Driving down Wilshire Blvd. near the LaBrea Tar Pits you will frequently find rows of specialty food trucks lining the street. Silverdraft invited us to tour a different kind of truck at their offices just a bit further down Wilshire. In the parking lot behind a building they share with pre-visualization gurus The Third Floor, we toured Mobileviz – a new mobile unit designed to offer filmmakers a unique and incredibly powerful resource for interactive on location production.
Technical stats:
Let’s first look at the tech that is packed into the Mobileviz trailer. Starting in the machine room we find 30 teraflops processing with 20TB of Micron superfast solid-state storage, incorporated into a cluster of 1,536 computer cores. That bears repeating: 1,536 cores and 20TB of SSD storage in a mobile configuration!
The trailer has space for many workstations with kit ranging from Autodesk MotionBuilder, Maya and 3DS Max; Mental Images’ Mental Ray renderer; Chaos Group’s Vray; Qube! render management from PipelineFX; Autodesk Smoke and Flame, Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid editing; plus on-set dailies and full color management capabilities. All of this located in a 53 foot trailer with onboard generators. Silverdraft is planning additional trailers in different sizes.
Design:
Silverdraft Mobileviz is designed to be deployed at a stage or on location, it can be used for 2D and 3D stereo capture for digital motion pictures (2K and 4K data, HD video), in-camera pre-visualization and realtime, high-resolution visualization of VFX shots, plus performance and motion capture recording. Ground-breaking rendering capabilities mean that Mobileviz can also be used when brick and mortar facilities need extra computer resources on VFX and CGI-laden projects.
Putting it to work:
Silverdraft is currently collaborating on a next-generation project designed to showcase the capabilities of the truck with pre-visualization experts The Third Floor, Autodesk, VFX supervisor Alex Frisch, and performance capture specialists Knight Vision.
Chris Edwards from The Third Floor talks about the project:
“At THE THIRD FLOOR, we strive to support filmmakers from the earliest stage of development all the way through the final handoff to final VFX Studios. Previsualization is highly effective in pre-production and in the form of “postvis”, after the plates are shot; but previs has yet to achieve its full potential on-set and during production.
Ambitious filmmakers like Robert Zemeckis and James Cameron have been pushing advancements in Virtual Production technology for many years, but most of these first-generation solutions require a large support team and are limited to the confines of a single sound stage. THE THIRD FLOOR is dedicated to taking the next step, by enabling filmmakers to take their previs decisions on location, so they can direct digital performances and arrange CG elements at the same time they are framing their live-action.
In order to speed these efforts, our studio has joined a collective of companies and individual luminaries with the expertise to make this happen today. Avatar veteran, James Knight, and his company, Knight Vision provides the motion capture expertise to track any camera or performer in broad daylight, which is a critical piece of the puzzle. Silverdraft is providing its Mobileviz solution, which provides power and massive computing resources, including all the comforts and capabilities of a high-end post production facility on wheels.
In addition, numerous equipment manufacturers and software developers have been lending their gear and technology gurus to support the cause. We hosted a successful test of the entire workflow recently, and it was amazing to see the groundswell of support from ARRI, RED, Autodesk and many others. It was also somewhat of an Avatar Crew reunion, including some of the Mocap Performers who acted in the film. This vote of confidence is a strong sign that Hollywood crews are rising to meet the demand for the creation of fantastic hybrid live-action / CG content, while being budget conscious to help Studios ensure box office success.
The trick is to create tools and workflows that are efficient enough to ensure that more of the Director’s vision ends up on screen and not on the cutting room floor. Targeted use of previs in development and early pre-production is the key to kicking off an efficient and effective production, but virtual production tools can help carry that vision all the way though the Production Process. This is our chance as an Industry to redefine the creative process as we conjure up the next-generation of inspired entertainment.”
Silverdraft key personnel:
Amy Gile, Founder & CEO, is a driving force in the business and capital development of Silverdraft, its projects and its relationships with entertainment companies and technology partners. Amy started her career in front of the camera, as a professional SAG/AFTRA-accredited actress and model, working nationally and internationally in film, TV, theater and commercials for over 20 years. She is also a talented producer, whose current projects include co-producing King Lear with Barry Navidi, starring Al Pacino.
Steve Hendricks, President, has a post-production career that spans over 30 years. He partnered with Virgin in 1987 to create 525 Studios in Hollywood and built and oversaw similar operations in LA, London, New York, Vancouver and Mexico City. Hendricks ran NY-based Creative Content Artists as well as Post Logic Studios Hollywood and New York.
Michael Cooper, Marketing & Sales comes from a rich background as VP of business development for EFilm as well as managerial roles at Electron Filmworks, Boss Film Studios and ILM.
Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan – Silverdraft Mobileviz Systems Architect
The computing technology within Silverdraft Mobileviz was developed by Dr Srinidhi Varadarajan, a world-leading pioneer in supercomputing technologies. He is director for the center of high-end computing systems, and associate professor in the department of computer science, at Virginia Tech University. His pioneering work in supercomputing, parallel processing, scalable network emulation, and network routing algorithms, led to his development, in 2003, of System X at Virginia Tech, ranked #3 among super-computers worldwide.
Dr Varadarjan said: “Over the last decade, the volume of VFX in movies has increased dramatically, to the point where entire movies are completely based around VFX. Today, even fairly humble movies include a significant amount of computer-generated content. Creating, handling and managing all this content requires enormous amounts of computing horsepower, and this is only going to increase. This is where Silverdraft Mobileviz trailers come in. Now, movie productions have access to a high-end realtime resource, in mobile form, that can park-up close to where the movie is being made. It’s not just for a $300m motion picture, it’s available to everyone who wants to include VFX or CGI in their production, and the latest on-set capabilities.”
Contact information can be found at silverdraft.com
That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d love to play for a day in that. Insane SSD storage!
working the post along-side the shooting in virtual real-time! all the truck’s missing is some bunk-beds! if you can get the workflow on point and pick up the tab for this bitch’s rental it would cut months off post-flow . .
Great article Jeff! This is a pretty exciting foray into really integrated virtual production, and mobile no less!
sexy…