Improve – Ryan Lintott https://ryanlintott.com Wed, 19 Jan 2022 17:16:19 +0000 en-CA hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7 https://i0.wp.com/ryanlintott.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-Folder_logo_512x512.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Improve – Ryan Lintott https://ryanlintott.com 32 32 113022379 Squint Standards https://ryanlintott.com/portfolio-item/squint-standards/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 20:51:55 +0000 http://ryanlintott.com/?post_type=portfolio&p=111
Squint Standards on Google Drive
  • Project Type: Productivity Systems
  • Role: Founder / Director / Pipeline Developer
  • Company: Squint/Opera
  • Year: 2007-2016

Squint Standards are an evolving ecosystem of tools and scripts that automated repetitive production processes and provided documentation for standard workflows. What began as a set of standards for the 3D team quickly grew into a structure everyone at the company used to manage tools and workflows. These standards were used to direct the collective knowledge of the company into a structure that allowed for quick access in the future. Squint Standards were never set in stone. Teams would meet regularly to discuss current workflows and update the standards whenever a better way was discovered. From 2007-2014 I was the only pipeline developer but by 2015 a team of 2 developers was formed to take on pipeline management.

Accessibility and deployment of standards was just as important as the standards themselves. Sharing the workflows in editable google docs ensured the latest version was always visible while scripts and plugins were updated automatically in the background to keep all systems in sync.

Related Projects:

]]> 111 Squint Teams https://ryanlintott.com/portfolio-item/squint-teams/ Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:07:49 +0000 http://ryanlintott.com/?post_type=portfolio&p=144
  • Project Type: HR System
  • Role: Founder / Director
  • Company: Squint/Opera
  • Year: 2014-2016

I created Squint Teams as a structured way to improve “how we do what we do”.  It was also a way of facilitating communication by grouping around common interests and giving everyone a voice as the company grew from 50 to 120+ people. Any staff member could join any team (3D artists would sometimes join the comp and edit teams as well as the 3d team, producers joined the UX team and so on). Team leaders would run monthly meetings and everyone on the team would participate in adding and working on R&D tasks to improve how things were done. I designed the guidelines, documents and sheets that gave structure to the program and personally mentored the various team leads as they took on their new roles.

]]> 144 Messy Goes To Okido – Series 1 https://ryanlintott.com/portfolio-item/messy-goes-to-okido/ Sun, 03 Jan 2016 14:52:21 +0000 http://ryanlintott.com/?post_type=portfolio&p=55
Play Video
  • Project Type: Kids’ TV Animation
  • Role: Technical Supervisor / Pipeline Development / IT Support
  • Company: Doodle Productions
  • Completed: 2016

In 2010-11 I was the technical director and one of the 3D artists for the Okido trailer that brought Messy Monster to life in 3D. The BBC loved the pitch and a few years later Messy Goes to Okido, the first TV series taken on by the studio, went into full production. I played a key role in designing the production process and planning for the expansion that would more than double the size of the studio. Throughout the production I supported the technical director and managed the IT and pipeline teams that were shared between Squint/Opera and Doodle Productions. I also contributed to pipeline development and built IT systems to ensure various processes and shared resources ran efficiently for both teams.

Related Projects:

External Links:

]]> 55 Squint/Opera 3D Pipeline https://ryanlintott.com/portfolio-item/squintopera-3d-pipeline/ Tue, 25 Aug 2015 21:36:13 +0000 http://ryanlintott.com/?post_type=portfolio&p=262
  • Project Type: 3D Pipeline
  • Role: 3D Pipeline Developer
  • Company: Squint/Opera
  • Year: 2007-2015

Squint/Opera started in 2002 as an architectural film company focusing primarily on film with some 2D graphic animation. It wasn’t until 2005 that Squint began producing 3D animations in-house.

When I joined in 2007 the 3D team was still quite small (only 2-3 people) and everyone worked in their own way. I worked with the team to develop an efficient 3D pipeline, optimized for the production of architectural visualization animations. I started by defining Squint Standards for 3D files, render settings, modelling processes and folder structures. I then began to customize the 3DS Max interface adding many scripts from ScriptSpot and then starting to build my own. Within a year we had a basic but efficient 3D pipeline and were able to produce larger, more complex 3D animations in far less time.

The new standards also allowed 3D staff to switch jobs and exchange files without having to re-learn a new structure each time. Over the following years the pipeline continued to improve incrementally by adding more scripts, tweaking render settings. The 3D Team would meet on a monthly basis to discuss ways to improve the pipeline. This would later be the inspiration to launch Squint Teams to allow many teams across the company to work in a similar way to improve their processes.

The change I developed that had the most impact on pipeline speed was the new render submission process. By splitting animated and non-animated objects into their own render pass we were able to reduce our render settings and massively decrease render times. This was only possible after finding an efficient way to light and then re-combine the two passes to make them look seamless. Once established, automating this process with maxscript became the first feature I built for the new Render Bomb.

In 2014-2015 I worked with the Technical Director to adapt and improve the multi-pass process for use on Messy Goes To Okido

Custom Scripts:

  • Render Bomb (render submission)
  • Mesh Fixer (fixing imported models)
  • Material Cleaner (cleaning non-standard materials)
  • Pointcache People (building animation libraries)
  • Update Squint Standards (auto-updating scripts, plugins and UI)

Related Projects:

]]> 262 Render Bomb https://ryanlintott.com/portfolio-item/render-bomb/ Tue, 25 Aug 2015 15:34:57 +0000 http://ryanlintott.com/?post_type=portfolio&p=256
  • Project Type: Pipeline System
  • Role: Founder / Pipeline Developer
  • Company: Squint/Opera
  • Year: 2009-2015

The Render Bomb is a 3DS Max tool built to improve the speed and reliability of render submissions. The script replaced a manual submission process that took many steps per job and had a significant chance of user error. While developing Squint/Opera’s 3D Pipeline, a part of the Squint Standards, I was able to automate many steps in the process. In the following years features were added to submit multi-pass jobs for lights, animation layers and stereoscopic cameras, all of which would have been hugely impractical without automation.

Features:

  • Automated multi-job submission for GI, baked/animated passes, lightpasses, stereoscopic passes and multi-camera renders.
  • Automatic file/folder creation and naming, quick-select frame size and file type, error-checking
  • Automatic job pools and priorities based on project folder locations.
  • Render submission to a Backburner, Qube and Deadline without having to work with additional submission windows.

In 2014 I hired another developer to add features to the bomb for the production of Messy Goes To Okido. In 2015 I hired Voy as the new head of the Pipeline team, passing over control of the Render Bomb. He worked closely with me the 3D team to add further features you can see documented on his website here.

Related Projects:

External Links:

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