Builder

[mottosso]

Goal

Enable integration testing across multiple departments.

Usecases

• As a [stakeholder] I would like to [what] in order to [profit]
• As an artist, I would like to automatically setup my workspace with relevant assets so as to get started quickly
• As an artist, I would like to preview my work in relation to surrounding work such that I can ensure it works together
• As a supervisor, I would like to automatically produce a render of a shot in its current state

Motivation

Assuming each shot consists of many parts and that monitoring when one of these parts change, it can be important to test whether the change works together with surrounding parts. But assembling these disparate parts can be both daunting and repetitive.

For example, picture an animator having produced a new version of a background character, partially obscured by a foreground character, environment and prop. His expertise lies in character animation, yet for him to visualise his work in relation to surrounding work, he must find and load the relevant versions of environment, foreground character and prop and put these together in an appropriate manner, which may differ across project and/or shot, before ultimately knowing what his work looks like in the greater whole.

Another common issue lies in knowing what you are passing down the pipeline.

In some cases, you can be presented with one thing, such as an animation, but have something different being passed on. Maybe publishing the asset discarded critical information due to some difficult-to-debug problem.

This can be solved by reviewing things that have already passed through the publishing phase, but for this to happen it cannot be tedious.