Customers Stories
Desktop - Mobile - Rendering
Tryba Architects
With two multi-million dollar projects on the board, nationally acclaimed Tryba Architects needed to supply their clients with multiple design iterations in order to solve construction issues in the design phase. The solution was renderBOXX, which would increase their rendering performance by an astonishing 90%.
Immersive Cocoon
Over forty years after the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, VFX designer/director Oliver Zeller and his partners at the NAU design collective pay homage to the legendary motion picture with a visually stunning short entitled Immersive Cocoon. Learn how a BOXX solution with 3ds Max helped make it all possible.
Matthew Perez
SolidWorks expert and self-professed motorcycle and car enthusiast Matt Perez decided to create an advanced surfacing tutorial of a 2010 Chevy Camaro and make it available for free online. In the 296 page work, he focused on why designers should model a particular way as opposed to simply focusing on how. The result was Matt becoming a genuine resource for SW users everywhere . . . and receiving a 3DBOXX 4860 XTREME workstation which has accelerated his workflow like never before.
Chris Taylor
While creating VFX for a BBC television series, veteran CG artist Chris Taylor was part of a team assigned to produce 1800 VFX shots in only 6 months. The solution was 3DBOXX. Now, as he completes his own feature film LVJ, he needs this sci fi indie to look like a Hollywood blockbuster. The answer again was 3DBOXX.
SERA Architects
SERA Architects Discovers 3DBOXX 4850, the Ultimate Revit Solution
Leading “green” architecture firm, SERA Architects, is dedicated to the principles of urban revitalization, historic preservation, creative retro-fitting of existing buildings and sustainable design. So when two high-profile, multimillion dollar projects representative of those concepts were slated to begin, SERA was the obvious choice. However, architect and job captain Russell Holzinger recognized that in order to complete the Green-Wyatt Federal Building and the Oregon Sustainability Center projects on time, he would be required to increase the speed of his team’s computer workstations which support Autodesk® Revit®. He found the ideal solution from BOXX.
SERA Architects’ Russell Holzinger:
“SERA is a technical innovator and the 3DBOXX 4850 is our standard,” he says. “That’s why we recommend these systems to everyone.”
Brian Stark, Metro DMA
Discordia: Stephen King's Dark Tower Goes Interactive with BOXX
Brian Stark (along with Judy Hahn) is the founder of Metro DMA and The Stark Agency, providing design, branding, and interactive services for a host of high profile clients—from Sharon Osborne, Linkin Park, and Marilyn Manson, to Dreamworks, Baz Luhrmann, and Donald Trump. Their latest client, best-selling author Stephen King, contracted with them in 2007 to orchestrate a complete overhaul of the author’s websites stephenking.com and The Dark Tower Official Web Site. The latter site includes an exciting online interactive experience called Discordia and, according to Stark, BOXX helped make it all possible.
Discordia: Stephen King’s Dark Tower Gets Boost from BOXX
"Working on the BOXX rig was the first time I truly felt like an artist," says interactive producer Brian Stark of Metro DMA. "The ability to create insanely detailed artwork and render out 700% faster is a true luxury for someone like me. I could not be happier with its performance, noise level, and style."
URS Corporations
URS is the world’s largest global engineering design firm. A leading U.S. federal government contractor with 27,800 employees, URS provides a comprehensive range of professional planning, design, systems engineering and technical assistance, program and construction management, and operations and maintenance services.
Alcom360 Architectural Studios
It is situated in beautiful Puerto Rico, is the prime example of a company that leverages the latest hardware and software to bring innovation and creativity to the venerable discipline of Architecture. Alcom360 specializes in producing stunning 3D renderings of architectural designs. At BOXX, we receive a lot of images of buildings, but Alcom260’s images are mouthwatering. Alex Herrera, the owner of Alcom360, recently invested in a BOXX render farm consisting of five renderBOXX 10200 modules (for a total of 40 cores). His story is telling: “Before the renderBOXXes, it took overnight to show a client a new version of their design. Now, we take the clients to lunch and the rendering is complete by the time we come back.” Rendering performance powering business performance: that is what renderBOXX is all about.
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard needs no introduction as they are a household name for anyone who has a passing interest in computer games. From Diablo to World of Warcraft, Blizzard has consistently pushed the envelope for immersion and sheer fun in a string of blockbuster successes that has made it a darling of the games industry. BOXX is pleased to count Blizzard Entertainment as one of our customers. Their animators would rather work on BOXX workstations than on any other platform: we wear that as a badge of honor. Blizzard recently invested in specially configured 3DBOXX 8400 Series Workstations for running IRIDAS Speedgrade, and by all accounts, they are thrilled: the system administrator in cinematic's says: "they are working beautifully!"
Blur Studios
Founded in 1995, Blur Studio provides visual effects and animation creative service. Focused on delivering creative excellence to its clients, the studio has produced many projects that include large format films, commercials, concept art, and 3D animation and visual effects. Blur Studio works in a highly competitive industry, which means that work needs to get done faster, better, and with more creativity and innovation just to compete and stay in the game. When it comes to the systems that power its creativity, Blur Studio wanted BOXX workstations because they respond quickly, are fast, and easier to add or remove from a large network. Jennifer Miller says, “The BOXX system was more compatible with the software I use, and the speed in BOXX systems allows me to be more intuitive as an artist.” Blur Studio is pleased with how incredibly fast BOXX systems perform, and how useful they are in helping Blur stay ahead of the competition.
