Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
of common sense tips, answers to the evaluation of practical ”what if...?” scenarios
and information scattered across the Internet.
1.2 The Asset Build Pipeline
The term
asset build pipeline
can be found in many wordy flavors: content pipeline,
asset build pipeline, build pipeline, pipeline or simply build. Under this concept,
each company can fit a radically different implementation of a system whose main
duty is transforming assets. In order to give a clear overview of what it represents,
we will briefly describe its contents and its (sometimes) blurry limits.
1.2.1 What Is Included and What Is Not
As far as this chapter is concerned, we will consider the asset build pipeline as
covering any processes designed to transform raw assets as produced by the
digital
content creation tools
or DCCs (3D modeling or animation packages, image paint-
ing software, audio editing suites, in-house editors, ...) to the files that can be
loaded by the
game
in a fully cooked or temporary form. In their simplest form,
the associated processes are executed at each user's workstation and are the main
methodtopushcontentfromtheDCCintothegame.
Figure1.1
showstheloca-
tion of the system as part of the global set of production tools and how the system
connects to each one.
In general terms, the asset build is a framework that allows the execution of
generictransformationtasks.Eachsquarenodein
Figure1.2
representsasingle
step that massages a set of inputs into one or many output files. This conversion is
theresultofexecutingacompiler,ascript,oratoolthattransformsdatasoitcan
Figure 1.1.
Block diagram of a content production pipeline, showing the tools and
exchange formats involved in the production of game assets.
