking about a new, better name. For now I will refer to it as "VBuilder". It's a one-click processor that is able to produce VMOs from CMOs using a list of simple processing-commands inside a XML file. A different XML file can be passed to the tool via the arguments, so it's possible batch-build for different VMOs.
We started to use directories as rough top-level for classifications of 3D assets: roads, buildings, cars, people. Adding a new car or a new building became a simple task: the 3D artist exports his new car as NMO to the "cars" directory, then he triggers VBuilder and within minutes a deliverable VMO file is available for testing.
What it requires though, is some up-front import-pipeline coding inside Virtools for each project (which might be reusable for different projects) and – in our case – naming conventions for objects and materials inside 3ds max etc.
What effect did we achieve with this?
Initially we had an iteration time of aprox. one day. This has to do with the fact that a Virtools programmer is not always available or ready to interrupt his development work for an assets integration-cycle.
So the artist may come to him and say: "Hi, I updated some buildings and some cars, can we have a look at it?". The programmer responds: "Let me just finished this little script first. It will only take 20 minutes" … … … then 2 hours later: "Ok, took me longer but now I am read… ???!! Hello?" – the artist went home as he comes to the office a lot earlier than the programmer!! He then does the integration and writes a notification about it. Next day, similar procedure. You see, this scenario really may happen and if you have a lot more Gfx ppl than coders it might get worse. I remember one project, where we had a junior Virtools developer doing mostly one thing: reimport new iterations from the graphics team.
With VBuilder the iteration cycle, for already available content-types, went from worst-case one-day to worst-case 5 minutes. Sometimes it only took 1 minute including startup of the player for testing. The best thing is, it even scales. I was able to support eight 3d artists while having time for adding features or doing bug-fixing. They were doing their stuff and it only needed my involvement when new item-types had to be created.
So with that team and VBuilder we were able to theoretically have several hundreds of content-update iterations or content-extension iterations per day! No idea how many they really did but they did plenty. That's a boost, ain't it?
Interested?
So, after 3 years beeing in use I am considering making it commercially available. It's no magic tool but it allows what I have described above. If you have several 3D artists in your team and you want to free programmer resources, this might be something for you! For me the effort to make it available only makes sense, if there are several teams or people willing to buy this. Thus if you think this is something for you, get in touch with me. Write me an eMail with "VBuilder" as subject. Also let me know what you think of what would be a fair price for you and on how many machines you would like to run it on.
Making it even better
I have a couple of interesting ideas of how to bring VBuilder to the next level. Currently it's focus is triggering the import and processing and building VMOs. This has some backdraws when working with the CMOs inside Virtools "Dev" and I think there are some interesting ways to make it even more efficient. If there is commercial interest, I would bring VBuilder to a new level!
To be continued …
Now this gave you a rough idea what VBuilder is about. In the next part I'll go into some details on how exactly it works.