Shotgun Software hosted its first Pipeline Awards at its user group meeting at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver last week. The awards honor excellence in pipeline tool development, integration, engineering and usage.
Members of the Shotgun community from around the world submitted inventive tools for consideration, and four were recognized with Pipeline Shotty Awards, distinguishing them as the best pipeline tools of 2014. The company also recognized four individuals as “Pipeline Heroes,” people who have had a significant impact on the postproduction community through their technical contributions and commitment to sharing ideas and best practices.
“There are talented innovators inside so many studios who are developing awesome tools that make laborious processes better for humans,” said Don Parker, co-founder of Shotgun Software and senior director at Autodesk. “These people are the unsung heroes of the industry, and we wanted to shine a light on their impressive achievements publicly. The level of sharing that happens in this community is fantastic. We have such respect for all of these folks. Their work truly impacts the whole industry. It’s important that this work is recognized.”
Bestowed with unique light bulb-themed awards designed by steampunk artist Andy Nortnik, the Pipeline Heroes were Tony Barbieri, head of pipeline, Psyop; Armando Ricalde, co-founder and director of technology, Cluster Studio; Mike Romey, head of pipeline, Zoic, and Patrick Wolf, global head of pipeline, Pixomondo.
Honorees for the top pipeline tools of 2014 each received a custom award by kinetic artist Kyle Auga that features a tightrope walker with a tool in hand.
Pipeline Shotty award winners were:
The Capture Lab (Yanna Kang): Motion Capture Tool.
The Capture Lab’s mocap tool is a client-facing order tool that eases the process of selecting and ordering motion capture animation in Shotgun.
Laika (Tony Aeillo and Owen Nelson): BB Gun.
Laika’s BB Gun tool allows multiple departments with different requirements to use the task scheduling capabilities of Microsoft Project to publish task updates to Shotgun where everyone can see them.
Park Road Post (Dave Alve, Siobhan Durkin, Pete Black): In-App Artist Tools.
Park Road Post utilizes multiple custom pipeline tools including an Info Panel in Nuke, Time Log Tool, Reference Viewer, Asset Manager, QT Reference Importer, custom enhancements to Shotgun’s Screening Room, and integration with SGO’s Mistika environment.
Burrows: Rhino Engine.
Burrows leveraged Shotgun’s Pipeline Toolkit to create a comprehensive workflow for their CAD-based automotive designers, including the first ever custom-built integration with Rhino 3D.
“What better way to recognize awesomeness in pipeline development than creating these awards, such a great idea,” said Armando Ricalde, Cluster Studio. “It is always great to see what other people are doing, lots of inspiration and topics for discussion, which is another great thing about Shotgun, its community. All the awarded projects look very interesting to me and though we don’t use all the tools that were interfaced with Shotgun, learning about them provided more insights about how to build better pipelines.”
