Tips

A place for some tips to wokring with virtual production with Unreal.

When Perforce is Down

You don't actually have to use Perforce with Switchboard. Here are steps to use if Perforce goes down using Windows robocopy.

1. Map a Network drive to your Perforce directory on your operator node.
2. Create a folder named the same as your Unreal project on the mapped network drive, e.g., ICVFXProductionTest.
3. Use robocopy to transfer
   • robocopy C:\p4\virtualproduction_xrlab-operator\demos\ICVFXProductionTest Z:\virtualproduction_xrlab-render\demos\ICVFXProductionTest /MT /Z /MIR /R:10 /W:3 /DCOPY:DAT /XD Binaries Saved Intermediate DerivedDataCache FileOpenOrder obj
   • The /MT flag enables multi-threading for higher performance. The /Z flag allows the transfer to be restarted if interrupted. The MIR flag deletes destination files that don't exist on the source and also transfers directories. The /R:10 flag retries a file 10 times if it failes. The /W:3 flag waits 3 seconds before retires. The DCOPY:DAT flag copies timestamps on directories. The /XD flag ignores the subsequent directories.
4. Proceed with using Switchboard

Symlinking on the Render Node

If Perfoce is setup to with different folder names on the render node and operator node you can create a symlink in Powershell so that you don't have to switch change every new Switchboard config. For example:

New-Item -Path .\virtualproduction_xrlab-operator\ -ItemType SymbolicLink -Value .\virtualproduction_xrlab-render\

This command would be run in Powershell on the Render node. CD into your root Perforce directory where your existing worksapce is i.e., virtualproduction_xrlab-render. It create a new symbolic link called virtualproduction_xrlab-operator in the same directory.