AMPD, a supplier of sophisticated visual computing solutions and Versatile Media, a global production/media company, are utilizing their relationship to drive a paradigm shift toward Virtual Production, characterized as “the new frontier” of filmmaking. In a recent PostPerspective article, Karen Moltenbrey explores this relationship and the benefits that NVIDIA® RTX™ GPUs bring to Versatile Media’s new virtual production facility. It is also the topic of our latest On-Demand Webinar: How AMPD is Architecting Optimal Real-Time and Virtual Production Studio Environments.
From script to screen, movies or TV, the creative process is generally divided into 3 phases: pre-production, production and post-production. Technological advances continue to deliver new products that reimagine the workflows of today’s visionary and imaginative storytellers, blurring the lines between these traditional phases into one, virtual production. For the first-time visual creators and film directors from multiple locations can participate, edit, create and render VFX in real-time from conception to completion all on one digital stage. This new workflow optimizes creativity, time and efficiency, but requires more high-performance computation to drive the infrastructure required for virtual production.
“When dealing with very large data sets that you need to render in real time, you need to have enough GPU memory to be able to load that onto the card to get it processing”, says AMPD CEO Anthony Brown. The technology they rely on to handle these workloads is the NVIDIA RTX platform. “There are certain workloads in which, really, the only cards you can use are the Ampere-class or Turing-based NVIDIA professional RTX cards…” says Brown.
The support of PNY professional graphics product and subject matter experts, and NVDIA RTX GPUs real-time rendering with an AI assist, physically-based simulation, unmatched GPU memory capacity and bandwidth, and the ability to drive studio sized arrays of LED displays, are just some of benefits provided in NVIDIA’s most recent and most powerful workstation GPU yet, the Ampere architecture-based NVIDIA RTX A6000. With professional NVIDIA RTX technology teams can film, edit and render on-the-fly, in real-time and high quality, rather than having to wait for months for the post-production crew to realize, render, composite and color grade the results. Traditional methods take days, months and even years. Put in perspective, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar took 100 hours to render each frame for several critical scenes, Toy Story 4 took 60-160 hours just to render one frame, and although affected by COVID-19, Avatar 2 has taken 12 years to complete.
Webinar: Learn More About the Revolution of Virtual Production
From freeing up the creative process to producing better stories or working to eliminate the creative and cost barriers of time, the goal is to implement optimized workflows with the latest innovations to tell stories in the most engaging and compelling way possible. Analysts expect Virtual Production to become the industry norm by 2026, and while it can be applied to almost all industries, its digital landscape is constantly evolving. Because of NVIDIA’s groundbreaking technology and relevancy across every sector, any professional will benefit from learning in more detail about how virtual workflows can apply where you work, or the industry you work in.
Listen and watch Matt Welford, Director of Virtual Production and Creative Director for Versatile Media (Canada), AMPD’s CEO Anthony Brown, and Carl Flygare, PNY Professional GPU Marketing Manager, discuss in detail how AMPD is architecting optimal real-time and virtual production studio environments.
