Shotgun for Pipeline Management in the Design Studio

BRANDON TASKER: So we're going to be talking about Shotgun for Pipeline Management but for the Design Studio. So some of you guys might already be a little bit aware of Shotgun, but I'm going to talk a little bit about this specifically for the automotive design studio and the industrial design studio.

Before I start, I want to talk just a little bit about myself to give you guys some context. So I come with the background from working in film and television and visual effects. So I have the experience working with these types of solutions, and I really know the value that they can add.

So just to set the ground is that the stuff that I'm going to talk to you about, I've dealt with everyday. I understand what it is. And I'm hoping that I can help you guys provide a solution to make your lives better and easier.

So the next thing we're going to talk about quickly is just designing for the future. So this is a big topic. And I'm not going to touch on it for very long, but what do we mean when we say design for the future?

And to me, that's really about thinking about the things that we don't know about yet. So how do you predict into the future of future trends and how design is going to end up? I don't have an answer for you today.

But what we are going to talk about is how pipeline management for the design studio can help change and guide that. So with all of the technology that's changing, and how everybody is expecting more from design in terms of iterations and quality, there are a couple key things that we need to talk about when it comes to pipeline management system.

And why is pipeline management important? And when I'm talking about pipeline, I really talk about the framework to get data from different departments to other departments and how important that is inside of a design studio to become efficient.

So what I'm going to talk to you about today is a social type system, that's something you would use in the everyday world, like a Facebook, like a Twitter, to keep you updated about what's happening, but do it in the same design sense. So this is what I'm going to touch on.

When we start talking about the design studio, there's three main areas that we see issues. The first one is that there's no real dedicated tool to manage design data, creative data. There's nothing that connects the design work being done to a management system that can track it.

Everything now, through Excel files, through other sorts of management, are either entirely manual or disconnected from the process. So when things change, they can't easily be updated. So these are a couple of things we're going to talk about today.

Along with that there's poor visibility to what's happening within the projects. So if a design project is happening, how do you know when things are being complete, when they're not being complete? When big decisions are made to change or steer designs, where are those tracked? How do people know how design got from point A to point B?

And finally, a really poor access to project resources. When I say this it says, when you start design, you're never starting from a clean slate. There's always other things you need to start with, whether that be 2D designs, CAD data from the past. These things are terribly hard to find.

And the best analogy that I've heard is that think of somebody on an assembly line for a car. And they need to put the front bumper on the car, but they don't have the front bumper piece, nor do they have the tools to put it there. They have to go find them before they can put it on, and that just keeps moving. So without having good access to the project resources, it slows down the speed of design and innovation and really hinders your performance.

So with that said, projects that you use with today look like this. And I think we've all been there. I suffer from it sometimes daily too, is when you start working on something, it ends up as an Excel file or a PDF or a PowerPoint. And that goes in an email, and it gets sent around.

And that email gets sent around a couple of times. People do revisions. And nobody really knows what's happened to it. You see a million versions, and nothing really makes sense. There's no clear connection between it all.

So with this, we really need to think about how we can solve it. And I'm going to propose a fairly simple way today, and that is with Shotgun. So I said I'm going to be talking about Shotgun. Surprise.

And I'm going to explain it to you a little bit more, but the idea right now is that we want Shotgun to be the center core of all the project, all the design data. Everything it goes through Shotgun, and we centralize it.

It's easy to find. You have somewhere to work from. It's the center for all of the notes, the comments, the decisions that are made in a project. And it helps make design better and more iterative for the future.

So with Shotgun, there's some key parts that we're going to use to make this work to give the design studio more power to make their decisions. The first thing is about asset or data management. So how do people manage the files?

How do people manage the work that's being done? Where is it stored? This is all extremely important in this process.

The next comes down to the project management. So how do we connect the work being done to schedules and tasking and things that are going to lead and guide a project to its finish? We also have social and collaborative tools within Shotgun that can help do reviews, iterate on the process, and provide notes and tasks that are all being tracked within the system as well.

