Nucleo:
Overview |
Features |
User Stories |
Requirements |
Compare |
Try Nucleo |
Buy
Digital Neural AxisDigital Neural Axis (DNA) is a visual effects, design, and digital post-production boutique based in Venice, CA. The company offers a broad range of post-production services including on-line color correction and editorial and specialises in feature film visual effects. Last year the shop produced 68 visual effects shots for Martin Scorsese®s ®The Aviator.® This summer, DNA teamed up with Pixel Liberation Front to deliver 67 shots for the Warner Bros. blockbuster, ®Superman Returns.®
Darius Fisher, president of DNA, was born in London, England. As a child he appeared in TV commercials which planted the seed for a life long fascination with film and video. He got his start on the other side of the camera in the late 80®s working on music videos, commercials, TV programs and concert films with The Rolling Stones, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Geldof, and even Princess Stephanie of Monaco. In the mid 90®s, Fisher moved across the pond to New York where he added clients Showtime, Curious Pictures, and RGA to his roster. Since relocating to Venice, DNA has evolved into a post-production boutique that can stand toe-to-to with larger FX houses when it comes to quality and attention to detail.
DNA®s ability to compete with the big dogs was put to the test during post of ®Superman Returns.® The firm joined forces with Pixel Liberation Front in April 2005 to complete 67 VFX shots including screen replacements of Lois Lane at the Daily Planet and the action-packed Boeing 777 scene®switching to other projects in-between and including 5 last minute ®clean-up® shots, all work concluded in early June, 25 days before the film®s release. During the project, Fisher and partner Melanie Franciosi, were called home to England several times for a family medical emergency which required splitting time between Hollywood and London®all the while meeting rigorous deadlines.
Why After Effects and Nucleo?
Nucleo takes full advantage of new multi-processor and multi-core technology®relieving the bottleneck created by compute time. There are no limits to what can be rendered with Nucleo. Image sequences, movies, and RAM previews are all optimized.
Nucleo Saves the Day
®Being an artist, it is really important to be able to see your work at finished quality. It simply was not possible in London to rely on our Los Angeles based thirty-processor render farm to speed up the After Effects renders. We bought one Quad-core Power Mac G5 for the new satellite office in London that came with all the latest bells and whistles. We cloned Melanie®s US harddrive sent it over to the UK and copied all the apps, plugins and settings needed for the job onto the new machine. We had heard about GridIron Nucleo and thought there was no better time to see if it could help reduce precious downtime rendering out shots in the UK without our render farm. Wow, were we amazed! Much to our surprise a full render was reduced by more than 50%. The Quad was faster than any of our machines in the farm already but combined with Nucleo one machine really held it®s own fifteen. A typical 45-minute render on the multi-core PowerMac G5 Quad took just 22 minutes with Nucleo. With only 2 more quads in the UK and Nucleo, we could have beaten the whole 15 machine farm back in LA, Nucleo saved the day, or was that Superman,® said Darius Fisher.
DNA Hardware/Software Toolkit
| Toolkit - Venice, California Hardware ® 15 dual-processor Power Mac/Cluster Node Xserve G5s ® 3 Gigabytes of RAM each ® Internal 250 gig serial ATA drives ® Xserve G5 dual 2ghz & 3.6 TB XserveRAID ® Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD cards & HDLink SDI-DVI ® 23® & 30® Apple Cinema Displays ® 2 TB Med®a FCR2X RAID ® NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card ® Wacom Intuos Tablet Software ® Adobe After Effects 7 Professional ® Adobe Creative Suite 2 ® Apple Final Cut Pro HD ® 2d3 Boujou 3.0 ® FinalTouch HD ® Imagineer Systems Monet 2.0 | Toolkit ® London, England Hardware ® 1 dual-processor Power Mac G5 ® 3 Gigabytes of RAM ® Internal 250 gig serial ATA drives ® Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD cards & HDLink SDI-DVI ® 30® Apple Cinema Display ® 2x 1 TB G-RAID ® NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card ® Wacom Intuos Tablet Software ® Adobe After Effects 7 Professional ® Adobe Creative Suite 2 ® Apple Final Cut Pro HD ® 2d3 Boujou 3.0 ® FinalTouch HD ® Imagineer Systems Monet 2.0 ® GridIron Nucleo |
