AWS for M&E Blog

Category: AWS Thinkbox

Accelerate Thinkbox Deadline by bursting to the cloud with Amazon File Cache

As the prevalence and complexity of computer-generated images (CGI) has increased in film, TV, and commercials over the years, so has the industry’s demand for massive compute for render farms to process and render CGI elements. Recently, Wētā FX made headlines with Avatar: The Way of Water, which had scenes so complex, it took 3.3 […]

AWS Thinkbox Deadline adds multi-regional support to Spot Event Plugin

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced AWS Thinkbox Deadline release 10.2.1 that includes the addition of AWS multi-regional support to the Spot Event Plugin, which allows Deadline customers to easily scale rendering by launching and managing Spot Fleets in multiple AWS regions from a single Spot Event Plugin. Introduction In order to leverage the elasticity […]

Figure 1: Autodesk VRED provides high-end rendering and streaming of complex digital assets

Virtual prototyping with Autodesk VRED on AWS

Figure 1: Autodesk VRED provides high-end rendering and streaming of complex digital assets The VRED set of software tools from Autodesk let designers create and present high-quality product renderings of complex digital assets, such as automotive vehicles and other engineering-related artefacts. VRED has traditionally used an array of hardware to increase productivity, including multiple GPU […]

AWS Thinkbox Deadline adds support for Rez

Today Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces AWS Thinkbox Deadline 10.2.0.10 support for Rez. “Rez is an open source, cross-platform package manager that creates standalone configured environments for third-party and proprietary digital content creation software. Rather than installing packages directly into environments like most other package managers, Rez installs all package versions into repositories on disk […]

AWS open sources Thinkbox artist tools for Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max

Today Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces that AWS Thinkbox plugins for Autodesk Maya (Krakatoa MY and XMesh MY), and for Autodesk 3ds Max (Krakatoa MX, XMesh MX, Frost MX, and Stoke MX) are now available under the Apache 2.0 open source license. You can access the source code from GitHub for KrakatoaMY, XMeshMY, KrakatoaMX XMeshMX, […]

Render sequence from Stranger Things season 4. Image courtesy of Netflix.

Netflix supports VFX companies onboard to the cloud, with AWS as key provider

The imaginative characters and settings from Netflix-original content like “Stranger Things,” “Bridgerton,” “Slumberland,” “The Adam Project,” and beyond couldn’t be brought to life for audiences worldwide without visual effects (VFX) and animation behind the scenes. Creating standout imagery for these projects and others requires substantial artistic talent, for which the streamer has acquired established VFX […]

AWS Thinkbox products now available free of charge

Today we are excited to announce that AWS Thinkbox products (Deadline, Draft, Krakatoa, Frost, XMesh, and Stoke) are now available at no cost. Thinkbox tools simplify rendering, VFX, and simulation workflows, and are in use by top studios around the world. AWS Thinkbox tools include: Deadline render farm management software that helps studios optimize and […]

AWS showcases content production in the cloud at SIGGRAPH 2022

The annual SIGGRAPH conference reconvenes in Vancouver August 8-11 for the first time in two years and we couldn’t be more excited to connect with colleagues and friends from around the world to celebrate the state of the art in computer graphics, animation, virtual production, and visual effects. Join us to learn about the latest […]

Explore remote production with AWS Partners at SIGGRAPH

In response to the exceptional demand for remote collaboration and virtual production, studios across the globe have shifted to cloud-based workflows for animation, visual effects (VFX), rendering, and editing. On-demand access to virtual workstations, elastic high-speed file storage, and scalable render farm capacity allow studios to scale up (and down) to meet project demand, onboard […]

How Winnie-the-Pooh sparked Method Melbourne’s journey to cloud rendering

Authored by Jon Stanley, Head of Systems of Method Melbourne. The content and opinions in this post are those of the third-party author and AWS is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this post.    If you’ve seen a blockbuster film in the last five years, you’ve likely witnessed the visual effects and […]