Animation and gaming are two fields where artists can bring their imagination to life and follow their creative instincts. But, creativity has to be coupled with technology to get the desired result; hence keeping up with the latest technology is also very important.

At the NASSCOM animation and gaming summit held this year in Mumbai, a session which discussed the cutting edge technologies in animation and gaming comprised of eminent speakers from around the globe. Chaired by Laura Dohrman of NVidia, speakers of the session included Dominic Spina of Nvidia, Franck Malmin of Def2Shoot and Marlon Montgomery of Mind the Gap Inc. .

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Dominic Spina kick started the session by talking about Gelato which is a non- real time, film quality rendering software from the stable of NVidia. "What NVidia has tried to do with Gelato 2.2 is make the GPU more interactive and faster. The objective is to render objects everywhere. It is available on Linux and Windows and has the options of creating plug ins," shared Dominic.

Dominic went onto showing a 3D animated clip called The Plush Life which was developed in house to test Gelato. This clip was made by an artist in six months with the advantage being that content can be developed and feedback can be got at the same time. "Gelato is based on final frame rendering. NVidia is trying to move most of the techniques from the CPU to the GPU. The Future technology that we are bringing out is Gelato 3.0 which we have christened as Mocha," commented Dominic. The new Gelato has an alternate rendering algorithm within the earlier versions of Gelato and is entirely GPU centric. Dominic concluded his presentation by comparing the Gelato 2.2 and the Gelato 3.0.

Making himself comfortable at the podium next was Frank Malmin of Def2Shoot with the focus of his presentation on asset management. "Located in Paris, most of our artists are aesthetically inclined; hence, there is an ongoing friendly tiff between the techies and the artists at Def2Shoot." Talking about asset management he said, "When we saw the amount of work that our studio was doing, we decided that we should create an engine for asset management. Thus was born Foam."

Def2Shoot was established five years ago with six artists and in less than two years, the animation studio scaled up its team to a 120. The studio wasn't prepared to handle so many people and so much work at that point in time; therefore the creation of an asset management engine seemed inevitable.

"Foam can manage any kind of assets. Data right from scratch to the delivery can be managed, all the while keeping in mind the significance of the characters and the idea of the creator," shared Franck. The engine took three years to develop and has been made in such a way that it can be adapted into the working of any organization.

The advantage of foam is that it breaks down the project in a structured manner with a step by step process. One can keep track of all the functions and activities taking place within the company. "It provides for the artists a database which helps in the completion of tasks. There are customizations for different formats. The objectives are to main the process of the projects as well as aid in analysis and keep the artists updated with software. Since we have various software integrated into the asset management engine, one can access data from any machine and doesn't have to needlessly shift to a different machine."

Def2Shoot has also created a render management engine in which different scripts and tasks can be assigned to any machine in the facility. They have also set up a system by which feedback from artists can be tracked, in addition to building a bridge with the accounting department where each employee's pay roll is systemized and accounted for. In conclusion to his presentation Franck said, "Creating engines such as these is good for small companies which are on the expansion route but have few resources."

The third speaker, whose presentation on Production Pipelines was precise and to the point was Marlon Montgomery Co-founder of Mind the Gap. He said, "The advantages of a good pipeline are profitability, scalability, reliability, quality and flexibility." Marlon shared some tips and tools including organizational structures (naming cultures, directory structures), version of control, asset management (one of the key abilities being the liberty to reuse the assets), navigating the complex directory structures, variable system (helps in keeping the artists productive), communication toolset (share documentation, tips and tricks), production tracking, budgeting and scheduling (you should always have artists and developers track down tasks for estimates). "I would conclude by saying that we should also have a 'make movie' button which would speed up the entire film making process and complete the movie in a shorter period of time," quipped Marlon.

All three speakers brought to the fore, three very different facets of technology which gave the audience a peek into about how different parts of the IT infrastructure work and in some cases tweaked to meet customized needs.

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