Google, has invested heavily into their cloud computing platform, building data centres across the world and developing the services and compatibility of the system. We’ve recently covered how Google are building a data centre into an old coal fired power station (including advice for old server rooms) and how they are including OpenStack into their technology, which increases the functionality and usability of the system for corporate customers. Google competes against Amazon and Microsoft in offering a global cloud computing platform and today, Google has announced a new facet to the Cloud Platform, Zync. Zync is one of Google’s acquisitions from around this time last year. Zync is a visual effects rendering service designed with cloud computing in mind. Google is opening up the first beta of Zync on the 20 August.
Zync integrates the computing, licensing, storage and even data transfer to and from the cloud system. It is able to render directly from most current rendering systems and tools and the list of compatible systems includes Maya, Nuke, VRay, Arnold. Google have announced that RenderMan support will be added very soon. However, because the Google Cloud Platform backs up Zync, there is masses of rendering computing power behind the scenes, which means customers get access to a robust, powerful and reliable Cloud Platform and Google in turn, can provide a drop-in system for both burst and longer term rendering jobs, billed by the minute. Google’s blog website boasts that Zync “lets artists focus on creativity, not infrastructure.” Pixar’s RenderMan Business Director, Chris Ford, said this on the announcement: “We are thrilled to announce RenderMan’s upcoming integration with Zync by Google Cloud Platform. When the integration is released in the near future, RenderMan users will have easy access to Google’s incredible cloud rendering infrastructure, for convenient access to burst computing power to meet animation and VFX deadlines.”
Artists to sign up for the beta will receive $300 in Cloud Platform credits, which is enough for around a hundred hours of rendering. Zync has a built-in calculator designed to help customers know how much their rendering job will cost across the 1,600 dedicated Compute Engine processor cores. Zync also includes support with a four hour response time during business hours. Google’s move today backs up previous comments from the company discussing how their cloud platform could be used as a render farm, but until now the business has not had a viable software solution. Now the movie studios have a system to tap into.