CLOUD AND REMOTE WORKING
VFX
ESCAPE TO VICTORY Realtime collaboration is an increasingly important component of Remote 2.0 workflows, enabling accelerated iteration and timely dailies/approvals across distributed workflows, as well as unlocking the ability of live on-set edits for LED capture volumes and more. There are different technical solutions to achieving it, but one of the most powerful currently is NVIDIA Omniverse, a cloud-native, multi- GPU enabled open platform for virtual collaboration and realtime photorealistic ray tracing and simulation that runs on NVIDIA RTX devices. Crucially it has also been built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) open-source 3D scene description and file format, which is becoming increasingly widely adopted by key software vendors (the list currently covers Maya, Unreal Engine, Houdini, and more). In the UK, it has been brought
together with Teradici CAS connectivity and HP Z workstations by Escape Technology to offer a turnkey system dubbed NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise. The result is potentially a very different vfx pipeline from the norm where compute and storage is centralised
and just pixels are securely streamed with AES-256 encryption. This makes the process less constrained by linear workflows and more open to parallel development. “Because it’s based on a
Universal Scene Description pipeline, artists can work on the same scene/environment simultaneously, but there are areas where it makes sense to do this and areas where it doesn’t,” comments Escape Technology CTO, Lee Danskin. “For instance, somebody can’t light and texture a chair if you haven’t modelled it yet - so there are always dependencies between tasks. Bigger picture though, yes, on large scenes and in big environments then artists can be working in parallel across those.” The resulting time savings will
be interesting to track, but the cloud-based system is already more efficient. “Tens of GBs of data load in seconds/minutes, not tens of minutes an hour,” says Danskin. “This alone, not waiting for machines loading data on a single thread, is a dramatic improvement in iterations available; leading to quality and time improvements that make old approaches pale into insignificance.”
Wacom tablet really well, then sub 25-35 millisecond response times are required for a really great experience.”
SECURITY GUARDS One of the key considerations of the new remote has, of course, been security. Attack surfaces have increased enormously with remote operations — Daire Byrne, Global Head of Systems at DNEG, says that 5,800 employees connected to the company’s VPN servers in a recent two day period, and that’s not atypical — and there is a general shift from castle and moat IT security strategies to zero trust models. Laxity is not an option, and BlueBolt MD, Tracy McCreary’s, response to questions of security is typical. “The networks and streamers have thorough security protocols that
we are required to abide by,” she says. “Some run tests on our system at the start of a project and we get audited by TPN every year. Since all of the data remains centralised on our servers in a Tier 3 data center, remote access means only pixels are being transmitted, no actual data.” “We are constantly working towards MPAA best practices,” adds
Vittorio Giannini, MD/EP at Freefolk. “Simple antivirus software isn’t enough today, we’ve implemented an advanced endpoint solution on all workstations and servers looking for attacks and lateral movement. Through our firewall we check all WFH connected machines for OS updates, installed AV, and local firewalls; if they don’t comply they can’t connect. All staff undergo phishing tests and awareness training as this is still the easiest way in.” The latter point is one made by IT security worldwide; the major
weakness in any security system is the people using it, and training is therefore an essential part of the response to increased threats. But then, it is the human aspect of remote working that remains perhaps the biggest issue that still needs to be ‘solved’ as part of Remote 2.0.
PEOPLE NEED THE POWER While collaborating on projects has been a fairly seamless process for many, staying connected, continuing staff development programmes, and maintaining consistent company values has been more of a challenge. Different companies are pursuing different strategies, depending on their size; small teams perhaps have an easier task in this area, but the larger
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