Users talk about GDI|Explorer

Tim McGovern about his experiences using GDI for the production of the 900+ effects shots on Warner Brothers' "A Sound of Thunder":

When we used GDI on "A Sound of Thunder" suddenly everything, no matter where it actually was, was visible and accessible in the GDI interface.

Pre-viz, Concept Art, Lidar set scan, Set stills photography, VFX shot sheets, Shot Description in the Bid,3D Model, Animation files, Textures, Lighting files, Director's comments, Precomps, Comps Version 1-999, all there in the interface.

It is an amazing tool and it can even manage your render queue if you let it. When you need to send shots off to another facility - GDI allows you to create a data suitcase quickly and easily - faster than any conventional way.

Frederic Soumagnas on setting up a Tokyo-based 3D animation studio with GDI:

After opening our new 3D animation facility in Tokyo (Xenn Studios), we had to face multiple chalenges; One was to efficiently manage the digital data we are generating each day for our production(s). The other was to efficiently exchange data and information with freelance artists and other facilities who are working with us remotely via the internet.

With the knowledge and experience of the people at Cirque Digital and with their 'user friendly' technology our studios was up and running in a matter of days.

On a daily basis "GDI Explorer" helps us manage efficiently our data and allows us to smoothly work remotely via the Internet.

Cirque Digital technology is a key component in making our studios a confortable place for digital artists, producers and directors.

The GDI interface made everything accessible within a few mouse clicks. Organization is key when dealing with large numbers of elements and shots. GDI put all those things right at our fingertips without having to spend valuable time learning a complicated program.

The studio uses GDI|Explorer as a database management software which also enables a worldwide internet pipeline. GDI|Explorer can manage the sequences chronologically, enforced naming conventions and help to organize data easily.

Through this system, artists can see at a glance the work in progress and the schedule. They can also input and manage their work inside the database. Even from remote places, they can be a part of the entire production process.

I used GDI Explorer for almost a year, working as a sequence supervisor on a movie production with a wide variety of VFX. The first (and basic) thing that GDI Explorer does, is providing you with the basic data structure, which is necessary to keep the data organized. The implemented browser makes it easy to create and customize your structure for individual needs.

The automatically displayed metadata (like notes or thumbnails of the directory content) make it easy to overview and access the data. The real strength of GDI Explorer lies in the capability of handling complex productions, especially if several companies are involved and the data is spread out over different locations.

GDI makes it really easy to compare and syncronize complete data trees or selected parts of them located on different servers, even over remote connections like FTP.