For each discipline in your flowchart, you should add one or more components. 


Each component represents a resource that either:

  • Needs to be available for the discipline to use when they begin work.
  • Is produced by the discipline from scratch.


There are potentially many steps involved when creating a component, so we have divided them into separate articles. Here, we begin with creating the component. At the end of that section, you can find links to the articles that explain how to apply the other settings, such as input filters and output filters.


Create the component

To create a new component:


  1. Display the Disciplines flowchart.

    From the Dashboard, select the project that contains the Disciplines flowchart. Then select the Pipeline option in the header menu to display the pipeline flowchart. Select the Disciplines flowchart tab.

    You can only display the Disciplines flowchart if your Entity types flowchart has been set up to contain entities. (You cannot add a discipline unless there are entities available).


  2. Select the discipline that is going to contain the new component. The discipline's properties are shown in the sidebar.

  3. On the Components tab, select the plus + button to display a dialog that you can use to create a new component.





  4. Enter a name for the component. SimpleCloud automatically creates a codename based on the name you enter. 
  5. Select the Component type.

    Component type setting has a list and also a search
    SimpleCloud includes various, commonly used components that you can select from the drop-down list. We also have an extended list of animation production components available, and it is it possible for developers to use the SimpleCloud API to create custom component types too. Any extended options and custom options are also added to the list.

    If you enter the first few characters of the option you want, the list will filter to show close matches. This can be quicker than searching through the menu.

    To find out how each component works, navigate to the SimpleCloud code deployment and view the configuration files and actions. For more details, see Program a Pipeline in SimpleCloud.

  6. Select the Component format. In most cases, this is the format of the file that is used for the component, for example, you could choose .psd for a Scene (SCENE) component.


When you select a Component format, extra fields appear, which you can use for setting up the component's inputs and outputs, filters for those inputs and outputs, and some other preferences.


Component settings has Connection, Input filters, Output filters, and Pipeline tools tabs


To find out more about these extra settings, see:


Connection tab:


Input filters and Output filters tabs:


Pipeline tools tab: