For digital artists who need to do previz and VFX work on the road, Silverdraft has announced the launch of Mobileviz, the first supercomputer-powered digital visual effects and pre-visualization studio-on-wheels for motion picture production.
Silverdraft Mobileviz combines tools for digital content creation with proprietary computing technology in an ergonomically designed semi-trailer. It is designed to deliver unprecedented capabilities to moviemakers on location, on a Hollywood lot or to a VFX-intensive production requiring additional computing rendering resources.
Deployed on-set or on location, Silverdraft Mobileviz can be used for 2D and 3D stereo capture for digital motion pictures (2K and 4K data, HD video), in-camera pre-visualization and real-time, high-resolution visualization of VFX shots, plus performance and motion capture recording. Ground-breaking rendering capabilities mean that Mobileviz can also be used when brick and mortar facilities face ‘peak load’ and need extra computer resources on VFX and CGI-laden projects.
Silverdraft Mobileviz trailers can be driven to wherever shooting is taking place. The service is customizable and scalable depending on the production requirement. Being dedicated to an IT network ensures maximum security of rendered assets and production material.
The computing technology within Silverdraft Mobileviz was developed by Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, a world-leading pioneer in supercomputing technologies. He is director for the center of high-end computing systems, and associate professor in the department of computer science, at Virginia Tech University.
The first in the fleet of Mobileviz trailers offers 30 teraflops processing, although higher-end systems can be scaled to process at up to 350 teraflops – 350 trillion floating point operations per second – ranking them amongst the top 50 supercomputers, and on par with the world’s most advanced production facilities.
Software and hardware technology accommodations within Silverdraft Mobileviz include: Autodesk MotionBuilder, Maya and 3DS Max; Mental Images’ Mental Ray renderer; Chaos Group’s Vray; Qube! render management from PipelineFX; Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid editing; plus on-set dailies and full color management capabilities. It also has 20TB of Micron super fast solid-state storage, incorporated into a cluster of 1,536 compute cores.
“Studios and filmmakers expect greater speed and efficiency, and want to create more elaborate visual effects than ever. Until now they have relied on complex, expensive and largely immobile solutions to produce live action with on-set, realtime virtual element visualization,” said Silverdraft Founder and CEO Amy Gile.
Silverdraft has formed strategic partnerships, and is currently collaborating on a next-generation project revealing the advantages of on-set pre-visualization for content creators, with the following key players: pre-visualization expert The Third Floor Inc, Autodesk, VFX artist/director Alex Frisch, and performance capture specialists Knight Vision.
