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From its inception, Zync has been a rendering solution designed by VFX artists for VFX artists. Since joining Google, the team has been hard at work integrating Zync into the broader Google Cloud Platform offering. The result allows artists to use the rendering tools they’re familiar with such as Maya and Nuke to seamlessly tap the performance, scale, and economic benefits of Google’s infrastructure.`

Today we’re pleased to announce the beta of Zync on Google Cloud Platform, slated to go live next week on 8/20. We invite artists to sign up and be notified when Zync launches next week, and get access to 1,600 dedicated Compute Engine cores to power your V-Ray, Arnold and Nuke-based renders.
Zync was designed at a visual effects studio based on a workflow that fits VFX artists’ existing pipelines. With Zync now powered by Google Cloud Platform, artists get the scale, performance, and security of Google’s infrastructure while still maintaining the familiarity and interactivity of a local render farm. The pricing benefits of Google’s cloud infrastructure enable you to spin up compute nodes on-demand in minutes, while per-minute billing ensures you pay for only what you render with no wasted overhead. In addition, we’ve further reduced our on-demand prices by another 15-25% for all applications we support. Our TCO calculator allows you to compare your total on-premises spend with the per-minute billing model Zync offers.
Sensitive to the critical, schedule-driven needs of creative professionals doing rendering work, Google will offer Monday-Friday support with 4-hour response times during business hours.
In addition to the existing platforms we support, we’re also pleased to announce Zync support for Pixar’s RenderMan software with a beta available in the coming month. After 25 years, Pixar’s RenderMan technology continues to set the standard for graphics rendering, evolving to enable the latest techniques including physically-based visual effects and state-of-the-art ray tracing.
"We are thrilled to announce RenderMan’s upcoming integration with Zync by Google Cloud Platform,” said Chris Ford, RenderMan Business Director at Pixar Animation Studios. "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.”
To learn more about Zync, we invite you to view our series of tutorial videos.  New users can take advantage for Google Cloud Platform’s $300 credit on Zync which provides over 100 hours of free rendering.
- Posted by Todd Prives, Product Manager, Google Cloud Platform
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Google is looking forward to the incredible energy this week at SIGGRAPH 2015. We invite you to attend our tech talks to learn more about cloud-based rendering and data processing on Tuesday 8/11, starting at 3pm in meeting room Georgia I at the JW Marriott LA Live. Throughout the conference, the Cloud Platform team will join its creative partners including Avere, Chaos Group, The Foundry, Pixar, and Thinkbox Software. Be on the lookout for their exhibit booths where we look forward to meeting with attendees alongside them!

As SIGGRAPH kicks off, top of mind for the Cloud Platform team is the importance of protecting the work of creative professionals. World-class security has been at Google’s core from our early days, and security remains our key focus on Cloud Platform. We are working closely with media and creative companies, taking steps to meet the most stringent security requirements in the industry. As guidelines and company-specific requirements for content protection evolve, we will work jointly with studios and governance bodies to ensure Google meets the highest standards of data security and integrity.

Today we are pleased to announce the public beta of our cloud-native rendering solution Zync, available to artists next week on August 20th. To celebrate artists’ creativity, we’re inviting users to sign up and be among the first to use Zync for cloud-based graphics rendering powered by Google Cloud Platform. In addition to earning additional free-trial credit, Google will curate the best work rendered on Zync to showcase the artists or their studios on Google’s media website.

Creative professionals are increasingly looking to Google’s global infrastructure to power key media workflows including graphics rendering, media archival, and video processing ranging from transcoding to content distribution around the world for livestreaming. Today we’re launching Media Solutions by Google Cloud Platform to showcase ways in which creative companies have harnessed Cloud Platform, and to begin providing technical content for companies to bridge their existing operations to the cloud -- from large studios all the way to the individual artist.

Our customers and our partners continue to contribute significantly to Google Cloud Platform’s growing ecosystem in media. Trailblazing customers focused on graphics rendering, such as Atomic Fiction, Framestore, and RodeoFX, are pushing what’s possible with creativity in the cloud. iStreamPlanet’s live video-streaming SaaS reaffirms the notion that cloud is fundamentally about enabling companies to focus on their core competencies rather than on infrastructure. Our partner Avere Systems recently announced the general availability of their high-performance NAS for Google Cloud Platform, helping customers bridge compute and storage-intensive workloads seamlessly between on-prem and the cloud.

Stay tuned in to the Google Cloud Platform blog all week where each day we’ll dive deeper into a media topic of interest. If you’d prefer not to wait, visit the Media Solutions site or sign up to participate in our upcoming #RenderMore showcase for artists.

- Posted by Andy Tzou, Product Marketing Manager, Google Cloud Platform
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Many of us on the Google Cloud Platform team have been inspired by the artistic and creative work our customers are beginning to power in the cloud. Google aims to put artists and creative professionals first with a set of solutions tailored to the unique needs of the media industry.

One of the key workloads in media that has natural synergy with cloud computing is graphics rendering, a process relied upon by the entertainment, engineering, design, and scientific communities. The rendering requirements of the visual effects and animation industry in particular are at an extraordinary scale, requiring vast amounts of compute and storage. One customer, Atomic Fiction, reported that their rendering jobs run anywhere from 2 minutes up to 40 hours for every single frame of a motion picture -- there are 24 frames in a single second of film!

With rendering historically being completed exclusively on-premises in large render farms, companies like Thinkbox Software are providing an important bridge to the cloud, giving studios effectively infinite compute and storage when they need it most. With the launch of Deadline Cloud Wizard, Thinkbox greatly simplifies the creation of cloud-based render farms. With support for over 60 different rendering packages out of the box, Thinkbox’s flagship product Deadline empowers artists, architects, and engineers to harness compute cores for rendering on Compute Engine. Deadline customers can scale their internal render farms seamlessly to the cloud in 30 minutes with minimal configuration. Customers can take advantage of Compute Engine’s key benefits that matter most for graphics rendering: per-minute billing, automatic sustained use discounts, fast provisioning of VMs, and the performance, reliability, and security of Google’s global networking infrastructure.

Media is one of Google Cloud Platform’s fastest growing workloads, and we’re seeing great momentum across our creative partners and our customers. Check out how Framestore enables its artists to build toward a greater result through creative refinement, how Atomic Fiction takes audiences to another place by focusing on creativity rather than infrastructure, or how RodeoFX is looking to tap Google’s cloud-based tools for its ambitious creative pipeline. Get in touch with us, we would love to learn how you’re powering your media and entertainment processes today, and how we can enable your artists and creative professionals.

- Posted by Todd Prives, Product Manager, Google Cloud Platform
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