3 posts tagged with "pipeline"

Technology is rapidly advancing and businesses have the challenge of catching up. Cloud computing is one of the many tools that aid workflow speed. This modern technology allows delivery and access to multiple services across the internet such as storage, applications, servers, network...etc. Devices from across the world can communicate through a cloud over the internet, which allows speed and efficiency when managing data and storage. Looking at the future there are some predictions of how Cloud computing will continue to advance in the upcoming years. This is where the Cloud 2030 Initiative comes in; it is a virtual space within the cloud-native community that discusses and envisions the future of Cloud Computing. Within this discussion forum there are multiple podcasts and events talking about the next decade of technology and how it will reflect in multiple industries.

General main predictions for Cloud Computing for the upcoming years:​

Hybrid Cloud Environments​

In the near future, there will be an increase in multi-cloud environments within organizations. Using both public and private in-house cloud services will allow an enhancement in security and efficiency.

Integration of Ai​

With the constant growth of Artificial Intelligence, it's only a matter of time until its capabilities are implemented within cloud computing to enhance security and efficiency as well. Integrating Ai will mean that a lot of processes could be automated and can ensure self-maintenance of computing systems.

Improved Security​

Cyber attacks will increase along with the growth of cloud computing. With machine learning and artificial intelligence, cloud providers may advance security measures like for example access control, encryption, threat detection, and more.

Blockchain Technology Implementation​

This implementation would allow transparent storage and data processing within organizations while simultaniously ensuring protection of public data. Blockchain stores data in groups that are connected through a chain. The data is consistent because it cannot be deleted or changed unless there is a general agreement from the network. Within the creative field, this is an excellent source to manage copyright data, making the management of digital copyrights a more efficient process. This technology has a built-in system that prevents unauthorized processes allowing consistency and security.

Edge Computing Integration​

Edge Computing allows devices in multiple locations to process data in the “edge” of a network in a hybrid setting: through a local server or a device. When data needs to be processed, only the most important data is transmitted in the main data center allowing more efficiency. Edge computing also allows an increase in speed when communicating with remote devices, and real-time computing particularly in locations where it was not practical in the past.

Universal Access:​

Cloud Computing services will be accessible from any location, making them an essential tool for new businesses.

Main focus: Business Transformation​

Cloud Computing’s current focus of transforming IT might shift into a focus of entire business transformation enabling new product development while simultaneously enhancing and accelerating innovation.

More Focus on Cloud-Native Development​

This development allows organizations to use microservices and containers for the development processes to be more efficient and at a larger scale.

Cloud Orchestration​

Cloud Orchestration allows automation of monitoring, arrangement, and integration of resources ensuring maximum efficiency while keeping the operation at a minimal cost.

Green Cloud Computing Initiatives:​

With the increase in climate change, there might be a shift in the upcoming years to make Cloud Computing a more environmentally-sustainable system by making it more energy-efficient.

How can we incorporate this at Baked?​

The future of cloud computing has immense potential to reshape how businesses operate, innovate, and grow. With advancements in AI, Blockchain, Edge Computing, and sustainability efforts, we at Baked will have a wide set of tools at our disposal to build more efficient, secure, and adaptable systems. As these technologies continue to evolve, staying informed and embracing change will be essential as we thrive and stay digitally connected across multiple office locations. Currently, we embrace the efficiency of cloud computing by working with Suite as our main cloud storage provider. Looking into the future we might be able to incorporate AWS EC2 as the main remote workstation provider. “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) offers the broadest and deepest compute platform, with over 750 instances and choice of the latest processor, storage, networking, operating system, and purchase model to help you best match the needs of your workload.” AWS EC2 would serve as a complement to Suite, adapting cloud orchestration, cloud-native development, edge computing integration, hybrid cloud environments, and universal access to transform Baked as a VFX business. However, a question remains: What are the advantages of the Administration burden of EC2 vs a turn key solution?

EC2 as a turn key solution would be a prebuilt system (a pre-managed service) that can be fast and easy to implement into our current Suite business process. It would be immediately ready to use once it is implemented at Baked allowing less complexity and potentially lowering upfront costs from custom solutions. However, this approach may reduce administrative control particularly when very specific customization is needed. On the other hand, the biggest advantage of EC2 would be its customization, flexibility, scalability and the full administrative control over all the instances. However, this would add more to the administrative burden. It would require the user to choose the right combination for the workload and manage their own OS updates, security of instances and software installations. Other than this, data between regions can incur costs if not managed effectively, if this occurs the user would be responsible for such costs along with monitoring cost irregularities. Something to keep in mind before implementing EC2 as a turn key solution or not is Baked’s priorities as a business : speed and simplicity vs control and complexity.

What is ACES?​

Academy Color Encoding System is a color management system created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is designed to improve the exchange of files in production between on-set look development all the way through final color correction, allowing everyone in the production to see the same image. ACES is meant to be a standardized color space aiming to universally facilitate workflows without so much color space conversion that sacrifices color accuracy, allowing long-term archiving as well.

