Alps VFX:
5x growth in 2 years!

Hello everyone and welcome to another great webinar brought to you by leaders in cloud rendering GridMarkets! We've got an inspirational guest for you this evening or morning depending on where you are based. Now with your introductions, I'm Charlie Watson head of Public Relations and Communications at VFX animation studio in London, Jellyfish Pictures. So, it is the evening for me, and I have a pleasure to be moderating this session today. I'll be talking to the founder and head of VFX at Alps VFX Filippo Robino. Filippo has worked in some of the biggest modern-day blockbusters including Aquaman Spiderman, Far from Home, Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Yeah, that's just the tip of the iceberg for his credit list Filippo story is one of focus and singers dreams come through to fruition before we hear from Filippo however we are going to have GridMarkets co-founder and the reason we are all here today and Mark Ross to take us through GridMarkets are and why they are so great and then following Mark we have another super special guest Ben Hill ben joins us from cloud security experts Oracle and the global director for Oracle startups. So, first of all Mark took it away. Hi everyone, I'm Mark Ross I'm going to talk a little bit about GridMarkets today very briefly the company is focused on providing animation rendering and visual simulations also molecular simulations we have some work that we do in the pharmaceutical side we have over 6000 customers in 90 countries we have major partnerships with 3d software companies like SideFX Maxon, Pixar and others and then we have some significant strategic cloud partnerships with the likes of oracle and google and others and as Charlie mentioned Ben Hill from oracle will be here talking about oracle security in just a few minutes we're located all around the world us Europe Asia Australia and that allows us to provide a follow the sun support approach which is one of the big advantages that we offer this is our pipeline as you can see we support Houdini 3ds Max Blender Cinema 4d Maya and then the corresponding renders that go along with it it's our model is a pay as you go model so you pay only for what you use then you can scale up and down in both machine count and license count we provide all that for you very seamlessly you just simply specify how many machines you want and we require the appropriate number of licenses and machines to satisfy that request I mentioned that we're located around the world and the team that we have that is located around the world that provides our support has come from some major studios so they know your pain they know what it's like to have a very complex and time pressing submission and how to get that across the finish line so we provide you know an excellent support team and on a 24x7 basis here's how it works very briefly if you want to get started there's a up page on GridMarkets.com/signup so you create an account very brief form fill in a few things then you download Envoy is the tool that allows you to upload and download your files to us and you can choose the Envoy for whatever your operating system is and once you download Envoy it includes the plugins that correspond to whatever 3d software you prefer so for example if you're using Houdini you would install the Houdini plugin once you do that point Envoy to your project files then Envoy will upload those files to you as you can see here we can upload files from either a local project directory or from whatever your favorite data store is s3 etc. and so on once that submission goes up then the render that you chose either render man V-Ray Redshift or whatever it might be is activated and your project starts to render again you would at this point specify how many machines you want to use and those machines would be allocated to your submission and this is all done behind the scenes once you have done the submission you get this real-time dashboard which shows what projects you have submitted to us and what their state of processing is and you can also use this to interrogate the job to find out details about the log and everything you would want to control your submissions is on this dashboard once the frames are completing they start to download so you don't have to wait for all the frames to be completed rather as each frame is completed then it begins to download to the directory that you have designated we're offering a free trial you can go to gridmarcus.com sign up to get the free trial and also use this promo code at the bottom 2021 July 7th webinar to get a 15 discount if you're a new user you'll get a 15 discount on whatever credits you buy after signing up and if you're an existing user when you buy the credits just use that discount code and you'll get the discount for that as well back to you Charlie so now we have ben roaring up in his Lamborghini to tell us about oracle ben please take it away thank you Charlie and thank you Mark it's always great to be here talking about oracle cloud infrastructure and our tireless dedication to security but I understand this is simply a primer before out via VFX's exciting content so I'll make it as quick as possible again my name is Benjamin Hill I'm global director in the oracle for startups program specializing in cloud architecture and security essentially we're an accelerated program that provides resources to entrepreneurs to help them launch their successful business so when oracle went about launching our generation ii cloud offering our approach to security was deliberate direct we wanted to ensure it was architected in automated always on and best of all free so how do we go about doing this let's go through some of the high points more security by default now what does that mean well firstly we design for isolation we've taken the hypervisor and put it on the network layer what on earth does that mean well in short this approach separates customer traffic which provides better security and performance and as an added bonus it reduces risk of hypervisor based attacks also OCI has what's called separation of duties which means oracle administrators have