While everyone recovers from this year’s Academy Awards , debating over who deservedly won (or lost), at Dell we’re most excited about our customers’ success – customer Double Negative (DNeg) walked away with Visual Effects award for their work on Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, In addition, Pixomondo worked on Oscar-nominated “Iron Man 2”. These customers have helped burst these blockbusters onto the screen, with Dell technology backing them along the way.
Double Negative (DNeg) created visual effects for Oscar winning film "Inception," as well as Oscar nominated "Iron Man 2," and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1”. Double Negative relies heavily on server clustering to render computer-generated imagery (CGI). Rendering involves the computer-generated construction of a three-dimensional digital image from a model and contains geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information. That takes a ton of computer horsepower. Double-Negative requires an IT infrastructure with immense capacity and power to meet project demand. That’s why they deployed an architecture consisting of more than 300 Dell™ PowerEdge™ M610 blade servers and 19 Dell™ PowerEdge™ M1000e blade enclosures. Double Negative has a mixed hardware environment so the Dell solution was the perfect fit as it is developed on standards-based technology, allowing the production house to quickly integrate the solution into its IT investments without disrupting existing render farm operations.
Working on a variety of high-profile films, Double Negative greatly relies on the computing power of Dell workstations to undertake complex rendering of visual effects. They are able to run workload-intensive creative software with ease on their ISV certified Dell Precision T7500 workstations, enabling them to meet client demands and bring their visual effects to life more quickly.
Pixomondo, who assisted with visual effects for “Iron Man 2”, is a global company with a network of 11 studios around the world (Los Angeles, Burbank, Toronto, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart). Founded in 2001, Pixomondo offers an “always on” 24x7x365 visual effects production, CG character creation, and 2 and 3-D animation for feature films, television and commercials. To support a 24×7 production model, Pixomondo has to have a technology model that is just as efficient as its processes. Dell has worked with Pixomondo to standardize the configuration of all of its new workstations, servers and storage so that the company can get up and running as quickly as possible. Specifications are agreed to, and then everything is streamlined. In some cases, Pixomondo even relies on Dell’s deployment services so they can get up and running as quickly as possible without problems.
Our customers in the media and entertainment industry need powerful computing systems to create and deliver their award-winning work in an environment that is increasingly competitive and demanding. As audiences continue to demand stunning visual effects, Dell technology helps creative professionals produce more break-through output in less time, allowing them to dedicate all of their energy to the arts and not IT.