Building OpenDCC / Dependencies

[instinct-vfx]

Hi all,

thanks to everyone involved to get OpenDCC started! It looks great and i am totally looking forward to playing with it!

While giving it a first look i realised that building is not trivial out of the box and getting dependencies is neither. My suggestion would be to rely as much on standards to find dependencies as possible (e.g. just piggy backing USD_INSTALL_DIR and then finding components automatically).

A fist start would be a list of required dependencies and supported versions for them (though i am Windows only, it would be great to get that for all platforms i would say.

Cheers,
Thorsten

[JT-SCB-GameDesign]

Hey Thorsten,
Did you figure out any more tips from the perspective of us new eyeballs?

[JT-SCB-GameDesign]

Since this is a framework, does anyone have sample app screenshots?
Maybe the community can collaborate on one to share openly if there is not one available already?

[xeash]

@instinct-vfx

Thanks! And no worries, sorry for the slow reply.

Just a quick note — there's a lot of ongoing technical discussion around building dependencies in this GitHub issue:
#2

While giving it a first look I realised that building is not trivial out of the box and getting dependencies is neither. My suggestion would be to rely as much on standards to find dependencies as possible (e.g. just piggy backing USD_INSTALL_DIR and then finding components automatically).

Yes, that's the plan. We're aiming to follow standards as closely as possible. Besides simplifying setup, it also makes it easier to swap in your own USD fork or upgrade USD when needed.

A first start would be a list of required dependencies and supported versions for them (though I am Windows only, it would be great to get that for all platforms I would say).

Absolutely. The goal is to support as many platforms as possible — and don't worry, we're treating Windows as a first-class platform.

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@JT-SCB-GameDesign

About the screenshots — OpenDCC is the open source core of the ShapeFX Loki app:
https://shapefx.app/
It shares the overall look and feel of the UI.

Loki is free to download and try, so you can definitely explore it today to get a sense of what OpenDCC aims to offer and how it will look in action.

P.S. Yes, we definitely need to add screenshots to the README. It's on the list!

[rudycazabon]

Greetings all,

I would like to know if any "formal" build documentation is available now and if not what is the ETA? I have attempted to complete builds within the aswf/vfx-all:latest docker image as well as my standalone Ubuntu 24.04 and it is a slog. I have purposely turned off many options inside Options.cmake so as to arrive (I hope) to some form of stability and add the various options back in. However, things like Qt ADS (for example) do not play well with the docker mentioned above.

Any and all guidance would be appreciated.

[xeash]

Hi, @rudycazabon
We’re putting the finishing touches on a CMake-based “deps” builder that supports Windows and Rocky Linux 9.
It grabs and compiles every third-party package we need (including Qt Advanced Docking System!).

The ASWF vfx-all image is a great reference, but in our view, it’s a bit heavy and not ideal for contributors: it’s Linux-only, and customizing it is difficult. Instead, we’re aiming for something lighter, project-specific, cross-platform, and easy to work with.

First release is planned within the next few weeks!

Thanks!

[rudycazabon]

@xeash This is welcome news. I concur that the aswf docker image is heavy. I believe that your approach of providing a cross-platform cmake build and deps is optimal as it will enable others in the community to custom build deps to suit their needs.

Thanks!

[rudycazabon]

@xeash Hey there! Stopping by to ask how the build instructions are coming along.

[nyue]

Checking in as it's been two SIGGRAPH now since OpenDCC was mentioned/launch.

I understand that Loki is base on OpenDCC which makes me wonder why the building of OpenDCC have not been documented.

I see multiple fork of this project, I want to avoid forking to figure out the building of OpenDCC.

Any updates?

[xeash]

Hey!

Sorry you’ve had that experience.

I actually left ShapeFX about a year ago, and from what I can tell, most of the original team has moved on as well. You may have also noticed that Loki hasn’t seen any updates for quite some time.

The good news is that an ex-colleague and I started an independent fork of the project:
https://github.com/opendccplatform/OpenDCC

We’ve been working on it in our spare time. At this year’s SIGGRAPH, we demonstrated some of the new work built on top of this independent repository, but we haven’t pushed those changes publicly just yet.

Improving the build infrastructure and providing proper build documentation are both high on our priority list. We know the current situation makes it difficult for new contributors to get started, and we want to make that much smoother before we ask people to jump in.

If you’re interested in following the project’s progress, I’d recommend watching the new repository, as that’s where we’re actively developing OpenDCC. From what I can see, the original repository doesn’t appear to be actively maintained anymore, so I expect most future development to happen in the new one.

Thanks for your patience, and we really appreciate your interest in the project!