Capturing logs in a visual effects (VFX), animation or games pipeline is useful for troubleshooting automated tools, keeping track of process runtimes and machine load and capturing historical data that occurs during the life of a production.
But collecting and making sense of these logs can be tricky, especially if you're working on the same project from multiple locations, or have limited resources on which to collect the logs themselves.
Collecting logs in the cloud enables you to understand this data by mining it with tools that deliver speed and power not possible from an on-premise logging server. Storage and data management is simple in the cloud and not bound by physical hardware. Additionally, you can access cloud logging resources globally; visual effects or animation facilities can access the same logging database regardless of physical location, making international productions far simpler to manage and understand.
We recently put together a tutorial that shows you how to integrate Stackdriver Logging, our hosted log management and analysis service for data running on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS, into your own visual effects or animation pipeline. It also shows some key storage strategies and how to migrate this data to BigQuery and other Google Cloud tools. Check it out, and let us know what other Google Cloud tools you’d like to learn how to use in your visual effects or animation pipeline. You can reach us on Twitter at @gcpjoe or @agrahamvfx.
