Definitely. Although PDG is hugely beneficial for Houdini workflows, there are many workflows involving common pipeline processing and data transformation that can be implemented in a very simple and straightforward manner without involving any Houdini. The data-augmentation workflow for ML or a photogrammetry pipeline are examples of this. Pipelines like this are easy to implement with the standalone PilotPDG application and will benefit from PDG’s built-in scale, automation, and performance-monitoring capabilities.
Yes. PDG can bring benefits to FX artists, technical artists, and even CG generalists. It can help scale and automate common workflows such as wedging, and help automate mundane pipeline tasks like data conversion. It uses a node-based interactive workflow that is very artist-friendly. You may need a little help setting up the farm but once you start using PDG, the workflows are very accessible.
- There are a number of stock nodes available to download, find, update and upload files to and from Shotgun.
- Although PDG is a great solution for environments creation, it also excels at pipelines in general. There are plenty of data processing / transformation tasks in a games pipeline that can benefit from PDG outside of environment creation.
- PDG can used to fully utilize the cores on your local machine. This requires no setup at all and will work out of the box.