trackable variants

We would need an option to add variants from the overview and define ahead of time.

-Example 01
Let say we’re working on a show with Dino’s
We need multiple triceratops in a scene and we don’t want to have a 1 on 1 copy of them, that would look silly.
I would like to have the same model and rig, animation cycles, but would like to have variants of the texture, maybe some have an extra scars, a little color variation etc. etc.
I don’t want to create new tasks as they 3 variants we've are all so slightly different that if the client to decide that the overall color of the Dino should be slightly more brown instead of green we need to adjust 3 (in our case substance painter) files.
Or if the model changes for some reason, again changing/adjusting 3 files
So i just want to be able to adjust that one file and have a folder that we can manually turn on/off for the extra scars etc. etc. etc.
We can to that right now at the publish and add a variant name, but we’ve no way to track it or define to the artist which versions we’ve need except for an note in the task.
And textureMain and A can be approved but textureB maybe needs some small adjustments


-Example 02
We’ve got a show with some “creative” comp shots. for some of these cases we already know that we need to create 3 versions of that shot which the client will decide later on which one will be finalized, this way again, we can have 1 nuke/aftereffects file where we can create the work in, but we can publish to the different variants to address feedback on just one particular version, we can omit the versions that we don’t need in the end.
But we can (in the hopefully near future) track time on it, which will also be important.



My suggestion would be a variant task.
So a variant task you can only add to a task.
You can name it, and have all the things setup in the overview. task progress, publish to it. (maybe don’t have someone assigned to it as you’re working from the same file that should be inherited from the mainTask
But if you open a variant task from the launcher or the browser, you’ll just open the asset/shot from the parent task and no other project file will be created.


I am aware that this can cause issue’s as you’re working in 1 work file, and can alter other versions if not careful (luckily we publish the work file along so we can always revert back)
Maybe if variant are present we can have a popup when the program start that you’re working with variant in a single file.

Also described here

https://community.ynput.io/t/defining-product-variant-ahead-of-time/1368