Convert Department class to read from JSON file

[mswindler]

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[mswindler]

Currently Department is basically an enumerated class:

dccpipe/pipe/am/environment.py

Line 224 in 84cf805

class Department:

Which isn't the greatest practice unless it is done correctly, and using an empty class with a bunch of constants isn't the right practice in Python.

Eventually we'll want to take a look at how we handle departments entirely, and make them more robust (i.e. when publishing to a department, exporting, etc.), but there are a few departments that we must keep:

Maya Departments:

• model

• anim

• rig

• layout

Houdini departments:

• modify

• material

• hair

• cloth

Other useful departments:

• texture (for storing texture maps)

• render (for storing the rendered frames for a shot)

Departments we should consider re-designing:

• hda: hda should only exist for tools, and if we have a directory separate from assets for tools (which we do) then why have departments when hda would be the only department?

• cycles

• cfx

• comp: Composited shots should be stored in the rendered_shots project directory.

• assembly: since assemble and clone are now handled in a very similar way, I don't know why we need assembly as a department.

Game plan:

So what we'd want to do is keep the departments we need as the default available departments in a project JSON file. Each grouping of departments should be in list format in the JSON file.

Then, Department should have it's own file (first of all) and the class methods should deal with reading and writing to that JSON file to get and add departments.