Treegrunt

The Treegrunt is the main entry point to all of the Blur tools. It is an environment and tool management system that allows a TD to quickly develop and deploy tools to artists.

• Treegrunt
• Where are all the Tools?
• Updating the Tools Index
• Why do I need to do this?
• How do I run Treegrunt?
• External Treegrunt
• 3dsMax Treegrunt
• Softimage Treegrunt

Where are all the Tools?

So if this is the Tool launching system...where are all the tools? For offline installations, the first time you run the Treegrunt you'll have to update its index.

Updating the Tools Index

If you don't see any tools, or if you are a Developer who created a new tool, in your Treegrunt:

1. Right-click in Treegrunt
2. Choose Environments >> Rebuild Index
3. Hit OK on the popup dialog

This will rebuild the XML index of tools that Treegrunt uses to launch tools from.

Why do I need to do this?

Originally, the Treegrunt system simply looked through the folder system for tools.

As our tools and necessities became more complex, we needed a faster and more flexible system, so we went with an XML based "database" of tools. This is a much faster system as it doesn't have to troll the filesystem every time it needs to look for tools.

The XML file provided a single place to lookup all tools, and allowed us to build a generic way to define Tools to register to the system.

To learn more about adding tools to the treegrunt, look through the tools tutorial.

How do I run Treegrunt?

External Treegrunt

Just double-click the Treegrunt link on your DESKTOP. This will run Treegrunt with any tools registered as External.

3dsMax Treegrunt

Choose Python >> Treegrunt. This will run Treegrunt with any tools registered as Studiomax and Legacy Studiomax.

Softimage Treegrunt

Choose Python >> Treegrunt. This will run Treegrunt with any tools registered as Softimage and Legacy Softimage.