City software educator no longer ‘best-kept secret'

By Jim Stafford

Published: October 30, 2007

Piyush Patel refers to PL Studios Inc. as "Oklahoma City's best-kept secret” for its fast-growing business of creating digital animation education software.

The city's "secret” was unveiled in a pair of events Friday: a digital animation workshop at the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park and an open house and ribbon cutting at PL Studio's new MidTown headquarters at 501 N Walker.

PL Studios makes and markets a popular line of digital animation education software known as Digital-Tutors. The software helps train digital artists in the nuances of complex animation software such as Maya, Softimage's XSI, Pixar's RenderMan and more.

All are used extensively by the entertainment industry to create animated films and video games. Representatives from Pixar Animation Studios, Side Effects Software, VICON House of Moves, Softimage Co., and Janimation showed short clips and provided demos at the Upgrade 2007: Evolving Art & Filmmaking workshop.

The companies all have such a close relationship with PL Studios that some of them even bundle the Digital-Tutors training software with their applications for new users. They came to Oklahoma City at Patel's invitation.

"We e-mailed them and said, ‘We are having a grand opening and would you like to come down?'” said Patel, founder and chief executive of PL Studios. "Every one of these people said, ‘We will be there with a smile.'”

The reception by PL Studios' industry partners created the opportunity to host the workshop along with the grand opening celebration.

An overflow crowd of almost 200 people wedged into a conference room at the Research Park Conference Center for the workshop. They watched captivating demonstrations and heard the speakers talk about how quickly the industry — and the software that runs it — is evolving.

"Quite frankly, I don't know how (PL Studios) keeps up with the changes,” said Peter Robbinson, education specialist at Side Effects Software.

Dylan Sisson, RenderMan Technical Artist at Pixar, provided a "wow” moment when he turned a flat drawing of a fish into a multisided, 3-D fish on the fly. Then he filled the screen with hundreds of identical three-dimensional fish.

Pixar is the creator of such animated blockbusters as "Toy Story,” "Monsters, Inc.” and "Ratatouille.”

While Digital-Tutors has gained a wide following in the animation industry, few in the crowd indicated they knew that the software was created by an Oklahoma City-based company.

"This is our core business; this is what we do,” Patel said. "We train people.”

Dana Myers, an interactive media instructor at Francis Tuttle Technology Center, said the school brought more than 50 students to the workshop.

"It's a great opportunity for our students, and they were so generous for inviting us,” Myers said. "We're getting into 3-D animation, so we are using all of (PL Studios') Maya tutorials. They are very good; the students love them. They are very engaging and it makes it a lot easier to learn.”

After the workshop ended Friday afternoon, PL Studios showed off its new 9,000-square-foot headquarters in MidTown, where 15 people are employed creating the Digital-Tutors software.

The company recently relocated from a longtime location in far western Oklahoma City.

Patel said the animation professionals liked what they saw during their visit.

"They were completely blown away by Oklahoma City,” Patel said. "This is the first time that any of these guests had been to Oklahoma. They were so impressed.”

Patel promised similar workshops in the future and said he wants to create user groups for each of the animation software packages used by industry professionals.

"We had a great mix (at the workshop),” Patel said. "There were artists, there were business people, there were students. Those are the people that it takes to spark this type of innovation. I think a lot of people left inspired.”

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