[Originally posted on 08/13/18]
LUXX Studios has only been around for 12 years, but it has already made a huge impact in Hollywood, providing visual effects work for large tentpole movies such as White House Down and Independence Day: Resurgence. Christian Haas and Andrea Block, founders of LUXX Studios, has continued building upon their successes, and is on their way to completing their very first full-length, animated feature titled “Manou the Swift”, an Ugly-Ducking-meets-Romeo-and-Juliet tale of an orphaned swift raised by seagulls, voiced by Kate Winslet and Willem Dafoe.
An Inside Look into LUXX Studio’s First Animated Movie
One of the biggest challenges for small, independent studios like LUXX is budget. Large, established players in the business can throw as much as $100 million or more at an animated film. LUXX has a budget of €8 million ($9.5 million USD), roughly 1/10 the budget typically allocated for a major animated production. They need to find efficiencies wherever they can so that they can make the film look amazing without breaking the bank.
This is where AMD comes in to the story. In production, LUXX utilizes Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Chaosgroup® V-Ray®, and Foundry’s® Nuke® along with several off-the-shelf plugins to assist with fluid and hair simulations. Such complex simulations can place a heavy load on a system, so to speed up their workflow, LUXX turned to AMD’s Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 1950X CPU and AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 7100 professional graphics card to help accelerate their content.
They saw an immediate difference upon using their new AMD powered workstations. Not only were artists able to complete their shots faster, they were able to complete them better. The extra time saved allowed them to try different versions of the same shot, allowing more creativity to flow, and producing a better film as an end result.
Manou the Swift Teaser Trailer
One other area where LUXX is leveraging the power of AMD is on their rendering side. LUXX’s previous rendering solution was a dual Intel Xeon based processor. The dual Intel Xeon E5-2620 CPUs took five hours to render a close-up of Manou, but when they switched their rendering to a single AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, the rendering time fell to under two hours per frame. This increase in power even enabled LUXX to reinstate shots that it had previously dropped on the grounds that they were too time-consuming to render.
Thanks to the stellar performance of AMD Radeon Pro professional graphics and AMD Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, LUXX Studios is completing their first animated feature faster and to a higher standard of quality than it thought possible. Read more about the benefits that AMD provides to LUXX Studios via the link below and be sure to check out Manou the Swift this autumn in a theater near you.
Keep up with all the latest news from LUXX and how Manou is progressing, powered by AMD. Click here to visit LUXX Studios website.
LUXX Studios Highlight Reel
Download the AMD + LUXX Case Study (PDF)
Learn More About AMD Radeon™ Pro
Learn More About AMD Ryzen™
Learn More About AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™
Warren Eng is a Product Marketing Manager for professional graphics at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. GD-5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq3UdDDMOi8
