Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit Released at Siggraph 0

Shotgun Software today released the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit (previously code-named Tank), providing studios with a set of out-of-the-box pipeline tools tailor-made for visual effects, animation and game development workflows. Fully integrated into the Shotgun production tracking platform, the Pipeline Toolkit allows studios to rapidly connect their artist applications to the important production information and files that artists need to do their work. It is available now to all clients at no extra charge.

Additional information about the Pipeline Toolkit is available at http://www.shotgunsoftware.com/toolkit .

Shotguns Pipeline Toolkit will be demonstrated in Shotguns booth (#737) during the Siggraph conference at the Anaheim, Calif. Convention Center, July 23 to 25. The Shotgun Pipeline User Group meeting at Siggraph will offer an in-depth technical presentation on Wednesday July 24th from 2-3:30 in room 213a.

Psyop was involved early on with the development of the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit, said Jean-Francois Panisset, CTO of Psyop. The collaborative development model allowed us to influence the direction of the product, contribute functionality important to us, and benefit from the involvement of other studios. The Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit is allowing us to develop a powerful, flexible, multi-platform pipeline infrastructure much faster and in a much more cost effective way than if we had tried to do it all by ourselves.

The Toolkit supports Adobe Photoshop , Autodesk Maya , 3ds Max , Softimage and MotionBuilder , The Foundrys Nuke and Hiero, and Side Effects Softwares Houdini, with more supported applications on the way.

Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit Key Features:

-- File Management: Keep your file system organized with tools that automatically create folders on disk and name and organize files from within an artists application. This is completely configurable to your studios conventions and can be modified across active projects.

-- Launchers, Loaders & Publishers: Included tools for launching artist applications from the Shotgun interface, browsing and loading in files with smart UIs inside artist applications, and one-click saving files to share with others.

-- Apps: All the tools that come with Pipeline Toolkit are developed as Apps, which are small independent pieces of functionality that can be mixed and matched.

-- Pipeline Management: Like source control for your pipeline, the Toolkit allows you to fork and configure different file system configurations and sets of apps that are running at the same time across multiple projects.

-- Dev Tools: Built-in Git and Github support make it easy to modify or create apps and deploy safely to various environments, while development tools make it fast to build and hot-load your code when iterating on an app.

-- Modular and Portable: A consistent interface based on Python and PySide lets studios write a single App that works across multiple artist tools like Photoshop, Maya and Nuke.

-- Python API: Access all the production and file based data with a single Python API.

-- Modify Source: The Toolkit python source code is available on Github for clients, allowing them to modify source or collaborate with the Shotgun team and other studios.

Modern studios have to be smart and efficient, and it simply doesnt make business sense for so many of them to reinvent the same tools over and over, said Don Parker, CEO and co-founder of Shotgun Software. Weve invested heavily in the development of the Toolkit because we know how much value these tools can bring to the entire VFX community. Our clients are telling us they are ready to collaborate with us and each other on pipeline tools, so we are proud to bring the Toolkit to them and provide a forum for that collaboration.

Shotgun has been developing the Pipeline Toolkit for more than four years and has been in private beta with hundreds of studios. The Toolkit is available immediately to all customers as part of their Shotgun subscription for the same low price of $49/user/month. Learn more or sign up for a free eval at http://www.shotgunsoftware.com.

A key goal of Pipeline Toolkit is to empower co-development within the community. The hope is that pipeline developers will use the framework to build tools that other studios can pick up and evolve. By encouraging community participation, Shotgun has already received contributions from studios such as Psyop, Rodeo, Blur, and Cluster for applications like Hiero, Houdini, and Softimage.

Customer Testimonials

Shotguns Toolkit allowed us to quickly and easily evolve our pipeline with tools that are helping our artists work faster. And by participating in the private beta, we had the chance to meet and collaborate with other studios on some key functionality that is now back in the Toolkit core product. We are very pleased with the Toolkit and the community forming around it, said Jordan Soles, CTO, Rodeo FX.

The Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit allows us to build on top of a clear architecture which leverages configuration, separation of concerns, plugins, code reuse and a consistent development experience across third party apps like Nuke, Maya, 3dsMax, Photoshop etc. We can deploy apps globally or go as granular as a single user which brings speed and administrative ease, while also allowing for innovation and short lived hacks. This product, being a toolkit as opposed to a monolithic application allows us to pick the building blocks which complement our existing infrastructure and transition gradually. And last but not least it offers the promise and possibility to collaborate on pipelines across studios, said Patrick Wolf, Head of Pipeline, Pixomondo.

Were all loving the Toolkit at Prologue. Thank you for the brilliant software, said Mike Fisher, Technical Director, Prologue.

Weve been plowing through Toolkit for our pipeline and its been

LINK:	http://news.creativecow.net/story/872153...
	See more stories from creativecow

Most recent headlines