How do I set environment variables before launching software?

ShotGrid Toolkit allows you to use hooks during the launch process to configure the environment and run custom code.

When you launch software, for example Nuke or Maya, via ShotGrid Desktop or through the browser integration, the tk-multi-launchapp will be run. This app is responsible for launching the software and ensuring the ShotGrid integrations start up as expected. There are two points during this process that are exposed via hooks to allow custom code to be run.

before_app_launch.py

The before_app_launch.py hook is called just before the software is launched. This provides a perfect opportunity to set any custom environment variables to be passed onto the launched software.

Example:

import os
import tank

class BeforeAppLaunch(tank.Hook):

    def execute(self, app_path, app_args, version, engine_name, **kwargs):
        
        if engine_name == "tk-maya":
            os.environ["MY_CUSTOM_MAYA_ENV_VAR"] = "Some Maya specific setting"

Warning : Be careful not to completely redefine environment variables set by ShotGrid. For example, if you need to add a path to NUKE_PATH (for Nuke), or PYTHONPATH (for Maya), make sure you append your path to the existing value, rather than replace it. You can use our convenience method for this:

tank.util.append_path_to_env_var("NUKE_PATH", "/my/custom/path")

Custom wrapper

Some studios have custom wrappers that handle setting the environment variables and launching the software. If you prefer to use custom code like this to set the environment, you can point the Software entity’s path fields to your executable wrapper, and tk-multi-launchapp will run that instead.

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