Cicada Design
Cicada Design is an award-winning design firm that creates stunning presentations of 3D environments, structures, and architectural spaces. Although they may be considered a small studio, Cicada has forged their reputation on complex, high profile projects. Their clients, whether prestigious architecture firms or real estate developers, depend on Cicada Design from the concept stage of planning and visualization, through commercial venture marketing and fundraising possibilities for cultural and public institutions.
Specializing in design visualization, animated HD, and textured materials, Cicada runs 3dsMax and VRay software on their BOXX systems and the company is thrilled with the results. The rich, detailed work created by Cicada designers in 3dsMax requires the performance and stability that architectural professionals have come to expect from BOXX. Regarding their rendering capabilities, Cicada used to employ a “buy by the frame” rendering service, but that proved to be an inefficient way of doing business for such an in-demand studio. They wisely invested in a renderBOXX farm in order to bring their beautifully realized visions to life while maximizing their production workflow. For Cicada Design, the decision was relatively simple. When you’re creating designs for the likes of the Canadian Opera Company or the Ontario Science Center you need BOXX solutions.
The architectural projects in your pipeline may or may not be as grand in scope as those of Cicada Design, but they are just as important to us. Call a BOXX consultant today for modeling and rendering solutions that not only ignite creativity, but maximize the efficiency of your design process as well.
Insomniac Games
The company name is indeed well chosen because Insomniac has over the years created some incredibly addictive games that has kept those with or without sleeping problems up at night! Insomniac is well known for its highly successful games for the successive generations of the Playstation console. The Ratchet & Clank series is one of Insomniac’s flagship products with the latest incarnation released in October 2007. Another popular franchise was started with the Resistance: Fall of Man, a title that was released as part of the PS3 launch. Resistance: Fall of Man is already slated for a sequel this year.
Insomniac was founded by Ted Price, Brian Hastings and Alex Hastings, a great combination of managerial and programming talent that has created a unique company culture that digital artists and programmers are proud to be part of. “Every game gets a lot of input from everyone in the company.” says IT Director Vicky Delgado. “because we want to create games that everyone can own.” That is why Insomniac intends to stay around its present count of about 150 employees for the time being because it seems to be the scale at which this broad collaboration functions most effectively. BOXX is proud that Insomniac chose 3DBOXX Workstations for both their digital artists and their programmers. Vicky Delgado echoed their impressions: “They are awesome machines!”
Rick Baker
Rick Baker has been working as a make-up artist in the film industry for over three decades. He has won six Academy Awards for Best Makeup for his work in films ranging from American Werewolf in London in 1982 to how the Grinch stole Christmas in 2000. He was also nominated in 1998 for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Mighty Joe Young. He also has three British Academy Awards and one Television Award. A fan of horror movies since childhood, Rick has been making monsters all his adult life.
Here’s what Rick had to say about his experience with a 3DBOXX
You know those commercials where one guy says I’m a Mac and the other says I’m a PC? , well, I’m a Mac. That presented a problem when Jaime Labelle from Pixologic asked me to beta test ZBrush 3.0 because currently it is only is for Windows. I once owned a PC but gave it away because I disliked it so much. I wasn’t thrilled about having to work on one again. Well, Jaime arranged for me to use a 64-bit BOXX machine to beta test ZB 3.0 and now I guess I have to buy the damn thing because it is sweet! I was working on ZBrush models with many subtools (new feature in ZBrush3), each consisting of around 20 million polys and the BOXX didn’t even slow down. I found it to be fast and dependable and I just like the way it looks. So now, I’m just confused, I still love my Mac, but BOXX has changed the way I feel about PC’s.
With A Twist Studio
BOXX customer “With A Twist Studio” produced a blowout ad for the worldwide launch of Nissan’s new GT-R without ever filming a real car. Car advertising is changing fast, and With A Twist Studio is leading the charge. Because everything was created in 3D, the studio’s rendering requirements grew tremendously. With A Twist invested in 10 renderBOXX high-density modules to scale its render farm; that’s a total of 160 cores of rendering power that fits in only 8Us of rack space. Director David Burton is enthusiastic about the new additions:”We could not have gotten he job done without the renderBOXXes. Our work is super-CPU intensive, especially the environmental simulation part that involves rain, snow, water splashes etc. We have 18 artists and the renderBOXXes never stopped, 24/7. We also throw a few of them at lighting and coloring when required. They give the artist the ability to render with new light applied in quasi real-time. We also use a few to produce very high-resolution (10K) print images. They really accelerate things. The renderBOXXes’ density was huge for us. We saved a lot of time because we did not need to install a new rack. They fit in the exiting rack. The best thing was: they arrived, we slid them in, and they were rendering the same day.” With a Twist is now working on a new automotive ad. We can’t wait to see this one!
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