Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/869840
With the summer season in full swing, it could only mean one thing: Hollywood rolling out its biggest blockbuster superhero movies. As audiences enjoy their popcorn in air-conditioned theaters, they probably find themselves wondering, "Just how the Incredible Hulk got so incredible?" or "How do those special effects come to life?" A big factor is the creative work of visual effects studios, such as Soho VFX. This studio hit the big time with a string of Marvel productions, delivering stunning visual effects for box-office winners like Avengers: Age of Ultron, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, San Andreas, Poltergeist, and The Revenant. To produce top-quality visual effects quickly and cost-effectively, Soho VFX relies on high-performance rendering for everything from computer-generated (CG) animation to scene composition. Because film productions have strict deadlines, delays can have huge negative consequences for Soho's reputation. Unfortunately, the studio's previous storage solution began to buckle under the pressure of increasing CG render complexity and volume, often stalling under the load. This slowed down the studio's artists and had the potential to impact revenue. After comparing Dell EMC® Isilon® Scale-out storage to its previous solution and others, Soho VFX selected Isilon for its performance, reliability, and built-in analytics advantages. Additionally, Dell EMC Isilon's InsightIQ® software provides Soho VFX with advanced performance monitoring, reporting, and analytics tools to optimize application performance, correlate workflow and network events, and accurately forecast storage needs. Scalar Decisions Inc., Canada's leading information technology solutions integrator, provided Soho VFX with full systems integration support for the Isilon project. DELL EMC ISILON BOOSTS STORAGE PERFORMANCE FOR VISUAL STUDIO SOHO VFX Soho VFX has increased performance dramatically, reducing the time needed to perform compositing renders by 300 percent. Soho VFX expects to nearly double its workload this year over the studio's workload of a few years ago. The studio has been able to nearly double its number of productions due to faster, higher-quality output. The combined performance improvements and at-a-glance analytics have given Soho VFX increased flexibility in designing and scheduling render workflows. In fact, performance has increased up to 4X over the previous solution in certain areas. M. Todd Smith, Head of Information Technology at Soho VFX, says, "With Isilon, our artists are free to create without limits…. Something that took three minutes to render in the past now takes one minute. That's a gigantic leap forward for our business." Isilon brings value to the Soho VFX IT organization as well. Because Isilon is so simple to use, just one IT person supports 30-40 users, compared to the industry average of 1:20. SINCE ADOPTING ISILON: • • • • Visit the following URL to read more about Dell EMC's work with Soho VFX: https://www.emc.com/collateral/customer-profiles/h14906-cp-soho-vfx.pdf