The pipeline: from acquisition to delivery

• The importance and methods of retaining the quality of the source material.
• The general VFX shot pipeline, including general knowledge of all artists’ roles within the shot’s lifetime and their needs and deliverables.
• The film and/or TV shot pipeline, from pre-production, through shoot, editorial, VFX to grading.
• The VFX production pipeline, including shot bidding, turn-over, briefing, reviews, client reviews, deliveries and final delivery
• Approach to loading data from internal and external sources
• Delivery and output formats
• Visual effects terminology
• And has a familiarity with industry-standard software packages e.g. Maya, Houdini, 3D Studio Max etc.

• Select and use appropriate software tools and techniques
• Use appropriate techniques to reduce degradation of the source material (for example colour correction concatenation and single step filtering on transformations)
• Use appropriate VFX terminology
• Show technical competence in at least one industry standard VFX software
• ·Use FTP clients (tools to transfer computer files) and external hard drives
• Create Quicktimes
• Package assets for client delivery

Data management

• The importance of and techniques for managing large scale on- line and near-line data storage.
• Digital images and manipulation techniques.

• Use disk management and general processes for the movement of data around the internal system
• Convert, resize and rename various file types
• Monitor, track and report data usage
• Identify data for archival and removal
• Undertake final archiving and subsequent data restoration from archives

Render management

• Grid computing and its use within VFX render queues - at a basic level
• How to balance resource needs within the company’s physical capacity
• Render optimisation techniques

• Monitor, manipulate and report on render queues
• Monitor, track and report render resource usage
• Identify render errors and fix/escalate them as appropriate

Databases

• The differences between structured and unstructured data
• The quality issues that can arise with data and how to avoid and/or resolve these
• The fundamentals of data structures, database system design, implementation and maintenance
• The organisation's data architecture

• Identify, collect and migrate data to/from a range of systems
• Manipulate and link different data sets as required
• Interpret and apply the organisation’s data and information security standards, policies and procedures to data management activities
• Perform database queries across multiple tables to extract data for analysis

Project organisation

• The importance of naming conventions and version control
• How to ensure shots/assets can move from artist to artist (readability)

• Demonstrate how to build efficient tools and identify how to improve efficiency in existing tools
• Build tools with flexibility in mind, to be able to quickly respond to changes to the brief
• Accurately bid/estimate how long tasks will take
• Complete tasks within the time allocated

Maths

• Trigonometry
• Matrices
• Vectors
• Applied mechanics
• Basic algebra

• Use maths to manipulate computer generated geometry
• Use maths to recreate physical systems
• Use maths to describe problems and solutions

Software design

• The software design process and the importance of design before development
• How workflow diagrams, prototyping and presenting to intended users can aid in designing better solutions

• Accurately gather requirements from intended users
• Design elegant solutions that satisfy the brief with extensibility in mind
• Present proposed solution and respond to feedback
• Investigate existing solutions or frameworks
• Plan and document development roadmap

Scripting

• Python scripting language
• Shell scripting
• Application specific scripting languages e.g. Mel, Vex, Hscript etc. as appropriate
• The principles of software development
• How pipeline management tools are used within the industry and how to create efficiencies to the benefit of the business

• Write good quality code (logic) with sound syntax in at least one language
• Troubleshoot individual artist/TD input, output or archival problems
• Support or troubleshoot pipeline and workflow tools
• Document tools/developments
• Develop small-scale tools, using existing pipeline frameworks and libraries

Computing

• The components of a computer – the CPU, GPU, graphics card and their properties and the local drive and its relationship to the server or network

• Identify and fix/escalate computer hardware problems as appropriate
• Create, move and store data appropriately within employer defined network and server requirements
• Identify the limitations or requirements of computer hardware for particular activities

VFX Craft

• The processes and art of a particular department, such as animation, lighting, FX or rigging
• The particular standards of a department and the challenges they face

• Be proficient in the techniques of a particular department, such as animation, lighting, FX or rigging
• Use the industry standard software package required by the particular department