Project Build Explorer

The Project Build Explorer allows you to navigate all the Assets used in the current Authoring project, and assign specific build information to each one (or groups of) them.

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The view is split into two panes: the Project Build Tree on the left, displaying the project’s build tree structure; and the Build Info View on the right, displaying the build step information of the item selected in the Project Build Tree pane.

Interface

Project Build Tree

The Project Build Tree displays all the elements of your project that are taken into account by the Build Engine (that is, all the elements that will be built with the project), organized as a hierarchy of nodes. Although based on the project’s physical structure, the build tree represents a logical organization of your project. Build tree nodes can be reorganized if required (using drag’n'drop).

Selecting a node in the hierarchy – like an Asset, a group of Assets or a tree folder – will update the node’s Build Info View (see below) with the corresponding build step information.

Dirty Assets Highlight

Dirty Assets are highlighted with a red icon.

A dirty Asset is an Asset that needs to be rebuilt for it to be exported with the final project. The dirtiness of an Asset may be due to the fact that:

• the Asset source file has been modified,
• the build steps of the Asset have been modified,
• the build parameters of the Asset have been modified,
• or the project has been cleaned.

Rebuilding the project should clean up the Asset.

Build Steps Quick View

The columns to the left of the node hierarchy provide step-by-step information on the build state of individual Assets, for a given Target (i.e. the Target selected in the Build Toolbar). Each column represents a build step:

“I” – Import; “P” – Process; “C” – Compilation; “E” – Export.

A cross on the column of a given node indicates that the build step is active for that node on the selected Target (see also section Build Info View below for more information on how to activate build steps):

– No build step defined for that node (this is the default value for all nodes)
– Build step is active, inheriting from parent’s build info values
– Build step is active and overriding default/parent’s build info values
– Build step has been removed when removing the parent’s build info values

Extern Asset Identification

Assets extern to the project (i.e. not under the project directory) use a special icon so as to quickly identify which Assets may cause trouble when sharing the Authoring project with other Users.

– Intern
– Extern

3DVIA Studio allows you to consolidate Assets (i.e. simultaneously copy an extern Asset under the project’s root folder, and update all the references to the Asset with this new location) using the build tree contextual menu (documented below).

Build-Generated File Display

An Asset’s build process may generate other files exclusive to the build process. Information regarding all these files, for a given Asset, can be displayed by hovering over the Asset with the mouse cursor.

Build Info View

The Build Info View displays build information on the node selected in the Project Build Tree, for a selected Target, and provides access to the different Build Engine settings for that node and Target.

The Target can be selected from the “Platform” and “Configuration” combo-boxes located at thet top of the Build Info View. The Target selected in the Build Info View is updated every time a selection is made in the Build Toolbar, but selecting a Target from the Build Info View will not update the Target selected in the Build Toolbar. This must be taken into account when carrying out build operations.

For the selected Target, the different Build Engine settings are accessed by checking the appropriate build step check-box. Checking a build step will also enable all the step-specific options already set or customized on the selected node (uncheck to disable), and tell the Build Engine to override default settings with these new settings when processing the project.

Available Build Engine steps are:

• Process the Asset
  If checked, Asset processors applied to the selected node(s) are enabled.
  NOTE that any processor applied to a particular node apply to all its children too.
  See Processing below and also the Asset Processors documentation.
  
• Compile the Asset
  If checked, compilation is enabled for the selected node(s) and children.
  See Compiling below.
  
• Do Not Export the Asset
  If checked, the Asset will not be exported with the project.

See section Exporting below.The Import build step is handled as a parameter global to the application, and control from the application Preferences. Visit the Preferences documentation for further information (Preferences >> Engine >> MediaWorkflow >> autoCreateCache).

When checked, a node’s build step appears in bold face with a “revert to default values” button on the right.

By default, build steps are unchecked and only default build options processed. To set and enable specific build options, the relevant build step must be checked. Checking a build step will affect the node selected in the Project Build Tree as much as all the nodes under its hierarchy (i.e. the build step will be enabled and the build options applied for all the nodes in the sub-hiearchy).

Every node actually acquires its build settings from its parent node. The Build Info View therefore displays build setting relative to the parent node, sub-node’s build options thus appearing in regular face and default icon “” (i.e. using the parent node’s build options) by default.

The build settings of a given node can however be customized to override the parent node’s build settings. To customize those settings, check the node’s build step and edit the default/parent values. Checking/unchecking a build step will therefore allow you to edit the selected node’s build settings and override the default/parent node’s values with new values.

