Picker Image Portability

What a relative image path means

• For a picker file, an image with a relative path means the image file is right beside the .mgpkr file.

• For a picker node, an image with a relative path means the image file is inside the Maya scene directory / pickerimages folder.

• If the picker node is referenced in the Maya scene, the image of relative path means the image file is inside the referenced source Maya scene directory / pickerimages folder.

Image Relative Path vs Absolute Path

• Before MG-Picker Studio 2.8, when you pick an image or import from an SVG file, it will trigger the image localisation; the image will be copied to the relevant directory, and a relative path will be used.

• Starting from MG-Picker Studio 2.8, no image will be copied, and an absolute path will always be used when you pick/import an image, and by default, automatic image localisation only happens during these events:

  1. When you save/export the picker file/node. This behavior is a configuration that can be turned on/off.

  2. When you save as a template file, the image localisation will always happen automatically regardless of the configuration.

  3. In any image path editor that shows you the absolute image path, click on the down arrow and select Localise this Image.

  4. Go to the Images menu in designer mode, select Process Images to Relative Path...

• Starting from MG-Picker Studio 2.8, the configuration of this auto-localisation during save/export can be turned on/off in two places:

  1. Go to the preferences dialog, in designer settings, in Image Localisation, turn on Copy and Use Relative Paths on Save/Export.

  2. Go to the Images menu in designer mode, turn on/off Auto-Process Images to Relative Path on Save/Export.

• Turning off Image Localisation config, does not mean there won’t be any image copying during picker file/node save/export. It just means those items using absolute image paths will remain absolute, but those already using relative images paths, will still get their image copied to the new dir, otherwise those images won’t be recognized in the resaved picker.

Some other notes on images

💡 Starting from 2.8, when you save as a picker file/node, the popup UI will contain extra text at the bottom, to remind you if the image localisation will happen or not.

💡 Starting from 2.8, if you use the mpg.MGPickerView api to save/export a picker file/node, you can specify an extra flag autoLocaliseImages=boolean to specify whether we do the image localisation during the save/export process. This flag is only used for this save/export process and will not impact your user configuration.

💡 V1 takes an SVG vector image as a bitmap. Starting in V2, it will render SVG as a vector image.