no access to customers memory space and as it relates to your data and associated storage services we have full encryption at rest and in motion as well as integrated backup for business continuity and disaster recovery best practices so moving on let's chat a little bit about our auto detection and remediation capabilities specifically oracle Cloud Guard security and vulnerability scanning services excuse me so oracle Cloud Guard known as OCG provides comprehensive end-to-end monitoring for cloud environments it's continuously collecting and analyzing data and service configurations audit logs and other information reporting its findings as problems based on out-of-the-box security recipes or custom security recipes created by the specific administrator and to complement OCG we have oracle's vulnerability scanning service which routinely checks hosts for potential vulnerabilities and generates detailed reports with metrics about potential weak points and again all of our the majority of our security services especially as it relates to oracle cloud infrastructure are free so multi-factor authentication for user access OCI vault to store things like ssh keys and we're open to open we're open to third-party tools so you can federate your iem policies with your centralized identity provider as well as sim systems like Splunk and logarithm so that is it like I said it'd be really quick I'm going to be passing it back to you know Charlie to move on to the exciting stuff thank you well I don't think this is any less exciting but certainly very important for these for the VFX industry to be able to do the amazing stuff they do so thank you very much ben for joining us today yeah but now yes the man of the hour Filippo and so to give so Filippo’s going to be talking about the effect hi Filippo hi everyone how are you doing today pretty good pretty good another warm day here in Italy so the sun is shining so it's great actually wow and that's going to be one of the topics we touch on is the fact you are in Italy having worked all over the globe and so to give attendees a little bit of background on out the effects Filippo founded it in 2019 and it's an Italian visual effect effects studio based print and applied high quality effect service to the global market their team bring international experience from renowned VFX studios and co-founder Filippo as I ran off the most incredible credits earlier and Filippo before we get started really into our conversation do you want to share some of your work with our attendees sure let me just share the screen thank you so much for sharing that Philippo that was just amazing I was an incredible music as well which had been part of the discussion tapping my toes thank you hey before we start talking about the effects and your newest venture okay I mean as everyone saw you've done some amazing work and you started off and entering and then have now traveled around the world you give us a brief overview of your journey to to those big high-end blockbusters yeah so basically when I finished the university I of course as basically I think every artist we had to decide if to open a new studio without knowing actually how to work properly to go and try to work on those major feature things and learn how to work so me and my current business partner that we had this little project we decided okay let's after university let's try to go and try to reach and try to reach high level in terms of career and to work in the in those big studios and see how the best are dealing with those how they get to done those shows and so on so we started really simple like starting from studios here small studios here in Italy and then we work all the way up to myself for example to wait I'm a business partner to other war like other places like The Mill New York or ILP in Sweden and we jump from one company to another one and basically just trying you know to learn everything from those company and to try to work to our best work at all time and to get the basically the job done in every place that you want so my first big gig basically was in in Munich in trickster it's basically where I learned most of my skills thanks to trickster which is an amazing company and they did really did and they're still doing a great work and then from there I decided to move on to scanline because that was also another a huge company that I really wanted to go to and experience to try their technology because they're very well-known especially in defeats the department that they are the best of doing water and huge circulation thanks to their pipeline and workflow with flow line and then after that with my cool wife since she's also in the industry and she also here with me at the moment in alps we decided to move on the other side of the world and to try experience some other companies such as Elora the method and then the waiter and also to see the other side of the wall basically yeah because the great thing about the industry is that it let us it gives you the possibility if you really want to literally travel wherever you want there is basically no limits in where you can go and work if you're good of course what you're doing and so on and it was a long journey and after we reached like me Alessia and business partner like high positions in the various company and we have like a very robust showing we decide to move forward with our regional project and to come back and to build our company wow that's amazing so how long had that been how long did that process take you set out the ideas after university well we started with this idea I think it was around 2012 2013 so it took us approximately seven years but of course it didn't happen just in 2019 because it's not that we decided for one day to another one to open but we had a long planning before that so that's why I also got to know GridMarkets and macros in particular because we started to work on the strategy on the company and the business plan what to do like basically one year and a half before opening it because we didn't want to get we want to be prepared for it and there are so many things that you need to count for companies just insane and when