Since 1.11 we have found ourselves spending an ever increasing amount of time on the Shots page. This is simply because Pipeline Steps allows us to view tasks how we had always hoped - at the shot level.
Given this funky new functionality, it seems right that we would also have access to the gantt at the Shot level - this would certainly make scheduling far easier.
Does anyone else agree?
Ok, first of all, what do you mean "funky"?!! heh
So let's talk about Gantt on the Shot page. How do you imagine that would work? Each Step group could have a gantt pane? Or a pane on the entire page showing all the tasks on the Shot? Hmm.
Note that if you change the mode to "summary only" or "summary and details", you'll be able to click on the summary cells to bring up an overlay of tasks with the details. That overlay has a gantt pane. Behold:
Will that work?
In this instance, 'funky' is a VERY good thing :)
I had discovered the overview page, although im thinking something which presents more of an overview.
In simple terms though, the way the gantt is represented on the tasks page would be perfect for the shot page. To be honest if we had the gantt on the shot page I personally would 'almost' consider the task page deprecated ...
With the Task pipelines we now have the ability at the shot level to drill down to the next level - that level being tasks. The data that previously relied on two pages, now exists in one page - its awesome.
Attached is my super simple hack (with blurred images to keep me from being fired).
The only complication surrounds the pipeline step you want to display tasks for at that point in time. Hmmm, one best left for you guys I think.
Do you see where im coming from though?
Damn, i dont know how to attach an image ... ?
Sorry, im making a mess all over the place!
http://clintond.com/stuff/shotpage_gantt.jpg
Please help me!
(and feel free to remove my mess from above)
Would that only work on the "All Tasks" group that shows all tasks for all Steps? What do we do if you have a layout like the enclosed, where you have Tasks *side by side*? That's the one that puzzles me. (and you can upload and insert an image by clicking on the tree looking button in the formatting bar of the note text area... see that? Or maybe that's reserved only for us...)
For sure it is something geared more towards the 'all tasks' view. Although it would also work with summaries only, by showing a single bar for the pipeline step.
And yeah I totally agree with the scenario presented above. It presents a complication for sure and my thought was that you would only focus on one pipeline step at a time.
The way im using pipeline steps (grouping 3d tasks together for example), means most of my tasks are vertically stacked, not horizontally. So in my particular case it would work ‘as is’. Although without soundling like a dick, I think the use of pipeline steps is best served by grouping tasks into a step. A single task per pipeline step seems incredibly inefficient to my mind. Anyway, that’s a very different topic and there are perhaps some valid reasons supporting such an approach!
Back to your primary concern though. For sure, the side-by-side scenario presents an issue, although I imagine there would be some ui control for choosing which step is shown on the gantt. It could be as simple as only showing expanded steps – with the left most step gaining priority in the case of multiples. That makes sense in that you expand something you want to focus on for that moment in time.
(and I cannot see the little tree thing you described – can post images to support requests though via the ‘add image’ option).
Maybe each Step column group can have a gantt pane? Then you can see the gantt for all tasks in the All Tasks step, or a gantt pane for each individual step? I'd worry that might affect page performance, but seems useful. I do wonder if that would fully replace the task mode though...
Good stuff. The seed is now planted! Thanks.
Hi Clinton,
Good idea - should be a hit with the production crew!
Don I think you are on the right track. In Clinton's picture the gannt chart would be inside the green box. I see the pipes as a window to a task page - per pipe gannts seem the most consistent with that idea. While 'one could' have many pipes and many gannts on a page, I imagine you would only want look at a specific department pipe or an all tasks pipe.
cheers,
cl
Is there a way to view the gantt chart for the entire scope of the project? I want to see a full overview of the project in the visual format that Gantt offers. It could even be a rollup of the shots - so the shots page would show the big picture rollup and the tasks page has the breakdown. Either way, I need a full overview of my project. How can that be accessed?
>Is there a way to view the gantt chart for the entire scope of the project? I want to see a full overview of the project in the visual format that Gantt offers. It could even be a rollup of the shots - so the shots >page would show the big picture rollup and the tasks page has the breakdown. Either way, I need a full overview of my project. How can that be accessed?
This is something our studio is struggling with as well. Especially for TV series production, you want to be able to see the overall schedule, for example the entire animation work period for a specific episode shown as one gantt bar. Right now we've done a bit of a workaround for this by creating separate tasks in the Episode pipeline steps for EP101 Layout, EP102 Layout, EP101 Lighting, etc. Then we made a separate sub-page in the schedule to show only those tasks.
This works for the time being, to show a general overall schedule; however the downside is that it is not linked to the actual shot-by-shot tasks and therefore doesn't reflect the actual dates/status/ etc of that work. Any changes have to be updated manually in the overall schedule.
