General information


Pipeline - TD - General pipeline TD overview

Our pipeline, just like any other studio pipeline, is a bit daunting at first to wrap your head around. Lots of stuff is going on all over the place and somehow it all comes together to form some sort of coherent artist experience (at least that's the goal....) This page tries to explain a bit about what's going on and where's it's happening.

The C:/pipeline folder

Every artist computer at school has a C:\pipeline folder. It looks like this:

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This folder is special because it's contents are synced to a Git repository that's on our local Gitlab. This way we can push to the Git repository and all pushed files will appear on all the computers. This folder contains almost all of the important pipeline stuff that's unrelated to our ShotGrid pipeline. Think of Nuke Gizmos, Houdini plugins, render engines, etc. A bunch of Windows environment variables point to these folders, which is why Nuke looks inside there for Gizmos and such. Here are some examples of these environment variables:

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So then in order to add Nuke Gizmos or Houdini plugins you'll need to:

  1. Get an account on our Gitlab.
  2. Get write permissions to the pipeline repository.
  3. Clone the repository.
  4. Make local changes to the repository.
  5. Push those changes so they will be available on all PCs.

The automation server

Tools that require a continuously running server process such as our web monitor or Slack bots are all running on our automation server. You can visit the Docker panel that we use for managing all of this by visiting the Automation server's IP address in your web browser on your school computer: http://145.90.27.19/

The Deadline repository

The nfa-vfxim GitHub organization

Probably the most important place is our GitHub organization. This is where the entirety of our ShotGrid pipeline code lives. It's all open source and MIT licensed. If you want to contribute to key pipeline infrastructure, this is where you do it. You'll have to request access to the GitHub organization first. See this guide (ADD LINK) for a more detailed look at how to contribute to our ShotGrid pipeline.

Pipeline - TD - The servers of the Filmacademy

We've got a bunch of servers running a bunch of different stuff. Here's all the ones you should know about:

The automation server 

For all our Discord bots, scripts that need to run continuously, and other backend stuff, we use this Linux server! The server runs the Pterodactyl panel, which lets us easily see which processes are running and create new ones. If you're connected to the school network via ethernet cable or VPN, you can access the Pterodactyl panel at http://145.90.27.19/.

Here's a couple of handy commands you should know for when you're SSH'ed into this server:

ssh admin@145.90.27.19 #This is your login, you should ask around for the password

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/pterodactyl.conf #NGINX Ptero config file
sudo nano /var/www/pterodactyl/.env #Ptero env file
sudo nano /etc/pterodactyl/config.yml #Ptero Wings config file

stat /opt/Thinkbox/Deadline10/bin/deadlinewebservice #This is where the deadline web service is at

sudo nano /etc/fstab #Place where the Samba drives mount during boot

# If the Pterodactyl panel seems to be down you can run this stuff:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart wings 

# If nothing seems to work, the drive is probably full and you should clear some Docker files:
sudo docker image prune -a

The Deadline server

This server runs all the backend stuff for our render farm like a MongoDB database. It also exposes some network folders.

The Storage server

This is our main storage server! The fourth years have 70TB of storage, the third years have 50TB and the second years have 30TB of storage available.

The storage server is fully wiped at the end of every year! Also it's backed up every night, so should something go wrong you'll have until the next day before the change is permanent.

The Education server

This is the storage server that's used for files that need to stay available for many years to come. It's got our stock footage, stock assets, software installers, stuff like that.

The Elements sever

We use the Elements storage server for all the interdepartmental stuff like VFX pulls and returns. You can access the files by opening the Elements software and logging in with your AHK account.

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