One command. Five minutes. Free forever.
Tracks shots, reviews submissions, publishes files.
No pipeline TD required.
Every studio has dealt with at least one of these. Now there's a way out.
AYON setup takes 2 days minimum with a dedicated pipeline TD
Running in 5 minutes with one curl command
ShotGrid costs $600/user/year — $18K/yr for a 30-person team
Free, self-hosted. No seats. No invoices. No vendor lock-in.
Files everywhere on NAS — wrong names, wrong folders, missing versions
Anatomy engine — every file in its place, every time, automatically
"Ask the TD" to add users, change paths, or update permissions
Any production manager can do it — no TD, no ticket, no waiting
Full project hierarchy from sequence to frame. Kanban boards, timeline view, dependency chains, and capacity heatmaps.
Frame-accurate video review with annotations. USD files render in-browser. Internal and client portals with secure links.
DCC panels for Maya, Blender, and Houdini. Anatomy engine resolves every publish path. 7 validators catch errors before they spread.
Local, NAS, S3, R2, or Blackbox — all unified under one anatomy engine. Versioning, workfile management, and delivery in one place.
AI-powered pipeline automation, budget forecasting, and real-time risk analysis for studios that need to stay ahead of schedule.
Connect HivePipe instances across studios. Push shots to vendor pipelines. Get versions back automatically. Multi-site, multi-vendor — one pipeline view.
Drop in your EDL or FCPXML. HivePipe creates every shot with correct frame ranges in seconds.
Assign tasks to departments. Artists see their queue in Maya, Blender, or Houdini — no browser required.
Artists publish from inside Maya, Blender, or Houdini. Validators run. HiveMind AI catches errors before they hit review.
Supervisors annotate directly on frames. USD opens without Nuke. Clients reply to email — no login required.
Approval triggers auto-transcode to your delivery spec — resolution, codec, burn-ins, watermark — ready in the delivery folder.
Live budget tracking against your bid. AI flags the shots burning fastest. War Room shows the whole project on the studio TV.
AYON needs a pipeline TD.
HivePipe needs a terminal.
Spend weeks on pipeline setup. Need a dedicated TD to configure environments, manage DCC paths, write OpenPype overrides, and onboard every artist individually.
Ship in one command. Any PM can deploy it. Any artist can publish. The pipeline gets out of the way and lets your team focus on the work.
From the first shot card to final delivery, every task, dependency, and deadline is visible to your whole team — without a spreadsheet in sight.
Full hierarchy with inheritance and overrides
Switch instantly — the data never changes
Know where your budget is going in real time
Artists log time in-tool, supervisors see the burn
Frame-accurate annotations, side-by-side version compare, and a client portal that doesn't require Nuke, Frame.io, or a Dropbox link.
Draw, mark, comment — synced to exact frames
No Nuke, no plugins. Just a URL.
Wipe or side-by-side with locked scrub
Queue up a session, share with client via secure link
Foot sliding on step 3 — needs graph editor pass
Looks good up to this point ✓
Blocking approved
Artist hits publish. Anatomy engine resolves the path. Validators catch mistakes. File lands in the right place, version is logged, review is submitted.
Native panels inside your DCC — no browser tab required
No manual path entry. Every file goes exactly where it should.
Frame range, naming, scale, cache settings — all checked on publish
Works with Nuke, Katana, Gaffer — integrate with any OpenAssetIO host
Outsource without losing control. Your studio pushes shots to a vendor — they see tasks, source plates, and notes in their own HivePipe. They publish back. You see versions in your review queue.
No Dropbox. No "did you get my email?" No shared credentials.
Set rules once. When animation is approved, comp task creates automatically. When deadline is 3 days out, the producer gets a ping. No TD required, no custom scripting.
React to status changes, deadlines, publishes, and more
Animation done? Comp task appears, assigned, ready to go
Ping the right person at the right time — Slack, email, or in-app
Visual rule builder — any PM can set it up in minutes
"Lighting burning 2.3× faster than bid. Reallocate before end of week 6."
Every task has a bid in days. Every publish logs time. HivePipe calculates burn rate in real time and predicts the final cost. The AI writes a plain-English summary of what's at risk.
Enter your bid days per task, watch actual time log automatically
Extrapolates from current burn to predict final cost before you overshoot
HiveMind writes plain-English alerts so producers know exactly what needs attention
Full-project live view on the studio TV — everyone aligned, no stand-up needed
| Feature | HivePipe | AYON | ShotGrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deploy time | 5 min | 2+ days | Vendor |
| Self-hosted | |||
| Price | Free / $799 one-time | Free (complex setup)* | $600/user/yr |
| TD required to deploy | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ |
| USD viewport in browser | |||
| Version compare | |||
| OpenAssetIO | |||
| Playlists / dailies | |||
| Time logging | |||
| Studio federation | ✓ (Pro) | ✕ (shared account only) | |
| EDL / XML shot import | Manual only | ||
| Review via email (no login) | Pro | ||
| Auto delivery transcode | Pro | ||
| Budget forecasting + AI | Pro | Limited | |
| Pipeline automation rules | Pro | Partial |
* AYON is open source but requires significant technical expertise to deploy and maintain.
One command. No YAML wizardry. No TD on call.
Self-hosted forever. No seats. No invoices. Pay once for Pro features — the software never stops working.
Instant delivery. License key by email.
Software never expires. Updates stop after 12 months unless renewed at $299/yr.