Installation

To install Gaffer, simply download and unpackage the appropriate bundle for your platform from the GitHub release page. The resulting directory will contain the complete application ready to use, and you can launch Gaffer immediately by running the bin/gaffer script from within that directory.

The gaffer distribution can be moved to any suitable location on the filesystem. For convenience, you should add <GAFFER_INSTALL_PATH>/bin to the PATH environment variable so that Gaffer can be run more simply as gaffer (where <GAFFER_INSTALL_PATH> is the location where you have moved the gaffer directory).

Note

This section and the next assume you have basic proficiency in using shell commands. If you don’t, the following should be enough to launch Gaffer for the first time. Assuming your web browser has placed the download in your Downloads folder, open a terminal and enter these commands :

cd ~/Downloads
tar -xzf gaffer-0.41.0.0-linux.tar.gz
cd gaffer-0.41.0.0-linux
./bin/gaffer

If installing on OS X, then please substitute osx for linux above.

Configuring 3rd party tools

Gaffer is shipped with the open source Appleseed renderer, ready to use with no further configuration. To set up a 3rd party renderer or dispatcher, it is necessary to set some environment variables as described below.

Note

The examples below all assume your are installing Gaffer for Linux. For OS X, please substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for all occurrences of LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

3delight

  • Ensure <3DELIGHT_INSTALL_PATH>/bin is in your $PATH.
  • Set the $DELIGHT environment variable to point to <3DELIGHT_INSTALL_PATH>.
  • Add <3DELIGHT_INSTALL_PATH>/shaders to the $DL_SHADERS_PATH environment variable.
  • Add <3DELIGHT_INSTALL_PATH>/displays to the $DL_DISPLAYS_PATH environment variable.
  • Add <3DELIGHT_INSTALL_PATH>/lib to the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

Arnold

  • Ensure that $ARNOLD_ROOT points to the location where Arnold is installed.

Tractor

  • Add the location of the tractor python module to the $PYTHONPATH environment variable.