Production guide

This page follows the work of production and coordination: creating a project, filling it with shots, putting the right people in it, assigning, then tracking progress and deadlines. Logging in and the main window are covered in Getting started.

Bernard's interface is in English: labels are quoted as they appear, in italics.

Notions to know

An item created from a model is a reference to it: it receives a copy of everything the model carries. Changing the model then propagates to all its items. See Workflows and Customising Bernard.

Creating a project

You need the Can Create permission on the Project type.

From the home screen. Click Create new project (in Recent Projects), give a name, choose a Template, then confirm.

From the root.

1. Go to the root (Navigate › Go To Root) and open the Tree View.
2. Right-click on the Projects folder › Create, then the project type.
3. In the Create New … window, fill in Name and choose the Template: a model project from your studio (animation, VFX, video game… depending on what it has prepared), or No Template.
4. Confirm with Create. The project appears in Projects; it opens with a double-click or by right-click › Go To Project.

Without a template, the project is created from the studio's default project model. The creator is automatically added to the project's users.

What a template copies. The structure of the project, its settings, its models, its workflows, its colours and its naming conventions. It does not copy the production items (Project Item) or their files.

Creating a template (administrators): right-click on a finished project › Copy To Template, confirm. Bernard creates a template named " Template" in the project templates folder. You will find it in the Root Settings, where you can edit it (workflow, colours…) or delete it. The next projects created from this template pick up these changes.

Good habits before launching a production

• Start from an up-to-date copy of the studio's template and check that it no longer contains data from an old project.
• Give the project a clear name, and update its Project State property (the values are those of your studio): do not leave it in its starting state.
• Add your teams to the project's Project Users property (see Putting people in the project).

Filling the project: creating shots

One by one. Right-click on a folder of the project › Create › the model you want (for example Shot). The menu only offers the models that this folder accepts. The shot appears with its workflow: its first task is Ready right away.

In batches from files (Import From Files). If your shots already exist as folders and files (image sequences for example), let Bernard create the items from them.

1. In the project, right-click on the folder or sequence that will receive the shots › Import From Files.
2. In the Import Item From Files In … window, choose Search Directory, a Filter (for example *.exr), then Search. Collapse File Sequence groups an image sequence into a single line.
3. Choose the Model of the items to create (for example Shot).
4. In the table, check Source Name, Item Name (the name of the item, by default the name of the source) and Parent (the host folder). Edit the names that do not suit.
5. Click Import. If you tick Open File Operation Once Import Finished, Bernard also opens the file copy.

In batches from a table (Import From Table). Copy the lines of your spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets).

1. Right-click on the folder › Import From Table.
2. In the Import item from Table in … window, paste the table (Ctrl+V) and choose the Model.
3. For each column, choose the property that receives it, or Do Not Import. The Parent column gives the host folder of each line. The name cells are coloured: one colour for an item that will be created, another for an existing item that will be updated. Remove selected Rows sets lines aside.
4. Click Import.

To import instructions from a table, see Instructions From Table in the Lead and supervisor guide. The other import and export tools are in Import, export and logs.

What can get in the way. The import entries only appear if your role can create the type of item concerned. Before importing, check that your columns and names are the ones the model expects: an offset shows up on every shot.

Putting people in the project

A user is only offered the projects where they appear in the Project Users property (administrators see them all). Before assigning:

1. Select the project and open the Properties panel.
2. Check Project Users: production, supervisors, leads, artists, and the people in charge of importing files if needed.
3. To create a missing account, see User management.

Departments

A department groups a discipline (animation, lighting, tracking…). It has a name, a colour and a background colour. A user belongs to one or more departments; a task and a compound have one department.

Creating a department (corresponding Can Create permission, or administrator)

1. Go to the root, open the Tree View, right-click on the Departments folder › Create.
2. Give it a name, confirm, then select it.
3. In the Properties panel, set its icon (drag an image onto the thumbnail), its colour, its background colour and its description. The History tab keeps a trace of what was done.

Putting people in it: select the user, add the department to their Departments property (type the first letters). You can do this from the tree or from the Properties panel.

Attaching work to it: in the node view, give a department to a compound or a task (Department property). The department then appears everywhere: spreadsheet, node view, assignments.

Assigning

The principle: you assign department × role pairs, not tasks one by one.

1. Each task has a department and an expected role (Assign To).
2. The Assignment tab of an item gathers all the department × role pairs of its tasks.
3. You put people in a pair: all the tasks of the item that have this pair are assigned to them.
4. A pair where nobody was put is automatic: if there is only one project user with this role and this department, they are assigned; if there are several, nobody is.
5. You can force the assignment task by task (Users property of the task).

Doing it in practice

1. In a spreadsheet, select one or more shots (same person for several shots: select them all; a value that differs from one shot to the next shows Multiple Values).
2. Open the Assignment tab of the Properties panel.
3. In each pair, choose the people. Check at a minimum the producer or coordinator, the artist of each department and the lead or supervisor. If a single person holds a role for the whole project, select all the shots and assign them once.
4. The Update Automatic Assignment button recomputes the automatic pairs. Right-click on a pair › Reset Automatic Assignment makes it automatic again.

One person per task. A task can have several assignees, but it then cannot be started: Bernard refuses the switch to WIP ("more than one user are assigned to task"). For work tasks, therefore, leave one assignee per task.

The permissions that frame assignment (who can change the state of other people's tasks, cancel, edit a workflow) are in Roles, permissions and assignment.

Dates and budget. On each task, fill in Start Date and Due Date, and the budget (Bid). In Spreadsheet Multi, the Add Column to Group command adds these columns for each step. Leave time for validation and rework. The Time delta then compares the budget with the time spent. To plan in a Gantt chart, see Time, attendance and planning.

Tracking progress

Spreadsheet Multi (Windows › Spreadsheet Multi) is the tracking view: one row per shot, one group of columns per compound or department, with the resulting state of the step and its current task (name, state, assignees).

1. In the scope bar, choose the project and the model of the items to track (for example Shot).
2. Right-click on the header › Add Compound Group (one group per compound of the model) or Add Department Group.
3. In a group's menu, Add Column to Group adds a property of the compound, and Compound Current task adds a property of its current task.
4. Save the tab (Save this tab changes): the layout is kept.

See Spreadsheet Multi for the detail.

In the spreadsheet, a few settings answer common production questions:

The bottom bar of the spreadsheet gives the totals (items, filtered, sum, average per column); Copy footers copies them. Ctrl+C copies the selection as a table to Excel.

Activity View (Windows › Activity View): what users did over a period. Add people in Users :, choose Last hour, Last day, Last week or Custom in Range :, then filter the text. Each line gives the time, the user, the object concerned, the type of change (Create, Update, Delete, Restore, Session) and the new value. Seeing other users requires the Can view other users' working time (Access HR Data) permission; without it, you only see yourself. The table is limited to the most recent entries: shorten the period if Bernard says so.

Working time: the Working Time View shows attendance, working time and lateness per user and per day. The export of time is in Bernard › Data › Export › Timelogs. The detail is in Time, attendance and planning.

Notifications: a follow rule (Local Settings › Following) warns you when an object enters your criteria, for example tasks that go Ready in your department. See Notifications and emails.

What your role must be able to do

These permissions are set in Bernard › Settings › Roles Setting (administrators): see Roles Setting.