Creating from Anywhere with an Artist-Driven Approach to Workstation Deployment
Michelle Brenner
Netflix is a prolific producer of visual effects and original animated content. To meet that demand, the studio needs to attract the world’s best artistic talent. Artists like to create groundbreaking entertainment instead of worrying about getting access to the software or source files they need. Production infrastructure engineering (PIE) at Netflix designed remote workstations tailored to artists’ needs that make it easy just to start working, whether in an office in Mumbai or at a house in Vancouver. The technical needs of fast-paced productions can vary vastly and change rapidly. PIE not only needed to make it easy for artists to have a one-click experience, but also for developers to control and customize that experience. This is a technical case study—not just on the how, but on the why. Why were technologies selected, what challenges did they present, and how is this different from an off-the-shelf solution? And where does the industry go from here?
Print ISSN
1545-0279
Electronic ISSN
2160-2492
Published
2021-11
Content type
Original Research
Keywords
Animation workflow, Amazon Web Services (AWS), cloud, configuration management, distributed systems, fleet management, remote work, SaltStack, Spinnaker, studio workflow, visual effects workflow, work from home, workstation deployment