Art And Technical Art — professional stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) for Art – Perforce / Asset Library
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 5 users, 20 workspaces, 1TB versioned storage included; Paid: $39/user/mo annual ($45 monthly), includes Swarm + DAM; Storage overage $0.20/GB-mo, Extra workspace $5/mo
Large Binary Version Control for Art (Git LFS / Perforce Bridge)
Where your source code lives and is collaborated on. Non-negotiable for any team or serious project.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free: 1GB LFS storage, 1GB bandwidth/mo; Pro $4/user/mo gives 2GB LFS; Overage $0.10/GB-mo storage, $0.10/GB bandwidth; Perforce $39/user/mo unlimited binary diff, $0.15/GB cross-site relay
Art Binary Storage – Raw Asset Lake (FBX, PSD, USD, Textures)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsR2 Free: 10GB storage, 10M Class A / 50M Class B ops, zero egress fees; B2: $0.006/GB-mo storage, $0.01/GB download (first 3x storage free egress); S3: $0.023/GB-mo first 50TB, PUT $0.005/1k, GET $0.0004/1k, Egress $0.09/GB to 10TB; Glacier Instant $0.004/GB-mo
Texture/Material Library Hosting & Delivery (Substance, Megascans)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsSubstance Individual $22.99/mo (50 credits), Team $49.99/mo (200 credits, 100pts ~100 materials); Quixel Free: unlimited w/ Epic account < $1M revenue; Poly Haven: 100% free CC0 unlimited; Storage overage R2 $0.015/GB-mo
Art Review & Approval Hosting – Dailies (Frame.io / SyncSketch)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsFrame.io Free: 2GB, 1 project; Team $15/user/mo annual (50GB pooled per user), $18.75 monthly; Pro $25/user/mo 500GB pooled; SyncSketch Pro $20/user/mo unlimited projects; Overage $0.12/GB-mo storage over quota
CDN for Art Asset Distribution (builds, patches, textures)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudflare Free: unlimited bandwidth (fair-use), 10GB R2 free then $0.015/GB-mo; BunnyCDN $1/mo minimum, $0.01/GB NA/EU, $0.03/GB Asia, storage $0.01/GB-mo; CloudFront $0.085/GB first 10TB, $0.02/10k req; Overage $0.09/GB
Render Farm Orchestration (Deadline / OpenCue)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDeadline Free: 10 local nodes free unlimited queue; Deadline Cloud Orchestration $0.12/worker-hr + EC2 g4dn.xlarge $0.526/hr, g5.xlarge $1.006/hr On-Demand; Fox: $0.15/GHz-hr CPU, $0.85/GHz-hr GPU RTX 4090; Overage burst license $50/day per 100 nodes
Artifact Repository for Processed Art Binaries (DDS, KTX, USDz)
Where your source code lives and is collaborated on. Non-negotiable for any team or serious project.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudsmith Free 1GB storage 50GB transfer; GitHub Packages Free 500MB; Nexus OSS free self-host (storage $0.023/GB); JFrog Free 2GB; Team $45/mo (10GB), Pro $150/mo (50GB); Overage $0.45/GB-mo storage, $0.30/GB transfer
Secrets Management for Art Pipeline (Perforce tokens, API keys)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsDoppler Free: 25 secrets 1 env; AWS Secrets $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls; HCP Vault Free 25 secrets, Plus $30/mo base for 25 secrets + $1.20/secret/mo after; Overage $0.30/secret, $0.08/1k API calls over 10k
Build Farm for Texture Compression & Mesh Processing (A10G/GPU)
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free 2000 min/mo (Linux), 500 min extra $0.008/min; Vast.ai RTX 4090 $0.35-0.65/hr, A10G $0.75/hr; AWS g5.xlarge $1.006/hr on-demand, Spot $0.38/hr (70% off), g6e $1.20/hr; Overage build minutes $0.008/min CPU, $0.02/min GPU
