Use case feedback - status or tasks?

[Byron Nash]

We're still refining our ftrack implementation and constantly trying to improve the pipeline. I'm curious how some of you are handling various steps in the process. Now, I generally have one, maybe two tasks per shot. Our VFX is usually pretty simple so Compositing and occasionally Rotoscoping is what we have been using. I track some of the steps of our process for tasks and shots with statuses. I'm curious to know when you decide to make a task for some to-do item on a shot versus keep it in the status? 

My shot statuses are:

1. Not Started
2. In Progress  (when the artist begins work)
3. Pending Review (when the artist submits a shot for review)
4. Client Approved (when the shot gets approved by the director)
5. Completed (when the shot is rendered)
6. Delivered (when shot is uploaded to the server for the colorist)

But, I wonder if we'd be better served by making tasks for things like generating the shot file for the artist, QC, final delivery, etc...?

 

 

[Andrew Lawrence]

Hi @Byron Nash, 

Thanks for posting this here. I'd also definitely been keen to hear from our community how they have things configured, but I can certainly try to offer some advise from what we've seen other studios implement.

One good way to think about this is that a status will be present on every single object, so therefore if there is a possibility that a certain step will not be present on certain objects it may be better to create it as a task, since that gives you the ability to add it only for certain objects. In general, statuses are used to indicate stages that will apply to every single object regardless, whereas tasks give you more flexibility in the steps you define for said object.

Another point to think about is "does the step need to be assigned to someone, needs to be scheduled separately or needs to contain any additional metadata?". If any of those answers are "yes" it may be good to create those as a task, since you can't achieve this with statuses. However, if say for example QC is 100% always part of every shot's process, is always done by the same artist and doesn't need to be separately scheduled, then you could technically include it as a status, as it's just a step in the status chain and saves you having to create tasks every single time. 

Hope this helps give you some pointers, but definitely keen how others have this configured.

Cheers,
Andrew