And finally, we're going to do all that by integrating the tools that people use everyday design with Shotgun. And we already have. So I'm going to discuss all this a little bit more. You'll get more details. But these are the four main things that we're going to do with Shotgun to help improve the design studio.

So now I've talked a little bit about what we're going to do with Shotgun, the next thing I want to describe is just what Shotgun is at a high level. So Shotgun right now, as I'm talking to you, for the design studio is something we're actively working on. But Shotgun, as a product, has been around for a long time.

It's a proven tool in media and entertainment for film and visual effects companies. It's used by some of the biggest studios in the world to do some of the biggest projects, some that I'm sure you're all aware of. I won't name any names.

So with that said, there's a lot of history with Shotgun. There's a lot of tools that have been used for a long time and critiqued. And it really has proven that Shotgun can be a tool to solve this process.

So I'm going to show you a quick video just to give you an overview of what Shotgun is and how to use it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

TROY BROOKS: I think we're at an inflection point in the industry that we haven't really seen since, well, some say since the time of photochemical film and the switch to digital. I think the advent of the cloud and real subscription pricing models for software licensing signal a sea change in the way the industry is organized.

I think DHX has a really good business model of vertical integration. Pipeline work, particularly, was the intersection of art and science. It was how you use technology and science effectively to make people productive and more creative.

ASI SUDAI: Developing a system that is equivalent to Shotgun takes a long time. Shotgun has been [INAUDIBLE] I think 10 years, if not more, and developed by a lot of people. So to get to the challenges that they already solved is a pretty massive thing to do.

ROBIN SHEA: It really is more of a turnkey approach that allows us to get everything we need and allow multiple parties to communicate in one area. The review system is pretty incredible in the sense that we can have a single user artist sitting there and receive all of the notes.

Everything that's related to the task on hand and the asset that they're working on comes through one stream. So no longer searching or relying on coordinators to be right on top of multiple spreadsheets to record all this information.

ASI SUDAI: The great thing about Shotgun is that everything lives in one system, and everybody can view that and also change it to whatever they need.

LOGAN MCPHERSON: If we had a proprietary system, having to retrain people as we bring them in, production staff on our system, and burn time and calories that way. Whereas with Shotgun and the user base that exists, we can bring people in and add knowledge and experience to our already sound methodology as opposed to making their way through a cumbersome system that takes time and is frustrating.

You get to engage artists at a higher level where they feel like they're offering the best of their creative abilities. It's definitely something that is huge for us. And it allows our artists to keep the conversation around the artwork and the creative.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BRANDON TASKER: So the last point that he said is something I want to focus on is to keep the focus on the art. To me, that's really important, the design process itself. And I'll talk a little bit more to that. But it's really about focusing on design and not worrying about the extra details revolving around a big scale design project.

So that's a little bit of, well, what Shotgun is. It's a high level, but, hopefully, I can show you some more details. The next thing I want to talk about is what we're doing specifically for the automotive division.

And what we're trying to do right now is take what we know from Autodesk for Alias and VRED, for our collective automotive knowledge, and take that into Shotgun, make it useful for an automotive design studio understanding their needs and expectations. So with that, we've built something called-- that we're calling anyway right now, Shotgun 4 Design Studios.

So we're adding additional functionality to fill in the gaps that the design studio might be looking for. So with that, we really want to focus on users being able to find, protect, and manage their data. So whatever you're working on, whether it be Alias files, or VRED files, whether it be designs in 2D or 3D, we want to help you manage that and do it in a simple way.

We want you guys to be able to share and collaborate on your work. So we want to give you a space where all the designs being done can be reviewed, iterated on, and visually collaborated on in one place. So it's all tracked and organized, but you have a place to do that.

We also want to help manage and schedule the tasking it involves. So all the different pieces that put a project together, have a place to do that, and how to connect to the work that's being done.

And finally, we're going to be integrating that-- uh oh, maybe this power bar isn't actually plugged in. Dina, do you want to just look at that for me? Sorry guys. We'll just keep going. Are we OK with that? Cool. Thanks.

