[Cloaked.conf functionality in Gluon]

We laid out in this thread how a very similar functionality to cloaking would be super useful in Gluon. Our team is still asking me about it!

Now I see, in the latest release notes, it's mentioned that "cloaked rules don't make sense in Gluon" which I strongly disagree with!

Quote

The Gluon Incoming changes is not affected by this behavior (cloaked rules don't make sense in Gluon) since the operation works in a different way.

What's the alternative?

• Click configure workspace
• select folders you want to load
• search files -> *.ztl -> hit spacebar to unload all
• search files -> *.psd -> hit spacebar to unload all
• search files -> *.zip -> hit spacebar to unload all
• search files -> *.mb -> hit spacebar to unload all
• ... do that again and again for all file types or folders you don't want to load, and you probably forget some of them.
• Do the whole process each time you want to update, because you don't want to miss new files and subfolders when your workspace is marked as partial.

[Cloaked.conf functionality in Gluon]

On 5/20/2022 at 1:45 PM, calbzam said:

Hi @Mitch,

Can you clarify what is your current problem?

If you have a Gluon workspace that is not fully checked but you just have configured a few folders in your workspace, only the changes that happen in these folders will be automatically updated to your workspace.

Regards,

Carlos.

Hey @calbzam. I thought the problem was quite clearly explained. Having the same issue as Mitch in our team, I can also just repeat what had been said before, and why your suggestions with the current functionality aren't a solution.

Example of current problem:

Create a new repository. Artist 1 starts working on an asset in folder asset1/, and adds zbrush, substance, Blender files, and texture maps. Another artist 2 ( eg. rigger or tech-artist) only needs the blender files and textures (put otherwise: everything except certain folders or file types), so they configure their workspace to only include those files in asset1/. Meanwhile, artist 1 checks in a missing texture map. Artist 2 doesn't get the update, because they had to manually load the files. Furthermore, artists 3, 4, and 5 added folders for asset2, asset3, and asset4. Artist 2 has to repeat the same step for each of them, as with asset1/. Every once in a while, artist 2 may need to check a substance or zbrush file.

Now scale that up to more artists and assets.

It's missing a functionality where you can simply define files/folders to not be loaded by default, while keeping in sync with the rest of the repo (load root) when new folders and files are added that you do need to have, without micromanaging them each time.

[Cloaked.conf functionality in Gluon]

A curious thing just happened: Gluon seems to care about the cloaked.conf when you try to delete a cloaked file. Tried to delete a file in Gluon which type is listed in the cloaked.conf and got an error message that the file cannot be deleted, because it is cloaked.

[Cloaked.conf functionality in Gluon]

22 minutes ago, calbzam said:

If I properly understand. you would like a similar feature so you can configure similar rules than the supported in Plastic GUI (file types...) but in Gluon?

Thanks for your answer. Yes, be able to have certain file types configured in Gluon to not be downloaded/updated by default, but have the option to manually download them. This would allow our artists to not be downloading several GB of data with each update (newly added folders to the library), but still get the smaller files they need from these new folders, without manually configuring many folders before each update.

14 hours ago, Olaf said:

when selecting a folder in the Gluon workspace configuration, it will not select (load) those file types, even though the parent folder was checked green. It would still show the file types to be able to select them manually, if needed.

 

[Cloaked.conf functionality in Gluon]

Hi! I'm evaluating PlasticSCM Gluon for our art-team, and we're in the same situation as @Mitch, except that we'd like to configure which file types are downloaded by default for the whole team. Reading through the docs, I thought cloaked.conf was supported by Gluon. As I now know, it is not.

We'd only use Gluon, since little to no code is involved. We're adding new asset folders on a daily basis. Each contain the big source files, like ZBrush & Substance Painter files, as well as the lightweight export format, e.g. GLB. Ideally, we don't want to separate working files from export files, to avoid maintaining parallel folder structures.

I expected the following behavior: Add file types to cloaked.conf, and when selecting a folder in the Gluon workspace configuration, it will not select (load) those file types, even though the parent folder was checked green. It would still show the file types to be able to select them manually, if needed.

On 10/14/2021 at 9:36 AM, calbzam said:

As you know Gluon by design has this functionality without the need of using a "cloaked.conf" file. You can configure your workspace to download the items you actually need.

With current behavior, when we'd update the asset library (consisting of lightweight formats), all (hundreds) folders would have to be configured in manual mode by all team members, several new folders a day... just to avoid the big files. This is not the same behavior as with a cloaked.conf.

The file search only allows for positive matches of a single file type. It can't exclude files from the search. Doing the search numerous times for all kinds of files that we do want to download (e.g. different image formats), just to avoid a few certain other files, is also not feasible.

Can this situation be made easier with Gluon? Right now, it's kind of a show-stopper for us. We wanted to switch to PlasticSCM/Gluon to make things simpler and more comfortable, not more complicated and cumbersome.