EA Germany, Omstudios, Milk VFX, Framestore and MPC Recognized for Toolset Development and Pipeline Advancement

Los Angeles, CA (August 12, 2015) - At yesterday's Shotgun Software SIGGRAPH User Group, the company recognized three pipeline toolsets and two pipeline 'heroes' with 2015 Pipeline Awards, honoring excellence in pipeline tool development and contributions made to the pipeline community.

Custom designed trophies were presented to Pipeline Shotty Award winners for developing top pipeline tools and to Pipeline Heroes, people who moved the field forward significantly within the Shotgun community or in the broader industry.

2015 Pipeline Shotty Awards

Media Submit and Media Link, René Calles, EA Germany
When artists render out image sequences from the Frostbite game engine, this toolset lets them easily drag and drop their media onto the appropriate task and add notes to all versions uploaded or just specific versions via the details pane. They can tag versions here as well as attach any associated files. Once artists submit work, it is published to Shotgun, compressed and uploaded for preview to the media site, and also renamed, versioned and stored in the server based on the context of the task.

Adobe After Effects Integration, Sebastian Thiel and Timor Kardum, Omstudios
Custom-developed After Effects integration with Shotgun allows users to push files directly into After Effects with the help of Shotgun. Ensuring synchronized workflows between artists and producers is much easier when project settings can be changed in Shotgun, and those changes are reflected in After Effects.

Smart Publish Notifications, Benoit Leveau, Milk VFX
A simple, powerful tool that grew out of experience, it ties together publishing and communication, connecting people inside a small studio in an elegant way. It sends ‘smart’ publish notification emails based on pre-defined rules (rigging to animation, lighting to comp, CC to the HOD of the department, etc.)

2015 Pipeline Hero Awards

The Framestore Team: Jesse Lucas, Jesse Spielman, Karsten Wagenknecht, Ian Thompson and Dane Bettis

These folks are true power users, having designed and heavily customized a streamlined, fully functional multi-site pipeline based on Shotgun Toolkit that includes all standard Toolkit apps, running solidly in production. They have relentlessly driven Toolkit forward and pushed the Shotgun team in that area, and in doing so they’ve achieved something distinctive that benefits the entire Shotgun community.

Hannes Ricklefs, MPC

Hannes is being recognized with a Hero Award for his years-long efforts to move pipeline forward and foster industry-wide understanding. In 2008 he co-authored a SIGGRAPH paper on the pipelines for Chronicles of Narnia and followed it up with one on Prince of Persia’s pipeline in 2010. That same year he organized the first SIGGRAPH Birds of a Feather on Pipeline and has been holding it every year since. His co-authored paper on the need for standardization within global VFX productions, co-authored book Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Films and Games, many talks and interviews on the topic, and his Google group have brought the pipeline community together and given it active forums for discussion, idea-sharing and problem solving.

For more information and videos of select winning entries, please visit: http://blog.shotgunsoftware.com/2015/08/pipelineawardwinners15.html

“All of us here at Shotgun are massive fans of our industry’s Pipeline community, who selflessly invest so much blood, sweat and tears into tools that make so many impossible productions possible, and help artists spend more of their time being creative,” said Don Parker, co-founder of Shotgun and Autodesk senior director. “It’s an honor to acknowledge this community in general and specifically celebrate truly excellent pipeline work this last year.”

About Shotgun
Shotgun Software, an Autodesk company, builds secure, scalable software for production tracking, review, and asset management. More than 600 creative companies rely on the Shotgun platform, which now includes the RV image/movie player, to provide essential business tools for managers and visual collaboration tools for artists and supervisors, often working globally with distributed teams. Studios of all sizes including DreamWorks, Framestore, Blizzard, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Double Negative and Ubisoft have adopted Shotgun's customizable system and contribute to the ongoing development of its growing ecosystem of applications. www.shotgunsoftware.com

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