3D workflow & pipeline research

Lightworks

2011-09-20T00:18:00.000+02:00

An unidentified reader of the blog just noticed this "fantastic opensource editing tool", this is an excerpt from their web: "An Academy and Emmy award winning professional-grade editor with over 20 years of history in the film and broadcast industry. Having cut hundreds of films such as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, Centurion and Shutter Island, it includes a full feature set of editorial tools --

license of messiah Studio5 just for $10

2011-02-09T00:39:00.002+01:00

pmG are offering the possibility to get their messiah studio for a drastically reduced rate ($10 or $40 based on version) if sufficient people choose to do likewise. From their site : 'This offer is open to: Individuals, small businesses, hobbyists, starving artists, the unemployed, schools, students, CG studios, game developers, plugin developers, architects, tinkerers, compositors and aspiring

Rays in Blue blog

2010-12-21T10:36:00.000+01:00

Checking Google Analytics I discovered a blog called Rays in Blue, which is very interesting: http://raysinblue.blogspot.com/ Its author, Rahul, says "I was responsible for a pipeline research back at my previous workplace and here are some of the general insights I had from my research." I have to admit that he has done a pretty intensive research and the quality of the (rest of the) links

Blue & Malone request for funds

2010-12-17T18:58:00.001+01:00

Este es para el público español: Si queréis ayudarnos con nuestro último proyecto, esta es vuestra oportunidad. http://www.lanzanos.com/proyectos/blue-malone-detectives-imaginarios/

Blog - The Art of CG Supervision

2010-11-13T10:19:00.003+01:00

Jorge sent me a link to this very useful blog, one which will possibly save you hours of hitting your head against the walls: "This blog aims to inform readers about the art of CG supervision --the challenges and techniques of managing a crew of artists engaged in producing visual effects or motion graphics for film, video or other media." An amazing resource. Thanks Jorge!

Plumber Production system for Maya

2010-10-28T17:41:00.000+02:00

Plumber is an asset-based production system For Maya 8.5 up to 2011. Currently Plumber has only been certified as a Windows-based tool, butthey hope to certify it soon for LINUX. The Professional version costs 120 $ per seat, the Amateur version is 45 $ Completely GUI based. Work collaboratively with shared asset libraries, simple department switching, and concise shot management tools. An

Partio Open Source particle formats conversion

2010-10-18T01:27:00.000+02:00

It seems Disney is going to open source part of its I+D, by opening Partio: "The goal of Partio is to provide a unified interface akin to unified image libraries that makes it easier to load, save, and manipulate particle files". Right now it supports "Houdini's GEO and BGEO, Maya's PDB and PDA, RenderMan's PTC" but it is not available to download for now. The reason to go Open Source seems to

Conferences about "Blue & Malone, Imaginary Eyes" short movie

2010-09-20T13:36:00.001+02:00

As some of you might know, my company is working on a short movie. We have been invited to give a couple of speeches about it in Spain. These are the links to the details, in case you might be nearby: Sunday September 26th, 11:00, Animadrid Saturday October 16th, 18:00, 3DWire, Segovia Regards!

Shameless Self Promotion

2010-08-02T01:18:00.000+02:00

Hi. I have been keeping this blog for some time, and plan to keep on it as long as possible. I know there are not many places to find this sort of information (If you know of any, send it to me to be published!) Today I would like to ask for a small return from the readers. Free and very simple things. 1.- If you want a Dropbox account, get one free right now USING THIS LINK: https://

Alembic : ILM´s open source 3D geometry caching interchange framework

2010-07-28T12:41:00.001+02:00

This is brand new from SIGGRAPH 2010. To sum it up in few words, it is a 3D render to exchange animated scenes between disparate softwares. "Alembic distills complex, animated scenes into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results. This ‘distillation’ of scenes into baked geometry is exactly analogous to the distillation of lighting and rendering scenes into

PipelineTD

2010-07-28T11:55:00.000+02:00

Anonymous kindly informed of PipelineTD "an interesting DAMS nicely integrated with Maya and has project planning, director approval tools with it". The author, Rahul Mishra, says in “I believe repetitive work should not be repeated, it should be automated.” That reduces human error and saves production time. This is what inspired me to develop pipeline-TD. The feature

A directory of Open-Source projects for the VFX community

2010-06-18T11:36:00.000+02:00

I was checking Render Mania and I found a post about (QUOTE) "openSourceVFX.org website opened recently. This is intended to be a central portal of open source VFX projects (...) their goals include listing and presenting valuable open-source projects for the VFX community and giving a voice to OS project leaders and VFX pros to promote their work and keep us updated."