Crash & Error Reporting for Custom Art Tools (DCC plugins)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSentry Free: 5k errors/mo, 50k replays, 1GB attachments, 1 user; Team $26/mo (50k errors, $0.00036/error over), Business $80/mo (100k errors); GlitchTip self-host $6/mo VPS + S3 $0.023/GB; Overage $0.0003/error, $0.02/GB attachments
Production Tracking for Art – ShotGrid / ftrack Equivalent
Rates, labels, and tracking for physical goods. Needed once you actually ship products.Pricing & free-tier limitsKitsu OSS free self-host, hosted Starter $10/mo 5 users; ftrack $25/user/mo annual (500GB pooled), $30 monthly; ShotGrid $60/user/mo annual, $78 monthly, 7% support uplift; Overage ftrack API $0.10/1k calls over 100k, storage $0.20/GB
Distributed Build Cache for Art Builds (Incredibuild / Shader Cache)
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitssccache + R2 free except R2 $0.015/GB-mo; Buildbarn self-host $10/mo VPS; Incredibuild Free 1k build-min, Growth $0.05/core-min (~$180/mo for 10 cores full-time); Overage $0.08/core-min, cache $0.15/GB-mo over 100GB
High-Performance Shared Storage Gateway (Studio NAS)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsSyncthing/Resilio Free unlimited P2P; LucidLink Team $25/user/mo + $0.16/GB-mo active hot block, $0.06/GB archive, first 1TB egress included; Hammerspace $500/mo base + $0.20/GB hot; Overage $0.20/GB over 1TB, egress $0.08/GB over
Material Authoring License Floating & Compliance Server
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsSubstance Single $22.99/mo, Team floating concurrent $60/user/mo; LicenseSpring $15/mo base + $0.10/hr floating check; FlexLM Cloud $200/mo 10 license packs; OpenLM Enterprise $300/mo 250 licenses; Overage $75 per extra concurrent checkout day, $2.50/license-day
Font & Icon Asset Licensing & Hosting
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsGoogle Fonts / Bunny Fonts Free unlimited; Adobe Fonts Free with CC (20k fonts); Monotype Enterprise $350/yr starter (250 fonts, 1M pageview/mo), overage $0.15/1k views; Hosting CDN Bunny $1/mo + $0.01/GB; R2 $0.015/GB-mo
Video Transcoding for Dailies & Art Previews (MediaConvert/FFmpeg)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsFFmpeg self-host free (compute EC2 Spot $0.0464/vCPU/hr); Mux $0.016/min SD, $0.033/min HD encoding; MediaConvert Basic $0.0075/min SD, $0.015/min HD QVBR, audio $0.0015/min; S3 storage $0.023/GB-mo; Overage $0.02/min priority queue
Metadata Search & Tagging Engine for Asset Library
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsTypesense OSS free on $10/mo VPS (1GB RAM); Meilisearch Cloud Starter $30/mo 100k docs 1M searches; Algolia Free 10k records 100k ops, Build $0.50/1k records + $0.50/1k search units (~$250/mo @500k records); Overage $0.60 per 1k records, search $0.40/1k ops
Backup & Archival for Master Art Files (Glacier / Deep Archive)
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsB2 Free 10GB then $0.006/GB-mo storage, $0.01/GB download; Wasabi $6.99/TB-mo ($0.00699/GB) min 90 days free egress; S3 Glacier Instant $0.004/GB-mo retrieval $0.03/GB, Deep Archive $0.00099/GB-mo (180 day min) restore $0.025/GB + $0.025/1k requests; Overage min duration charges apply
On-Prem GPU Render Node Pool / Spot Fleet Manager (Lookdev)
Powers AI features — model access, embeddings, and inference. Costs scale with usage, so watch the meter.Pricing & free-tier limitsVast RTX 4090 $0.45/hr, A10G $0.75/hr; Lambda L4 $0.60/hr, A10G $0.75/hr; AWS g5.xlarge Spot $0.38/hr On-Demand $1.006/hr, g6.xlarge Spot $0.52/hr On-Demand $1.31/hr; CoreWeave A40 $0.90/hr; Overage Spot fallback On-Demand +20%, data $0.05/GB
Shader Compilation Farm as a Service
