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HotBox Studios Benefits from Time Savings with Nucleo Pro

HotBox Studios is a visual arts, media production and technology company based in the UK. The company was founded in the 1990®s and has made a name for itself with computer animation and visual effects within live performance and installation. Nemesis, HotBox Studios® first live performance production - created in collaboration with Random Dance - premiered at London®s historic Sadlers Wells, showed on the BBC and toured to over 40 countries worldwide. In recent years, Hotbox®s international award winning collaboration has led to productions premiering in London (Sadlers Wells, Lilian Baylis, Laban), New York (Lehmann Maupin), and Milan (Teatro alla Scala), and touring to almost every corner of the globe. HotBox Studios has worked in partnership with a variety of artists including Wayne McGregor, Shirazeh Houshiary, and Sir John Tavener.

®Despite having powerful multi-core machines, we used to set-up After Effects renders to run overnight. If a deadline was looming we couldn®t afford to take the risk of a render failing due to a corrupt frame or any other error. This meant one of the team members would either pull an all-nighter to babysit the render, or log in from home every hour or so to check the progress,® said Mark Hatchard.

The time savings proved invaluable to HotBox Studios

After a little research via Google, and coming across a review in Computer Arts magazine, Mark Hatchard decided to give Nucleo Pro a try on an animation sequence for Henry Purcells® Opera ®Dido and Aeneas,® directed by Wayne McGregor. Nucleo Pro became the key to getting the job done on time.

Nucleo Pro allowed HotBox Studios® compositors to render After Effects compositions in the background as they continued to work on the next sequence, and output full renders in a fraction of the time previously possible. With tests needing to be rendered, converted to DVD format, and uploaded to the company®s web server before the director could download and test in Milan, the time savings proved invaluable.

Get a good night®s sleep with Nucleo Pro

The story of ®Dido and Aeneas® tells a tale of two lovers, who cannot be together. At the end of the opera, Dido decides to take her life. The projection on the screen behind the lead is an animation of a unicorn in an ethereal environment - symbolizing passing from one world to the next.

The three minute unicorn animation was projected in SD at a resolution of 720x576, incorporating motion capture and particle systems. Each element was rendered on an individual layer then imported to After Effects for editing and compositing. As HotBox Studios neared the deadline, machines had to deal with up to 20 layers of still sequences, effects, and masks. This all put a huge strain on resources.

®I was really surprised at how Nucleo Pro allowed us to maximize the power of our multi-core machines - achieving the speed gains we knew would be possible given the hardware available. Since adding Nucleo Pro to our pipeline, we now have the luxury to preview a render and make adjustments before leaving for the night. The peace of mind is a real treat and helps us all maintain a better work-life balance,® continued Mark.

Dido & Aeneas will be coming to the Royal Opera House (www.royalopera.org) in spring 2009

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Visit HotBox Studios online at http://www.hotboxstudios.co.uk/