The input could be a digital asset, a movie clip, picture, document, spreadsheet, script file, 3D model, simulation, etc. When the pipeline is developed and controlled in this way each of the blocks can have people or teams who can focus on taking their input, running their processes on it and producing their output for the next block in the pipeline.

It is also worth mentioning that each block in the pipeline also very likely has its own more granular process in and of itself. For instance animators will take the script, voice track, storyboards, and animatics and go through the process of blocking -> splining -> polishing. Animators will iterate over that process before producing their final output of a fully animated scene with baked keys as the Animation Pipeline Block Output

If you really get jazzed about creating, planning, managing and executing pipeline processes you should probably look into getting into production and even into becoming a film or vfx producer. The job of the producer is to drive this crazy machine and ensure that all the parts stay well oiled such that the final film output makes everyone equally happy and un-happy at the same time

In the process of producing this material I found a really good website with some great info. Check it out!

Let's take a look at a pretty decent pipeline overview flowchart to see what we have been discussing