Shotgun and Tweak Announce Strategic Alliance

Companies Collaborate to Offer Seamless Integration of Shotgun Production Tracking System and RV Playback Software

Los Angeles, CA and San Francisco, CA (July 27, 2009)— Shotgun Software and Tweak Software today announced their intentions to integrate their VFX and animation production tools, Shotgun and RV, for seamless interoperation. The combined solutions make it easy for users to find and play back media they need to review. Tweak Software is the developer of RV, the image and sequence viewer for animation and visual effects markets; Shotgun Software develops Shotgun, a project management and collaboration system also catering to visual effects, production and game development companies.

This integration provides one-click viewing of media in RV right out of Shotgun, and Shotgun-aware tools inside of the RV player.  The integrated solutions will be demonstrated for the first time during the SIGGRAPH 2009 conference in New Orleans at the Shotgun user group meeting on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 from 1:30-3:30PM in room Blaine Kern C at the Convention Center Marriott, New Orleans.  The event is open to all SIGGRAPH attendees; please RSVP to register at http://www.shotgunsoftware.com/rsvp.

RV is the next generation image and sequence viewer for VFX and animation artists. RV was created by artists and engineers who needed a refined tool for working with film resolution and high dynamic range images and has been adopted by leading studios around the world.  Shotgun is a flexible and scalable web-based project management system designed specifically for the visual effects, CG feature animation and video game industries, allowing all parties involved in a project instant access to critical data, messaging and real-time project progress.

“Integrating RV with Shotgun, the leading production tracking system, was an obvious choice. Because RV is customizable and Shotgun has an open API, a deep level of integration can be accomplished—something that would be very hard to achieve with black-box playback tools,” said Seth Rosenthal, Tweak Software Co-founder.  “A new Shotgun module has been written in RV’s scripting language that can send and retrieve files for playback from directly within Shotgun. UI widgets were scripted to display Shotgun metadata and a new Shotgun Menu has been added into RV.”

Tweak and Shotgun were each founded by visual effects and animation production insiders to tackle the challenges and demands of high-end CG production. Both share a similar strategy for building next generation tools: work with leading studios around the world to make software that address real world production requirements of animators and VFX artists, and then make those tools widely available to the industry.

“Shotgun has been designed to integrate completely with other tools in our clients’ pipelines, and image playback is central to their workflow,” said Don Parker, Co-founder and CEO, Shotgun Software.  “Now that RV has become the playback tool of choice for many of our clients, we saw an opportunity to work with Tweak to make sure that these two pieces of the pipeline are integrated seamlessly. It’s been a pleasure to work with Tweak on this, and we are excited about the additional value this update and future enhancements will provide our customers.”

Integration of Shotgun and RV will enable workflow efficiencies such as:

•    Ability to launch Shotgun-aware playback from anywhere in the pipeline (from within Shotgun, via email links, web pages, etc.)
•    Access to Shotgun data from inside RV (scheduling, task information, production notes, etc.)
•    Reduction of errors and significant time-savings by making production data ubiquitous across the pipeline
•    Easily navigate shots, assets, versions and playlists in Shotgun; instantly view related materials in RV
•    Find and play the right version of a scene in a range of ways: in sequence, A/B compare, tiled, composited and more.
•    Retrieve metadata about images being reviewed in RV such as task due dates and shot cut information

About Shotgun Software
Shotgun Software was founded in January 2006 by a group of visual effects professionals to build production tracking and pipeline solutions. The founding members worked together on a major studio animated feature, and are developing Shotgun to fill the mounting industry need for a commercially viable system for managing complex projects in CG, gaming and visual effects. Shotgun is actively developing the system with more than 30 industry studios including Digital Domain, Framestore, Zoic Studios, and Laika. For more information, and an online demonstration, visit www.shotgunsoftware.com.

About Tweak Software
San Francisco, CA-based Tweak Software was founded in 2007 to develop tools that address real-world production needs of VFX and animation professionals. The company was co-founded by Jim Hourihan and Seth Rosenthal in 2007. Jim Hourihan is the recipient of two Sci-Tech Academy Awards and is best known for developing Dynamation, the first commercial particle system that was subsequently incorporated into Autodesk’s Maya software. Hourihan also spent six years as a principle R&D engineer for Industrial Light and Magic where he developed many tools still in use at the facility today. For more information, visit www.tweaksoftware.com.

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Media Contact:
Karen Raz, Raz Public Relations
310-450-1482, karen@razpr.com