ROUND ROCK, TX — Dell’s solutions are being used by VFX studio Pixomondo to quickly and reliably generate visual effects. The facility employed Dell workstations and render farms in its recent work on the HBO series, Game of Thrones and the Paramount feature, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Pixomondo’s set up includes Dell Precision workstations, Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell PowerVault storage and Dell UltraSharp monitors.
“We started to work on Game of Thrones for Season 2, taking the job of creating all the visual effects for that series,” explains Sven Martin, visual effects supervisor at Pixomondo. “This was an enormous undertaking on a TV series with a tight schedule, and thanks to the speed and reliability we get from our Dell workstations, monitors, servers and storage, and the tremendous support we get from Dell’s IT support, we were not only able to meet the tough expectations, we were also brought on for Season 3.”
Pixomondo’s work on Games of Thrones includes the massive castles, giant ship explosions and fire-breathing dragons. To tackle these demands, the studio used Dell Precision T5500 and T5600 tower workstations to create the complex content quickly and Dell UltraSharp U2410, U2711 and U2312HM monitors for clear and detailed display. The studio also used Dell PowerVault MD3220 and MD1220 storage and Dell PowerEdge R410, R620 and R720 servers in its renderfarm for quick segment turnaround, allowing for more rounds of tweaking, and ultimately a better final product before deadline.
For Star Trek Into Darkness, Pixomondo was challenged with creating 380 pivotal shots, which represent one-third of all the VFX in the film. The studio used Dell Precision T7600 and T5500 workstations with Nvidia Quadro K4000 graphics cards, Dell UltraSharp U2410 monitors and Dell PowerEdge R510, R410 and R310 servers. The Dell hardware enabled Pixomondo to explore new areas inside the iconic USS Enterprise Ship, such as the engine room, the lethally radioactive warp core and the labyrinth of corridors throughout the ship. It also let Pixomondo push the limits on action-packed sequences of the film, such as the attack on Starfleet Headquarters, a high-speed pursuit above the Klingon home world of Kronos followed by an intense battle on the surface of the entirely computer graphics generated world.
“It was exceptionally rewarding and very challenging to work on the Star Trek franchise and create something new that would still pay homage to the original,” adds Ben Grossmann, visual effects supervisor at Pixomondo. “The Dell workstations and servers gave us tremendous computational firepower to render the massive 3D images around the clock.”