UNLEASHING THE FREEDOM TO CREATE

Transcription

1 CASE STUDY JELLYFISH PICTURES UNLEASHING THE FREEDOM TO CREATE VFX studio Jellyfish Pictures unchains artists from their desks thanks to the cloud-based creative power of NVIDIA GRID JELLYFISH PICTURES

2 Jellyfish Pictures harnesses the power of NVIDIA GRID to run all the creative tools they need, from Nuke to Softimage, from any location on any device with full performance. AT A GLANCE CUSTOMER PROFILE Company: Jellyfish Pictures Industry: Media & entertainment Region: Greater London area, United Kingdom Size: Up to 100 employees on site, plus artists working remotely as required SUMMARY > > Independent VFX and animation studio. > > Flexible and agile; artists can migrate from local workstations to a cloudbased platform. > > Able to scale up and down for productions by managing on-demand resources. > > Expanded into second studio in Brixton Village. SOFTWARE Key Applications: Nuke, Maya, Softimage, all Adobe software Desktop and Application Remoting: VMware Horizon Hypervisor: VMware vsphere HARDWARE NVIDIA GRID Boards: K2 Servers: Various HP and Supermicro servers Clients: Various desktop computers, HP and Dell thin clients Cover: Sofaworks Neal, the laid back sloth, created for the Sofaworks ad campaign by Jellyfish Pictures. Agency TBWA. Directed by Chris Cottam. Jellyfish Pictures is an independent visual effects and animation studio with facilities in Noho and Brixton Village, London. Founded in 2001, the company is one of the most respected boutique facilities in London and has grown from strength to strength, gathering together some of the most talented individuals in the field to help create highly original, British Academy of Films and Television Arts (BAFTA) award-winning work. Today, the firm behind the BBC s Inside the Human Body, Planet Dinosaur, and commercials such as Peckish, Sofaworks Sloth, and Neal and the Natural History Museum Alive 3D strives to remain at the forefront of technology and design by offering something extra in both creativity and approach. CHALLENGE Jellyfish Pictures outgrew their Noho base in Margaret Street in early 2013 because of the restricted power and office space available at that location. The challenge was to find a solution that would keep them in the heart of London s thriving VFX community without compromising either quality or client service. SOLUTION Jellyfish Pictures partnered with network and cloud provider Exponential-e to develop a new private cloud platform known as Desktop-as-a-Service for Graphic Processing Units (DaaS GPU) powered by NVIDIA GRID technology. This platform allows employees to work remotely without affecting quality, productivity, or creativity. They can now utilize persistent virtualized desktops, delivered by VMware Horizon, with all of their usual computing power, software applications, and graphicsintensive creative tools. All documents and files, now centrally hosted, are accessed directly from the virtual desktops, providing seamless integration between cloud resources and the local network. The NVIDIA GRID-enabled DaaS-GPU platform empowers graphic artists and editors to work as if they were using a physical workstation. The virtual desktops perform up to 3-4 times faster than normal desk-based computers performing like-for-like tasks, and also achieve frame rates

3 Jonah: Jellyfish Pictures collaborated as associate producers with Kibwe Tavares to create the film s anti-hero: the world s largest fish. Film4, Shine Films, Factory 15, BFI, Kibwe Tavares. In the past, the huge amounts of processing power needed for VFX work meant that our artists, designers, and developers were tied to a physical desktop. But now, the traditional VFX workstation has been transformed by adopting a hybrid, cloudbased platform. We can work from anywhere and on any supported device that we want. Jeremy Smith Chief Technical Officer Jellyfish Pictures 6 REASONS FOR GRID 1 Reduce desktop service costs by up to 30%. 2 Predictably low monthly cost per user. 3 Consistent, high quality userexperience. 4 Facilitates flexible work practices. 5 Lower energy consumption and costs. 6 Future-proof technology strategy that reduced the need for hardware and software updates. of between frames per second. This improves the productivity of graphic artists and enables the company to deliver faster turnaround to meet tight production deadlines. Crucially, it also means that employees have the ability to work from any device and any location because they are no longer tied to a physical desk. This makes the company highly flexible when bidding for future work. It has also supported other developments within the Jellyfish Group, including the opening of their new purpose-built, 4,000 square foot studio in Brixton, where 60 artists and supporting production staff are based. The DaaS-GPU platform allows the studios to share work, allowing employees and contract/remote workers to collaborate seamlessly on projects despite being based in separate offices. Using Exponential-e s low latency, private network powered by NVIDIA GRID technology gives the graphic artists access to all of the creative tools they need, from Nuke to Softimage, from any device anywhere in the world, with high-end workstation performance. The DaaS-GPU platform also includes asset management and storage capabilities that make it function like a datacenter. This means that the Jellyfish creative team can harness the power of the platform for both application performance and rendering without any risk of data loss if a computer or terminal crashes or fails.