And finally, the last major point is integrating with the products you use every day. So if you have the Shotgun system, but it doesn't connect to the product you already use, then it's going to be more difficult to start with. It's going to be difficult to adopt in the first place. But if it becomes integrated with things that you're already used to, then it just becomes seamless and natural. So this is something we're really looking at doing.

So the benefits that doing this will provide is really about giving designers effective and appealing file management, a way to manage their work, and do it in a really visual and appealing way. We want users to be able to search and find the data that they're looking for. We want them to always have access to the files they're working on and have easy access to it at all times.

It just wasn't on?

Yeah, [INAUDIBLE] the switch turned on.

Oh, cool. Saved the day. Thank you.

All right, and then the next thing about effective and appealing management for designers, so we want all stakeholders in the project to be able to track what's happening, so not to a really low level of tracking every detail, but at a high level of seeing where things are, what status they're at, and how the progress is going. It's really important to add that knowledge to a project.

And finally, like I already mentioned, to have seamless integration with the products you use every day allows you to do this file management really easily. It's already there. It's something that becomes part of Alias or part Maya, or part of VRED. It's there for you, and you can take advantage of it on day one.

So there's also some additional value that you can get with Shotgun. And the first thing really, to me, is about task and schedule management. So it's really good to know that we're not trying to replace these big scheduling systems that exist in design studios are OEMs. We want to be able to help add tasks at a lower level, so the little things that need to be done, 2D design here, 3D design there, and be able to connect the work being done to those tasks and to the people that need to do it.

This also can work as a personal to do list. When somebody goes in Monday morning, they have a list of things that are assigned to them. They know the first thing that needs to be done. And they see what's due next. It helps them organize their thoughts, not have to think about what's next, and really focus, again, on the design process.

So next, we get to the collaboration and review tools. So Shotgun has lots of collaboration and review tools already built in. And they allow you to make all your notes and to draw right over designs that are already being done and keep and store all of those within the Shotgun solution.

And we're also adding additions to 3D, so that you can view, design, and collaborate on 3D models. Things that you would design can be viewed in the browser, added notes, drawn on top of, and those notes can be used to further drive iterations of your design.

So it's also important to talk about what Shotgun isn't. So we don't want to think, again, of it as a complex scheduling and task management system. What we do want to focus on, though, is connecting the work that's being done to simple tasks. And that's really important.

The next thing really is that as Shotgun will be a tool to manage your data, this isn't a PDM or PLM system. Shotgun is really about giving you a good framework to manage what you're doing and not storing all of it inside of it.

So there's no check in and check out, like designers would be afraid of. We're not giving that generic engineering structure that those teams would be used to. But we're giving a managed system that has some structure that allows people to be creative, but still underlying management of that data and where it is stored and where it goes.

So it allows you to, essentially, store data in almost the same way you're storing it now, cleaner, but more managed. But you still have access to it. It's still yours. We're not taking it away. It's not going into a big scary PDM database. Shotgun is just putting it in the file system for you.

So when I talked about the Shotgun for DS, for design studios, we've added some key features that we found are really important to designers. And the first one being the Alias and VRED integrations. So things that I've already mentioned about getting the real power of Shotgun is connecting it to the app that you already use every day.

So building these integrations allows users to do very simple file management tasks, as in filed, file saved, and then publishing. And the way that works is that they don't need to worry where they live on disk. Shotgun knows where they are. All they have to do is open a file from a task they're assigned, and it's there. It's read for them to use.

And they can work and save it. And by saving it, it's not going to be shared with the team. It's going to be local to them. While still being managed by Shotgun, it's just for them right now.

When a designer then wants to share it, they can publish that. That goes to Shotgun. It's now shared with the teams. They can review it. They can iterate on it. And everybody now can view that design.

So this is really key, because we understand not all designers like to share their work. Sometimes, you'd like to hold things back for a while. So this gives you the option of working a little bit more secretively for the first little bit. And then once you're ready, once you have the design you want to show off, you have the option to do that.

We also have added the 2D and 3D viewers as well, so that you can add and view 3D files either singly or at the same time. If you have two different 3D models and you want to compare the changes that were made, you can easily load those into a review tool in a browser and tumble around and see the changes. And again, you can add all the notes and comments to this here, and it's all going to be tracked in Shotgun.

