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Production Manager: Workflow & Guide

Welcome to the Production Manager (PM) guide for the OpenStudioHub. As a PM, your primary responsibility is bridging the gap between the studio's production tracker (Kitsu) and the physical file system (VCS/SVN).

1. The PM Dashboard & Core Responsibilities

The PM Dashboard provides a high-level view of the Overall Project Health. It features the Pipeline Wizard, a sequential orchestrator designed to guide you through the initial phases of production.

Your core responsibilities follow a strict chronological flow:

  • Sequence & Storyboard Initialization: Generating the initial sequence files so artists can start drawing the storyboards.
  • Editorial Setup: Spawning the master edit file for the Editor to assemble the animatic and push the required shots and assets to the pipeline.
  • Entity Validation: Reviewing and approving the new Shots and Assets proposed by the Editor.
  • Batch Genesis: Automating the creation of nested directory structures, copying base .blend templates, and generating tasks in Kitsu for the 3D artists to claim.

By following the Pipeline Wizard, you ensure that no artist starts working without the proper Kitsu tasks, SVN directories, and Master files in place.

2. Entity Validation & Kitsu Sync

Before physical files can be generated for 3D production, the entities (Assets and Shots) must be properly registered in Kitsu.

The Editorial Handoff

In the OpenStudio workflow, the production pipeline starts with the storyboards. Once the storyboard artists finish their work, the Editor uses the Master Edit file to cut the animatic. From Blender's VSE, the Editor pushes the proposed Shots and Assets directly to Kitsu.

As the PM, you act as the gatekeeper for these new entities:

  • The Hub queries the Kitsu API to fetch pending entities pushed by the Editor.
  • It looks for Shots and Assets currently sitting in Todo or Ready To Start statuses.
  • Only valid, approved entities will be passed onto the Batch Creation engine.

Validating the Data

Before moving forward, ensure that:

  • Shots belong to a valid Sequence.
  • Assets have a properly assigned Asset Type (e.g., Character, Prop, Environment).
  • Naming conventions are respected (the Hub will automatically sanitize names by removing spaces and forcing lowercase/underscores during physical file creation).

3. Batch Spawning & Directory Generation

The Batch Create engine is the most powerful tool in the PM arsenal. It physically materializes the Kitsu data into the studio's SVN repository.

The 4-Step Pipeline Wizard

You will progress through four distinct stages that map to the chronological workflow:

  1. Spawn Storyboard Master: Creates the initial 2D Animation/Storyboard .blend files in edit/storyboards/ so the storyboard artists can begin sketching the sequences.
  2. Spawn Edit Master: Generates the Master Edit .blend file in edit/. The Editor uses this file to assemble the storyboards into an animatic and subsequently upload/push the required shots and assets to Kitsu.
  3. Batch Create Assets: Iterates through the approved Assets (pushed by the Editor), creates their folders in pro/assets/<type>/<name>, copies the project template, and spawns the required tasks (e.g., Modeling, Rigging) in Kitsu.
  4. Batch Create Shots: Iterates through the approved Shots, creates folders in pro/shots/<sequence>/<name>, copies the template, and spawns the required tasks (e.g., Layout, Animation) in Kitsu.

Under the Hood

When you click "Batch Create", the Hub:

  1. Resolves the Semantic Topography on the NAS (SVN root).
  2. Scaffolds the nested directories.
  3. Copies the base .blend template to prevent Sparse Checkout deadlocks for Vendors.
  4. Updates the Kitsu task metadata with the relative path to the newly created .blend file, allowing artists to launch the files directly from their Hub dashboards.