The use of division of Fox Renderfarm in China and Autodesk for rendering is being recognized and adopted by an increasing number of users in the industry as a way to provide a better user experience at the product level. Through combining Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk 3ds Max®, Autodesk Arnold and other professional visual solutions on the division of Fox Renderfarm in China, many enterprises in the visual industry have shortened their production cycle, reduced the production cost and optimized production process.
Rayvision Technology is a company that specializes in providing vertical cloud computing services for the visual arts industry, which serves more than 400,000 users including Oscar winners, well-known films, and leading studios in television animations, visual effects, architectural visualization and games from over 100 countries and regions. One of its brand, the division of Fox Renderfarm in China, is known as the pioneer of China’s “Self-Service Cloud Render Farm”, which has rendered highest-grossing films such as Wolf Warrior 2, Nezha: I am the Destiny, and The Wandering Earth.
Rayvision Technology
R&D background of division of Fox Renderfarm in China
The application of computer technology in visual design and production is commonly known as CG (Computer Graphics). It integrates both technology and art, covering almost all visual art creation activities in the computer era, such as graphic design, web design, three-dimensional animation, film and television special effects, multimedia technology, and architectural design and industrial modeling design mainly based on computer-aided design. Nowadays, CG has been widely applied in forefront areas such as film and television special effects, 3D animation production and 3D game production, and will be applied to more service scenarios and fields in the future with the rise of the concept of Metaverse.
Take 3D animation production as an example, the general process of 3D content production mainly includes steps of pre-production, modeling, texture mapping, binding, animation production, visual effect production, light setting, rendering and post-processing, among which rendering is a necessary and vital step.
Rendering refers to the process of using Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and other software to create models and animations for architectural design and animation, and then using professional rendering tools such as Autodesk Arnold to create final renderings or animated videos of the designed content, which creates more artistry to 3D animation production. It can be said that rendering plays a decisive role in the final presentation of the work.
Designers, artists and engineers work hard every day on creating designs, effects and experiences with strong visual impact. As users demand higher quality for film graphics and videos, new concepts of automotive and architectural design become more complex, rendering is facing unprecedented challenges. According to the statistics from an Internet survey, the ratio of production time to rendering time in China has even reached 3:1, which means that 25% of a film’s production process is spent on “waiting” - waiting for the rendering to be completed.
It takes a lot of waiting time for traditional rendering, which prevents creative personnel from spending more time focusing on content creation. However, as cloud computing is applied in the visual industry, a new approach has been opened up for the visual industry with cloud rendering, which gives practitioners an opportunity in film and television animation, visual effects, architectural visualization, games and other sectors to catch up with international productions in a short period.
Simply put, cloud rendering is that users upload resources through various terminals such as cell phones, pads and PCs, render them on the cloud, and then get the rendering results. Recently, there have been a lot of visually appealing special effects works, which cloud rendering took a great credit. Combined the division of Fox Renderfarm in China with professional visual solutions such as Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Arnold of Autodesk Software (China) Co., Ltd., the production cycle, cost and process all have changed dramatically.
Under such a development trend, the division of Fox Renderfarm in China, the leading cloud rendering platform in Asia, is dedicated to providing professional, reliable, safe and stable, sustainable and innovative cloud rendering solutions for the visual industry so as to accelerate the development of visual industry.
Division of Fox Renderfarm in China introduction
The division of Fox Renderfarm in China has a large-scale computing pool with a single cluster of 10,000 nodes, being able to provide highly flexible and customizable cloud rendering services for projects at various sizes. Since the division of Fox Renderfarm in China was established in 2010, Rayvision Technology has obtained unanimous praise in the industry depended on its patented cloud rendering platform and professional TD service team. With massive computing resources, high degree of data security measures, full-featured SDK and seamless integration of pipeline of user and 7X24 hours online technical support, the division of Fox Renderfarm in China is there at users’ service all the time. Cloud rendering on the division of Fox Renderfarm in China can greatly reduce cost, and enhance efficiency.
Kenny Zou, General Manager of Rayvision Technology
Kenny Zou, General Manager of Rayvision Technology, introduced that the division of Fox Renderfarm in China includes two modes, offline rendering and real-time rendering. Offline rendering is mainly applied in film, animation, film and television special effects, architectural renderings, architectural roaming animation and urban planning, among which film animation and architectural animation have the largest application amounts at present. Real-time rendering mainly applied in virtual teaching, virtual display, virtual exhibition gallery, virtual scenic spot and other segmentations of real-time interaction.
