VARIETY | FEBRUARY 18, 2012 | Original Article

Top Houses Choose RenderCloud to Cut Costs

‪With their data storage costs on the rise as visual effects companies render more and more work, vfx and animation houses are finding a silver lining in a shared cloud. ‬

In Vancouver, where many vfx and animation houses have set up shop to service the region's growing film and TV production business, three of the city's top shops -- Rainmaker, Digital Domain, and Image Engine -- among the converts that are switching over to a cloud-based media storage and rendering system, eliminating the need for each of them to maintain a costly inhouse system of their own.

The facilities were all facing the same issue, says Image Engine head Jason Dowdeswell. Each time they tackled large-scale projects they were forced to purchase more storage and rendering capability. However, once a show was done, there was no way to scale back down.

So the studios -- partners in the Vancouver Studio Group, a 16-member association formed in 2009 to identify production efficiencies -- looked into a way to share rendering computers. After entertaining various proposals, they decided to go with RenderCloud, from Toronto-based technology firm Scalar Decisions, and set to launch Feb. 15.

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