Blender Studio has released Watchtower, a simple free visual production tracking tool for film and animation.

The web application displays the current edit of a video in sync with data on the timing of a shot, its position within sequences, the task types involved, their completion status, and the artists assigned to it.

A simple visual tool for tracking the production status of movies and animations
Developed for use in production on Sprite Fright, the studio’s latest animated ‘open movie’, Watchtower began life as a Blender add-on before evolving into a web application.

The tool provides a visual overview of the progress of a production, with a timeline along the foot of the screen showing the current edit, including the individual shots and their grouping into sequences.

Tracks below the shot timeline show which departments – storyboard, layout, and so on, all the way through to rendering and compositing – are involved, with colour coding to indicate the progress of the work.

A grid view at the top of the screen can be used to display shot thumbnails or production assets – again, colour-coded to indicate completion status – with the option to filter them by sequence or task type.

Watchtower can fetch data from Kitsu, CGWire’s open-source production tracking tool via its Zou API, or from JSON files, for integration with other task management software.

Licensing and system requirements
Watchtower is available free under a GPL licence. It uses JavaScript framework Vue.js. You can find installation instructions here.

 
Read more about Watchtower in Blender Studio’s blog post
(Includes a link to an online demo using production data from Sprite Fright)

Find the source code for Watchtower on GitLab

Tags: animation, asset, Blender, Blender Studio, CGWire, completion status, free, GPL licence, JavaScript, Kitsu, open movie, open source, production tracking, sequence, shot, Sprite Fright, vfx, video editing, visual effects, visual overview, Vue.js, Watchtower, web application, Zou