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Shotgun Engine for MotionbuilderShotgun Integration in Motionbuilder |

Documentation
Installation, Updates and Development
Configuration Options
Release Notes History
The Shotgun engine for Motionbuilder establishes a bridge between Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit apps and Motionbuilder. It also contains a PySide distribution, which is designed to connect to the QT inside of Motionbuilder, making it possible to write apps using Python and PySide that run right inside the Engine.
Supported Application Versions
This item has been tested and is known to be working on the following application versions: 2016-2020. Please note that it is perfectly possible, even likely, that it will work with more recent releases, however it has not yet been formally tested with these versions.
Documentation
The Shotgun engine for Motionbuilder contains a standard platform for integrating Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit (Sgtk) Apps into Motionbuilder. It is light weight and straight forward and adds a Shotgun menu to the main menu.

Installation and Updates
Adding this Engine to the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit
If you want to add this engine to Project XYZ, and an environment named asset, execute the following command:
> tank Project XYZ install_engine asset tk-motionbuilder
Updating to the latest version
If you already have this item installed in a project and you want to get the latest
version, you can run the update
command. You can either navigate to the
tank command that comes with that specific project, and run it there:
> cd /my_tank_configs/project_xyz > ./tank updates
Alternatively, you can run your studio tank
command and specify the project
name to tell it which project to run the update check for:
> tank Project XYZ updates
Collaboration and Evolution
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If you have access to the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit, you also have access to the source code for all apps, engines and frameworks in Github where we store and manage them. Feel free to evolve these items; use them as a base for further independent development, make changes (and submit pull requests back to us!) or simply tinker with them to see how they have been built and how the toolkit works. You can access this code repository at https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/tk-motionbuilder. |
Special Requirements
- You need Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit Core API version v0.19.18 or higher to use this.
Configuration
Below is a summary of all the configuration settings used. These settings need to be defined in the environment file where you want to enable this App or Engine.
menu_favourites
Type: list
Description: Controls the favourites section on the main menu. This is a list and each menu item is a dictionary with keys app_instance and name. The app_instance parameter connects this entry to a particular app instance defined in the environment configuration file. The name is a menu name to make a favourite.
Release Notes
Welcome to the release notes for this Engine. Below you will find an overview of all the changes we did for each release. We try to be as detailed as possible and include all bugs we have fixed, features we have added and things that may have changed. If you have questions about a particular release, don't hesitate to contact our support team!
v0.5.2
2020-Dec-8
Switches from using the support email alias to pointing to the support site
v0.5.1
2019-Dec-11
Support for MotionBuilder 2020
v0.5.0
2019-Apr-05
Support for v2019, PySide2, core 0.18 and misc changes.
Details:
- This version of the engine is not compatible with versions before 2014.
- Engine now requires core v0.18 or later.
- Adds support for mobu 2019, PySide2 and cleans up the engine payload.
- Adds context switching support.
- Updates to 0.18 logging.
- Removes deprecated config params debug_logging and use_sgtk_as_menu_name.
v0.4.2
2018-May-14
Now ensures that the folder is created, before saving the workfile during publish.
v0.4.1
2018-Jan-09
fix for broken thumbnails in mobu
v0.4.0
2017-Nov-20
Now houses publish2 plugin hooks and supports template-based worklfows
v0.3.1
2016-Feb-18
Adds a call to log a user metric for the DCC version
v0.3.0
Rebuilt PySide to fix many stability issues with newer apps
v0.2.13
Implemented workaround for menu instabilities in Motionbuilder 2011 & 2012
v0.2.12
Fixes to menu creation and destruction
Details: It is now possible to restart the engine correctly from the Work Area app Fixed some instability issues when certain apps are launched from the menu Tidied up menu location and construction
v0.2.11
Improvements to the Toolkit dialog & widget management
Details:
- Dialogs created with show_modal & show_dialog are now released correctly when closed.
- Updated to require core v0.14.23
v0.2.10
Updated Engine Icon.
v0.2.9
Updated Icon.
v0.2.8
Renames and support for the new name Sgtk.
v0.2.7
Renames and support for the new name Sgtk.
v0.2.6
Uses new API methods for file system lookups.
v0.2.5
Fixed window parenting
Details: Fixed window parenting
v0.2.4
Added an icon to the engine bundle.
v0.2.3
Updated manifest to require core v0.12.5
v0.2.2
Added support for automatic reload.
v0.2.1
Fixed a unicode related bug in the menu handling.
v0.2.0
Added pyside support.
v0.1.0
Initial Release