AWS for M&E Blog

Category: AWS Thinkbox

Landscape VFX

AWS enables Outpost VFX to service new clients anywhere in the world in hours

When he founded Outpost VFX in 2012, CEO Duncan McWilliam never thought that his studio’s on-premises computing infrastructure would max out the building’s electrical system—or that he would be asking the landlord for more power. Outpost VFX creates visual effects for films and episodic television. Some of its recent credits include the Amazon Prime series, […]

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. Render farms massively reduce render times by dividing large renders into smaller tasks and distributing those tasks among a […]

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 […]

Devin France in the film WENDY

Nice Shoes Places Cloud-Enabled Pipeline into Production Over a Weekend

Multidisciplinary creative studio Nice Shoes provides end-to-end content production services across media formats and platforms. With several locations throughout North America, the independent client-focused outfit is headquartered in the heart of New York City, where a modest technology staff of four keeps each facility running efficiently through even the most demanding projects using Amazon Web Services […]