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsFASTBuild OSS free; Hetzner CCX23 4 vCPU $0.10/hr; Incredibuild Cloud $299/mo 20 cores unlimited shaders, $0.06/core-min over; SN-DBS $400/dev-kit/yr + $0.15/min compile; Overage $0.08/min shader job, queue priority $50/day
Photogrammetry Processing Pipeline (RealityCapture, Metashape)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsMeshroom free (compute only $0.10/hr CCX); RealityCapture PPI $0.004/mpix, 5000 img 24MP ~$10 credit, 100 credits $99 (~$0.99/credit); Metashape Pro $3499 one-time + $649/yr support, cloud $0.015/GP-point processing; Overage 10% discount over $500 spend
Motion Capture Data Ingest & Storage (Mocap)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsMinIO free self-host $10 VPS; Wasabi $6.99/TB-mo, R2 $0.015/GB-mo free egress; Move.ai Starter $300/mo 15 hrs processing, Enterprise $1200/mo 100 hrs; Rokoko Plus $50/mo per suit user; Overage $45/hr mocap processing, storage $0.023/GB-mo
LOD & Mesh Optimization as a Service (Simplygon / InstaLOD)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsBlender OSS free; Simplygon Free Indie 1k optimizations/mo; Pro $1200/mo unlimited local + $0.10/optimization cloud; InstaLOD SDK $950/mo per 10 seat batch + $0.05/optimization over 10k; Azure worker $0.75/hr A10G; Overage $0.08/optimization
Asset Validation & Linting CI Pipeline for Art (USD, textures)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Free 2000 min Linux, Pro $4/user 3000 min; Buildkite $15/user/mo + agent $0.005/min CPU, $0.02/min GPU validator; TeamCity Cloud Free 100 build configs, $45/mo extra 50 configs; Overage $0.01/min CPU, $0.02/min GPU validation, $0.15/GB artifact
Telemetry & Usage Analytics for Custom DCC Tools
Understands your users and supports them. Drives product decisions and retention.Pricing & free-tier limitsPostHog OSS free + $10 VPS ClickHouse; Cloud Free 1M events 5k session recordings; Starter $0 up to 1M then $0.000248/event (~$248 per 1M over), Growth $350/mo 5M events; Mixpanel Free 20M events limited; Overage $0.30 per 1k events over quota
VFX Simulation Cache Storage (OpenVDB, Alembic, USD high-IO)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsFSx Lustre HDD $0.023/GB-mo, SSD $0.14/GB-mo (throughput 1200 MB/s/TiB); LucidLink hot $0.16/GB-mo active, $0.06 archive; S3 backend $0.023/GB; Hammerspace $500/mo base + $0.20/GB hot; Overage burst throughput $0.12/hr per TiB, $0.09/GB egress
Secure Remote Workstation Streaming (for artists – Parsec/HP)
Delivers and processes audio/video to users. Bandwidth-heavy, so plan the cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsSunshine/Moonlight free OSS; Parsec Free personal; Teams $30/user/mo min 3 seats ($90/mo), Warp $50/user/mo; HP Anyware Standard $30/user/mo, Professional $45/user/mo + $0.50/hr GPU broker; Nimble Studio $0.80/user/hr + $1.00/hr EC2 g5.xlarge; Overage $0.60/hr session
Color Management & LUT Hosting Service (OCIO, ACES)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub + OCIO free; R2 free 10GB then $0.015/GB-mo, Cloudflare egress free; Colourlab.ai Team $100/mo 10 users, Enterprise $299/mo unlimited; Dolby Vision license $3000/yr + $0.10/LUT processing; CDN overage $0.02/GB, $0.10/1k LUT converts
Asset Dependency Graph & Impact Analysis (USD/MaterialX)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsOpenAssetIO free OSS; Typesense Cloud $30/mo 100k assets 1M queries; ftrack Graph add-on $10/user/mo extra; Flow Production Tracking Enterprise $78/user/mo includes graph, storage $0.20/GB over; Overage $0.15 per 1k graph queries over 1M, $0.05/dependency edge reindex
How this professional art and technical art checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a professional art and technical art build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.