Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 30, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In the USA, the 3D film based on a children’s book has already grossed more than 60 million US dollars since September 18. In “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” audiences are captivated in particular by the computer animation and the use of numerous visual effects – made possible by NVIDIA Quadro GPUs.
“When implementing visual effects using computer animation software, the speed of the application and the user’s experience are particularly important,” explains Rob Bredow, CTO at Sony Pictures Imageworks. “Rendering that took 45 minutes or more on a CPU can now be completed in just 20 seconds with NVIDIA GPUs. With this system, the creative process has changed from a laborious activity into pure fun.”
Sony Pictures Imageworks uses NVIDIA Quadro solutions on all its artists’ workstations. The power of the NVIDIA processor enables 24 FPS and real-time previews of highly complex, data-intensive scenes in Autodesk Maya. Artists thus receive an exact representation of their work.
“GPU-based rendering is becoming increasingly important, and early adopters such as Sony Pictures Imageworks benefit from the significant increase in speed and greater interactivity,” emphasizes Dominick Spina, Technology Product Manager of the Digital Film Group at NVIDIA. “Software developers from a wide range of industries can learn a great deal from the GPU-based solutions that Sony has successfully used in film production.”
