Phase 1 / May 2026
Forged on Thresholds, built so other VFX teams can use them. 20+ years of supervision, the pipeline I always wanted on a real show, finally shipping. AI closed the gap between knowing exactly how this should work and writing the code, without me pretending to be a pipeline TD.
From script to shot
One shared data pipeline. A bid becomes a live production plan, no re-typing, no glue scripts between tools.
Over the last years I've shifted focus from shot work to workflow optimization and pipeline development; the tools, the workflows, the UX a VFX team actually needs. Claude Code and AI made it possible to build all of it. Before, the gap between “I know exactly how this should work” and “I can ship it as production software” was a five-person engineering team. Now it fits inside one supervisor's head and a weekend of work.
My strength
Workflow analysis, workflow optimisation, pipeline design. Twenty years on the floor, as a VFX & CG Supervisor and former 3D Generalist, spent watching exactly where pipelines hurt, where producers struggle, where clients lose patience. I know what a CG department needs, what a VFX department needs, what's important and what isn't.
What I'm not
I'm not trying to replace pipeline TDs or production engineers. I don't have their coding background. What I have is the supervisor's view of where the workflow actually breaks, and now, thanks to Claude Code, the ability to prototype and ship the fix without waiting for engineering bandwidth that never comes.
The result
Three tools, built by the person who uses them, refined by the producer who depends on them. PXLbid -> PXLflow -> PXLtools, end-to-end, one data contract. Not a product looking for a market, the pipeline I always wanted, now hardened enough to drop into someone else's show.
AI agents trained as a Producer and a VFX Supervisor. They read the script the way I would.
Drop a script in. AI agents, trained as a Producer and a VFX Supervisor, read it, scope it, decompose it into departments, price it, and schedule it. The whole thing flows straight into PXLflow, so re-bidding a revision becomes a delta, not a redo.
How it works
is simple as 1-2-3
Counts shots, sequences, assets. Flags complexity. Enough to know whether the project is a 50-shot commercial or a 400-shot feature before you call the client back.
Check, give feedback, change what's needed and proceed to Phase 2, while the tool learns from you.
Continue from Phase 1. The AI re-reads in depth and decomposes every asset and shot into detailed department tasks (model, texture, lookdev, rig, muscle, CFX, etc). Honors your bible, your folder structure, your naming convention, and gives you back a file that you can ingest directly into PXLflow.
A complete department-level breakdown the producer can plan against, not a spreadsheet skeleton you still have to fill in by hand.
A visual, cost-driven bid you can edit line by line. Every shot and asset is priced by discipline through an effort baseline, a complexity grade, and a seniority multiplier, all of them yours to tune in the Library. Re-grade a line or drop it and the whole quote recomputes live, down to overhead, contingency, margin, and a best-to-worst range.
Export it as XLS or PDF for the client, or ingest it straight into PXLflow, not a static file the producer has to re-type into the planner.
From the same breakdown, a solver lays out the most predictable crew to hit a date: recommended headcount per discipline, a dependency-aware Gantt, the critical path, and the bottlenecks holding the show back.
Set a start and a client target, toggle overtime or a feedback buffer, and watch the window move. An entire production planned for you, under your supervision.
The tracker you'd build if you'd actually sat in dailies for over twenty years.
Took inspiration from ShotGrid and ftrack for the review side. From Notion and Monday for the planning side. Threw out everything that felt like it was built by someone who'd never sat in a dailies room. What's left is the tracker I always wanted.
I use it daily as the supervisor. My producer uses it daily as the producer. Every feature in there got fought for in a real review, hardened by a real schedule, killed if it didn't earn its place. No one's writing tickets from a roadmap they imagined.
Tasks know what they depend on. Move a deadline, the schedule reflows. Approve a concept, the downstream modeling task wakes up. And the plan does not start from a blank page: PXLbid's bid and schedule ingest natively, so the production opens already laid out, ready to assign.
Per-asset notes, versioned submissions, annotated frames, daily review sessions. Open any version straight into PXLrv, the built-in review player, and the notes round-trip back to the same sheet. The dailies room conversation becomes a permanent record without anyone having to write the minutes.
Electron desktop app. Google Sheets and Drive backend. Client-side OAuth. No server to maintain, no SaaS lock-in, no monthly bill that scales with seats. Mac and Windows installers, auto-update via Cloudflare R2.
Built in, not bolted on
PXLrv is a PXLsuite-branded build of OpenRV (Apache 2.0): full-quality playback, color management, frame-accurate scrubbing. It does the job studios pay a commercial RV review-player license for, with nothing to pay per seat.
Open any version from PXLflow and it loads in PXLrv, with the PXLflow notes panel living inside the player. Read the shot's notes, add new ones, and they write straight back to the same sheet. One backend, one data contract, no exporting and re-importing.
Independent shippables, sharing a brand, conventions, and a tech philosophy. Each one solves a real production problem on its own. The pipeline emerges when you stack them.