Build Explorer Contextual Menu

Right-clicking on a node, a group, a folder of the Project Build Tree will open the following contextual menu:

Show Dependencies Display InCache and Offline dependencies (compare to the Document Explorer, which shows InCache dependencies only). Create Group Add a new empty node to the Build Tree, used to reorganized the project’s logical structure. Create Dynamic Group Dynamic Groups are used to watch out for groups of Assets that might not be directly loaded by the project (e.g. dynamically loaded at runtime). Those Assets are not automatically registered into the Build Tree but they still need to be exported with the project. The “Create Dynamic Group” command will allow you to simultaneously choose the folder containing the Assets to watch for and add a new Dynamic Group to the Build Tree. The newly created Dynamic Group will contain the Assets contained in the selected folder and its contents will be automatically updated (added or removed) when the project is loaded in authoring or when the project is exported. Delete Delete selected node from the build tree. Note: unlike the Remove Unused Assets command, this action does not delete Assets from the file system. Rename Rename selected node. Import Asset Manually Add an Asset to the Build Tree (e.g. an Asset that is not directly loaded by the project or by one of its dependencies, and therefore not automatically added to the Build Tree). Explore Explore the result of each build step for the given Asset. Consolidate Consolidate an Asset or group of Assets (see description below). Remove Unused Assets Open a dialog for managing registered and not registered Assets (see description below).

Using the Project Build Explorer

Searching Assets

You can use the search bar to look for a particular Asset inside the Project Build Tree.

To display/hide the search bar, activate the Project Build >> Tree view and type CTRL + F on your keyboard. Then type in a string inside the text-field (the name of the Asset or folder to search) and press ENTER. Use F3 successively to search for the next item matching the string.

Consolidating Extern Assets

3DVIA Studio allows you to consolidate imported Assets that are “extern” to the project (i.e. not located under the project’s folder).

Consolidating an Asset means coping the imported Asset under the project root folder and updating the authoring links to the new location.

To consolidate an Asset or a group of Assets (recursively), right-click on a Build Tree node (representing an Asset or a group of Assets) and select “Consolidate Asset” from the contextual menu. WARNING: This command is irreversible.

Removing Unused Assets

The Build Engine detects both unused Assets registered in the Build System (e.g. Assets that are no longer used in the project) and unused Assets not registred but present in the Project >> Sources folder.

To remove unused Assets, use the ”Remove Unusued Assets” command available from the contextual menu. This command will open the following dialog:

• Registered assets: Assets that are not used in your project but which are referenced by the Build System (and will therefore be built with the project). These Assets appear highlighted in red (red font) in the Build Tree pane.

• Non registered assets: Assets present in your Project >> Sources folder but which will not be build with your project.

Removing both registered and non-registered Assets will allow you to truely clean up your project.

When ”Ok” is pressed, Assets for which the ”Disk” and/or “SourceControl” check-boxes have been checked will be removed from disk and/or from the source control system, respectively.

NOTE: this action is irreversible.

Build Steps

Processing

Asset Processing consists on running a sequence of processors on a particular node (an Asset, a group of Assets or a folder with all its contents). When processing is enabled for a particular node, all the processors that have been applied to the node are processed.

To enable processing, select a node from the build tree and check the “Process the asset” check-box. This action will also enable processing for all the node’s children, if any.

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To apply a processor to a node (with “Process the asset” enabled), select the node from the build tree and drag and drop an Asset Processor from the Asset Processors library to the “Process the asset >> Processor” area. The processor will be applied simultaneously to the node and all its children, if any. Selecting one or more children will allow you to edit the processor individually.

To edit the list of processors applied to a particular node, select the node from the build tree and check “Process the asset” to access the different processor parameters.

The results of processing an Asset are stored in the Project >> Build folder.

NOTE: Processors applied to the Authoring build target will be executed during the loading of the Authoring project.

Compiling

In some cases, an Asset may required to be converted and/or optimized for a particular target platform (or may otherwise not run properly on that platform).

To compile an Asset, select the Asset’s node in the Build Tree and check the “Compile the asset” check-box in the Build Info View.

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To change the compiler, double-click on the current “Compiler” and select one from the pull-down menu (which list all available compilers for a selected target platform).

When compiling a group of Assets containing Assets of different types, you may avoid compiling some types by setting their compiler to “none”.

The results of compiling an Asset are placed in the project’s “Bin” folder.

Exporting

Exporting is the final step of the build process. When all the Assets are built, the 3DVIA Studio Exporter makes a runtime export of the project, ready to run on the target platform. You may develop other exporters to carry out specific operations using the 3DVIA Studio SDK, available to 3DVIA Studio Pro users only. See the SDK documentation.

By default, all the Assets are exported when you export your project. However, you may disabled exporting for a particular node by selecting the node from the Build Tree and checking the “Do not export the asset ” check-box in the Build Info View.

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To export a runtime version of your project, select the “Export” button from the Build Toolbar and edit the export options from the pop up dialog:

• Available exporters: Use this combo-box to select a different exporter. The pull-down menu lists exporters available for the selected target platform.
• Output Folder: Indicate the URI for outputting the result.
• Exporter Options: Customize the exporter by configuring available options. Options may vary depending on the exporter.

If the project build is dirty, you may be prompted to rebuild the project before carrying on with the export.