Deadline 10, the most recent version of the render management platform developed by Thinkbox Software, a recent acquisition of Amazon Web Services (AWS), is now generally accessible.
AWS purchased Thinkbox, a Canadian-based company, in Winnipeg earlier this year. It inherited the line of visual effects software solutions and rendering software solutions from the 7-year-old business, including Deadline.
Deadline is a cloud-based and on premises compute management solution that helps users manage their resources for rendering projects. These projects are often very compute-intensive and distributed.
Version 10, which was released in public preview less than three week ago, became general availability on Tuesday. It offers deeper integration with AWS. A new AWS Portal feature, for instance, links users’ on-premises Deadline render farm directly to their AWS cloud environment.
AWS announced that Deadline 10 was the first step in making cloud rendering simple through the new AWS Portal feature. It automatically connects to customers on-prem farms, tags AWS instances to track them, and synchronizes with local assets servers to ensure that all files have been transferred before rendering starts.
Another feature is the new asset transfer function that syncs an user’s network file system to cloud on-demand.
The new release offers additional licensing flexibility. According to AWS, Deadline 10 customers can purchase software licenses through the Thinkbox marketplace, deploy existing licences or use a combination of both.
More information about the Deadline 10 release can be found here.