For example, users in film and television animation used offline rendering of Rayvision Technology for light rendering and other processes, which shortened the production time and improved efficiency. Meanwhile, due to cloud rendering, film and television production studios might be able to optimize their production plan, team structure and staffing, simplify inputs, improve efficiency, shorten the production cycle. Division of Fox Renderfarm in China also helps users in architecture design sector to greatly shorten the time for animation light rendering or building rendering, which enables them to quickly preview the building effect and optimizes the customer experience.
Division of Fox Renderfarm in China’s key to success
Cloud rendering drives the digital process of multi-scene in the visual industry. Kenny revealed that when select and use cloud rendering products, users mainly concern the following two aspects:
The first aspect is quality. It is a must for cloud rendering provider to accurately and unmistakably render the work in accordance with the expectation of users. As there are some differences on the cloud and local environments, such as the different CPU and GPU configurations, the effect of rendering on the could may not reach the expectations of users. In addition, various artists are different levels of rendering software operation, thus, contents created by them could have some problems in parameters. In a case of inappropriate parameter setup, the rendering cannot even be shown or the rendering effect is not right. For any potential problems in quality, Rayvision Technology, with its know-how and experience accumulated over ten years, can help users to check whether setup of common parameters in the entire scenario is reasonable. When users set up unreasonable parameters, the division of Fox Renderfarm in China will prompt an error reminder to users to help them correct the setting and ensure rendering quality.
The second aspect is service. CG is highly demanding in timeliness. Sometimes, the rendering of content must be completed at midnight due to the urgent needs of users. In order to satisfy the users’ requirement, Rayvision Technology offers 7x24 hours customer service. It has a professional TD team to help users to troubleshoot and solve problems if there is any during the rending process. For some extreme complicated problems rarely seen, Rayvision Technology works with technical experts from Autodesk to solve the problems. The safeguard by such a professional technical service team is one of reasons why mainstream film and television production companies choose the division of Fox Renderfarm in China for rendering.
Certainly, in addition to quality and service, whether there is a large enough computing power pool and enough server resources to save time and guarantee the delivery time are also important factors considered by users when they choose and use cloud rendering.
Rayvision Technology makes products further satisfy the needs of users through years of practice and constant improvement of products, and brings low-cost, efficient and reliable cloud services through technological innovation, which makes Rayvision Technology products deeply recognized by industry users.
Through its development history and solutions, it is not difficult to see that Rayvision Technology is strongly recognized by users mainly due to three factors: Firstly, with a top professional TD team and R&D team, Rayvision Technology has a deep understanding and rich project experience in visual field. Secondly, specialized in visual industry for over ten years, it has engaged in products and services development, invested a lot in research and development to improve product experience, which makes it an industry benchmark. Finally, Rayvison has built up a computing resource pool specially optimized for the visual industry, which has massive visual computing power and high cost performance that greatly improves efficiency while lowering the cost.
Digital entertainment content creation powerhouse--Autodesk
As set forth, film animation and architectural animation are the two biggest segmentations of applying the division of Fox Renderfarm in China. It is well known that, as the world’s experienced design software and digital content creation company, Autodesk can create the contents from detailed war scenes to surreal creatures, from complex weather effects to vast terrain....The strong technical capabilities of Autodesk’s digital entertainment creation tools help CG users and VFX artists unlock their inspiration and creative passion.
Digital entertainment creation tools of Maya, 3ds Max and Arnold have been frequently adopted by designers and artists. Maya is an excellent 3D animation program from Autodesk, widely used in professional film and television advertising, character animation, film effects and so on. Maya integrates advanced animation and digital effects technology, which not only includes the general 3D and visual effects production functions, but also combines with advanced modeling, digital cloth simulation, hair rendering and motion matching technology. In addition, as a high-end film production software, Maya has complete functions, flexibility of work, high production efficiency and a strong sense of reality of rendering. 3ds Max is a 3D animation rendering and production software based on PC system. It is easy to use and efficient, which is widely applied for advertising, film and television, industrial design, architectural design, 3D animation, multimedia production, games and engineering visualization and other fields. Arnold, a ray-tracing rendering program from Autodesk, a photo-realistic and physics-based ray-tracing renderer, is designed for the needs of artists, modern animation and visual effects production. In recent years, it has become one of the most widely used rendering program in professional film production worldwide. The software products and solutions of Autodesk have been adopted by many films awarded with Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for the last 16 years.