We also have a collage tool that we've built to help take those versions and images and designs that are created in Shotgun and make something out of them, create a mood or theme board. People want to view designs in different lights and connect them together. So with this tool, within the browser as well, you can drag designs that already exist into a workspace. Line them up, draw on top, add text, things like that, and really help give you a theme to work off of and review.

And finally, we understand that not every Autodesk piece of software covers every need. So sometimes, you need to manage files that are not related to Autodesk. We have a tool for that.

And with the upload file application, we can start tracking all the files that relate to the projects with Shotgun. We can easily drag and drop them, upload them, and Shotgun can help you manage those as well. So it's not just for Alias and VRED and Maya. We can help you manage all the files related to your project.

So when I talk about that, I want to show a quick video of all those features I just mentioned. So the first one will be a 2D compare. People have two 2D designs. They can put them together, toggle between them, see how the iterations and changes have occurred.

We also have the 3D viewer now where you can tumble around a 3D model in the browser. You could add notes. You can also have two versions, see the differences between them, kind of tumble around, and see how they look. And again, this is all within the browser.

Like I mentioned, we already have the Alias and VRED integrations as well. This helps you open files really simply. You can do your work. And then you can save the files as well, and saving is just as simple. Shotgun will manage the version control for you, where the file goes. You don't need to worry about any of that.

And finally, like I said, once you want to share it, you can publish that Shotgun. By publishing it, you're now saying, please review my work. Hey, team, this is my new design. You have that information. And then now this published version can be viewed in the web as well.

With the collage app, I can show that you can drag and drop these versions into one area. You can add some text, things like that. You can also export these out. We understand automotive designs like to print things out, put them on the wall in very large scale, so we made sure we can support that.

To manage your other files, it's as simple as dragging and dropping. You can edit, add some extra metadata. But all it takes to upload and track it with Shotgun.

And finally, there's some really strong and powerful scheduling and resource tools as well. When you have work that needs to be done, you can build predefined templates that automatically get built. And they can define a little bit of your process, the base tasks, and who needs to do that work, to help you understand your process as well as how it is scheduled for the future.

OK, so now that I've discussed a little bit more about what we've done for the automotive solution is that we can touch on this again and say how we were going to solve this. And I want to go into some of these details. So asset management, project management, communication and collaboration, and integration.

So the first thing we're going to do is start a little bit around the asset management portion and talk about why this is important. So we need to manage assets because designers need a way to store and manage their data, but in a simple and accessible way. It's really important that people can do this, so that designs and projects can become more organized and structured, but still be creative at the same time.

By doing this, it helps make sure a project always is up to date, that people know what's happening, know when designs are ready to be reviewed, when things are running behind in time. To have a good overall status of where the project stands is very important across the board on projects.

With the asset management tools, like I mentioned already, we already add automatic versioning. So although we don't do the check in, check out like a PDM system would, we version everything for you. So it's automatically tracked. You always have a way of going back to earlier versions. You never have to worry about lost files.

And finally, again, it's all about doing this within the product you use every day. We don't necessarily need you to learn a whole new solution to take advantage of the added benefits that Shotgun can bring by giving you these tools in Alias or VRED or Maya or Photoshop today.

So just a quick video again about the Alias integration. And this is how I would open a file up. I can do my work inside.

And once I'm done doing some updates, I can just save the file. I don't need to think about where it's going. I don't need to think about where I'm supposed to put it, what it should be called. Shotgun's going to help me do that and just simplify my life in these little really important ways.

Now when I want to share it, I can take a screenshot. I can add a little comment on what I've done and add some context to what was being done. When somebody goes and reviews that, now they know what's happened and why.

And then they can review that in the browser. So that Alias file is now being viewed through Chrome or Firefox. And the person that can look at it or take a look doesn't actually need to have Alias on their machine, doesn't need to know how to use Alias. They have access to all of this stuff from the browser they're used to using all the time.

