Met Effects Production Pipeline Loves Rails

For the last few months, we’ve been playing around with the Ruby on Rails framework invented by David Heinemeier Hansson (the guy who developed Basecamp). After years of database driven web work (and myself not being very good at it, unlike my business partner, Justin) this framework is simply amazing. I was able to have a simple database driven web app up and running in no time.

In the vein of “biting off more than I can chew,” I decided to take my new found tool and try to build an excessively large and complex production pipeline management system that I’ve been dreaming about for years. Kory Juul and I have been working on an all CG animated short that he developed a few years back. It’s been on our “off time” because it doesn’t pay and we’re pretty slammed. But with a team spread around the world working on elements, we needed to devise a way by which team members could share files, resources, and stay up to speed with what was happening on the project.

It’s baby stepping right now, mainly because we don’t have the project to really run it through the wringer. But soon, we’ll push it public style.