Enjoy tight integration between SyncSketch and Maya
The Maya plug-in for SyncSketch allows you to:
- Upload videos and playblasts to SyncSketch in seconds, skipping any conversion process
- Download notes and image annotations from SyncSketch back to Maya, adjusting parameters such as frame offset, etc.
- Manage and share your viewport presets for conveniently recording consistent-looking playblasts
BETA: This Plugin is in active development - and we need you!
We want to make this integration the best this it can be and need you to test it, help us squish those bugs and get it just right.
Please email support@syncsketch.com to let us know what you think! We look forward to jamming on this with you.
Note: The Maya Plugin is not available on the Light plan. Please consider upgrading to any paid plan to access the integration
Compatibility
The current version of the plug-in has been tested with Maya 2024, but should be compatible with 2020 or later.
Downloading and Installing the Plug-In
The plug-in is available on GitHub. Installation instructions are included.
Getting Started
Once you’ve installed the plug-in, you should see a SyncSketch tab on the Shelf. Opening that tab will reveal the SyncSketch tools.
The Shelf tools provide quick access to the most-used features of the plug-in:
The leftmost “logo” icon opens the main plugin window.
The “Record” circle initiates a new playblast recording with the current settings.
The “Play” triangle plays the most recently-created playblast.
The “Upload” icon uploads the most recently-created playblast to the SyncSketch review that is currently selected in the main plug-in window.
The “Download” icon will begin downloading sketches from the SyncSketch review for importing back into your scene.
The “Cycle Presets” icon will cycle through the saved viewport presets
The “Manage Presets” icon will open the viewport presets management window.
The Main Plug-In Window
Clicking the logo icon will reveal the main SyncSketch plug-in window:
Using the Plug-In
The basic sequence for using the plug-in in a collaborative feedback workflow is to upload a playblast to SyncSketch, have collaborators review it, then download the resulting sketches back into Maya.
Log in
The first thing to do is to log into your SyncSketch account using the Log in button.
Select a target review
Once you have logged in, you’ll see the SyncSketch Projects and Reviews you have access to in the Target for Upload section. (If new Projects and Reviews are created in SyncSketch after you’ve logged in here, clicking the refresh button should reveal them here.)
Record a Playblast
In the Record section:
- Choose your format for the playblast file.
- Choose the viewport preset and camera.
- Choose the frame range you want in the playblast.
- Adjust the directory for the playblast files, if necessary. (In general, you should not need to enter this directory for any reason, so if the default is acceptable, you can just leave it as is.)
- Set the playblast clip name. this will be use as the base for the playblasts file name, which will appear in SyncSketch.
- Anything added in clip suffix, for example
_v1, will be appended to the clip name in the uploaded playblast file. - Select the after record options. You can play the playblast before you upload it to make sure it’s what you expected. You can set it to upload immediately if you’re more confident.
Uploading the Playblast
Playblasts you’ve recorded will upload to the target review you’ve selected in the Target for Upload section. The File to Upload field will show the path of the most recently recorded playblast, or you can specify a different one to upload using the button at the right.
Once it’s uploaded you will be presented with a link to the target review.
Also, the Folder list in the Target section will have the upload selected, and the URL to it will appear underneath the list. There’s a link button next to the path that will open the review.
This is the URL to share with your collaborators.
Downloading the Sketches
When the reviews are done and the drawovers are finished, it’s time to pull the sketches back into your Maya timeline.
Select the uploaded playblast in the Target list at the right of the SyncSketch plug-in window (if it isn’t already) and click Download. This will begin the process.:
The SyncSketch plug-in provides two methods for importing sketches as drawovers in the Maya timeline, depending on the Maya version you’re using.
Maya 2022 and earlier
Maya 2022 and earlier have a feature called Greasepencil. When you download sketches, the Download and Application dialog will appear:
Select the Camera that you were using when you generated the playblast and check Apply. Click Download Grease Pencil.
The sketches will appear on their corresponding frames in the animation.
Maya 2023 and later
Maya’s newer method is called Blue Pencil.
Clicking Download opens the Download and Application dialog. When you click Download Sketches, they will be zipped into a Greasepencil-compatible archive file. Copy the path to the downloaded sketch archive:
Then click Import as Blue Pencil Layer, and the Import Blue Pencil dialog will open. Paste the path to the archive file into the filename dialog and click Import Drawings.
They will be applied to the current view, so you will need to restore the viewport to the camera position you had when you exported the playblast in order for the sketches to be aligned properly.
You can also render playblasts to SyncSketch by right-clicking the timeline and selecting Playblast with SyncSketch. Clicking the box next to this item will display the SyncSketch plugin’s main window.
Using Viewport Presets
The plug-in includes Viewport Preset management features that let you save sets of shown elements from the Viewport and conveniently switch among them when exporting playblasts without having to update the viewport or the Playblast Display options. The presets can also be shared to ensure consistency among team playblasts.
For example, you can use Maya’s Show menu to hide the NURBS curves controlling your rigging and create a SyncSketch Viewport Preset called “No Controllers”. When you use this preset to create a playblast, it will always be from the selected camera and the viewport settings stored in the selected Preset, even if you change it in Maya.
To update a preset with some adjusted viewport settings, open the Preset Manager window (blue diamond) and click Override Preset from View.
Note that SyncSketch does not observe the settings from the Playblast Display menu in Maya.
See a quick Intro Video Introduction for an early version of this plugin here: