This document discusses several case studies of companies using AWS cloud rendering services for animation, visual effects, and 3D modeling projects. It describes how several major Indian animation/VFX studios and other companies have moved rendering workloads to AWS to reduce costs and improve scalability compared to on-premises rendering farms. Specific client examples discussed include a large CG studio reducing costs from $0.01 per core hour using AWS Spot instances, an entertainment company using AWS for rendering and compositing across regions, and an online rendering service provider using AWS in the backend for clients.

1. AWS Cloud Rendering: Global Customer Cases
Pradeep Pillai
AWS India
pillaip@amazon.com

2. Agenda
• India
• Animation/VFX - Rendering in India
– Major companies
– Major Work
• Rendering on AWS : Client Case Studies
– Client1
– Assemblage Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.
– SixSteps Pvt Ltd.
– Housing.com
• Q&A

3. Simulating 1 second of human brain activity takes
3,300,000 Compute Cores

4. World's Fastest Supercomputer
3,120,000 Cores
Cost :$390 Million

5. ~ 39 years of computational chemistry
Estimate On-Prem Cost: 40Million
Novartis: HPC job on AWS
Results on AWS:
87000 cores
Time taken : 9 hours
Cost : $4200

6. India
Population 1.2 Billion
Area 3,287,240 km²
Capital New Delhi
Largest City Mumbai – Population: 13,922,125
Official languages Hindi and English, 22 others
GDP (nominal) $2.2 trillion
About India

7. Major Animation/VFX Studios in India

8. Some good work done in India

9. 8.7/10 IMDb
Production Cost: >$40M
Collection till date: >$100M
Best VFX till date by India

10. Client Case Study 1:
Rendering on AWS

11. ------- Studios (India): 10K Rendering on AWS

12. Profile of the client:
Largest CG/Animation/VFX studio
3DAnimation Visual Effects Studio
USA India
Animation Movies
• Special Venue Attraction

13. Some of their customers:

14. Before AWS:
• 5000+ servers
• Multiple Petabytes Tape and Storage boxes
• One of the largest buyer of EMC Isilon Storage and Intel Servers in India
• Rent out servers
- Rush job for a high value customer
- Limited by their internal DC capacity
- Latest Cores and Large Size server not available
- Tight budget and delivery timelines

15. Engagement and getting them to move to AWS..
CFO Engg
Domain expertisein Rendering
Proof of Concept
scale this
• Now standardized
• No more HW purchase

16. Meter: Sample Dashboard
• Manages complete cluster lifecycle
– Launches servers and Monitors utilization
– Provides burn rate and estimated cost
– Data-driven SPOT deployment

17. Clients Competitive Analysis
MS Azure >7 Times costlier than AWS

18. Current Architecture
300 Mbps link
AMI + AWS CloudFormation Template
Lustre Render Nodes
On-Premises Storage
Maya workstations
On-prem farm Storage Servers )

19. Architecture and workflow notes
• For a 10K render, on-prem farm ran 1K or 2K jobs to iterate
• 3D wireframes modeling done on-prem using Autodesk Maya
• Once iterations done, wireframes/inventorytransferred to AWS, and
production10K render job kicks off
• Used Asperato accelerate wireframecopy
• LeveragedLustre cluster and render farm scaled up in time

20. (contd…)
• A typical rendering wireframe/inventorywould be around 2 to 4 TB
• Rendered assets transferred from Lustre to on-premfor compositing
• Data in Lustre FS would grow up to about 32 TB
• Customer worked out an arrangement with Pixar for Renderman
licenses on cloud

21. AWS Solution
• Hybrid model
1200 c3.8xlarge& r3.8xlargeSPOT instances
high memory req lighting passes
Pixar’s Renderman Rhythm & Hues
• Internetpipe of 300 Mbps (Upload 3D wireframes& Download rendered frames)
• Theyuse ASPERA overit

22. Price Achieved:
< $0.01
per core/hour over a 7½ day period
• Inclusive of:
– Compute
– Storage
– Network
– VPN
– Data Transfer

23. 3,578 16,496
163,364
79,983
64,147
411 303
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun July
Spend ($) on AWS

24. What Next for this client…
EFS
SPOT Fleet SPOT Block
Appstream
GPU enabled workstation Nice
• Direct Connect

25. Next large project with this client…
• New 24k Render
500 instances of 32-cores 140+ GB RAMs
1500-2000 instances at peak
SPOT Fleet
Multi-Region render

26. Client Case Study 2:
Assemblage
Entertainment

28. Current Architecture
100 Mbps VPN
AMI + AWS CloudFormation Template
Spot Render node
s
NFS server
On-Premises Storage
Maya –
Modeling
On-prem farm Storage Servers
Nuke –
Compositing

29. Architecture and workflow notes
• 3D wireframes modeling done on-prem using Autodesk Maya
• Wireframes copied to an NFS server on AWS
• Uses Modo for rendering &
• Muster as scheduler and for Renderfarm Mgmt
• Render farms spread across multiple regions
• Nuke for compositing
• At peak used 900+ instances c3.4xLarge

30. Client Case Study 3:
Rendering Fox India

31. Profile of the client:
online render farm
Rendering as a Service
• Web Based console
3ds Max, Maya, Softimage
Plugins

32. Use of AWS:
• Uses AWS Spot instances in the backend
• Web console uses AWS API to Auto-Provision
• Workloads: Various sizes, Configs, S/W on AWS
• Clients include
• Animation/VFX Studios,
• Design & Engg Firms
• Architecture Firms
• Auto Manufacturing
• Electrical & Electronics Industries

33. Client Case Study 4:
Housing.com

34. Profile of the client:
Online Real Estate portal
funded Startup
Game changing innovations
Rendering houses with furniture
• Virtual Walk thru
SPOT

35. Command Line, API, Cloud Formation Templates (CfnCluster)
Take Control using AWS

36. Questions & Answers

37. 감사합니다
Thank You