In an interview with Kenny, the author learned that given the advancement and widespread use of Autodesk products，Maya, 3ds Max and Arnold software have been used by more than 50% of offline Fox Renderfarm's China division projects and works currently. According to the long-term practice and observation of Rayvision Technology, more than 80% of companies in 3D animation use Autodesk’s digital entertainment creation software to create groundbreaking visual effects.
Co-create a new experience of digital art
The success lies in win-win cooperation. Based on the fact that Autodesk and Rayvision Technology are in the same ecosystem and share a common users group, Autodesk and Rayvision Technology have reached a strategic partnership to jointly create a new experience of digital art for CG users as the industry is developing vigorously.
So how do Autodesk products and Fox Renderfarm's China division work seamlessly? As Kenny introduced, “Take Maya as an example, users make an animation scene on Maya, after that, they have to go through an light rendering process before they get the final output. The rendering process takes the most of time and machine power. At present, Rayvision Technology incorporates Maya into Fox Renderfarm's China division seamlessly as an plug-in. In other words, it inserts a menu called rendering. After the users complete the animation scene, the lighting team can directly click the rendering menu to put all assets on the Rayvision Technology for cloud rendering. After processing, Fox Renderfarm's China division system will automatically download the rendered results to the user’s local storage. In addition, Fox Renderfarm's China division also provides a client-side for users who plan to submit files in batches for rendering, and supports users to directly drag dozens of to-be-rendered engineering files to the Fox Renderfarm's China division client-side at one time for submission and rendering. The rendering speed can be greatly improved when users use Maya software throughout the whole process, which is to use the computing power of supercomputers on the cloud as if they were using native computers.
Users completed their rendering work through Fox Renderfarm's China division service together with Autodesk software. Such way of providing users with a better experience at product level through the combination of software is being recognized and adopted by an increasingly number of users in the industry.”
Value-chained and ecology- shared
Autodesk and Rayvision Technology are leaders in their respective fields with the same target users and similar enterprise vision. Kenny said: “The value of Autodesk to Rayvision Technology mainly comes from two aspects: Firstly, a huge ecosystem in the field of 3D content production has a large number of user groups using products and solutions of Autodesk, and has enough customer needs, which provide a potential room where Rayvision Technology can provide services. Secondly, the popularity and continuity of Autodesk products are pretty good. Moreover, there are many secondary development teams constantly contribute various resources such as plug-ins and modules to the ecosystem, establishing interactions between users. The creative team, artists, TD and developers have formed a benignant development ecosystem based on Autodesk products. Rayvision Technology provides rendering services in this system to promote the sustainable development of this ecosystem with everyone, which is a focus highly valued by Rayvision Technology.”
For Autodesk, Rayvision Technology has built a bridge between users and Autodesk. Rayvision deeply understands users’ needs and Autodesk technology, and is able to obtain and summarize accurate and true users’ feedback that is a valuable asset Rayvision Technology brings to the Autodesk and its R&D team through this cooperation.
Integration and interaction for a promising future
Looking forward to the future, Kenny indicated that Rayvision Technology hopes to further expand the scope of cooperation with Autodesk from the current Maya, 3ds Max and Arnold software to the engineering construction industry and manufacturing industry, which requires both parties work together to expand the market. Rayvision Technology strives to integrate with more Autodesk products at the product and operation levels so that more Autodesk products or functions can be accessed by users on its platform. On top of that, in terms of product iteration, it is also expected that in certain conditions the R&D teams of both parties can carry out more in-depth communication and exchange to integrate more technologies, provide users with supporting or new functions.
As a multinational software company with a global perspective, Autodesk has been rooted in China for nearly 30 years. Over the years, Autodesk has been committed to building a dynamic, open and interconnected local ecosystem, vigorously developing various international and domestic partners that can directly provide related resources in the Chinese market. Besides, Autodesk desires to establish an open, interconnected ecosystem. At various value dimensions on the industrial chain, the products and technologies of innovative and start-ups associated with digitalization can be well integrated into such an ecosystem. They integrates with each other and conduct valuable interactions.
It is gratifying that Autodesk and Rayvision Technology are engaged in energetic and valuable interaction with each other, so as to make continuous to the ecosystem. Let’s look forward to more cooperation and development between them in the future!
Kenny expressed, “The Autodesk’s products are popular, stable and continuous. The creation team, artists, TD and developers have formed a benignant development ecosystem around Autodesk products. Rayvision Technology provides rendering services in this system to promote the sustainable development of this ecosystem with everyone, which is highly valued by Rayvision Technology.”