Interesting softwares for 3D distributed production (updated)

2010-06-03T11:58:00.002+02:00

Scroll down for a brief update on online video-editing tools. Over the years I have coordinated several projects in which a number of artists work separately.Although very far from a perfect solution, I have found different useful tools that can help anyone in a similar situation.These are the tasks I have found more overwhelming, and the corresponding tools that might be to manage them:

3D Storyboarding software

2010-05-12T10:26:00.000+02:00

Campbell sent me a note about RedBoard, that integrates Maya with the storyboard artist. RedBoard is (from their web) a "a comprehensive production management (...) a single application for (...) 3D productions (...): - A drawn storyboard. - Production wide scene and shot data creation from that initial process.- Utilise an EDL from a corresponding editing application to translate timing

5th Kind

2010-04-21T22:07:00.000+02:00

Sergo sent me a very supportive email (thanks!) and informed about 5th Kind asset and production manager. Although the web itself is not specially appealing, once you have a look at the list of studios and feature films using it, this doesn´t seem very important. (from their web) "5th Kind has been managing assets for the highest budgeted, most complicated workflows in the

Shotrunner: organize, collaborate, manage and track media projects

2010-04-21T12:21:00.000+02:00

Shotrunner is (from thir web) "an online application for Visual Effects and Animation projects. ShotRunner helps you organize, collaborate, manage and track media projects. Its main purpose is to let distributed project teams stay coordinated and productive. It is really several tools in one:A status board for sequences, shots, elements, assets and tasks. A discussion forum File sharing Task

Pinky Dinky Doo Production Focus

2010-04-19T13:52:00.000+02:00

Rogelio sent me a couple of links about this series, which uses 3D to animate in 2D. The Production Focus is a great case study, and this AWN article will give you some hints on the budget. It´s quite interesting to have a look at.

Linux Render Farm´s Renderfarmer

2010-04-18T12:00:00.000+02:00

This seems like one of those softwares that could really help you out of a rendertime bottleneck, if you don´t have resources for a commercial render farm. RenderFarmer allows "anyone with basic computer skills to quickly install a powerful render farm (...) Simply install it on one dedicated computer, and it will bring up to 8 (*) render nodes up from bare metal via network boot. It never

GDI|Queue

2010-04-18T11:51:00.000+02:00

Some time (years!) ago I wrote about GDI|Explorer ("organization, communication and workflow tools for (...) creative individuals, workgroups collaborating on-site or via the internet as well as large studios operating worldwide.") Now I see that they also have a freeware auxiliary software called GDI|Queue for distributed rendering, offering a graphical interface to Condor (High Throughput

Blog on Animation Pipeline

2010-04-10T00:54:00.000+02:00

Miguel Angel just sent me this link, it is a recent blog with a bunch of juicy articles, about "good practices in project management procedures and technology" from an experienced point of view. Worth having a look. Thanks MA

GTO open source 3D file format

2010-03-30T09:08:00.000+02:00

Miguel Ángel sent me a note about GTO, a (from their web) "open source file format designed for computer graphics. It was developed by Tweak Films to serve as the core storage format for our geometry and rendering pipeline. GTO is used by VFX and animation facilities, post-houses, and game developers for a wide variety of applications. It's small size and versatility make it useful for

Afanasy - Free Render Farm Manager

2010-03-30T08:54:00.000+02:00

I just learned about this project and was curious to know if somebody has actually used it yet and could give us some feedback about it?

Creation Flow: web based visual review collaboration for video and images.

2009-10-26T22:49:00.000+01:00

We at "El Viaje Imposible", my production company, are working on a quite complex short film. I have casually discovered a great tool that we are using to review videos remotely: 1) The artist uploads a video that needs to be reviewd. 2) The supervisor (the "boss") can play it, stop it anywhere, and paint over any frame adding some text. 3) The artist can later click on a comment in a list to

CGW article about OpenPipeline

2009-09-30T09:04:00.001+02:00

In CGW´s Volume: 32 Issue: 8 (Aug. 2009) article "Building the Perfect Production Pipeline", showing how OpenPipeline "an underground, open-source project" (...) "began as an experiment to produce an easy-to-use production pipeline. It has since evolved into a serious tool for managing the production pipeline and teaching production asset management in the classroom"

Comment left on "Software in the Animation Industry Data Base" article

2009-09-20T11:26:00.000+02:00

Hans-Christian Jehg has left a new comment on the old (2006) post "Software in the Animation Industry Data Base", stating that HoBSoft responds very precisely to the point of the article. Thanks Hans!