Gaffer newbie plugin development questions

[Nicholas Yue]

Hi,

  Gaffer newbie diving into it on the Windows platform.

  I have follow the following example and install the plugin

        http://www.gafferhq.org/documentation/0.59.7.0/WorkingWithThePythonScriptingAPI/TutorialStartupConfig3/index.html

  I see that it loads the actual node detail from another file

        $GAFFER_ROOT/resources/examples/references/macbethTexture.grf

  I also looked around and found another example

$GAFFER_ROOT/resources/examples/boxBasics.gfr

  Question 1 : Looking at the above *.grf files, are the file generated via another (UI) tool or manually written ?

  Question 2 : Am I correct to understand that the plugin mechanism performs the loading and registration, the plugin details e.g. input/output/parameters, those are all defined in *.grf files ?

Cheers

[John Haddon]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2021 at 1:54 AM Nicholas Yue <yue.ni...@gmail.com> wrote:

  Question 1 : Looking at the above *.grf files, are the file generated via another (UI) tool or manually written ?

A `.grf` file is authored via the Gaffer UI, by creating a Box and then exporting it as a reference. Typically this is intended for end users rather than developers, and typically a user would load a `.grf` file manually using a Reference node. Everything loaded this way appears as a Reference node, so each `.grf` is not strictly speaking a new type of node, and isn't really something we'd consider to be a plugin.

 

  Question 2 : Am I correct to understand that the plugin mechanism performs the loading and registration, the plugin details e.g. input/output/parameters, those are all defined in *.grf files ?

Correct. The startup file is simply adding a menu item that will load that `.grf` file into a new Reference node. It can be useful for users to integrate their creations a bit more tightly this way, but for a developer I would tend to recommend using one of our more advanced plugin mechanisms - writing your own nodes using Python or C++.

Cheers...

John

[Carlo Giesa]

Hi John!

I just bump in here out of curiosity. Although I'm not planning to do any C++ node development on Gaffer soon, I'm still curious to know if there is a way to write a C++ plugin node (as you would for Nuke or Maya) without the need to compile the entire application? If so, are there any examples to check out?

Greets,

Carlo

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[eric...@gmail.com]

I can chime in on that one Carlo, as I've created a number of nodes without building the whole Gaffer application. I use Scons and Gaffer's SConstruct file as a starting point for getting the build set up, but I'm sure any build system can work and might be simpler if you're only building a node here and there.

The main things you need to supply to the build system is the header files location which are in the "include" directory of your Gaffer installation and the library files location in the "lib" directory. 

Alex Fuller's GafferCycles project is an example of new nodes (and a whole renderer integration!) that builds independently from the Gaffer build: boberfly/GafferCycles: Cycles for Gaffer (github.com)

- Eric

[Carlo Giesa]

Hey Eric!

Thanks a lot! I will check that out.

Greets,

Carlo

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[John Haddon]

Here are a couple of other public examples of compiled Gaffer extensions that might be useful for reference :

• Image processing plugins for astrophotography : https://github.com/themissingcow/gaffer-astro
• Integration of the Atoms crowd tool : https://github.com/Toolchefs/atomsGaffer

Cheers...

John

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[Carlo Giesa]

Hey John!

Thanks a lot for those hints. I will check them out.

Greets,

Carlo

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