Case Study | Performance & Productivity

How Rising Sun Pictures Create Hollywood Blockbusters with Lenovo

Visual effects (VFX) have become integral to modern filmmaking, delivering stunning visuals that captivate audiences worldwide. From epic space battles to mesmerising underwater sequences, the production value of entertainment continues to improve by leaps and bounds year-on-year.

While these visuals may seem like they are generated using magic, it is the seamless integration of artistry and technology that transforms these scenes from storyboard to the screen. 

Aussie company Rising Sun Pictures (RSP), is doing exactly this. The award-winning world-class visual effects company has contributed their expertise to over 180 projects: including renowned titles under the Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars banner. However, to create high-quality VFX, enable their talented artists to bring their creative visions to life and handle the high compute demands of their projects, RSP needed access to cutting-edge hardware and robust computing capabilities.

Primarily focused on visual effects, RSP specialises in large scale environment work, human replacement, characters, design work, and using machine learning for face augmentation to bring the director’s vision to life. Andrew Palmer, Look Development Supervisor at RSP, the company has experienced an increased pipeline of work in the last two years, which resulted in an expansion of the team. Mirroring the efficiencies of a well-resourced team, RSP also realised the need to bring in new devices which could deliver against the increased demands. 

"With our spread of ongoing projects, we needed to ensure we had machines that would handle our volume of work without sacrificing quality. We needed a partner that could meet us on scale, but also on a real range of hardware requirements including high spec machines with NVIDIA Quadro graphics for our AI and ML workflows, as well as a variation of other components for 2D and 3D applications," said Phil Barranger, Head of Operations at RSP. 

Cognizant of the unique requirements of their operation, RSP engaged Storm FX to assist with identifying and deploying the right devices. 

The responsibility of overseeing this rollout fell to Peter Davies, Systems Engineer/Account Manager at Storm FX. From the get-go, it was clear to Peter that performance, reliability, and customisability were key requirements for RSP.

“At Storm FX, we have worked with numerous creative industries and know that demands for each use case are unique. With RSP’s high compute demands, they clearly needed a platform that combined high-performance and customisability into a single package,” said Davies.

The solution came in the form of Lenovo’s ThinkStation P620, which featured the game-changing AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO CPU, and support for the best NVIDIA® graphics. 

Following Storm FX’s recommendation and the industry's high regard for the product, RSP upgraded to the ThinkStation P620 and received glowing feedback from their team; and there was no looking back. 

Andrew recalls that the migration to Lenovo’s workstations was remarkable, and the difference was night and day. The artists were able to turn around work significantly faster and constantly push the limits of imagination in their quest to deliver breath-taking visual effects.

Pankaj Gupta, Workstation Business Development Manager for Lenovo said, “The P-series workstations have been purpose-built to offer class leading performance for professionals. The P620 in particular brings together high performance, legendary reliability, and customer driven innovation into one sleek package.” 

“At Lenovo, it is our mission to provide smarter technology for all, and we are extremely pleased that the P620 has helped RSP’s creative content developers harness unmatched performance and reliability,” added Gupta. 

RSP is not only delighted with the technology of the Lenovo P620 workstation, but also their partnership with both Lenovo and Storm FX. 

“Lenovo and Storm FX have been amazing partners for us, whenever we needed to scale up, they had solutions and we know they’ve always got our back when it comes time for support,” said Barrenger.