Dell gives Power Visual Effects in Films

Dell media and entertainment solutions has helped power award-winning visual effects (VFX) shots in several films up for an Oscar last night at the 85th Annual Academy Awards®.

Dell’s end-to-end highest performance technology helped Dell VFX customers, Pixomondo and Important Looking Pirates (ILP), deliver projects and execute against creative visions quickly and efficiently for the films “Snow White and the Huntsman,” nominated for an Oscar for Visual Effects and “Kon-Tiki,” nominated for an Oscar for Foreign Language Film, respectively. Dell Precision workstations also helped Tippett Studio bring “Ted” back to life to present the Oscars for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing alongside Mark Wahlberg.

“We are beyond proud that many of our customers were nominated and recognized for their great work at the Academy Awards® last night,” said Neil Hand, VP, Tablet and Performance PCs, Dell.

Pixomondo credits efficient, reliable and global IT infrastructure backed by 24/7 support from Dell in helping this dispersed team collaborate, render and share assets across offices at all times of day all over the world. The studio needed hardware they could rely on and that would scale with them. Dell systems allowed the artists to efficiently deliver the scope of high-quality work on time. The studio used a complete end-to-end Dell solution including Dell Precision T5500 tower workstations paired with high-end dual-Dell UltraSharp U2410 and Dell ST2420L monitors, Dell PowerEdge R510, R410, R310 and R200 servers, and Dell Networking 6248 switches to simulate, animate, render and view its work on the film.

This combination of Dell technology, services and solutions allowed Pixomondo to focus more time on creativity and workflows to overcome challenging shots and sequences. For instance, Pixomondo successfully delivered very complex shots where knights crumbled into tens of thousands of obsidian fragments by developing a custom dynamics system. The proprietary system gives physically accurate simulations while still maintaining artistic control over the look of each fragment and the progression of the overall shatter effect itself. To achieve this, Pixomondo utilized Dell solutions in offices around the world to share matchmove, animation, effects and lighting work; “something we’re very proud of and so were Universal and director Rupert Sanders,” said Roberts.