Computer Graphics World

A nimation students face many challeng- es as they prepare to enter the work- force—one of the most obvious is the lack of experience working in a studio pro- duction pipeline. For studios juggling tight deadlines and even tighter budgets, this is- sue can oftentimes be a deal breaker when it comes to landing the job. Time spent train- ing an artist or an animator is essentially money left on the table, and in these trying economic times, few studios are willing to make the sacrifi ce. However, an underground, open-source project, which began in 2006 and has been consistently gaining momentum over the years, is providing students with the tools they need to work in a production pipeline long before they ever set foot in a studio. If You Build It, They Will Learn Several robust production pipeline applica- tions, such as Temerity Software's Temerity Pipeline or Avid's Alienbrain, are commer- cially available, but unfortunately, many schools do not have the means to acquire, maintain, and support these types of soft- ware programs. Necessity spurs invention, and the concept for OpenPipeline, an open-source framework for the manage- ment of animation production data and workfl ow, was born. Conceived at Eyebeam Art and Technol- ogy Center, a majority of the OpenPipe- line development took place at the Pratt Institute Digital Arts Research Lab and is currently being maintained and updated at Kickstand, an animation research and de- velopment studio in New York City. e OpenPipeline project was essentially developed to emulate the production pipe- line found in a studio environment. To im- plement and test the software specifi cation, a working prototype was developed for Au- todesk's Maya. e development guidelines were straightforward: create a code base in MEL (before Python was available), elimi- nate the use of external data bases, applica- tions, executables, or libraries, and provide cross-platform compatibility. While Open- Pipeline was primarily developed at the Pratt Institute, many individual users and studios have made invaluable contribu- tions to the evolution of the program by providing feedback, suggestions, and, in many cases, code. OpenPipeline begins with concept de- velopment and ends with project output. e students at the Pratt Institute Depart- ment of Digital Arts also use PipelineFX's Qube render management solution in their production pipeline. Student proj- ects at Pratt, such as Vadim Kiyaev's senior Capstone Project, and MFA thesis fi lms by graduate students Paris Mavroidis, Alek Vacura, and George Smaragdis, have all benefi tted from access to production pipeline tools and the added fl exibility to make creative decisions and enhance the project at a late stage. Features Deliver Results OpenPipeline off ers asset management, re- vision control, user notes, and scene popula- tion and management capability. e asset management feature allows you to name, store, retrieve, and associate information with data. If, for example, you create an asset called "bob" of type "character," it will au- tomatically be saved to /lib/character/bob. is fi le structure easily archives and delivers the asset, removing the guesswork of where it should be saved in the directory structure. Revision control keeps track of the edits to a fi le and incrementally saves the fi le, instead of overwriting it with each save. User notes and information are associ- ated with the fi le, including who saved the fi le, and the interface allows a person to browse through previous versions and revert to a fi le if necessary. Scene population and management features off er an overview of sequences, shots, shot components, and the ability to import or reference assets or shots. Scenes are also handled like assets with an automatic naming and storage path. Users have the ability to defi ne assets, asset types, and asset components, along with sequences, shots, and components in OpenPipeline. As these are created, a logical director structure is built. Once everything is in place, users rarely have to use the stan- dard "open" or "save" functions—Open- Pipeline automatically manages, saves, and correctly names fi les. A centrally defi ned script path allows users to share project data and interact with the same production tree using shared OpenPipeline source code; any changes or updates made in the system August 2009 36 ■ ■ ■ ■ Education Pratt students have used the school's production pipeline tools to create their projects, including George Smaragdis' "Scrimshander," shown here. An underground, open-source project gives students experience before entering the studio By Rob O'Neill

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