International animation giant DHX Media relies on PipelineFX's Qube! to help produce over 20,000 frames of fully rendered animation a night, every night. Because of Quebe!'s intelligent render management system and scalability, DHX can use every machine at its disposal to ensure that shows like
The Deep are delivered on time. In addition, PipelineFX's innovative new metered licensing policy, it doesn't pay for the extra software licenses for longer than it needs to. PipelineFX's industry leading render management software, and new pay-per-minute licensing policy, gives DHX the edge it needs to remain dominant in today's highly competitive animation arenas.
Formed in 2006 by the merger of Canadian production companies Decode Entertainment (
Waybuloo, The Hoobs) and The Halifax Film Company (
Lunar Jim),DHX Media has grown to become one of the key players in children's television, now employing over 1,300 staff in 15 cities worldwide. Through the acquisition of firms including Cookie Jar, WildBrain and Nerd Corps Entertainment, DHX Media is now the owner of the world’s largest independent library of children’s content, including such major international brands as
Teletubbies, YoGabba Gabba!, and
In the Night Garden.
DHX uses Qube! with a wide range of software, including Harmony and Flash for 2D animation, Maya and V-Ray for 3D animation, and NUKE for compositing, even integrating it directly with Shotgun for asset management, along with RV for media playback. In order to meet such tight deadlines, DHX Media can call on all of its hardware resources: as well as its 228-node in-house render farm, plus additional nodes in a local private cloud service, they also co-opt hundreds of artists' workstations as temporary render machines overnight.
Senior Pipeline TD at DHX Media, Joshua Bretag, said that,
"DHX Vancouver had been a long-time user of Qube!, and when Nerd Corps was acquired, it was time to consolidate under one render farm management solution. Being the industry-leading solution, Qube! was the obvious choice. Thanks to Qube!'s powerful command line tools and Python API, we are able to integrate more than just our rendering,” says Bretag. “In fact, we generally push any heavy computational task through it. That includes publishing shots, scripted scene assembly and automated Playblasting."
PipelineFX, based in Honolulu, is the leading provider of intelligent render farm management solutions for digital content creation, PipelineFX provides software, support, consulting and training services worldwide. Qube! runs on more than 35,000 render nodes at over 750customers in 51 countries and is used to render film and visual effects, post production,broadcast, design, games and education media.
Because of PipelineFX's metered licensing policy, DHX Media has been able to preserve its competitive advantage in today's global broadcast market. Qube!'s winning combination of stability, flexibility and scalability enables DHX to push boundaries, secure in the knowledge that frames will still be delivered on time. And by using metered licensing, the company can wring every last CPU hour of power from its hardware and bill clients right down to the minute.
Troy Brooks, VP Technology at DHX Media, said that,
"For too long, rendering has been a black box, constrained by capital budgets - studios have either under-quoted for it, or been unable to substantiate their quotes. As we move forward under increasing budgetary pressure, we need more insight and flexibility to manage the whole process, and rendering is a key performance indicator. With tools like Qube!, we can finally optimize this process."
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