Welcome to the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit Starter App!

This app serves as a quick way to get started when doing Toolkit App development. If you want to get up and running quickly, follow these simple steps:

Step 1. Pick a branch!

This repo has got several branches, illustrating slightly different workflows:

• the master branch contains a standard multi app which runs in all engines.
• the shotgun_multi_select branch shows how to get started if you want to create a shotgun specific app where you can select multiple objects in Shotgun and pass this selection into the app.
• the shotgun_model_delegate branch illustrates how to use the Shotgun MVC model for efficient data retrieval and the toolkit widget delegate system for display of content.

Step 2. Fork this Repository!

First of all, fork this repo. You can fork it to your own github accout or fork it to an internal git server, that's totally up to you! At this time, make sure you also rename it to something sensible. We recommend the naming convention tk-ENGINE-APPNAME, where ENGINE is set to multi if the app can run in more than one engine. For example, if you are working on a rigging tool in maya, you may want to name it tk-maya-characterposer.

Step 3. Install your forked App in Toolkit

Create a Dev Area

Now, first things first - before starting development, let's install the App. First, create a development sandbox for your project by going to the pipeline configurations page in Shotgun and click select "Clone" on the menu when right clicking on the primary pipeline configuration. This will give you a private place to do development and you wont be disturbing the production.

Install the new repository

With your development sandbox there will be a specific tank command that you can use to address this particular configuration. Open a shell and navigate to your sandbox. Now run the install app command. When you install an app, you need to choose an environment and an engine. The engine is the application you will be running, so either tk-maya, tk-nuke etc. The environment is a collection of tools that you want to run against a specific work area. In our default configuration, when working with Shots, the environment is called shot_step and when working with Assets, the environment is called asset_step.

> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank install_app shot_step tk-maya user@remotehost:/path_to/tk-multi-mynewapp.git

This will find the latest git tag and install that into your setup. If you want more information about how the install_app command works, just run it without any options.

Now, to test that the App was installed correctly, go to a Shot task in Shotgun and launch maya from your development sandbox. Toolkit now tracks this repository and if you create new tags, these will be detected by Toolkit's update system.

Step 4. Set up your local environment

Now clone your forked repo locally, so that you have the code on disk somewhere. Next, we need to switch toolkit so that it doesn't track the latest tag in the git repo, but instead looks at your local code. For example, if you have your locally checked out code in /Users/john.smith/dev/tk-multi-mynewapp, you would do the following:

> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank switch_app shot_step tk-maya tk-multi-mynewapp /Users/john.smith/dev/tk-multi-mynewapp

Step 5. Make changes!

Make changes to your code. Since you are now running tookit with a dev setup, there is a reload option on the menu. Clicking this will reload all apps and configuration, making it easy and quick to iterate.

Step 6. Tag up a version and switch back to git mode

When you are ready to release, tag up a version in git. Name it for example v1.0.0. Then, switch back to git mode. Toolkit will pick up the tag with the higest number and use that - your dev area is no longer used by the system.

> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank switch_app shot_step tk-maya tk-multi-mynewapp user@remotehost:/path_to/tk-multi-mynewapp.git

Step 7. Push your config changes to the production config

Lastly, push your configuration changes to the Primary production config for the project.

> cd /your/development/sandbox
> ./tank push_configuration