“Launcher: balancing stability and flexibility in CG artist software” by Veilleux, Agland and Naum
Conference:
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Title:
- Launcher: balancing stability and flexibility in CG artist software
Session/Category Title:
- Enlightening and Moving Workflows
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Moderator(s):
Abstract:
This talk presents the Launcher, our software environment configuration tool at Animal Logic, now Netflix Animation Studios. The Launcher has been a central component of our animation production pipeline for the better part of two decades. We dive into the core features of the tool and define how the Launcher is used to structure and maintain the various software environments. One of such core components are known as presets. Presets help determine the packages and settings needed to launch an application for a specific department and project. We then look into the many safeguards put in place to promote stability without hindering innovation such as the ability to snapshot presets, patch settings used to alter the version of problematic releases, overrides to enable testing local builds and more. The roll back feature allows users to rewind to any moment in the past making it possible to temporary avoid a broken release or to revisit a scene that was saved with a now deprecated version of an application, for example. We will finally dive into the advanced features of the tool and its backend. The Launcher not only has a graphical user interface but also has a command line interface and a web API. It is used to configure the environments of all of our jobs on the render farm. It can also be used to facilitate major initiatives such as VFX Platform updates and studio infrastructure changes.
