Cloud rendering provider Zync, an off-shoot of Boston VFX studio Zero VFX, has been acquired by Google, where it will run on the Google Cloud Platform—the same infrastructure that supports Google's web search index, YouTube, and Gmail..
The move into the media-and-entertainment vertical comes as Google pushes to gain awareness and credibility for its cloud infrastructure among developers and enterprise users. Zync had previously used Amazon's EC2 infrastructure for its file servers and instances, but said today in a message posted on the company's website that Google's platform would introduce more options to the service, including the ability to bill on a per-minute basis.
"With per-minute billing, studios aren't trapped into paying for unused capacity when their rendering needs don't fit in perfect hour increments," wrote product manager Belwadi Srikanth in a post on the Google Cloud Platform blog.
Zync boasts that its services have been used on more than a dozen feature films to date, including Star Trek Into Darkness and American Hustle, as well as "hundreds of commercials." The service supports Maya, Nuke, V-Ray for Maya, Mental Ray and Arnold for Maya along with GenArts Sapphire plug-ins and The Foundry's Furnace and Ocula.
