CGI: How Leonardo Render is Touching an International Nerve

Computer Graphics Imaging (CGI) rendering has elicited a lot of buzz in recent years. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, predicted to grow to as high as $150 billion in the next two years. It is also a fairly commonly used household term, with more people than not recognizing and correctly using the term “CGI” when referring to their favorite special effects film sequence from recently produced movie or TV series.

What most consumers do not know, however, is that CGI rendering has been around for decades. While it was conceptualized in the 1960s, productions from as early as the 1980s, including Tron, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as a plethora of Lucasfilm endeavors introduced and successfully integrated CGI special effects into their cinematography. For anyone over the age of 40, this means that CGI effects have never not been a part of their movie watching experience.

As the capabilities of animators have really taken off and cinematographers are constantly at work meeting or exceeding audience special effects expectations, movies without CGI effects basically do not exist. Starting with Toy Story, Pixar’s first full length feature animation completely in CGI which came out in 1995, this level of quality is now the norm. The 90’s also delivered The Crow, during the filming of which the untimely yet oddly fitting death and subsequent CGI recreation of lead actor Brandon Lee mid-production made it even more of a cult favorite than it’s fantasy/live action comic book roots. Within 10-15 years of these productions, cinematography had advanced via CGI to the point where it was well within the limits of normal to expect realistic, CGI rendered full feature fantasy and live action films such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Avatar, and Up, which also happened to be the first animated film nominated for an Academy Award.

Other Markets

With the mastery and complete normalization of CGI within the United States film industry, the past 10 years have seen CGI rendering move into other markets like architecture, automated driving, and health applications. Natural adopters of this technology, such as video game developers, have been long utilizing these technologies alongside filmmakers, with current production capabilities now setting the standard for uses in other genres.

Advertising and marketing has seen enormous influxes of CGI rendered content, some excellent, some less so. Both video and still photography in ad campaigns regularly feature CGI rendered graphics, to the point where the lines between “real” and “fake” are regularly so blurred as to be indistinguishable.

CGI rendering now allows us to virtually view rooms, floorplans, and other virtual aspects of real estate listings in much more interesting and 3D, photorealistic ways than previous advertisements were ever capable of, creating what is essentially a virtual open house. In fact, according to a survey conducted by industry giant Redfin, approximately ⅓ of home buyers are making offers on homes sight unseen, a trend they attribute to low inventory in an increasingly tight seller’s market. However, with the proliferation of CGI utilization in online home searches, it is arguable that no home is truly “sight unseen,” when a few clicks can provide a highly accurate and realistic tour of even new construction homes.

Academics, from elementary level curriculum, all the way through upper division and graduate level university courses in various scientific training modalities such as engineering, medical school, and laboratory research and production use CGI rendering techniques to produce high quality, 3D imagery for use in simulation labs, training techniques, and even testing environments. Training in CGI rendering is also a growing field, and students of all ages can learn rendering in a variety of environments, from traditional brick and mortar college classes, to free, all ages online training programs.

CGI in the International Markets

One of the most interesting markets to begin utilizing CGI in recent years has been over in Asia, particularly in China. Pro gaming and eSports has its roots in South Korea with the launch of industry classics like StarCraft II in 2010, followed closely by other Blizzard giants such as League of Legends, which by 2012 surpassed the raw gameplay hours of any other game in South Korea by more than double. Regardless, the Asia gaming market and its high imagery demands is a major part of the $116 billion global gaming industry projected growth in coming years.

The eSports Scene Is in Full Swing

Why is China a notable part of this growth? With closely monitored governmental regulations recently opening up the possibilities, China is seeing unprecedented growth, both in user numbers and production. China now boasts 183 million mobile gamers, all of whom join the 36% of gamers globally who are now on mobile devices. China based mobile esports teams in spaces like Supercell and Gen.G are opening up player demographics in previously untapped populations and skill levels.

China based game developers are cleverly and carefully designing games such as Journey to the West and other productions by companies like One Zero Digital Limited around historically accurate depictions and stories of ancient China, all the while working to dispel disparaging cultural stereotypes that would work against platform growth. All of this is happening at an amazingly high rate of speed, given that the restrictions on video game consoles in China were lifted less than 3 years ago.

CGI: Leonardo Render’s Transformative Solution

Leonardo Render is possibly the greatest thing to happen to the CGI market since CGI was invented, and this is particularly true in the Asian market, where exponential growth of CGI has not only met, but surpassed US and European markets. In China for example, where an average of 27 new games per day are released, there is an unprecedented market driven need for speed.

Leonardo Render offers that speed, and they offer it at very economical rates. By identifying and solving the single greatest factor causing in CGI production, impossibly slow rendering speeds, Leonardo Render has transformed the industry, making things that were previously impossible in virtual reality spaces a happy reality, both for CGI animators and the various user populations they serve.

Their solution is both simple and brilliant: by tapping into GPU mining facilities, an established infrastructure which previously was utilized for Ethereum mining in the cryptocurrency world, the Leonardo Render people are actually not only solving this unsolveable problem, they are also providing large groups of unemployed GPU miners a very profitable market. This is because the GPU farms that were built for Ethereum mining have been overtaken by ASICs mining hardware, which operates at a faster and more economical rate than previous miners could ever hope to compete with.

Through the Leonardo Render platform, GPU miners can now offer their services to GPU-intensive CGI rendering projects, creating an undeniable win-win for both parties. CGI animators can now see their production happening in real time, giving them opportunity to modify, edit, and alter their final products. This was an option previously unavailable to them, given the fact that rendering used to take days and weeks to complete, particularly for animation projects. GPU miners also win in this scenario, as they are now looking at making $0.50 per GPU per hour for CGI rendering services, as opposed to the previous $0.04 they would make mining Ethereum.

With recent forays into the Asian gaming and CGI markets at various trade conferences and road shows, Leonardo Render is excited to support the growing Asian CGI market. The need for quick and cost effective CGI rendering is enormous, and nowhere is it greater than in Asia, where the combined needs of China, South Korea, and other Southeast Asian countries make it the fastest growing global market in the world.

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