The syncsketch-maya plugin which will allow you to

• upload videos and playblasts to syncsketch in seconds, skipping any conversion process
• download notes and image annotations from syncsketch back to maya, adjust parameters such like frame offset etc
• manage your viewport presets for recording

See a quick Intro Video for this plugin here: https://vimeo.com/syncsketch/integrationmaya

See a good use case, demonstrated by Zeina Masri on how to animate from reference: https://vimeo.com/359388029

Installation

Drag & Drop

The easiest way to install this application is to ...

1. Click this File Link > installGui.py < to download the installation Python file.
2. Drag drop it from the browser into a maya-viewport. This will automatically install all the dependencies without requiring admin privileges into the current version of Maya's modules folder.
3. Click 'Install' and on Allow this process to run python (press 'Allow' in the popup)
4. Click 'Allow' in the Untrusted Plugin Loading warning dialog to load the 'SyncSketchPlugin.py' plugin
5. Start SyncSketch UI
6. Log-In with your SyncSketch Credentials.

Installing an experimental dev release:

1. Set environment variable SS_DEV to dev in your environment or Maya Script Editor

import os
os.environ['SS_DEV'] = 'dev'

2. Download installGui.py and drag it into your maya-viewport.

Manual (Experienced user)

If you are familiar with python and pip, you can go for a manual installation and follow these steps:

1. Install the Syncsketch-API + extras

pip install --upgrade --user  "syncsketch>1,<2.0" "requests>2,<2.28.0" "pyyaml>5,<6.0"`

2. Install the Syncsketch-GUI

Use pip to install the latest release of the Maya Syncsketch plugin from Github. Update the target path to the Maya script folder for the current version of Maya you are using.

pip install --upgrade --target=C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\maya\2018\scripts https://github.com/syncsketch/syncsketchGUI/archive/release.zip

3. Open Maya & Install the maya Shelf from the script editor:

import syncsketchGUI
syncsketchGUI.install_shelf()

Note: Manual installation expects you to have ffmpeg and pip already installed and set-up correctly.

Uninstall

To uninstall, make sure to close Maya and then delete the folder and file corresponding to the version you want to uninstall from $MAYA_APP_DIR\<maya_version>\modules. See Maya help for more details on MAYA_APP_DIR.

For example, on Windows to uninstall version 1.3.0 of the Maya Syncsketch plugin from Maya 2022, where you replace <user> with your username:

Windows:

# delete the following folder
C:\Users\<user>\Documents\maya\2022\modules\syncsketch-1.3.0
# delete this file
C:\Users\<user>\Documents\maya\2022\modules\syncsketch-1.3.0.mod

MacOS:

# delete the following folder
/Users/<user>/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2020/modules/syncsketch-1.3.0
# delete this file
/Users/<user>/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/2020/modules/syncsketch-1.3.0.mod

Environment variables

SS_DISABLE_UPGRADE - If this environment variable is set, the plugin will not check for updates on startup.

SS_DEV - If this environment variable is set to dev, the plugin will install the latest dev release instead of the latest stable release.

Known Issues

Installer crashes running in Maya 2020 or 2022 using Python 2

Ths is due to a bug in OpenSSL affecting certain generations of Intel CPUs. See https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/troubleshooting/openssl-sha-crash-bug-requires-application-update.html for more details. Workaround is to set the environment variable OPENSSL_ia32cap to :~0x20000000 before running the Maya. This can be done in the Maya.env file in your MAYA_APP_DIR folder. For example, on Windows, you would add the following line to C:\Users\<user>\Documents\maya\2020\Maya.env:

Maya.env

OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x20000000

Contributing

Fork and send pull request

If you want to contribute to this project, your help is very welcome. We are trying to give a minimal version of a Publish workflow, which you can either adapt or get inspired by.

Long: How to make a clean pull request

• Create a personal fork of our Github.
• Clone the fork on your local machine. Your remote repo on Github is called origin.
• Add the original repository as a remote called upstream.
• If you created your fork a while ago be sure to pull upstream changes into your local repository.
• Create a new branch to work on! Branch from master.
• Implement/fix your feature, comment your code.
• Add or change the documentation as needed.
• Squash your commits into a single commit with git's interactive rebase. Create a new branch if necessary.
• Push your branch to your fork on Github, the remote origin.
• From your fork open a pull request in the to the master branch
• Once the pull request is approved and merged you can pull the changes from upstream to your local repo and delete your extra branch(es).

And last but not least: Always write your commit messages in the present tense. Your commit message should describe what the commit, when applied, does to the code – not what you did to the code.