So when we talk about project resources, this is really about all the data that is being tracked within a project. So what's important with this? It's really important about transparency. And again, this is about just knowing what's happening in a project, being informed, knowing how designs are going, when they're not going so well, all the important information to help make crucial decisions.

With that also comes task management, and that just helps people know what to do and when. When are these things do? And also give a little bit of information about what they're expected to do. So it's not just a general do this design. You can give some context, and that's all based inside the task itself. It just gives the user a little bit more information to help them finish their job.

And finally, with managing this, like I said, you have easy access to project resources. So again, with talking about the little bit of information that you would have relating to the task itself, you might also have files, things that are related to that, information you need to know, whether it be images or CAD files, things like that. You will have access to at your fingertips by having the task assigned to you.

So we can show quickly about how some of these tools work and look in Shotgun. So I can have these things in Shotgun that I called assets. We'll have an exterior model, an interior model.

And I can add something that I briefly described, which is a template. It's a task template. It's a quick structure of what your current process is. By adding those, you can quickly have all of these different assets assign these tasks.

And you know what now needs to be done. You can assign the users to them. You can assign due dates.

And now, every user that works on the project will have a list of things that they need to do. They know what they need to work on. They have access to the data they need. And they can start doing their job. Again, this is all about making the designers focus on design, not worrying about these menial tasks that they are normally required to do, and focus on their important part of the job.

There's also different views in Shotgun as well. This isn't super important right now, but you can also view these in like a Gantt chart, so you can see when all these tasks are stacked up where they actually land. So when things start, when things end, and you can see how many people are staffed on a project, where the resources are a little bit allocated, and if you're going to meet those deadlines or not.

So the next thing I want to touch on is the communication and collaboration tools that Shotgun has and that we've added as well. So by using Shotgun as the one central core to a project, we can really streamline and just really simplify the communication efforts. You don't have to worry about communication through emails and text messages and notes on people's desks or walking around and talking to everybody. If all this data is stored in one place, everyone is empowered to have that knowledge about what's going on.

And with that, everybody has that visibility of what's happening too. You can understand that, if that guy next to me hasn't finished his work yet, then I guess I'm not going to be able finish mine. You know what's happening around you.

You know what people are working on, and you also can be more creative and think about the work that's being done. It's really important to have the idea of a project and a team working together to generate these designs, because that's how we want to collaborate and create better things.

So with that team interaction, we really want to focus on putting everything in Shotgun. If everything's there and stored, everybody has access to it. And then it just makes everybody's job and life easier.

So this is the 3D review app. Once you publish a file, let's say an Alias file, to Shotgun, you can tumble around in this view. You can look at your model in 3D space.

I can select different parts of the geometry itself, and I can add a note. Whatever I'm thinking at the time, I can type it in. I can enter it. And that will get saved as a thumbnail.

If I ever turn away from this view, tumble around somewhere else, I can click on this thumbnail again and see what camera view I was looking at when that note was made. I have the context of why the note was made. I have the model the note was made on. And now, I understand what I need to do going forward as a designer to fix that.

So everybody is more knowledgeable. Everyone knows what's happening. It's all about keeping people in the know about what's going on in the project.

And finally, all of this stuff is really important, because we can integrate with the products you use every day. If there was a disconnect, this would be harder to manage. But because we're building these very simple but clean and powerful UIs inside of things you already know, Alias, VRED, Maya, Photoshop, things like that, you're going to have access to those tools from day one.

Somebody can go in and use the functions of file save and publishing to Shotgun on day one and have added value to them. By doing this, they always know where the data is stored. No files are ever lost. And people can really focus on design. They don't need to worry about these extra tasks. Focus on the design, let Shotgun manage everything for you.

So I want to show a quick video, something that we've done to really integrate Alias with Shotgun a little bit better. And some of you may know this or not, but there's a tool in Alias called an annotation tool. It's a locator tool. You can grab a point, pull a line up, and add text. Type it in.

And we understand that this is done fairly often in Alias reviews, and there's a lot of powerful tools in Alias. So by making this note, it would get saved. But we need to extract that. We need to do something with these notes.