4 We can now also foster a much more creative environment for our employees. They will be able to share work in real time between our studios, which will help with creative development. Jeremy Smith Chief Technical Officer Jellyfish Pictures The nature of the VFX industry is project-based, and we often require technology resources and freelancers on demand. Exponential-e s solution enables us to respond quickly to these fluctuating project requirements, explains Jeremy Smith, CTO of Jellyfish. Scaling up and down for productions where you might be operating remotely from several locations, such as on set, on location, and in the studio, at speed with security and privacy center stage is difficult, to say the least. Operationally, we no longer need to rely solely on our existing architecture when further processing power or capacity is required. Instead, our staff can spinup additional resources on demand. Exponential-e s cloud-based DaaS-GPU platform uses VMware Horizon with NVIDIA GRID K2 cards for graphics processing, deployed on HP and Supermicro servers. The solution runs over a low-latency 100 Gbps network between Jellyfish s two studios, ensuring that graphic artists using the virtualized desktops don t experience any problems with screen refreshes and rendering. Dr Easy (above left): A robot with medical training is dispatched to defuse a dangerous situation. Directed by Shynola, produced by Warp Films, developed and financed by Film4. CGI by Jellyfish Pictures. Samsung EcoBubble (above right: This cool bear viral video for Samsung Appliances exceeded 17 millions views on YouTube. CGI by Jellyfish Pictures. This investment in network resources was absolutely critical, because the performance of all cloud services directly depends on the speed of the network used to connect to the datacenter. When Jellyfish artists are working round the clock in different studios to a strict deadline, removing all potential loss of productivity from lag is vital. Security of the VDI implementation is of paramount importance because of the multi-million dollar production budgets in play; however, the

5 hosted service that Jellyfish uses remains both within its Local Area Network (LAN) and on the clean side of the firewall, meaning that traffic does not traverse the public Internet. Security and privacy concerns are therefore negated. RESULTS The virtualized desktop environment has changed the way Jellyfish works and competes in the industry. The company is now capable of moving from a capital expenditure business model to an operating expenditure structure. This reduces much of the upfront costs when Jellyfish expands to take on a big project, thus ensuring that they can align budgets with projects. For the first time, the company can be both highly flexible and confident when bidding for new work. Even more valuable, NVIDIA GRID technology has removed the chains between artist, studio and desktop. Jeremy Smith explains, In the past, the huge amounts of processing power needed for VFX work meant that our artists, designers, and developers were tied to a physical desktop. But now, the traditional VFX workstation has been transformed. By adopting a hybrid, cloud-based platform, we can work from anywhere and on any supported device. Through our work with Exponential-e and NVIDIA, we are able to create a system that allows work to be shared in real time between our studios so that our employees and contract/remote workers can effectively collaborate on projects all on the same logical workspace. To learn more about VMware Horizon (with View) visit products/horizon-view To learn more about NVIDIA GRID visit Today, Jellyfish offers a highly creative environment for its employees. Thanks to the Exponential-e DaaS-GPU platform built on NVIDIA GRID technology, they can easily share work in real-time between their two studios and work seamlessly from virtually any device and from any location. They are also able to hire the best creative talent, regardless of where that talent is located. JOIN US ONLINE gridforums.nvidia.com tinyurl.com/gridvideos linkedin.com/company/nvidia-grid 2015 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, and NVIDIA GRID are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. All company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated.