Universal Flow Format (UFF) Concept

Site Admin Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 247

Ok, its been on my mind for a while.

WHAT IF THERE WAS A Universal Flow Format (UFF) driven by XML to describe a process tree that can be imported into any procedural based application.

For example:
XSI Nodes to Fusion Nodes to Houdini Nodes To Inferno Batch To Shake

i think you get my point. I guess some general rules would need to take precedence when importing tools that exist in one but not the other... but wouldnt that make LOTs of things easier for lots of people?

I present it to you guys as a thought, but I have been stucking building 3 similar process trees (detailed) for licensing constraints.

A "UFF" would eliminate this time consuming set up of files and items that didnt translate could at least be a marker for a refined subtree in the accepting application.

I have not issued this as a feature request, due to it requiring more than one entity to agree to this.

Let me know what you guys think,

Chris Maynard
http://www.cmiVFX.com

Joined: 06 Jan 2007 Posts: 7 Location: Norway

We have a similar case in our branch. Our company makes industrial cameras. Since last year there is standard called Genicam which allows to control all caamera that support that with the same software.
We thougt about it.
One problem is that not all camera have the same fucntions. You could reuse your software with common functions like exposure and image size.

I think the compositing industry is not interested in such a format since it would allow to quickly change package and so loosing customer this way.

Site Admin Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 247

actually this format was just picked up from a software developer and is being worked on righ now as we speak. So we will just sit back and see what happens.

-c