ACES can encode all colors part of the HVS (Human Visual System) and beyond the spectral locus to create pixels on screen. All values visible to humans are part of the spectrum locus in the chromaticity diagram, however the values outside of this spectral locus, even though they are not visible to humans, are useful for color transforms and math computations. This wider range of colors captures more accurately the colors and tones of the real world.

ACES reverse-engineers the camera color system that is baked within and transforms it back into the pure linear light info without any camera alteration. “ACES is often described as scene-referred or scene-linear. Abstracting away the camera’s bias allows us to get closer to the actual real-world scene that the camera records.” Other than color, ACES displays a wider range of brightness levels handling (HDR) High Dynamic Ranges better than traditional linear color spaces.

Difference between ACES and Linear Encoding​

Linear encoding without ACES, the default color encoding from Nuke (such as SRGB or Rec709) has a different and more specific purpose compared to ACES. Linear encoding like SRGB’s main purpose is for general display instead of color manipulation since it is the standard color space for most monitors, websites and general digital content (great for intermediate steps in a workflow). Linear encoding has a more limited Gamut of color and doesn’t expand beyond the spectral locus. When manipulating and displaying the image, some of the issues that may arise are the way pixels are being calculated when over-exposed, showing artifacts and information that would not be “camera-correct”. By having a standard dynamic range (SDR), the linear encoding compresses the image and can lead to clipping, making the image lose detail in highlights and shadows. Even though ACES also clips down the values of an image, it does not provide artifacting, it gives a more balanced/ softer look in the composition.

Improvements in ACES 2.0 (A look to the future)​

Quoting the following article: Getting your VFX head around ACES 2.0

Key design goals of ACES 2.0:

• Improve consistency of tone scale and provide an easy to use parameter to allow for outputs between preset dynamic ranges
• Minimize hue skews across exposure range in a region of same hue
• Unify for structural consistency across transform type
• Easy to use parameters to create outputs other than the presets
• Robust gamut mapping to improve harsh clipping artifacts
• Fill extents of output code value cube (where appropriate and expected)
• Invertible – not necessarily reversible, but Output > ACES > Output round-trip should be possible
• Accomplish all of the above while maintaining an acceptable “out-of-the box” rendering

“Alex Fry: The two main things that are better are, better visual and perceptual matches between the SDR and HDR renderings of the transforms, and better behavior for extreme colors at the edge of gamut, or extreme colors that are heavily overexposed. Both of those areas are much improved.”

How can this be beneficial at Baked?​

By learning about the advantages of ACES color space workflow, the approach can be integrated during production making it the standard production color space. This way it can facilitate communication between different departments within and outside of Baked. Allowing everyone to be on the same “visual page” since this color encoding system is more reliable, expanding higher-quality renders with the widest possible color gamut. Other than this, ACES facilitates archives as well, allowing production to jump back to older projects that used the same workflow to implement it in newer ones without problems.

Practical Artist Workflow at Baked:​

In daily use, an artist working in Nuke simply sets their OCIO config to ACES (at baked this looks like baked_fn-nuke_studio-config-v1.0.0_aces-v1.3_ocio-v2.1.ocio) and then, for each Read node, assigns the camera’s input color space via the OCIOLookTransform node (e.g. ARRI Alexa Log C → ACEScg). The OCIOLookTransform node applies an additional gamut compression method for handling negative pixels in ACES 2065-1 Interchange input color spaces. All compositing is then done in this unified, scene‑linear ACEScg space, ensuring that blending, keying, and grading behave predictably across different source formats. If a classic log to lin conversion is required, an OCIOLogConvert node may be used. When interfacing with legacy footage or external clients still on Rec.709 or sRGB, artists use additional OCIONamedTransform nodes or baked-in Look transforms in the config to convert those inputs cleanly using ACES. This small discipline—assign early, work linear, output transform late—keeps the whole pipeline “color‑correct” from start to finish and preserves maximum headroom for HDR finishing or archival.

Checklist​

• Flow Production Tracking loads Pipeline Toolkit and creates appropriate directories in Suite and on Basket.

• Nuke launches properly.

• Nuke project template is read from Suite.

• Plate and ref versions for shotgrid are created properly from Basket.

• Once assigned, shots are sorted based on storage location field in Flow and ingested. Refs are copied to their new locations. (ingest formats are working.)

• No duplicate folders are created.

• Published support files adhere to correct file paths dictated by storage location field in Flow.

• OCIO config sets properly and v000s look correct - and save to appropriate locations in Suite and Basket.

• Workfiles app works correctly, and artists can open work.

• OCIO viewer in nuke works.

• Flow Production Tracking write node is free of bugs and includes metadata knob.

• Send nuke to deadline works, and deadline is able to read from suite to grab data for render.

• Read from write works and publisher correctly publishes.

• Movie for Flow is rendered on Deadline. baked.render_artist_mov is findable.

• Color and slate look correct.

• Statuses are set correctly on upload and tasks are correct.

• LA side exports of Suite and Basket shots render on deadline correctly for client versions - outputting to 1_IO/3_DELIVERY/{playlist_name}

• Files from Suite copy back to Basket without needing to replace existing data.