DuBlast for Maya

Better Playblasts for Maya

• Auto-Select the right camera!
• Rendering options.
• Burn in metadata and frame number.
• Modern and animator-friendly video format (Lightweight intra-frame mp4).
• Auto-save next to the Maya scene file.
• Simple and performant default player (ffplay).
• No need to install Quicktime anymore...

Installation

For now, DuBlast works only on Windows, but making it work on Linux should be easy.

• Download the latest release.
• Unzip all the files and folders to one of the Maya plug-ins folder, like:
  C:\Users\YourName\Documents\maya\plug-ins\
• In the Maya Plug-in Manager, click the Refresh button, then enable DuBlast by checking the Loaded box. You'll probably want to check the Auto load box too...

Usage

You can create a playblast using the new Maya command dublast.

# Python
import maya.cmds as cmds
cmds.dublast()

// Mel
dublast

You can add this command to a shelf, or use it to create a keyboard shortcut. The provided dublast.png file can be used as an icon with your shelf button.

When running the command, a preview window and these options are shown:

• Camera: Select the camera to use for the playblast. By default, DuBlast selects the first camera found in the render settings.
• Size: Set the size ratio according to the render settings.
• Renderer: Set the render options
• Comment: Set a short comment to be added to the file name and the burned in metadata.

DuBlast automatically burns some metadata in the video:

• The current frame number
• The optional comment
• The name of the camera
• The focal length of the camera

Note that some of these metadata may not be visible if the output size is too small.

Using the default video player (ffplay)

DuBlast automatically plays the video with ffplay, a free and lightweight video player well suited for checking animations.

It is a headless player: it doesn't have any user interface, but you can easily interact with the video anyway:

• Right click: seeks in time
• Space: play/pause
• S: go one frame forward
• →: go 0.10s forward
• ←: go 0.10s backward
• ↑: go to end
• ↓: go to start

Use another video player

Through the Edit ▷ Set video player... menu entry, you can select your own custom video player. Select the executable file of the video player you'd like to use.

Reset options

Use the Edit ▷ Reset defaults menu entry to restore all default values, including the video player.

Other

There's no option (yet) to the command so you can't set the options programmatically to create the playblast without showing the options dialog. But that should change in a near future.

The settings are not saved (yet), but that's a planned feature.

There's no way to change the default player, but again, that's planned too.

Development and build

Develop

There's nothing specific to setup to develop DuBlast, but an install script is provided in the tools folder to get started more quickly. It just symlinks the needed files in the plug-ins folder of Maya.

1. Clone this repository
2. Copy ffmpeg.exe and ffplay.exe in the root folder. You can find these here.
3. Run the tools/install.bat file. It just symlinks the files in the plug-in folder of Maya.

Note: you'll need admin rights to run the install script, in order to be able to create symlinks. If you don't, you could still just copy the files manually...

Build

A script is provided to quickly build DuBlast for release.

1. Navigate to the tools folder.
2. Set the version number in the build.bat script.
3. Run build.bat

DuBlast is built in tools/build, and zip file is generated in there too.

Join the community

Join us if you need any help, if you want to contribute (we're always in need for translations, writing the doc, fixing bugs, making tutorials, developing new features...) or just want to show what you're doing with our tools!

We need your support to release our free tools. You can donate or join the development fund to get an early access to the tools.

• Come and have a chat on Discord.
• Donate or join the membership.
• Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn...
• Read the Contributor Covenant