LOS ANGELES — Pipeline tools developer Shotgun Software has announced that its flagship production management tool, Shotgun, is now optimized for integration into game-specific workflows.
Primed to tackle increasing challenges in the game industry, this launch is the result of over a year of collaboration with more than 30 top game studios including Avalanche, Microsoft Game Studios, and EA, and allows studios to seamlessly manage their art department's and remote partner's workflow, increasing studios' creativity, productivity and cost-efficiency.
This game industry initiative marks a natural evolution for Shotgun. This games industry-tailored version of Shotgun integrates proven features such as production tracking and collaborative review and approval into game art workflows, and its familiar holistic approach provides useful tools for everyone in the studio. Managers can easily track, schedule and manage a project from start to finish with an integrated set of apps and Shotgun's custom reporting. Shotgun has specifically designed tools for artists that provide simple and visual task views and tools to access important project information and collaborate with other artists and supervisors. Supervisors have tools to continuously review artist work, annotate images, and provide feedback to creative teams; the feedback loop is seamless even when project work is being managed across multiple facilities with teams distributed around the globe.
Key features of the product include:
- Plan, track and manage all game art
- Iterate, review and collaborate with artists both in and outside your studio
- Web-based playback and annotation tools directly within Shotgun interface
- Integrates with other tools to build the most robust pipeline for your studio
- Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit seamlessly integrates with apps like Maya and Photoshop to automate and speed up artist tools and tasks
- Flexible options with easily customizable toolset
- Integrates with Perforce
- Integrates with key engineering tools via Open API
Shotgun Co-founder and CEO Don Parker explained, "Game studios are dealing with the similar pain points as the entertainment business - shortened production schedules, tightened budgets, and the increased complexities of managing multiple teams and partners in various locations. Our mission is to help our clients and we've partnered with some of the most demanding players in game development to build out the Shotgun platform to solve real game production pipeline problems."