ANAHEIM, CA — Shotgun Software has released the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit to provide studios with a set of out-of-the-box pipeline tools for visual effects, animation, and game development workflows.
The Pipeline Toolkit, previously code-named "Tank," integrates fully into the Shotgun production tracking platform, enabling studios to connect their artist applications to the production information and files that artists need to do their work. In fact, Pipeline Toolkit provides integration right out of the box with Adobe’s Photoshop, Autodesk’s Maya, The Foundry’s Nuke, and Side Effects Software’s Houdini, as well as delivers a Flexible Customization Framework.
"Shotgun's Toolkit allowed us to quickly and easily evolve our pipeline with tools that are helping our artists work faster," says Jordan Soles, CTO, Rodeo FX.
Shotgun’s Pipeline Toolkit features:
- File Management: Keep your file system organized with tools that automatically create folders on disk and name and organize files from within an artist's application. This is configurable to your studio's 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 doesn't make business sense for so many of them to reinvent the same tools over and over," explains Don Parker, CEO and co-founder of Shotgun Software. "We've 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."
The Toolkit supports Adobe Photoshop; Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, and MotionBuilder; The Foundry's Nuke and Hiero; and Side Effects Software's Houdini, with more supported applications to come, according to a company spokesperson.
"Having an Asset Management system that's so flexible is crucial for a rapid pace studio like us, you can adopt it gradually one project at a time while your pipeline evolves," said Armando "Doc" Ricalde, Co-Founder and CTO, Cluster Studio
Shotgun’s Pipeline Toolkit, the result of more than four years of development, is available immediately to customers as part of their Shotgun subscription for the price of $49 per user per month.
Shotgun’s Pipeline Toolkit is being demonstrated in Shotgun's booth (#737) during SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim, Calif.