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Validator

What is a validator?

A tool that helps artists ensure that their work meets the project’s standards and requirements. It can check for various issues such as naming conventions, file formats, and other project-specific guidelines.

Why use a validator?

Validators help maintain consistency and quality across the project. They can automate repetitive checks, reducing the risk of human error and saving time for artists.

They often also include helper functions to help artists fix issues, such as renaming files or converting file formats.

Impact on your project

A good validator can 10x your art teams productivity. Not only preventing many bugs or graphical issues, but enabling you to automate your content pipeline.
Complete asset pipeline automation is only possible with predictable data, and a validator helps ensure that data is predictable. (naming conventions, file formats, etc.)

How to adopt a validator in your project?

  1. Identify the requirements: Determine what standards and guidelines are important for your project. This could include naming conventions, file formats, or specific attributes that assets must have.
  2. Choose a validation tool: Select a validation tool that fits your project’s needs. This could be a custom-built tool or an existing one that can be integrated into your workflow.
  3. Integrate the validator: Incorporate the validator into your project’s workflow. This could involve setting it up to run automatically during asset creation or as a manual step before submission.
  4. Train your team: Ensure that all team members understand how to use the validator and its importance. Provide training or documentation to help them get started.
  5. Monitor and iterate: Regularly review the validator’s effectiveness and make adjustments as needed. Gather feedback from your team to improve the tool and its integration into your workflow.

Existing validators

  • datafix - dcc agnostic, meant to build your own python pipeline
  • Pyblish A decent basic validation API, meant to be used to code your own validation pipeline. However, it has some unpythonic workflows, and is more aimed at VFX & film workflow than game dev workflow.
  • Maya modelchecker - a great free & fast Maya validator. Not meant to be customized
  • Odin validator - a commercial Unity validator

validation