So we have this option to export annotations, something we figured would be really useful. This note in Alias can now be put into Shotgun, and it can be tracked. That note no longer lives in this Alias file somewhere on disk. It's now in the one central system that everyone's using. That note then can be tasked to a user, given a due date, added more context if needed, but now there's visibility of how that note was made.

And again, you can see right here, it's pretty hard to see probably from far away, but that note that I put in here in Alias is now showing up in the Shotgun panel inside of Alias. So you can see how the two connect. There's a lot of good data in Alias. And this is just the start. If there's extra things we need, we want to be thinking about those, how we can store them in Shotgun to better aid our design teams and project management teams to create and develop these projects in a better and more efficient way.

So now that I've talked about those, I want to just touch on the people we're really targeting in this. And we're going to start with the designer. So these are the people who are using Photoshop or drawing. They have ways of publishing their work in Shotgun and tracking that work. With review tools already, they can easily review that work, push that onto other departments, and have access to everything they need all in one area.

This is going to be the same for the Alias and VRED users as well. We really want to power these key users to use the integrations with Shotgun to improve their workflow, to manage the data for them, and to track the reviews of the work that they've been doing. This really gives them the power to focus, again, on design and not worry about the menial file management that's required of them.

And finally, we'll touch on the management aspect of this as well. So when all of these people are doing all this work, somebody needs to manage what's getting done in a way. And Shotgun's a great place to help do that. People that normally would track all this stuff in Excel can have a lot of this stuff already tracked for them with Shotgun.

They can help setup these pages to view the data they need that's important to them on this day, like right now. They have that power once everyone starts using and integrating with Shotgun.

So we'll start with the designer. So with the designer, what do we really want? We want designers to be able to find, manage, and share their 2D data. Simple as that. I've already said it a couple times. It's really straightforward. We want to help them manage the work that they're doing.

We also want to help them communicate with their colleagues. So if they're doing point one, then by sharing it, they're going to be completing point two. By sharing their work, everyone else knows what's happening. They can collaborate on the work, and then that iteration process can continue.

And finally, focus on design. I'm going to say this a million times. We want them to focus on design and not worry about the manual file management and things like that that come up in normal design process.

So I have a quick video of how the Photoshop integration will work and how this workflow would be understood is that somebody can launch Photoshop from our Shotgun application. By doing this, you have the Shotgun integration built into Photoshop.

And by opening that, you now have access to those same tools that I mentioned you have in Alias. So I can say, file open. I can start a 2D sketch task that's assigned to me. I can say, new file. It's going to create a new file for me. And then, I can start my work.

So with that, I'm going to do some magic. And now I have a design. So now I have a design. I will to save it.

I can give the scene a simple name. You don't need to worry about complex naming. It's really simple. And then Shotgun will version all that stuff for you. By doing that, now I can share that data. By publishing that to Shotgun, I can now share it. I can get reviews from my managers.

So then we'll switch over to manager view. So as a manager in this process, what I can do is I can go into Shotgun. I can see things have been published and that are tagged as ready for review,

So I see this in here. It's ready for review. I can just click on it, and now I have tools that I can do those annotations and reviews.

I can draw over top. And I can add a note, I can comment on what I've drawn. By doing that, I now have saved this stuff in shotgun. It's being tracked. Yes, I know I'm not a good artist. And with that, this information then can go back to the person that created the design.

So as the designer, I go back in to Shotgun now. And I see that I have a note. I can now view those notes being made. I'm informed of these changes. And now I know what I have to do next.

So this is the first step in that iterative process. So we can now continue this. The user can go back into their design program, do the changes, publish the work, and somebody can review it. This process is all tracked and stored in Shotgun. So 10 months down the road, you know where you started and how you got there.

So with designers, we really want them to enjoy working with Shotgun. We want them to find it simple. We want them to take advantage of the tools, but not get in their way.

And we want them to have easy access to everything they need. So like I mentioned before, to have access to the details of the task they need to do, whether that's designs, other file types, just technical information, they'll have that at their fingertips.

