VFX Operations

Feature Animation Visual Effects As A

Job Shop @

Input: Scripts, Storyboards, and Sound

Outputs: Image Sequences

Process Overview

Rough Layout

Character Animation Final Layout

Modeling

Rigging

Pipeline

Front End

Editorial

Approved Concept Art

Editorial

Lighting Final Render

Cloth & Hair FX (Particles, Smoke, Etc)

Texturing Look Dev

Back End

Objectives

Reduce Flow Time

Low Variability

Maintain Quality

Yikes…

Rough Layout

Character Animation Final Layout

Modeling

Rigging

Pipeline

Front End

Editorial

Approved Concept Art

Editorial

Lighting Final Render

Cloth & Hair FX (Particles, Smoke, Etc)

Texturing Look Dev

Back End

Animator’s Working View• Fast• Manipulate in real-time

• Smooth• Check contact points• Check motion blur• See details• Check quality of

conversion to lighting format

Animator (and Director) Quality Check Render

d

Zooming In: The Animation Workflow

Animator Works with Scene Publishing Animator

Review Director Review

QC Render (Video File)

Good?No Yes

Good?YesNo

ANIMATION

Two Publish Problems: Render “Death” and Bad Output

Animator Works with Scene Publishing Animator

Review Director Review

QC Render (Video File)

Good?No Yes

Good?YesNo

Death:• Often from new assets (rigs, props)

that had never been published• Scenes that had a technical glitch• Required Pipeline TD intervention

and can take days to track down• Relatively rare

Bad Output:• Often result of changes to props

(removed or renamed props) between publishes

• Generally easy to fix• Very common

Problem: The Render Recipe was Cumulative

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Repetition Due to Variation in Publishing Output

Animator Works with Scene Publishing Animator

Review Director Review

QC Render (Video File)

Good?No Yes

Good?YesNo

ANIMATION

New Process Variability

Publishing Output Quality LowOriginal Process Variability

Specification Width

First RenderSecond RenderFinal Render

The Fix: A Recipe Syncing Pre-Process

PublishingPublished Scene File Publish Pre-process

Existing Recipe

Check and update based on scene contents

New Process Variability

New Publishing Variability

Specification Width

Result

Reduced repetitions of render cycleReduced overall process time

Cut down on overtime (Saturday) work

Takeaways

• There are workflows inside of large processes• Quality / bottleneck issues within

workflows impact overall quality and flow time• Get employees on the front line

involved to unpack workflows within processes