you and your business partner you're all you're successful in on all your respective studios you've gone all over the world worked some of the bigger studios wetter scanline what was it in that moment of time what was it that made you think actually no now I'm ready now let's go back to Turin well the thing that it made us basically do the flip like to say to stop basically and to move on was a very simple thing to see all the talent that was scattered around the world especially Italian artists that we became friends with of course because you know you go in a different country you always try or you try to yours it tries to gather with your own countrymate so to say so you hang out and so you talk and always this was this will from everybody like to say ah if there was the possibility to go back one day in Italy in a good studios with high level of work that they do work as they are doing it here in waiter or in other studios so I would be so happy to return so I can stay be with my family be with my mother my father my father and so on and you know stealing comedy but still also do what I my the work that I'm good at and that I love to do because I think it's for everybody your own country still your own country so you always have even though maybe it's not the best country in your own yeah where you grew up so there is always this wheel of coming back and we realized that there was such a huge treasure for us out there because in this industry the let's say the resources the main resource are actually the artists are not because the computer yes of course they're a great resource but they're constantly changing and they're getting just more powerful so it's just a matter of purchasing hardware and system but artists you need to have to they have need to have a good education they need to have a huge a good technical and very strong technical side but also the same time on physical side good attitude at work to be organized and to find all of that in a person it's really hard it's really hard and if we just give them the possibility to come back they will come and we will have our door open for them and not just the Italian one of course because currently we are employing like a lot of artists from Germany from Australia from all around the world so it's not an old Italian company absolutely so I mean you've experienced extreme growth in the last two years despite all the challenges that studios have been facing but what did it look like when you first started two years ago well how many of you were there what was there okay when we started the plan was well let's take it easy let's do small steps so we keep everything under control so our growth rate was said to be like 10 people maybe in a two years lifespan and so we could really monitor the growth of the technology side and so on so we started with smaller projects like commercial project projects from other vendors like a few shots here officials there and all simple let's say simple stuff that would give us the time to develop like a pipeline and so on but then we got in our hand not by luck but we got by to our hand like a huge project that is this this dumping movie that they wanted to give it to us and we took it of course and that was more than 720 shots you know wow so that was basically an H-bomb in our hand and we had to survive so we went so our business plan was completely I wouldn't say throw it in the bean but had to completely be rewritten in a very short time and most of the stuff was actually not reviews just you know played along but at least we have a direction you know we had a plan for a smaller scale office and company but we just had to upscale it along the way and instead of being like 10 artists after three years we reach out between 56 or 57 artists something like this at the peak last month and since we were also the main vendor of this for this production those were just the artists that we had in ours in two different offices because also we had to rent another office to expand but overall we gave work for around 250 people wow for this project so we all actually we did a head-to-head for 250 people but we still had to end the work of the output of 250 people because on the outsourcing vendor that we used and so on we had to to check the work of course and to use it because most of it was just prep work yeah I mean hiring that that amount of crew is incredibly challenging and quite daunting for any studio none less than a new one I mean how did you find finding the talent well the recruiting was done the mostly personally by me in Alicia my business partner especially because since this the studio literally went kaboom such a short notice we had to basically separate a bit the word the work so he has a more 2d background since he is a compositor and I have a more 3d background since I'm a fixed artists and so on so we decided kind not to split the thing but you know to be responsive more responsive more focused on the two different departments so we can manage it better and basically we were just recruiting all people that you used to work with in the past or actually people a lot of people actually came to us they presented to us they're showing and we hired them or simply we formed them from the beginning because when we started also we started immediately a collaboration with the local school here in touring in town and they are providing like a good talent because there are good schools and we immediately grabbed the best the best of them as soon as they were at school okay come with us we will give you now a good start and then they start they started literally on this not just on the small because also we had the other thing going on but we literally throw them into flames if you know what I mean like they say okay here you go now you do big visual effects so of course we taught them everything and we tortured them and explained them everything but it was it was intense it was a very intense experience but we literally created a very a very good and very efficient team in literary north time and that was incredible the team that we had at the end of the movie was really amazing they were able to do crazy things