Navigate the Schedule tab

Navigate the Schedule tab - Exercise

To successfully navigate each of your playgrounds and create your schedule scenarios, you will be working in the Schedule and Resources tabs.

The Schedule tab displays a Gantt chart of your schedule scenario. You can use the Schedule tab to create and duplicate scenarios and to set constraints on the activities you're scheduling.

View scenarios, search, filter, and customize

From the top of the Schedule tab, you can:

• Expand and collapse the available scenarios.
• Find an activity from the search, such as a specific task or asset.
• Filter the displayed activity results by details about those activities, such as the activity type and resource.
• Customize the information displayed about each activity, such as what columns are displayed about each activity, and what information is displayed in the Gantt chart.

Scenarios

Select Scenarios to expand and collapse the available scenarios.

Quickly sort existing scenarios, create new scenarios based on the original schedule data imported when the playground was created, and duplicate, delete or edit details about the selected scenarios.

The Scenarios panel can be pinned to keep it visible when switching between the Schedule and Resources tabs.

Search

Use the search to find activities in your schedule, such as a specific task, asset, or episode. Narrow down the activity you are searching for by filtering from summaries, tasks and milestones.

If there are no search results for the activity type, you will be advised to change your filters.

Filter

Filter the displayed results by details about those activities, such as the activity type and resource.

You can filter activities by:

• Whether or not the activity has a constraint applied and if the constraints are feasible
• The activity type, such as a task or milestone
• The required resource, such as compositing or animation
• The category of the activity, such as character or environment
• The tag associated with the activity, such as layout or lighting

Customize

The Customize option allows you to customize the information displayed about each activity, such as what columns are displayed about each activity, and what information is displayed in the Gantt chart.

Zoom controls

There are several ways to set the displayed calendar range for your schedule scenario.

Use the calendar picker to choose a start and end date across which to see your schedule.

If you specify a date that is outside the current date range of the Gantt chart, you may lose sight of your activities. Click Reset to zoom out and frame the Gantt chart so that it displays your entire schedule.

Use the zoom in and out icons to narrow in on or expand on the dates on display.

Zoom into a date range with the draw zoom area tool.

Drag either end of the timeline selection to narrow in on or expand on the dates on display.

Activity information

Your schedule is displayed in a Gantt chart, similar to a task page in Flow Production Tracking.

To the left, columns display information about each activity.

Activities are grouped by the hierarchy set in Flow Production Tracking. In Flow Generative Scheduling, these are called summaries. In the example below, tasks are grouped within shots, which are grouped within sequences. Tasks, shots and sequences are activities in Flow Generative Scheduling.

Summaries can be collapsed and expanded.

Add additional columns to display about each activity by selecting the three dots in the top right of the panel.

Activity options

With an activity selected, you can use the activity options in the right-hand side to display more details about your activities, including:

• General information, such as the activity type, tags and categories.
• Basic constraints and priorities.
• Upstream and downstream dependencies, both local and external.
• The standard working days for the activity along with any workday exceptions.

Information tab

With an activity selected, select the information icon to display more information about that activity, including Activity Type, ID, Tags, and Resource class, if applicable.

Controls tab

With an activity selected, select the controls icon to display information about the constraints and priority for that activity.

Dependencies tab

With an activity selected, select the dependency icon to display more information about the activity.

In the example below, the animation task has preceding and succeeding dependencies.

Preceding dependencies need to be completed before this animation task can start.

Succeeding dependencies cannot be started until this animation task is completed.

In this example, we can see a preceding local dependency of layout and an external dependency of rigging, which is linked to a prop.

Local dependencies are a part of the same summary, such as tasks on the same shot.

External dependencies are part of different summaries. An example of this would be a lighting task on a shot that is dependent on the lookdev task from an asset. The lighting task on the shot cannot be started until the lookdev task has been completed on the asset. The shot and asset are two different summaries that depend on one another.

In the example below, the animation task on the shot is dependent on the layout task on the shot, as well as the rigging task on the asset. The rig must be completed so that the animator can animate.

Both dependencies, layout and rigging, will need to be scheduled to be completed before this animation task can begin.

Calendar tab

With an activity selected, select the calendar icon to display more information about workdays. When importing a schedule from Flow Production Tracking, project work schedules will also be imported.

If any exceptions or non-working days exist at the project-level, they will be reflected in the calendar tab.

Note that work schedules and exceptions at the people-level have no impact in Flow Generative Scheduling.