So next, I'm going to touch quickly on the modeling persona and what that means to us. So we really want, again, and this is going to sound very redundant, but we want them to be able to find, manage, and track their 3D data. So working in Alias, we want them to be able to save and manage things without having to think about it.

And again, we want them to have access to those same resources, those technical information, the 2D designs, the other 3D files, so it's all at their fingertips. So they can be empowered to do the work they need to do without having an overhead of finding information in the first place.

We want them to be able to communicate with a colleague by publishing their work. And we also want them to focus on design, really not worry about the tools getting in the way, and focus on what they need to do.

And again, this is the same. We want people to enjoy working with this. We don't want them to find it as any overhead. Something that they would do every day, they can do with Shotgun on day one and find extra value. We want them to have easy access to everything they need and be empowered to do their job and complete their tasks.

You're going to find this starts a trend, because it's all the same. So with visualization, it's very similar too. We want them to be able to manage their files, manage the work, and manage the work coming downstream as well. As visualization can be at the end of the group, sometimes, this group specifically will have lots of stuff, lots of files from lots of different directions.

So they need access to all their data in the same way, those project resources. They have Alias files, CAD files at certain kinds that they need to take in and do renders, do visualizations of. They need a way to do that really easily.

And with Shotgun, that's what we want to provide them. We want to give them easy access to those files and allow them to focus on doing their visualization work and not those other tasks that constantly bombard them.

So just a little view of the VRED integration as well. This is very similar to Alias is that I can easily open a file. I can see what I've worked on. And I can do the work that I need to do.

With this said, I can do any changes to the file itself. I can do anything I need to do. And I can easily save it using Shotgun.

I can use those same tools that I use in every other program that are standardized, it's simple. If you go from Alias or VRED or Photoshop, they're all going to work the same way. And I can save and manage my work.

And again with this, we can also publish it. We can publish these things to Shotgun. And we're actively working on these VRED integrations a little bit more to connect more with the rendering aspect of this pipeline process, but these are all integrations that we can take and fill useful information into Shotgun.

So again, what do we expect from visualization? We want them to enjoy working it. We want them to find it simple and have the power to do the job they need to do, have access to everything they need, and to be able to focus on design.

So finally, we'll talk about a little bit of a different persona, and that's the decision maker or the management team around these people. So really why it matters to us is that we want them to have transparency of what's being done. We want them to know the work that's being done, when it's being completed, and how up to date their tasks are. If they're not done, somebody needs to know about it. And Shotgun is a great way and an easy way to see when things are being published and when they're not.

You can really easily summarize all the important data that's being done on the project as well. This allows you, again, that visibility and knowledge of when to make decisions and where, and to have access to all the data at any time. So all the project resources, all the designs, the data, any PowerPoints or Excel files that relate to the project can be found in the same place. So everyone is empowered to have the resources needed to do their job.

And finally, with that, all of those review, collaboration, things like that, even meetings, and all those meetings can even be tracked within Shotgun. So you always have the knowledge going forward about what's been done, when decisions were made, and how that carries going forward.

And what do we expect from design management? We really want them to be empowered to manage their teams. We want them to know what's happening at any given time and help make decisions if they need to be made.

It's really important that those people have visibility on a project, so that everyone can have the power to make those decisions. And that's what it's all about in the end is driving these creative decisions and doing it in an informed way.

So finally, and this will be a little bit more on the management aspect of what Shotgun can offer. It can really help drive some governance in a project. It can help organize and standardize processes. And it can also add as a best practice in design.

So it can help add these things that maybe would be lacking on day one. Shotgun will allow you to manage itself, Shotgun, in a simple way, to be able to maintain it in a simple way, and do backups, things like that. It also adds the ability of all those versions we talked about that no user work is lost. You don't have to worry about those things anymore with Shotgun.

You also will have easy access to rights and permissions, as everyone would expect. And we talk about sharing all your data with your project and your team. Certain people might not be able to do certain things. And Shotgun has the power to do that. You have permission controls.

So maybe a designer might not be allowed to change their due date. That's a pretty standard one. But you have the control to let people do certain things while still being able to view others. It's really important to give people access to the things they need without giving them too much control over the whole process.