and another thing that kind of played in our favor was the Kobe because a lot of people kind of tried to return home from abroad during the period because being abroad in other countries was harder because you were alone isolated with the house so a lot of people started coming back in Italy and also we managed to get to hire some of those people that they were coming back from other UK or other parts and to hire them i mean it's fantastic I mean however having shot up so quickly were there any growing pains what those technical challenges were or did you have to you have to start thinking about how you're going cleverly how you're going to you're going to have to burst into the cloud using the cloud to expand your studio going and you know investing more in on-prem what was your looking at other studio with my with our experience we saw that the rendering power in every studio that we went no matter which scale the studio was from the smallest to the biggest was never enough there was no way to it was always they were always down time in which we were I was finding myself in which I couldn't render maybe even for weeks in some studios my stuff my work because the farm was completely like slammed because of the amount of show they were running and also the quality that all the show nowadays they require and even though the render in general getting better still never enough so we decided since we're starting from scratch to don't invest in a huge again a huge render far that it would just become like a manageable and never it's never going to be enough but to already look at the studio in a cloud version but rapidly especially talking with other studio and other people that have experienced with the cloud we saw that was the solution of the cloud is great but it's not the it doesn't cover it all so you cannot completely you cannot have a class a studio completely on the cloud because the lines the internet lines and other there are other things there are always some problems so you need to have a bit of to be a bit self-efficient in case you know there is a downtime on the lines or the rest so what we went for it was more a hybrid approach in which we had the work station locally here configured in a certain way and then just submitted to the cloud behavior stuff the long rendering and so on the one that will basically stop the facility from working when you have too much to render your place so in that way we will never we will never we will never ever we were not we were not stuck with renders basically on the farm and we were not having the problem of you know not be able to continue our work because we couldn't check the artist's work that we were producing today because they couldn't render it basically so which it worked actually quite well in my opinion like we were able to render everything in time in great quality and without interruption and of course since the entire infrastructure was built along the way there were problems it was not all perfect but overall I think it was a great success so we've spoken quite a lot about the projects that helped grow the company I think it's time for some of our attendees to get to watch some of these do you have the Alps VFX reel too yes absolutely this is part of the work that we accumulated when we started the company so unfortunately I cannot share yet that project the big one because it's still not very easy at the movie but it will be a certain point let me share impressive that's brilliant thank you such a short amount of time and it's just incredible I mean let's just list some of those so you've got commercials for Lamborghini Stephen King drama the stand I mean it's just amazing really good and it is all over the world it's not just Italian productions I mean how are you working alongside other studios how are those yes exactly yeah so also another thing that I forgot to mention is that in our business plan originally and that's what we are actually currently doing is that as I mentioned we gave work for more than 250 people for this production not just this project also for other projects so what we do we try not to basically create a huge and insane studio and gather all the artists of everywhere but if we see that our office is not big enough or so on if we can we try to share as much as possible with other studios but artists or work so they also can grow with us and they can help us grow because sometimes we saw that especially with a certain facility if you grow too much if you are too big your efficiency actually drops sometimes because for many reasons so there is everything as a sweet spot where you can reach in terms of dimension for a company and then after that it's probably best to just share the work with other smaller students so you can also grow with them and also it's better for the artists so they are not just in one big huge environment but you know in smaller environments so they feel also more at home it's a more human friendly environment on these projects a lot of them are these big Houdini simulations and are those are those are you finding that's the sort of work that's coming your way you're being asked to do yes not just that we at the moment for the project the big one that I can show you of course the downfall we had to take care of many aspects so we are actually not just the huge simulation but we also do tons of huge 4cg environment extension and cg extension with environment and so on then we have tons of simulation tons of compositing as well we had to do animation we need to do like face replacements or velocity face replacement and so on so we are actually focusing on many things but yeah the facility were built around the effects so to say about around Udemy and of course new for compositing why is because effects overall is the most demanding department in the visual effects industry because the amount of data that we generate and the amount of because of the caches and the amount of render that we need we have is pretty insane so I mean in less than two years because that was already six months ago we had to expand our server already 12 petabytes close to half petabytes and still grow it's still not