Men In Black 3 (MIB3), the effects-laden blockbuster from Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) starring Will Smith, owes a lot of it’s incredible visuals to NVIDIA Maximus technology!
Realistic Smoke effects are featured in nearly all of the 600 visual effects shots SPI created for MIB3; which has grossed nearly $600million at the box office since it opened in May.
Creating computer-generated visual effects requires complex simulations that tie-up expensive and valuable computer processing power. To dramatically improve the speed of simulations and the quality of smoke generated in MIB3, SPI used Side Effects Software’s Houdini 12 3D animation and visual effects software (with improved GPU optimization) on an NVIDIA Maximus-powered workstation. This included scenes from the film such as a recreation of the Apollo 11 rocket launch in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (see image below).
Creating MIB3 smoke simulations on a Maximus system proved to be so efficient and easy to drop into the production pipeline that SPI wound up deploying 10 Maximus-powered workstations on the film. These workstations were put in place to support a variety of visual effects software tools, allowing the creative team to focus on their art.
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