• Artists working from home

Artists working from home

This page has moved to https://help.animbot.ca/support/solutions/articles/61000292055-artists-working-from-home

 

It’s possible to have an artist working from home while using the licenses from the Studio. If client machine is able to telnet the license server, it will work just as if s/he was at the studio. The RLM license checkout process is usually fast, however, loading animBot modules could take several minutes. In this scenario, it’s recommended that the artist installs animBot locally. Please follow the steps below:

  • Download animBot (preferably the recommended version for the Enterprise Edition)
  • Extract the zip file and you will find a folder/module “animBot” inside the version folder i.e. “animBot_1_0_0_Bundled/animBot”.
  • Do NOT use the drag/drop file. Instead, copy the animBot folder anywhere in your computer, with the exception of <user>/maya/scripts, as this location is reserved for individual licensing installations. For instance, one can copy them to <user>/maya/scripts/animBot_enterprise/.
  • Next, we need to add this location to Maya’s python path. Because animBot is also installed on the company network, we need to make sure the local python path comes BEFORE the company’s. In addition to that, we need to set the global variable ANIMBOT_CONFIGJSONPATH to point to the company’s config.json file location, as otherwise animBot will not run in Enterprise Edition mode.  It’s not recommended to handle every artist with the config.json file to be installed locally, as one could enable internet connection and other settings that might not be desirable. We can achieve both things by adding the following python command to the artist Maya shelf, to be used to launch animBot:

 

# Add animBot python path to the top of the sys.path
import os
import sys
myPath = "<user>/maya/scripts/animBot_enterprise/"
if myPath not in sys.path: sys.path.insert(0, myPath)

# Set the config.json path, so animBot runs in Enterprise Edition mode and is able to check floating licenses from the server
os.environ["ANIMBOT_CONFIGJSONPATH"] = "/company/network/path/to/config.json"

# Launch animBot
import animBot; animBot.toggle()

* Replace <user> with the real folder name and make sure the path is absolute.
* If an artist is not comfortable with installing animBot him/herself, you could for instance create a script to copy animBot files from your network to the user machine. The end goal is to end up with the animBot installation locally.
* If user has a spotty network connection, please read this topic on roaming licenses.