AI-driven VFX script breakdown and bidding. Weeks of script analysis, done in minutes.
VFX production tracker. The best of ShotGrid, ftrack, and Notion-style planning, built by people on the floor. Tracks shots, versions, tasks, dependencies, and approval status — the actual viewing happens in PXLrv.
Production Python toolkit for Maya, Nuke, and Unreal.
Custom made tools for the most used DCCs, developed to solve everyday artist's struggle.
Every tools' development comes from a real production need on the floor. Each one fixes something the DCC should have done out of the box.
Built for Maya 2025 (PySide6) and Nuke 15 (PySide2), with versioned releases, a proper installer, and a shared dark UI. Each tile opens to the longer story.
The natural evolution of the turntable scene I released on Gumroad two years ago and that downloaded over 3000 times from artists worldwide.
Now wrapped in a full easy-to-use UI on both Maya and Nuke, end-to-end.
Production-grade quality at a glance.
In Maya: import an asset, load the tool and run an easy-to-follow setup.
You end up with a production-grade turntable in the viewport, with Macbeth chart, reference balls, six perfectly balanced HDRIs (plus 2 free slots for your own HDRI). Render layers come pre-configured with embedded AOVs and shader.
In Nuke: the Maya export drops in cleanly.
The Nuke side handles asset name, side reference, background colour, and output whatever passes you want: colour, beauty, wireframe, all driven by a compact UI and because one render layer (from Maya) contains all the AOVs needed.
Build a client-ready turntable for any assets in a few minutes, not hours/days.
One tool, across two DCCs.
One seamless workflow, hardened on real client work, and the foundation of every other PXLtool that grew around it.
Scan a vendor texture library, build hundreds of PBR materials in your naming convention, in one click.
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A complete, robust batch renamer. Simple where it should be simple, deep where production demands it.
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Generate dozens of render layers from selection, auto-named from your group and object hierarchy.
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Bulk-export a master model split into hundreds of pieces, each as its own OBJ, in one click.
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GLB import and export with the right twist. Textures extracted, PBR materials built, asset centred, all on one click.
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Prototype
The first prototype of Claude integrated directly inside Maya. Drive repetitive tasks by prompt.
An early-stage AI agent integration that lives inside Maya. Ask it to do the boring repetitive thing, renaming, layouting, filing, simple cleanup, and it does it. Preliminary, but already productive on real shots.
The longer-term goal is a Maya-native co-pilot that understands the scene the way a TD does, not just a generic LLM with a viewport.
Prototype
Turn a script into a Maya Sequencer build, sequences, shots, frame ranges, ready to previs.
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Prototype
Prototype
Send Maya transforms to Unreal/MU — writes an FBX plus a .pxlbridge.json sidecar for the engine side.
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Batch-set the colour space on selected Read/Write nodes — pick the space, tick Read/Write, apply.
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Pack dozens to hundreds of renders into a single compact contact sheet, organised by lighting, expression, or asset.
Read guideA bid built in PXLbid opens in PXLflow already laid out, no re-typing and no glue scripts, because both tools read and write one shared data pipeline and run the same costing math, so the quote and the schedule never disagree. PXLtools speaks the same data on the DCC side. And the same dark editorial UI carries across every surface, web and DCC, because production teams shouldn't have to learn three visual languages to ship one shot.
One data pipeline
Bid to delivery
PXLbid to PXLflow to PXLtools, end to end. A bid opens in the tracker already laid out, no re-typing and no per-tool formats to reconcile. Both tools run the same costing math, so the quote and the schedule always agree. The producer's Excel export round-trips back in.
Shared visual language
Dark editorial UI
Same palette, same type rhythm, same component library across all three tools. PySide6 in Maya, PySide2 in Nuke, React 19 on the web, all reading from one design system.
Production standard
Ready to hand off
Built and hardened on real client work, versioned and documented, with a proper install for every tool. Not throwaway scripting. Any TD can pick these up and own them on day one.
VFX & CG Supervisor for over twenty years. Former 3D Generalist. Now also a pipeline-optimization consultant: studios that have outgrown their workflow bring me in to look at it the way I'd look at my own.
PXLsuite is the practical answer to a problem most VFX teams run into eventually. The pipeline grows organically, every project bends it a little, and after enough years the workflow no longer fits the way the team actually thinks. The pre-made tools made certain assumptions a decade ago and never revisited them. The team has the experience to fix it but not the engineering bandwidth.
That gap is what changed for me with Claude Code and modern AI. The same supervisor who knows exactly where a tracker should hurt now also has the ability to build the fix in a weekend, harden it on real client work, and ship it as production software. PXLsuite is the proof. Three tools, built by the person who uses them.
If your studio's pipeline used to fit and now doesn't anymore, that's usually a workflow problem dressed up as a tools problem. I look at pipelines the way I look at my own; 20+ years of supervision behind the audit and the ability to build the fix, not just write the slide deck. The door is open.