Software-Defined Workflows

MovieLabs and its member studios have published a third paper in the series of 2030 Vision white papers. The paper, titled “The Evolution of Production Workflows - Empowering Creative Processes with Software-Defined Workflows”, double-clicks on the software-defined workflow principles of the 2030 Vision. It discusses a path to implementation of those principles, describing the essential formalisms and specific mechanisms that will enable flexible production workflows with increased automation and interoperability.

The goal of software-defined workflows is to support human creative tasks by connecting them to the greatest extent possible through software-mediated collaboration and automation. The paper defines a framework that allows software to understand and communicate information about workflows, making them more nimble and adaptive. It presents an approach which can be applied to help build interoperable workflows and tools for automation in a myriad of areas, such as collaboration, compute and rendering orchestration, asset movement, cost calculation, personnel scheduling, and project dashboards.