VFX innovation

building the cloud infrastructure

Google Cloud Platform runs on the same infrastructure used to power Google and serves its global user base across Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and other services. It enables developers to build, test and deploy applications on Google’s highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure. Choose from computing, storage and application services for modern web, mobile and backend solutions.

The cloud has become the future for growing businesses and successful projects. Could you tell us a bit about Google Cloud’s role in the VFX industry and provide some examples?

Google Cloud Platform provides virtually limitless compute and storage capacity for companies of all sizes. Combined with our fast global network, our infrastructure is ideal for the VFX industry given the large datasets produced and intense computational requirements. Processing is billed on a per-minute basis (after 10 minutes), making it an ideal use case for burst rendering capacity. Customers include Framestore, The Mill, RodeoFX, Hornet, Moonbot Studios, and Atomic Fiction. Recent projects rendered on Google Cloud Platform include the Robert Zemeckis feature film The Walk (VFX by Atomic Fiction) and the animated film Taking Flight (completed by Moonbot Studios).

Taking Flight

Can you tell our readers a little more about the different types of products Google Cloud Platform offers? How can these be combined to meet objectives?

Indeed, products and solutions can be composed based on the business needs. Best way to learn about our offerings is through our products page:
cloud.google.com/products

For Media specifically, check out
cloud.google.com/solutions/media

Because we offer the entire suite, we have customers using just one or two products, to customers using our entire suite of offerings. So from individual developers to small startups, all the way to the largest companies in the world driving innovation and top-line growth by running their IT stack on top of Google Cloud Platform. We aim to provide the best infrastructure in the world for our customers’ businesses.

As Google Cloud Platform has become the flexible option for data storage, what other services do you offer for small and big companies?

Google Cloud Platform believes in an open platform and offers rendering solutions to all sizes of companies within the paradigm of a flexible pipeline that best fits their needs. For smaller to mid-size studios we offer Zync Render, a turnkey solution built on Google Cloud Platform that supports asset transfer, on-demand licensing and a browser-based render management system. We are also working closely with key content creation software partners to enable support of their solutions on our platform. These include Thinkbox Software’s Deadline Render Manager, Avere Systems Virtual FXT Edge filer and licensing for VRay, Arnold, Renderman and Nuke for Zync.

We are also working closely with the major Hollywood studios to ensure Google Cloud Platform meets the security standards required for VFX studios to utilize us for rendering.

For studios that wish to build their own custom solution on top of our compute and storage offerings we have experience working and consulting with companies to construct this, incorporating all parts of the pipeline including syncing assets & dependencies, configuring a VM and integrating your existing render manager.

Is there anything else you would like to mention to our readers?

We encourage you to visit our Media Solutions by Google Cloud Platform homepage and Zync Render to learn how our solutions can help your workflow. We believe we are in the early days of cloud, and the true promise of cloud computing is beyond just “lift and shift” of existing workloads into remote servers. We believe the true promise is letting artists, creators, and engineers focus on their core business. This means that rather than focusing on IT as a cost center, our customers are focused on their users: driving engagement, growing usage, market share, and ultimately serving their users in fundamentally different and more effective ways. Zync Render is an example of this, where small teams of artists -- even individual artists -- can create extraordinary renders without touching a single server farm and without doing any IT management. They focus on their core competency: creating unforgettable scenes and creativity. Cloud is at its best when it fades into the background and you don’t know there’s complex technology behind it. Creators focus on building what’s next.

Atomic Fiction

Atomic Fiction has whisked audiences away to some of the most exciting worlds ever created, from Game of Thrones to Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

For it's latest trick, the studio created something more down to earth – or high above it, to be exact – in Robert Zemeckis' The Walk, Atomic Fiction transports both Joseph Gordon Levitt and the audience 1,300 ft above the streets of 1974 New York.

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