Rodeo FX, one of the world’s premiere visual effects companies, regularly contributing unique visual imagery to Hollywood’s blockbuster motion pictures, has expanded its integration of Arnold within the company’s software arsenal. Now used for all of the company’s rendering needs, Arnold Core and Arnold for Softimage play a significant role within Rodeo FX’s pipeline for feature films, TV shows, and commercial projects. The announcement was made by Jordan Soles, Rodeo FX’s Chief Technology Officer.
“Arnold allows our artists to better spend their time focused on the creative aspects of lighting a scene, rather than on having to act as a data manager organizing multiple versions of multiple passes of data,” Mr. Soles said. “The interactive nature that Arnold provides allows our artists to move lights freely within a shot, with results that can be seen almost instantaneously. My incredibly positive experience working with Arnold on numerous films at Sony Pictures Imageworks made our decision to adopt it here at Rodeo FX very easy.”
Soles explains that having integrated Arnold, the sheer number of versions it takes for Rodeo FX digital artists to hit a final has decreased enormously, with the company’s work having gotten better looking because of this new approach. The render times and memory needs are far more consistent and dependable, allowing the company’s productions to build better schedules and deliver shots more efficiently.
Rodeo FX’s Head of CG Matthew Rouleau adds, “Arnold has dramatically improved our look development since we first began incorporating it into our rendering pipeline a few years ago. Its ease of use and incredible interactivity have made our lives a lot easier – we can now spend far less time on the technical aspects of rendering, and more time creating beautiful assets and images. Arnold’s incredible memory management, rock solid stability, and full ray-tracing have allowed us to redefine what we thought was possible to accomplish in rendering.”
Sébastien Moreau, President, Founder & VFX Supervisor, Rodeo FX, adds, “After having done due diligence, we determined that Arnold was the right fit for us, and we’ve adopted it into all of our tool sets. We trust this tool, and we are confident that we can throw extremely complex assets through the pipeline now. Arnold will consistently deal with all of this critical data in a highly dependable way.”
Mr. Marcos Fajardo, the Chief Architect of Arnold and founder of Solid Angle, said, “It has been very exciting for us to watch Rodeo FX steadily grow their Arnold license count, project after project, each time blowing our minds in the process with increasingly beautiful photoreal work. Jordan, Matthew, and their colleagues are active members in our vibrant community of professional Arnold users, and their patient feedback has greatly helped improve our software. We are delighted that Rodeo FX has chosen Arnold for all its rendering needs and look forward to working with them for years to come.”
About SOLID ANGLE
Solid Angle is the technology company behind the Arnold rendering software, with offices in Madrid and London and customers throughout the world including Framestore, Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Rodeo FX, Luma Pictures, Image Engine, The Moving Picture Company, Digic Pictures, The Mill and Psyop.
Arnold was designed from the ground up to efficiently process the complex geometric datasets required for feature-length CGI animation and big-budget visual effects, while at the same time simplifying the pipeline, reducing the number of passes, minimizing storage requirements and greatly enhancing interactivity for lighting artists. It achieves this by incorporating modern, CPU-based ray tracing and physically-based shading techniques.
Arnold has been used to create unique images in many feature films including Marvel’s “The Avengers,” “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Thor,” “X-Men: First