enough so when I'm contacting our iq company they wanted to supporting us or come to say hey we need to grow more and like ow like why we are not finding any hard drive anymore on the market for you like because that's another big problem at the current time that the hardest supply are getting less and less but yeah we are still the facility it's really modern in terms of technology we are very strong and powerful network to be able to transition those caches around those huge vendors and this is this is really we are literally squeezing these those facilities that we have to use like lemons in terms of mega from those machines so but try to keep them keep it as efficient as possible without any waste so again we touched Filippo on that growth and I just want to say congratulations in that we kind of touched it before but we have been going through a global pandemic which has you know that stopped shooting and it has it's rocked the film and media entertainment industry I mean how did you get did it help that you already had this big project in do you did you have a constant wave of new projects coming I mean how have you been in the last we had constantly project coming in smaller projects bigger project like the stand and others plus this big damper movie so in terms of war we were always like working there was not a day that we're not working because this let's say we had less work to do we still had to develop the pipeline to work on the facility and so on since we had to build everything from scratch so that that was a challenge but they also the biggest challenge during the epidemic was the bureaucracy side of opening a company because of course when we had to start basically most of the public offices closed down shut down because of the coffee so so all the public channels everybody the public employee that they were taking care of bureaucracy of course they had to be relocated at home so everything took way longer than expected like you know to simply like opening bank accounts or to register like for the garbage tax or whatever any kind of issues for the office and so all those problems were dilated and they got just bigger and they were costly they were never going away and also they were probably the country because also they had no idea to work remotely and the thing is that we were actually very way more efficient than all the other because we built the studio with you know even the year for actually one day to have a lot of people working remotely so we were after there was the lockdown we were already productive the day after like there was basically no doubt whatsoever and so we were not prepared but everybody else was unprepared so we were asking questions we're not getting the answer so that actually was tricky but we solved we sold most of the problems and you've got the real to show for it as well yeah you know but I can imagine VFX supervisor FX artist to having to open bank accounts and deal with as you were saying the garbage tax a little bit different yeah but this is what you do when you open a company you need to take care of those because if you don't pay the tax then you get this fine and then you can you know yeah so I have an audience question for you and it's more creative less rubbish based so and it is the rocket simulation that looks really complex and what went into making it oh that was a very interesting project because it was done of course with side effects and because we had to develop they were developing of course the new sparse solver and they asked me to they asked us me and us to do this video this presentation video where we were actually showing and showing the public how this new spark solver was from solving the problem of a complex rocket simulation so basically that you have just one single container one single simulation for the type thing in the brain in the past you had to split up the simulation several containers was a huge mess still was a very tricky project because of course when you start this project for side effects the tool are still in development so you don't get to use the final tools from the project and it was tricky but it was also very interesting to work with them because I could give them suggestions already how to improve the tool while it was sitting in the in development during this during this video making and it was a very interesting experience to work with side effects and I had to say it's a great company and they have a great team of mathematician and programmer because I they gave me all the support to make this video happen like with new release of Houdini technical support for things that were not making sense or not working and it was a very fun project I've got another question they're all they're coming in thick and fast now Filippo just one more thing anyway the scene for this particular project is available so anybody can download the wooden scene that generated this simulation from the side effects website from the side effects website great thanks thank you for that if is there people want to get in touch afterwards I'm sure we can share a link share the link to that so remote working is the topic of the next question obviously we had enforced remote working how do you see that going forward and you've spoken quite a lot about talent and encouraging them to come back to Italy and young talent especially what's your view on that there is it's not a million dollar question but a billion dollar face I would say because to know the answer to that it's very interesting to me it's great in a sense because you can literally work with anybody in the world with the artists that you need so you can reach out to them they don't need to relocate if they want they can relocate of course but even if you need them let's say for a short gig for 15 days or three weeks there's no point okay they don't even recover from jet lag if they come from New Zealand that they had to come back already so it's kind of important but they can still work on your project especially if you need that so which is great so and with the technology nowadays that's possible it's actually great streaming you know your such tools such as ceravici or even