LOS ANGELES — At the 2015 SIGGRAPH Conference, Thinkbox Software (www.thinkboxsoftware.com) is showcasing advancements to Deadline, its scalable, high-volume compute management solution. Deadline enables studios to easily link any combination of local and cloud-based resources into one logical pipeline.
Thinkbox is introducing on-demand metered licensing with Deadline 8, which will start beta soon. The feature will work with both local and cloud-based farms alongside existing permanent and temporary licenses. Usage is tracked per minute, and can be purchased and managed round-the-clock via Thinkbox’s e-commerce portal. Additionally, the store will host on-demand, per-minute licenses for select third party rendering options, including The Foundry's Nuke.
Deadline 8 also adds a Proxy Server application that allows users to securely connect to and interact with remote and cloud-based render farms over public Internet without the need for a virtual private network (VPN). An updated user interface with enhanced interactivity improves the monitor experience, while the new sandboxed Python environment facilitates additional rendering and event stability.
Currently, Deadline supports cloud rendering on Amazon EC2, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure and OpenStack, among others.