Outpost VFX Partners With Microsoft For Supercharged Render Capabilities

Outpost VFX has spent the last year working closely with the Microsoft Azure team to develop deep cloud workflows and its advanced creature pipeline.

By partnering with engineers at Microsoft to explore cloud compute with Azure and help to deliver a VFX-friendly workflow for the platform, Outpost VFX delivered a stunning creature asset for an upcoming feature film in only four months – something that would’ve been impossible for the team without the power and flexibility of the cloud.

Rendering anything, let alone photorealistic creatures with dense fur, can take a long time and a lot of compute power to achieve. On-premises render farms can be very expensive to upgrade and can’t usually be expanded quickly enough to satisfy unprecedented render demand.

With complex Houdini fur simulations and a wide range of animation to interpret at render time, being able to burst to the cloud at a moment’s notice allowed the Outpost VFX team to iterate efficiently for the client while also quickly exploring creative ideas.

Published in November 2019, a Microsoft Azure case study sheds some more light on how Outpost VFX worked closely with the tech giant to deliver the undeliverable and broke new ground while doing so.