Advanced Tips and Guidelines
These useful tips, guidelines and information for advanced users.
| • | Unicode Guidelines |
| • | Flexible Scene Data Placement |
| • | Configuring the Mount as Samba |
Unicode Guidelines
Here are some useful guidelines to keep in mind if you are considering using Unicode:
| • | Because the Unity game engine does not support Unicode characters, it is recommended to avoid using it in scenes intended for games. |
| • | Unicode characters cannot be used for parent folders of USA_DB and USADATA. |
| • | To zip a scene with Unicode in its name, use 7zip which is included in the package; the regular zip cannot handle some Unicode characters. |
| • | SMB sharing is needed for Unicode characters as NFS shares do not support Unicode. |
Limitations
| • | Offline scenes with Unicode characters cannot be imported on Mac OS X 10.10.5 and 10.11. |
| • | A scene name with Unicode characters cannot be opened through the Harmony Web Control Center. |
| • | If a scene name contains Unicode characters, the following commands in the File menu cannot be used: Update Database Scene and Download Database Changes. |
| • | Mac samba client for Linux server: Unicode does not support NFS. |
| • | Users of usabatch: There are limitations when using samba with Unicode. |
Configuring the Mount as Samba
NFS on Mac OS X does not correctly support Unicode characters. The user will have problems with incompatible or unreadable files when using NFS on an external Linux storage. This is especially important on hybrid systems where more than one operating system is involved.
Samba correctly 'normalizes' the Unicode character encoding (see Unicode character normalization). However, Samba must be mounted as a drive by the user. Basically, the user mounts the share when logging in, so they have access to the share. If the samba mount command is put in the /etc/fstab file, the share is mounted by root and is only accessible by root. In this case, the only way to mount a samba share is to use the auto_master and auto_smb files.
How to configure the mounts as Samba
- Edit the auto_master file to enable the samba share to be automatically mounted:
sudo vi /etc/auto_master
- Add the following line:
/- auto_smb -nosuid
- Create/edit the auto_smb file to mount the samba share from the server. The parameters will depend on your exact configuration.
sudo vi /etc/auto_smb
Type the following: (In the example below, rnd-11 is exporting two samba shares.)
/mnt/USA_DB -fstype=smbfs,soft ://usabatch:usabatch@rnd-11/USA_DB
/mnt/usadata -fstype=smbfs,soft ://usabatch:usabatch@rnd-11/usadata
- Configure the mount points.
sudo mkdir /mnt
sudo mkdir /mnt/USA_DB
sudo mkdir /mnt/usadata
sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt/.
- Create the symbolic links to the root. Or use the shortcuts.conf configuration file if you want to avoid having symlinks at the root.
sudo ln -s /mnt/USA_DB /USA_DB
sudo ln -s /mnt/usadata /usadata
- Mount now.
For some configurations/users, you must explicitly unmount before remounting the file systems.
sudo umount /mnt/*
sudo automount -vc
Flexible Scene Data Placement
Since the /USADATA and /USA_DB directories no longer need to be placed at the root of your file system, you can place them wherever you like. This is useful when using third-party asset management and tracking systems.
If you choose to place the directories at a location other than the root, you can create a shortcut that points to the location of the file system without using the .lnk shortcuts on Windows or the symbolic links on Mac and Linux.
How to create a shortcut that points to the new location of the file system
- Locate the shortcuts.conf file here:
/Applications/Toon Boom Harmony [version] [edition]/tba/resources/samples
- Copy the shortcuts.conf file and place it here:
/Applications/Toon Boom Harmony [version] [edition]/tba/etc
- Open the shortcuts.conf with a text editor.
- Here are some examples of what to add at the end of the file:
/USA_DB /mount_point/usadata
/usadata /mount_point/usadata
On a server, you can point to a subfolder like this:
/USA_DB /parentfolder/usa_db
/usadata000 /parentfolder/usa_db
- Save the file.