Managing Assets in Final Fantasy

skia writes "Interesting topic with an even more interesting backdrop: Tracking Assets in the Production of "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". From the article: "Creative processes don't have clearly defined paths... therefore, the attempt to give a static definition for such process has to face the tension between divergence towards the creative possibilities and convergence towards the pre-defined mechanical process that databases can handle." It also links to Beating the Averages, which is another must-read for /.ers."

Comments

The 'Yahoo Stores'/Lisp article

[caca_phony]

From the Paul Graham article:

If you chose technology that way, you'd be running Windows. When you choose technology, you have to ignore what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best.

this argument seems calculated to convert slashdotters to lisp programming, but it's logic means that in the slashdot subculture, it would have to %s/Windows/Linux/g. A conundrum.

I keep working on learning lisp myself, it's pretty deep stuff, gives me brain cramps trying to understand it. I wish it were a little smaller and a little faster, too. Maybe I just need to upgrade my 486 with 64 megs of RAM...

Wonderful article

[theolein]

I used to work in Multimedia in a large Internet Agency doing Director CD-rom productions for clients in teams ofusually about 5 or 6 people. The problems he describes in the article are exactly the same, on a smaller scale, to be found in most productions where you have management (the art director), designers (graphics, video and sound), project managers and coders. While coders and project managers want to see structured plans, directories, storyboards and timelines, each creative person usually has his or her own way of working with files which is often coupled with the fact that not many designers can communicate their wishes well to coders and coders seem to make interfaces that designers cannot use.

On one especially long hard project, we had several mishaps and lost assets because the designers forced us to work with a non logical file naming system, and at that time I wished for a tool that would enable designers to have their certain flexibility that they need but would still be structured enough not to hinder the coding process.

I'm still waiting today.

Re:Wonderful article

[sien]

Absolutely. I've been working in the computer graphics industry and it still pains me that artists don't have any good version control software.

Really, it's quite appalling that programmers have been using this kind of technology for at least 20 years and yet all the people we work with haven't been added to the system. After recently preparing a large word document, I realise most office workers don't have a good way of work either. It's really shocking.

The approach of using an object oriented database is really interesting.

I'd like to know how the big games development shops handle the problem, from my limited contact with them it seems pretty haphazard.

Re:Wonderful article

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some commercial products that enables
the check-in/check-out workflow for artists; SGI's
StudioCentral and NxN's Alienbrain, for example.
I've seen some small game studios using Alienbrain.

However, from my experience, file-based version
control doesn't fit nicely to the large production.
There are too many interdependencies among files,
and unlike programming, sometims it is difficult to
separate artists' work into files with the
authoring tools. (Suppose one artist works on
a model and another works on its animation).

Re:Wonderful article

[DGolden]

Microsoft's Sharepoint Portal Server product does MS-Office compatible docuement versioning. It is poised to bring a new cycle of MS-dependence to companies.

Star Office lags behind, unfortunately, although, in theory, sharepoint-like functionality should be easy to whip up, given the open file format of Star/Open Office.

Re:Wonderful article

[-brazil-]

While coders and project managers want to see structured plans, directories, storyboards and timelines, each creative person usually has his or her own way of working with files

If they insist that they can only work using their personal way of doing things, they are incompetent hacks that have no place in a big project. The idea that the art guys must be pampered and they ideosyncrasies allowed to fuck up the project is really dumb.

The exact same problem arises with programmers and coding styles, and any project manager worth their salt rightfully expects his programmers to adher to a common coding standard. It may not be 100% comfortable to work with, but it is far, far better than having mixed coding styles cause misunderstanding and waste of time.

Re:Wonderful article

[Anonymous Coward]

If they insist that they can only work using their personal way of doing things, they are incompetent hacks that have no place in a big project.

That's right, in the organization that already
has established pipeline and hierarchy of
responsibility.

If you are trying new techniques of expression,
however, the story is not so simple as the coding
style. It's more like designing brand new
programming language and writing software in
that language simultaneously.
Change of pipeline is inevitable.
I think it works if you organized a small
team with competent skills and tight
communication.