DAM: good solutions; post pros want asset management integrated with project management

Post, July, 2003 by Claudia Kienzle

Creators of animations, visual effects and graphics agree that vendors of digital asset management (DAM) solutions don't really understand them.

In their marketing, many vendors emphasize how their DAM solutions can track the whereabouts of millions of digital files on storage systems enterprise-wide so that a particular asset can be retrieved and repurposed to maximize the investment made to acquire or create it. So, for vendors, efficiency boils down to finding stuff.

While tracking assets is vital to high-level graphics and animation work, the experts we spoke with said that's just not enough. What they want are DAM solutions that track the assets in relation to the shots they are in; while tracking the shots in relation to the movies they are in. So, for studios, efficiency boils down to project management.

Post professionals view the project as an asset that's comprised of shots that are assets comprised of elements -- such as 3D models, CG characters, background plates, mattes, textures, visual effects, animatics, storyboards and other individual assets. While finding assets quickly and easily saves time and money, asset management conducted in the context of project management significantly improves the efficiency and productivity of the overall operation.

SONY IMAGEWORKS

"When vendors talk about asset management, very often they mean finding files in libraries or databases. When we talk about asset management, we mean following the progress of each individual asset as it moves through the workflow pipeline," says Bill Villarreal, VP of technical operations at Sony Pictures Imageworks (www.imageworks.com) in Culver City, CA. "If a shot has languished, we want to know what happened to it. We want to quickly gather data that will tell us what's 'holding up the works' on certain assets so we can make changes that get production back on track. Many vendors simply don't get this. NXN does get it, and that's why we're integrating their Alienbrain VFX [www.nxn-software.com] solution into our production pipeline."

When Sony Pictures Imageworks began working on Spider-Man, they chose NXN's Alienbrain VFX because it was the first commercial solution to offer both asset management and digital production management of visual effects, digital character animation and full-length CG motion pictures. Villarreal says Alienbrain VFX helps increase productivity and reduce time spent on workflow management tasks from concept to completion.

For Stuart Little 2, which opens this month, Villarreal says that Alienbrain VFX tracked all the digital files used to create the animated character Stuart Little -- such as his colors, clothes, textures, whiskers and other attributes. But they also tracked all the different versions of each asset or shot that the directors, producers and art directors had considered but didn't use. Approval information becomes part of the metadata or historical record associated with each asset.

"Throughout the workflow pipeline, artists fill in the metadata fields for each image, noting which assets represent key milestones in the production, such as frames approved by the director or final renderings. The metadata tracks the assets as well as determines which ones are especially important to keep for perpetuity -- so we're prepared to retrieve the assets in the event the movie is re-released in the future."

RHYTHM & HUES

Six years ago, when Rhythm & Hues (R&H) decided to find a DAM solution that could manage all aspects of the production pipeline -- including scanning, design, modeling, CG animation, VFX, film recording and archive -- they found there was none.

So, R&H's 12-member software division developed a proprietary solution strictly for in-house use. The result is PTS (or Production Tracking System), which has at its core a powerful DAM solution that currently tracks over 10TBs of data on multiple servers throughout the facility. But, that DAM capability is contained within PTS's sophisticated production management environment, rich with workflow analysis tools for tracking the progress of assets in development.

"Workflow is a very big deal for us here at R&H," says Mark A. Brown, VP of technology, at Rhythm & Hues (www.rhythm.com) in Marina del Rey, CA. "Because of the intelligence built into PTS, not only can we find out where a particular asset is, we can see what tasks need to be performed on that asset.

"If an effect shot appears to be behind schedule, we can query the system for 'critical path analysis' to determine where the bottleneck is," continues Brown. "This allows us to find the problem quickly and take action, such as dedicating more artists to it. More importantly, these reports are generated automatically, without our having to physically gather up the data and prepare reports."

Efficient production management is especially vital because R&H has several large-scale movie effects projects in the works at once, including Garfield, Scooby-Two, Intolerable Cruelty and Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat. PTS also streamlined visual effects and animation work for such movies as X-Men 2, The Ring and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.