Setup and launch custom production environments with Render Farm, Production Tracking, Automation and more - your 3D Animation and VFX Pipeline backbone - with ease, independence and scalability! The way YOU want it! YOU only! Exactly!
This is not another Pipeline Tool. It is a tool to build a structured foundation for any Pipeline Tool you might decide to use at some point in your studio.
An open source toolkit - a declarative build system - to easily create reproducible production environments based on your studio (even down to per production) needs: create Landscapes for production, testing, debugging, development, migration, DB restore etc.
No more black boxes. No more path dependencies due to bad decisions made in the past. Stay flexible and adaptable with this modular and declarative system by reconfiguring any production environment with ease:
- ✅ Easily add, edit, replace or remove services
- ✅ Clone (or modify and clone) entire production Landscapes for testing, debugging or development
- ✅ Code as source of truth:
- ✅ Always stay on top of things with Landscape Maps and node tree representations of Python code
- ✅ Limit manual documentation to a bare minimum
- ✅
OpenStudioLandscapesis (primarily) powered by Dagster and Docker - ✅ Fully Python based
- ✅ Build your own studio automation
- ✅ and share it (scripts, packages etc.) across Landscapes
- ✅ Do you like project based studio services?
- ✅ No problem with OpenStudioLandscapes
This platform is aimed towards small to medium-sized studios where only limited resources for Pipeline Engineers and Technical Directors are available. This system allows those studios to share a common underlying system to build arbitrary pipeline tools on top with the ability to share them among others without sacrificing the technical freedom to implement highly studio specific and individual solutions if needed.
The scope of this project are users with some technical skills with a desire for a pre-made solution to set up their production services and environments. OpenStudioLandscapes is therefore a somewhat opinionated solution for working environments that lack the fundamental skills and/or budgets to write a solution like OpenStudioLandscapes by themselves while being flexible enough for everyone with the technical skills to make their way through configuring a Landscape or even writing their own OpenStudioLandscapes Features for custom or proprietary services to fully fit their needs.
I guess this is a good starting point to open the project up to the animation and VFX community to find out where (or where else) exactly the needs are to make sure small studios keep growing in a (from a technical perspective) healthy way without ending up in a high "tech dept" dead end.
What problem does OpenStudioLandscapes solve?
What's separating the men from the boys is the production back bone. Large studios spent years and years of man (and woman) hours and millions of dollars to build robust automation to support their production while smaller ones are (in those regards - no matter how recent and advanced the tools they use are) decades behind. So, in one sense, OpenStudioLandscapes is a time machine by giving you the ability to jump a few years ahead of yourself by giving you a pre-made on-prem production environment at very little cost.
The second problem it is trying to solve is one that you (as a small company) do not have yet. Ideally, before you start thinking about automating processes, you want to have a robust underlying system. However, what usually happens is that studios build their systems (again, while they are still small with no budget and/or understanding for professional automation) the other way around: they write their small scripts and build everything else around and on top of that. This almost inevitably leads to tech dept in the future after growth has happened - a house of cards built upside down. So, you wanna replace or remove your old little script that you wrote 5 years ago which is being used in so many places you can't even remember? There you have it. Better don't touch it. Better continue building your system around it. Right? Wrong! OpenStudioLandscapes is here to change that by making sure your future you is not going to regret decisions of its past you by providing structure while keeping systems and pipeline features as isolated (read: portable) as possible!
Now you're asking: "So, tell me! What exactly does it produce? Is it even worth the hassle? And wtf is a Landscape?". Good you're asking! To get an idea what the actual output (or product if you will) of OpenStudioLandscapes looks like and what it can be used for, I have created a ready-made, portable Demo Landscape (well, OpenStudioLandscapes created it of course). No need to go through the installation process at all. Just clone the repository and follow the (very short) instructions. Here's a Landscape Map of the Demo Landscape:
Bear in mind: OpenStudioLandscapes is a young project. There are still many items to be implemented (and potentially bug-fixed). I lack experience in many fields when it comes to software development. The documentation is not in a shape I would like to see it in. So, before adding features and Features to OpenStudioLandscapes, I plan to work on stability, documentation and support. To avoid filling in the wrong gaps, I would like to mainly fill in those that are being asked for - and this is your part. Ask anything. Request anything. Suggest anything. Anything that leads to a better experience - without hiccups and without too much noise at the same time - from installation to usage. If your field of expertise can improve this project, please step forward and jump on board!
Now, it's time to head over to the Wiki!
