Even prior to the pandemic, advances in technology and cloud computing were making remote collaboration a reality for animation and VFX teams. But in the wake of the lockdowns, the number of remote creators has quickly increased so that we’ll see (at the very least) a permanent shift toward hybrid studios of onsite and remote artists. It’s important to understand though, that in media & entertainment, this sea change is more by design than circumstance. Productions have long relied on global project teams or contributors within their production pipeline to create a feature film or series. Enabling these geographically distant teams to work faster, more efficiently, and affordably in real time was always the goal, pandemic or not.
But how do you make it work?
Challenges
I’ll begin by addressing the challenges faced by project teams, most of which should sound familiar. First of all, you have large, diverse teams with specific workflows and multiple skills. Each skill requires its own software applications and system setup, from workstation to data center (physical or virtualized). In addition, these creators may be working remotely or scattered throughout the world. Secondly, 3D production pipelines are growing more complex as artists incorporate real-time ray tracing, rendering, simulation, and more into their workflows. To further complicate matters, the array of tools necessary to enable these workflows are often incompatible, leading to long, linear workflows burdened by time consuming export-import tasks. Lastly, the demand for faster time-to-solution, multiple iterations, and the expectation of true-to reality simulation and photorealism is increasing as well.
NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise
This is why NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise is so welcome. Full disclosure: my employer, BOXX Technologies, offers a line of NVIDIA-Certified Systems built to support Omniverse Enterprise, but that’s not why this platform is essential. The simple reason is that it directly addresses the aforementioned challenges, making real-time, seamless, simultaneous collaboration a reality. So what else does Omniverse Enterprise do? Please read on.
Cost and Waste Reduction
Simultaneous collaboration enables instantaneous edits and iterations to a project file at any layer, resulting in faster time to production with less redundancy and waste. Plus, the Omniverse Enterprise “single source of truth” workflow saves on costs incurred to store large, redundant file copies.
Increased Value of Existing Infrastructure
Omniverse Enterprise unites creative teams working across disjointed systems and incompatible software applications while also maximizing the value of existing infrastructure by unlocking live-sync collaboration between applications. It’s also the ideal solution to the hybrid/remote work challenge, giving studios the ability to connect creators across any NVIDIA RTX professional system.
No Productivity/Innovation Trade-off
Omniverse Enterprise allows teams to make maximum iterations at no opportunity cost, meaning they can take more creative risks with no time or effort sacrificed, leading to superior production quality.
Accelerated Time to Production
Omniverse Enterprise eliminates tedious, linear exporting/importing, which should be music to every post pro’s ears. With a mere click to ultra high fidelity, it enables all team members to review detailed animation and VFX.
Conclusion
The NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise platform offers easy-to-deploy, end-to-end collaboration and true-to-reality simulation that will transform complex animation and VFX workflows for studios of any size. It unites project teams, creative assets, and software applications in a shared virtual space, enabling all to collaborate on a project file simultaneously. In terms of ROI, real-time interoperability across those applications means multiple iterations at no opportunity cost. You can also maximize creative risk to reach improved quality and innovation—and to meet critical post deadlines. Finally, NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise is optimized and certified to run on NVIDIA RTX professional mobile workstations (like BOXX Technologies’ GoBOXX) and NVIDIA-Certified Systems including BOXX APEXX workstations, RAXX rack mounted systems, or FLEXX data center platforms (bare metal or virtualized solutions). BOXX systems are purpose-built for Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, and Arnold, as well as Cinema 4D, Chaos V-Ray, Unreal Engine, Blender, and a host of motion media editing applications.
Lean more about BOXX NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise solutions here.