the simpler remote desktop of windows they did so many improvements on it that it's fully functional at the moment and that technology to make this happen is actually very easy to implement that nowadays because there are so many firewalls that they provide that and so on the only problem that remains is actually to work with the artist because if the artist is a senior artist so it's a skill artist then it's he can work in autonomy he knows what to do he doesn't need too much guidance but you know you just ask him to do something and he knows how to reach that level and since we have so many senior artists at the moment in the world actually that's great because most of them like those are of course efficient self-sufficient the problem comes when you have a junior artist or a mid-level artist those people that those artists need support they still need the they need to learn the job and they and the only way to learn the job is if senior artists teach them how to work and doing that remotely of course is still doable but is not very efficient so here comes the big question like yes of course we can have all the senior artists working remotely and they're then having the union mid-level artists working locally but even if they work here locally who's going to teach them the work of all the senior artists so you need to have I think a good combination of remote artists that you know that they maybe they're not even interested teaching to other artists you can just need to rework so you can have those remotely and they are very efficient but when it comes to more junior artists you need to have them here in place and you need to have like senior artists teaching them to work because following tutorial it's very important in our line of work but it's not enough because you need experience on the field to understand certain dynamic and certain workflows to deal with them or even just simply how to deal with the stress because if you have a union artist that have a lot of tasks and doesn't know how to do them if he has next to him a senior artist and don't worry we will manage I did this many times just a matter of patience we just do it one time it's more comforting than just you know being left alone and having like someone on a remote chat say yeah well it's fine it's a it's a human problem like you a human thing yeah no I agree I think there is much to be said about working together in a studio and not just and you know for the for learning purposes and support but also for that culture and making friends when you know when you're first entering an industry as you've said a lot of your the artists that you've had come to you and your relationships have been super important to be able to build out and without that if you're just isolated in your home working from home and that stops that somewhat so I have one more question and if you've got we're going to do a countdown for you to answer it in because we're going to have to move on but what is the most complex or troubled Houdini shot you have had and you've got one minute if you go over I won't I won't penalize you too much to answer it the most complex shot sorry complex Houdini shot you have ever worked on was independence day because we had to do this huge of simulation and render and in the first time that I did the simulation and I submitted the render on the farm I switched off the facility literally and that's amazing I still remember the time like what happened the guy I was like guys I submitted the vendor you know as soon as the blade started you know all fetching in the cash like all the artists are screaming like I can't walk my mouth is too slow and everything is just like oh wow of course then from there I really learned a lot because to be able to render those shots I really had to learn not too much the technique on how to do like a great simulation a beautiful simulation but how to handle like a simulation in terms of data managing the data and that's the key of effects that the certain point is not just about creating just a good knocking nice looking shot but also be able to render it and so yeah and that's why it's very important the technical aspect of it yeah well thank you that was a great story to end on thank you so much Filippo for joining us thank you for the time hearing your story of being able to go back to the home to their home country and setting up I think it's one of inspirational so one of you know hope that they can that can do that and I'm sure lots of people who are setting up on their own as well who have joined this webinar have learned a lot of you as well so thank you so much for that so that does bring us on to the next webinar which as you can see I hope on your screens it's with od studios on august the 11th and you can see some of their the huge names they've been working with and so OBD Studios are a full-service boutique visual effects based in Vancouver one of my favorite cities and they focus on high-end effects and look development work as well as offering onset VFX supervision and we're going to have yes so we're going to look forward to that on august 7th please don't miss it it's going to be another great chat if you missed it before in mark's chat you can sign up either for a free trial or if you're an existing user of GridMarkets get 15 off your some credits with your with the promo code 2021 July 7th webinar you can access this recording if you want to share it with your friends with GridMarkets.com forward slash webinars learn more about oracle at oracle.com forward slash security and if you have any questions want to know more want to get in touch with Filippo and please email support GridMarkets.com and I'm sure we can help out so I think we've done it on time thanks so much ben Mark Filippo you've been absolutely wonderful I'm looking forward to august 11th it's in my diary I hope it's in yours too and yeah I think that's the last slide I just want to make sure that I have got I have ended on the right side it could have been such a smooth ending there and I've just ruined it I think we're good thank you Thank you, bye-bye thanks Filippo it was awesome all right thanks everyone bye-bye.