AWS Deadline Cloud launches to transform content rendering pipeline

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched AWS Deadline Cloud, a fully managed service that helps customers set up, deploy, and scale rendering projects in minutes to make their rendering pipelines more efficient and take on more work.

With Deadline Cloud, customers creating computer graphics, visual effects (VFX) or creative pipelines to incorporate artificial intelligence-generated (AI-generated) visual effects can build cloud-based render farms (aggregated computing) that scale from zero to thousands of compute instances. Meet peak demand without having to manage your own infrastructure.

Customers can customize rendering pipelines for specific projects using built-in customization tools and integration with digital content creation (DCC) software such as Autodesk Arnold, Autodesk Maya, Foundry Nuke and SideFX Houdini, and render directly from their preferred tool For use in design, modeling, animation, visual effects, and more. With Deadline Cloud, creative teams can speed up production times by running more projects in parallel without worrying about capacity constraints. Deadline Cloud provides built-in budget management capabilities to help customers understand the cost of each project at a high level of granularity with no upfront costs. Clients only pay when they render. To get started with Deadline Cloud, visit aws.amazon.com/deadline-cloud.

The final frame of VFX and other digital media is produced through a process called rendering, which takes 2D and 3D digital content data and calculates the output, such as an image or video. The need to render high-resolution content developed by creative studios and generative artificial intelligence tools has led many organizations to build their own on-premises infrastructure—render farms—that combine the power of hundreds or even thousands of compute nodes to handle rendering jobs. A render farm, which consists of queues (submitted rendering jobs) and queues (groups of nodes that process the queues), can take weeks or even months to set up and deploy, and requires significant planning and upfront commitment to procure hardware. and configure complex infrastructure.

Organizations must decide between meeting peak demand, which can result in costly infrastructure sitting idle between delivery cycles, or encountering fixed capacity constraints, which can limit the number of concurrent projects they can take on. Delaying the project may result in missed delivery commitments. Render farms also require companies to connect software from multiple specialized DCC tools, such as animation or game movie software. If the software in the asset pipeline is incompatible or incompatible with the render management tool, the studio will need to retain older versions of the software, compromising its required workflow, or introduce additional processes to integrate the software.

Additionally, organizations need to track and manage costs to stay within budget, and internal tools often lack the functionality to easily track project costs. While some organizations use rendering management software such as AWS Thinkbox Deadline, many studios do not have the in-house staff or IT resources to configure or manage their own cloud-based computing infrastructure and must source alternative computing and IT support from outside. As a result, organizations may lack the scalability to easily grow their business.

Through Deadline Cloud, customers in industries such as media and entertainment, architecture and engineering can transform their content rendering pipelines for projects such as film, TV shows, commercials, games, industrial design and more without upfront investment or ongoing costs between projects. Customers can access Deadline Cloud through the AWS Management Console and use a guided process to set up a render farm, including providing the size and duration of the project to determine instance type and configuration permissions. Deadline Cloud automatically configures Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud execution instances and manages network and computing infrastructure, simplifying customers’ ability to scale computing as needed. For customers who have invested in on-premises computing, Deadline Cloud can consolidate and extend their existing computing and use it to perform rendering jobs. Customers can use built-in integration with popular DCC tools to eliminate the need to manually set up and license render projects for each DCC and reduce the time and effort required to customize rendering pipelines for each job.

For example, animation studios can combine DCC and generative AI technologies to use Deadline Cloud to render compute-intensive scenes at scale for upcoming movies without worrying about impacting other projects or configuring additional infrastructure. Deadline Cloud’s dashboard provides customers with a comprehensive view to analyze logs, preview rendering jobs in progress, and easily view and control costs. With Deadline Cloud, customers can link their own third-party software licenses to the service, or easily use usage-based licensing to render using existing DCC tools and rendering engines. Deadline Cloud’s scale and elasticity (through its pay-as-you-go model) means customers don’t need expensive hardware or the time to set up a local render farm.

“We are at an inflection point in the industry, where the demand for render-quality VFX and the volume of content created using generative AI is outpacing customers’ on-premises render farm capacity,” said Antony Passemard, general manager of creative tools at AWS.

“AWS Deadline Cloud meets any customer’s rendering requirements by providing a scalable render farm without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure. Creative teams can embrace the speed of the content pipeline and respond quickly to opportunities to accept more projects while meeting pressing deadlines. deadlines and provide high-quality content.

Deadline Cloud is now available in US East (Ohio), US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (Ireland).

Animaj is a next-generation media company bringing high-quality, inspiring brands to children and families around the world.

“Our business is rooted in automating and optimizing the production of 3D animated scenes that spark the imaginations of children around the world,” said Antoine Lhermitte, VP of Engineering at Animaj. “Our unique pipeline, which combines complex character animation operations, runs on custom infrastructure. (multiple steps) are tedious and time-consuming, creating content bottlenecks and reducing the time we have for innovative storytelling.

“With AWS Deadline Cloud, we can scale rendering capacity up or down based on dynamic workloads, and adjust capacity in minutes instead of hours. By offloading undifferentiated work, we’ve been able to deploy seven times faster, enabling We accelerate artists’ invention so they can focus on their creativity and bring inspiring stories to global audiences.

Company 3 is a comprehensive post-production facility responsible for feature films, series, commercials and music videos.

Phil Wortas, Director of New Technology at Company 3, said: “Over the years, we have invested in local resources to handle large rendering jobs.

“AWS Deadline Cloud’s flexibility in managing rendering compute on-premises and in the cloud, and its ability to use open job descriptions gave us the freedom to build the integrations we needed, helping us easily share job execution processes across multiple departments within our company.”

For 35 years, SideFX has provided artists with stylized 3D animation and visual effects tools designed to create the highest quality cinematic effects.

“As the creators of Houdini, the industry-leading visual effects software, it’s critical to us that artists get an intuitive, customizable, and future-proof experience when using our tools,” said Rob Stauffer, Technical Consulting Manager at SideFX.

“Houdini’s integration with AWS Deadline Cloud means artists can use advanced and familiar tools for motion graphics, virtual reality, and more, then render seamlessly in the cloud directly from Houdini, allowing creators to focus on innovating new ways to deliver their stunning visuals. Amazing content rather than managing rendering workflows. We look forward to exploring new opportunities to leverage the performance and capabilities of Deadline Cloud to enhance the richness of Houdini’s comprehensive toolset.

Check out the upcoming Cloud Transformation Conference, a free virtual event for business and technology leaders to explore the evolving cloud transformation landscape. Book your free virtual ticket to gain insight into the practicalities and opportunities of cloud adoption. Learn more here.

Label: AWS, infrastructure, rendering