View Asset Management
Asset Management refers to the tracking, updating, and approval of assets to be used in the production of CG animation or visual effects. Not limited to just the production business, of course, asset management is an essential part of any workflow. In some cases, this is handled directly by the artists, though in most professional and semi-pro teams, this is accomplished with a combination of special code or an application designed for such use. Asset management apps have been expensive in the past, and often are restrictive compared to the needs of the team. One solution has been to use MySQL (an open source database) and write and track with Javascript and/or Python.
Other shops use Revision Control Systems to handle the work, as conceptually, the workflow of an RCS is very similar to the needs of an animation team. RCS systems use library analogies to “check-in,” “check-out,” track changes, and so on. Systems like Source Safem, originally developed to manage source code for computer programming, is such an example, though by no means the only one.