New Resource Planning Views Optimize Artist Resources to Help Creative Teams Ramp Up for Production

To help VFX, animation and games studios keep pace with increasing demand for high-end content, ShotGrid is bolstering its tool offerings with the launch of new Resource Planning views to aid producers and management teams to improve scheduling workflows. Resource Planning views allow facilities to easily and efficiently optimize artist resources across the studio, projects, and departments at a high level, allowing teams to quickly scale for growing workloads.

“We collaborated with a range of ShotGrid customers when developing Resource Planning views as it’s been one of the most requested additions. We’re excited to give producers and managers the ability to view their projects in a whole new way so they can react more quickly to the dynamic nature of production and be more effective in running their teams,” said Warren Trezevant, senior product manager, ShotGrid.

Using the live data available in ShotGrid, the new Resource Planning views let producers identify areas where artists are overloaded or underutilized, and easily rebalance work to optimize team performance. This more efficient allocation of work helps teams confidently deliver projects on time and on budget.

Several world-leading visual effects facilities — including Image Engine — worked closely with the ShotGrid development team to provide input on the specifications and prototype of the new Resource Planning tools.

"My job revolves around resource planning, so any tool that will take out some of the manual work that we’re doing will be incredibly beneficial,” said Melissa Gray, central p​​roduction manager, Image Engine. "Every facility seems to use a different tool for resource planning, which makes it difficult for creating standards across the industry – having this tool in ShotGrid will help facilities and productions run more efficiently."

What’s new in ShotGrid:

Easily Compare the Capacity and Workload of Artists
The new high-level view provides an overview of your studio’s Artist capacity and workload across all projects and departments. Easily see when and where Artists can take on more work or when they have been assigned too much and drill down into the details with only a few clicks.

View by Departments or Projects
Dynamic Department and Project views provide a breakdown of Artist resources and the work assigned. Visualize the data by departments across all projects with the Department View, or by each individual project and their departments with the Project view.

Quickly Rebalance Overbooked and Underutilized Artists
Dive into detailed views of an individual department or project and quickly identify Artists who are over or underutilized. Easily pull up an overview of a given Artist’s assigned tasks and adjust task assignments and schedules with live data in just a few clicks.

Customizable Workflows
With robust customizing capabilities, tailor views and data for each unique studio need. Select custom start and end time ranges and analyze data in a variety of chart types, configure how Workload is calculated and what it represents, and adjust the capacity on each person, including contracted time — providing studios with more flexibility.

The new Resource Planning views are available today for all ShotGrid customers, as part of ShotGrid’s growing offering of scheduling tools. For more information, visit: https://www.autodesk.com/products/shotgrid/