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Live Event Production Company Consolidating Blender and Maya
Company Situation
The company operates in the live event production industry, specializing in large-scale drone light shows. Their creative team includes 18 full-time animators and is rapidly growing to meet increasing demand. They produce approximately 1,000 shows annually, with peak seasons like national holidays requiring dozens of simultaneous events. Their work involves complex animation creation, rendering, and multimedia integration to deliver visually stunning, synchronized drone performances for diverse audiences.
Existing Workflow
Currently, the company relies on Blender and Maya for creating animations, with Adobe Creative Suite used for final renders and audio production. For file storage and collaboration, they primarily use Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive internally, managing roughly nine terabytes of data. External sharing and company approvals are handled through a separate digital asset management system (Brandfolder). Their team uses Microsoft Teams for communication and frequently shares links to files stored on SharePoint.
Issues with the Existing Workflow
The company experiences significant workflow challenges including:
Slow upload speeds and throttling during peak business hours, causing delays in accessing and saving large files.
Poor search functionality within SharePoint, relying heavily on strict naming conventions to locate files.
Unreliable sync companies that are buggy and sometimes consume excessive local storage, leading many team members to avoid using them.
Risk of accidental data loss, exemplified by an incident where 300,000 files were deleted but fortunately restored from backups.
Fragmented external sharing processes, requiring multiple platforms for internal and company-facing collaboration.
Growing pains related to scaling storage and collaboration infrastructure to support a large and expanding animation team producing thousands of high-volume projects annually.
How Shade Would Change Their Workflow
Shade offers a streamlined, cloud-native asset management and collaboration platform designed to handle large media files with high performance. By integrating Shade, the company would benefit from:
- Consistently fast upload and download speeds without throttling, regardless of time or network congestion.
- Advanced, intuitive search capabilities that reduce dependence on rigid naming conventions and folder structures.
- Reliable, lightweight syncing that minimizes local storage use and improves user adoption among animators.
- Simplified sharing workflows that enable seamless internal collaboration and secure, easy external company reviews through shareable links without complicated app downloads or permissions.
- A scalable, centralized repository that supports rapid growth and high-volume production demands with reduced risk of data loss or corruption.
Benefits
- Dramatically improved file transfer speeds and accessibility for large animation assets
- Enhanced search functionality enabling quick retrieval of past projects and assets
- Reduced local storage requirements and more stable syncing for team members
- Simplified, secure sharing process for both internal teams and external companies
- Scalable infrastructure supporting fast-growing creative teams and high-volume production schedules
- Minimized operational risks with a robust cloud platform designed for media workflows
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