Page History
...
Centralized Asset Management
...
Usinganima® (PRO and ALL) Anima you can download the models from the library directly from inside the anima® Anima application. If you are going to use anima® Anima on multiple machines connected to the same network, we recommend setting up your “Purchases” folder in a shared location to make sure that all the machines are using the same updated resources.
Sharing the downloaded models in the same network location is a good idea to use it as a sort of download cache, to avoid downloading multiple times the same models. You are not forced to do it because anima® Anima will automatically download any of the assets you may need, but sharing the same Purchases folder with your colleagues will save you time and bandwidth (keep in mind that the new 4D models have a considerable size).
However, the Render Node installations of anima® Anima don’t need access to the “Purchases” folder, only to the anima® Anima project folder, because all the resources used in a project are stored inside the subfolder named “resource cache”, placed inside each project folder. We use that “resource cache” subfolder to store all the resources used by that particular project in the most efficient way. This way, we ensure that any device having access to the anima® Anima project folder will be able to load and render the scene without issues, and you won’t need to manage the contents of the “Purchases” folder manually.
Therefore, as you do when you render with any other DCC application like 3dsMax®3ds Max, Maya®Maya, or Cinema4D®Cinema 4D either either locally or using a Render Manager like Backburner, Pulze, Batch Render, Team Render or Deadline, your only need to put your anima® Anima project folder in a shared network and then import it into your scene. After that, the anima® Anima plugin will be able to find and load that scene from your local network (ALL, PRO and Render Node), and will render the anima® Anima content without issues.
The Purchases Folder
...
| Section | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
|
...
|
...
|
...
|
...
| Section | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
|
...
|
...
| Section | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
|
...
|
...
...
Whenever you set “Purchases” to any location, a few .xml files and 3 subfolders (“models“, “clips” and “streams“) will be automatically created there. For example, if your “Purchases” path is set to “Z:/_AXYZ_/purchases“, then the anima® Anima actors (all the *.y files) will be placed inside the subfolder “Z:/_AXYZ_/purchases/models“.
Blocked Purchase Folder
...
| Section | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
|
...
|
...
|
|
...
|
...
|
Purchases Folder on the Render Nodes (DEPRECATED)
...
On the anima® Anima Render Nodes you can also define a Purchases folder, but notice that this is a setting that is only kept to ensure backward compatibility with anima® Anima 4.1.x or older. Since version 4.5.x it is not necessary anymore to set up the Purchases folder in the Render Nodes because they now use the new “resource_cache” subfolder from the same anima® Anima project to get all the assets used in the project, so setting the Purchase folder on the nodes will have no effect at all on the newer versions.
...
If you have problems to have access to your mapped drives from anima®Anima, it means that the main anima® Anima process “anima.exe” is running in a user environment that does not have those mapped drives mounted yet or in which the access to those drives has been marked as unavailable by Windows (this could happen if the NAS or Server that hosts the network drives was not reachable for a while).
Sometimes you can even open a Windows File Manager and an anima® Anima File Browser in the same user session, but see the mapped drives on one of the windows only. This counter-intuitive behavior is a known issue in Windows systems and is described in full detail in these articles:
- https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3035277/mapped-drives-are-not-available-from-an-elevated-prompt-when-uac-is-co
- http://woshub.com/how-to-access-mapped-network-drives-from-the-elevated-apps/
This usually happens when anima® when Anima is launched from the installer because the installer is always executed with “admin” privileges and the processes that are launched from there are inheriting the same windows environment. If this happens, the problem can be easily solved by closing anima® closing Anima and starting it again from the Windows Start menu.
...
- Make sure that the user that is running the anima® Anima process has actually access to those drives and that the drive mapping is also set up on that account. You can see the users related to each process in the Windows Task Manager, at the Details Tab.
- Use the extended UNC paths instead of the mapped drives. For example, let’s say that the path “Z:\ANIMA_Assets” has a “Z:” mapped drive that corresponds to the UNC path “\\You_server\your_shared_folder“. Then you can replace that part to get the full path: “\\You_server\your_shared_folder\ANIMA_Assets”
...