Chinese Business Development Program Ensures Render Efficiency for Growing Community of New Media, Film and Gaming Firms
Los Angeles, CA, March 10, 2015 – In an effort to spur economic growth, China’s Jiangye District government has purchased 400 licenses of PipelineFX’s Qube! to manage the rendering needs of 100 companies currently residing in its new Jiangye Newtown Technology Park and a recently announced joint venture with Original Force that will provide renders, motion capture, color grading and 3D scanning to customers across the globe.
The Jiangye Newtown Technology Park was created to support and incentivize a growing technology community populated by artists and companies working in the films, games, animation and new media industries. As rendering plays a big role in getting CG approved and out the door, the government enlisted Original Force – the esteemed Chinese game and 3D animation studio – to assess the global pipeline needs for the development’s long list of studios.
“During the proposal process, we saw a lot of value in submitting tools that have worked well for us over the years,” said Jeff Zhang, Marketing Director of Original Force. “That meant including standards like Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya for creation jobs and relying on PipelineFX’s render farm manager Qube! to make sure everything gets done on time.”
Original Force’s proposal also came with recommendations for motion capture, color grading, game engines, and 3D scanning/printing tools, ensuring that the Jiangye Newtown Technology Park would be fully equipped to take on whatever the complex’s artists threw at the free-use pipeline. Since 100 companies yield a lot of render jobs, Qube! will factor into this system quite heavily as it will be the engine routing and prioritizing those tasks.
“Qube! has the power to address problems before they become problems,” added Zhang. “While a render farm with no manager might just stop working on a job if there’s an error, Qube! spots it and either starts the job again or sends it to another machine so your artwork stays on track. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have to always stand over the machine watching for mistakes.”
Qube! was also chosen for its customization capabilities. While Qube! is known for its flexibility – cross-platform, optimized for top content creation software – every pipeline requires something different. Through a mix of PipelineFX’s support team and Qube!’s API, firms can adapt their render farm to their own specific requirements.
“Qube!’s API interface has helped Original Force develop a lot of customized bridges between the different types of rendering software we use,” said Zhang. “As a current resident of the Jiangye Technology Park, we can share some of our secrets with our new neighbors, so they can enjoy the benefits of working with Qube! even faster.”
With rapid growth and continued investment on the horizon, the 6,000 core system Qube! manages is just the beginning. The next step in Original Force’s mind is to create an R&D software platform that can handle a remote rendering service. For companies like Original Force that have multiple outposts across China, this system could make the transfer of large, high-res files between branches even easier. And if this happens, Qube! will no doubt be involved.
“PipelineFX’s support will be essential to the growth of the Jiangye Newtown Technology Park and the companies within it,” continued Zhang. “Efficiency never stops being useful, and becomes even more important as technology and the art produced with it becomes more complicated. With Qube!, we know we have something that can be trusted to perform even when a building full of artists are sending everything they can in its direction. That’s why we suggested it in the first place.”
About Qube!™ and Smart Farming™
Qube! is an intelligent, mature and highly scalable render management solution that can be quickly integrated into any production workflow, and is backed by world-class technical support. Smart Farming delivers intelligence to production pipelines by providing business-critical insight into render pipelines, maximizing investment in rendering infrastructure and automating manual processes. Qube! works out of the box with all leading content creation applications and is truly cross-platform with all software components available on Windows®, Linux®, and Mac OS®X operating systems.
About PipelineFX
As the leading provider of intelligent render farm management solutions for digital content creation, PipelineFX provides software, support, consulting and training services worldwide. Qube! runs on more than 30,000 render nodes at over 700 customers in 51 countries and is used to render film and visual effects, post production, broadcast, design, games and education media. Clients include Apple, Arc Productions, Base FX, BBC, Cinesite, Deluxe, Dyson, Efilm, Electronic Arts, Google, HBO, Hasbro, L.M.U., Lockheed Martin, L'Atelier Animation, Method Studios, MPC, NBC Sports, Next Media Animation, Nvidia, NHK, NYU, Original Force, Pratt Institute, Procter & Gamble, ReelFX, South Park Studios, SVA, Target, Technicolor and many others. PipelineFX is headquartered in Honolulu, HI, and has offices in Los Angeles, London, Portland, Las Vegas, and Vancouver.