Bookmarks provides a basic overview of your project's assets and files. Use it to create new jobs, shots, or browse existing content. Share paths and notes with your Slack-mates and preview renders with OpenImageIO and Shotgun RV, or add versioned template files to manage file naming.

The project started life as a Maya script to change workspaces but since has grown into a standalone, multi-threaded asset manager.

For Maya artists Bookmarks has tools to load and save scenes and caches (hello incremental save!), preview/import images. Non-maya artists, and even small and medium sized studios, could find themselves in need of a simple asset manager where Shotgun (and the likes) are not required.

I use it to manage my own freelance projects because it lets me quickly set up the folders needed to turn a small job around. It is also place where I keep notes, feedback, google sheet urls. I tend to keep adding descriptions to scenes as I increment versions know what was changed in each version.

To get started specify your servers and create a job if you don't have any. Right-click anywhere inside the window and select Manage bookmarks.

Use the icons to add a new server, job or bookmark. The job templates are simple zip files and you can add your own by dragging a zip to where the templates are listed. If the job template has bookmark folders they will be listed below automatically, otherwise, add a new one by hand.

Bookmarks are folders in your job folder and the main container for CG content. Bookmarks have frame rate, resolution, default frame range, and a Slack tokens. Each job can contain multiple bookmarks - eg. shots, assets, etc.

Assets are Maya/Houdini workspace-like folder structures. Each contains a series of task folders (eg. a scene, render, cache folder). Any folder can be an asset, and any folder containing an asset identifier file (eg. workspace.mel) will be recognized as such automatically.

Files are stored inside task folders. When browsing, Bookmarks reads all files inside a selected task folder, including files in subdirectories. You can use the provided search and filter tools to locate and save items. See this folder diagram for details.

Search filters can be used to include or exclude items based on their description and file name. They are persistent and will stay on unless you remove them. Click or press Ctrl+F to edit. To show all chef images type chef and press enter. To exclude all chef images type --chef (two dashes followed by a name).

You can also click subfolder labels. To isolate elements Shift+Click, to hide elements Alt-Click on the label. To reset the search filter Alt-Click on the search filter icon.

Save items as a favourite - these items will be added to My Files. You can also archive superflous items.

Use thumbnails to visually scout items. Bookmarks will generate a thumbnail for image files. Press space on your keyboard to preview the image (this also works for alembic archives!).

The maya plugin replaces the internal project manager and uses assets to set the current workspace.

Shift+RightClick shows Maya specific actions. Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S shows the file-saver.
Ctrls+Shift+Alt+B will show/hide Bookmarks.

After installing bookmarks enable mBookmarks.py in Maya's plugin manager.

To send messages using Slack, you must configure a bookmark with a valid Slack OAuth token. The tokens are generated automatically when you install a new app to your Slack Workspace. See guides on Slack on how to add a new app and make sure to enable the following scopes:

Bookmarks has not yet been ported to Python 3 and currently requires Python 2. Make sure all python dependencies are installed:

Starts Bookmarks as a standalone PySide2 application:

  import bookmarks
  bookmarks.exec_()

Or inside Maya initialize the widget like this:

  import bookmarks.maya.widget as widget
  widget.show()

  # NOTE: Bookmarks is meant to be used as a singleton,
  # and running multiple instances is not allowed.

(c) Gergely Wootsch, 2020.
Email
gergely-wootsch.com