Aardman Animations has integrated Tweak Software’s RV image and sequence viewing application into its Linux-based CG animation pipeline.
The Oscar-winning studio has been using the software since its pre-beta release and recently approved its integration into the pipeline.
‘Having Aardman adopt RV is a great acknowledgement of the software as a tool for artists,” said Seth Rosenthal, Tweak co-founder.
“We are developing our CG pipeline on Linux and we are fitting RV in pretty much everywhere we can,’ says Tom Downes, pipeline lead at Aardman. ‘To start with, we are using it for lip sync tests and playblasting because it is frame accurate and syncs the sound nicely. It’s pretty much the only player we’ve tried that does that. On Linux, as far as I am aware, there is no good alternative.”
Downes says some of Aardman’s key stop-motion animators are using RV for animation planning tests being done in Maya. “They are not really keen on using computers so playback has to be a really transparent process ‘ they will have 8 or 10 RV sessions up at the same time to compare playblasts. We’ve wrapped it up a little bit to make it transparent, but we don’t need to do much, it’s a simple program to use.”
