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Streamline your creative workflows so you can get to market faster with better games. Here's how.

August 1, 2022

5 Min Read

Author: by Katie Cole

Presented by Perforce

Here’s a scene I think you will recognize: You search and search for an art file you need. You can’t find the right one, so you painstakingly remake it. Then you send it to the teammates who need it ASAP and watch impatiently as it slowly loads and delivers. Whatever feedback you receive on the asset is sent piecemeal over email and messenger, and as you revise it, you scroll back and forth through messages to make sure you address every point. Meanwhile, you’re fielding questions from other teammates: Where is asset A saved again? And was asset B approved yet?

I’m not a doctor, but if the above situation sounds like your team, I can confidently diagnose you with a chaotic creative workflow. The cure is a single source of truth for all your game art.

My team and I are excited to announce the launch of the newest addition to the Perforce Planning & Collaboration Suite for Games: Helix DAM. It was built to streamline creative workflows so you can get to market faster with better games.

So, What Is Helix DAM, Exactly?

Helix DAM is a new web-based UI layer built on top of Helix Core, the version control system trusted by 22 out of 25 top AAA game studios. Helix DAM streamlines and secures the process of storing, finding, using, reviewing, and tracking the progress of creative assets — including 2D, 3D, audio, and video files.

Why Did We Build It?

In addition to solving for messy and time-wasting scenarios like the one above, the team at Perforce heard from our customers that creative and technical teams needed a way to accommodate each other’s workflows while keeping assets secure. We often heard that the creative teams found version control intimidating and needed it to be more invisible, or in the background of their workflow, to help keep all their assets in one place.

So, we designed Helix DAM to make collaboration between creative & technical teams easier.

The idea behind the Helix DAM is simple. It helps creative teams:

  • Maximize the use of their creative assets – Stop recreating everything from scratch because it is too hard to locate.

  • Streamline the review process – Stop the chaos of reviewing creative assets over email, Dropbox, or Slack.

  • Save money – Reduce storage costs by keeping all assets in your single source of truth and save your team time by easing collaboration.

  • Secure their creative intellectual property – keep assets in a secure location from creation to delivery.

How Does Helix DAM Work?

Helix DAM sits on top of Helix Core and offers a visual, web-based UI that provides teams with a library of all the creative assets in their available projects.

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Automated, AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven tagging and advanced searching makes it easy for team members to locate assets.

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Asset reuse functionality makes it a breeze to use the same asset in a single project exactly as is, or in various forms, or to take that asset and reuse it in a completely different project. Helix DAM maximizes the use of the creative work your artists and designers have already produced, speeds up delivery time, and gives teams the opportunity to iterate on even more critical parts of the product.

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Additionally, Helix DAM goes beyond storing assets; it provides a streamlined and secure way to review creative assets as well. In-Context feedback allows team members to comment on assets within the tool and quickly cycle through iterations to see how an asset got to its current state.

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And a Kanban board helps the entire team understand where an asset is in the creation process. Quickly see if it is in review or ready for use.

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How Does It Work with Helix Core?

As I mentioned earlier, Helix DAM is built on top of Helix Core. This means to use Helix DAM you must have a Helix Core server deployed that it can connect to. Helix DAM can connect to existing primary or commit Helix Core servers you have running today by simply entering your Helix Core server IP or DNS name.

What Value Do Teams Get from Helix DAM?

We designed and built Helix DAM from the ground up with one single vision: to simplify the way artists and designers interact with a version control system.

Helix DAM offers tremendous value to high-velocity creative teams in the following ways:

  • Find assets faster and easier. You can search using many different criteria, including tags, filename, project, collections, and more.

  • Speed up and simplify the review process. Leave comments directly on previews of the asset, so artists can clearly see which comment is for which part of the asset.

  • Improve organization. You can arrange your assets by project and collections to create an easy-to-use, project-based structure.

  • Get ironclad security and stay in full control of who can access what. Both internal and external contributors only have access to exactly the files they need.

  • Get started with it fast. It’s an easy-to-use web UI with no need to install complex desktop applications.

Streamline Creative Workflows & Accelerate Innovation

In a nutshell, Helix DAM is one secure, easy-to-use tool that unites teams and streamlines the game art creation process. We think it will save your teams a lot of time and energy — which you can instead spend creating even better, more immersive, and more innovative experiences for your customers.

Streamline Creative Workflows & Master Your Art

Try Helix DAM free for 14 days.

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