Founded in 1998, DNEG is one of the world’s premier visual effects and animation studios for feature films and television. DNEG expanded over the years into a global force with multiple facilities across various continents. The company built its reputation for delivering the best in visual effects through high-profile projects such as Dune: Part Two, Avatar, and The Last of Us. Its outstanding work has earned many accolades, including Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Visual Effects Society Awards. Yet the company isn’t resting on its laurels. Instead, DNEG is working to accelerate the efficiency and creativity of its teams by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its VFX workflows — and with ASUS and ProArt hardware, it’s already achieving startling results.
By leveraging AI, DNEG can automate complex tasks, analyze vast amounts of data, and generate realistic effects to create new possibilities in the cinematic landscape. DNEG’s AI-driven VFX solutions have helped to make movie production more efficient and cost-effective, which has enabled the company to remain at the forefront of the industry, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in visual effects.
As DNEG pursues the latest AI-powered solutions, one of the primary challenges that it faces is providing its employees with sufficient computing resources for demanding AI workflows. As a global company with teams that span multiple time zones and many employees who work remotely, DNEG couldn’t simply outfit its headquarters with high-performance workstations and call it a day.
Martine Bertrand, Senior Researcher in AI at DNEG, explains the primary obstacle that DNEG had to surmount: “Machine learning requires having access to very specialized pieces of equipment that you would not be able to necessarily have in your home. Having access to those via virtual machines from anywhere in the world is a very important thing for us.”
Thousands of ASUS NUC Mini PCs allow DNEG’s employees across the globe to access the company’s virtual machines. ASUS NUCs, like the ASUS NUC 14 Pro, are startlingly small and highly configurable PCs that are easy for businesses to deploy at scale. With high performance per liter, excellent connectivity, and dongle-free Bluetooth connectivity, ASUS NUCs are an effective tool for getting a large workforce up and running.
Some of DNEG’s employees, like Bertrand, require access to PCs that offer even more performance. When they work from home, they need high-end hardware ready to run and display projects seamlessly. They need equipment that can handle large volumes of processing power. To achieve this, the company invested in the latest technologies, such as high-performance GPUs and CPUs.
Currently, Bertrand is exploring the performance potential of a Powered by ASUS Puget Systems Workstation. Featuring a ProArt Z790-Creator WiFi motherboard, a powerful Intel Core i9 CPU, and a robust ProArt GeForce RTX™ 4080 SUPER graphics card, this workstation enables distributed teams like Bertrand’s to handle training and pre-processing tasks efficiently.
Bertrand emphasizes the importance of these ProArt components in running pre-trained models and producing high-resolution images. “The graphics card is the heart of it all. Because we’re playing around with pre-trained models, they can run fantastically on 16GB of VRAM, and you can produce high-resolution images on a graphics card like this,” she concluded.
The ProArt Z790-Creator WiFi was built from the ground up for scenarios like DNEG’s. PCIe 5.0 x16 slots provide support for the fastest graphics cards available today. DDR5 RAM accelerates bandwidth-hungry content creation workloads, while four onboard M.2 slots allow for a spacious and speedy storage array. A robust power design and enlarged VRM heatsinks enable this motherboard to shoulder the work of sustaining demanding workflows. And exceptional connectivity options, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports and WiFi 6E, make sure that it’s easy to connect a full creative workstation with this motherboard.
As a visual FX company, DNEG leans on high-quality displays just as much as it does on high-performance hardware. As Betrand explains, “The shots that we work with always come in this high-dynamic-range, high-bitrate format, and we need to be able to have a monitor that gives you this capability of looking at 4K content and seeing if it preserves the quality and details that we wish to make into the final shot itself.”
To help its AI researchers preserve and ensure the quality and consistency of the images they work with, DNEG uses ProArt Display PA32UCXR monitors. These professional displays offer a high dynamic range with peak brightness up to 1,600 nits, support for multiple HDR formats, true 10-bit color, and a 4K resolution, all vital for maintaining color representation and detail in the final shot.
For the large-scale projects that DNEG works on, it’s crucial for team members across the globe to evaluate and talk about the same colors for each pixel in a project. The PA32UCXR is factory pre-calibrated to achieve an average ΔE value of less than one for industry-leading color accuracy. To maintain that level over the long-term, ensure consistency across the global workforce, and facilitate effective communication and collaboration, it also features automated calibration through an embedded motorized colorimeter.
With its fleet of ASUS NUC mini PCs, DNEG has been able to put potent performance at the fingertips of its global workforce. As it uses the latest AI solutions to accelerate its work to create advanced realistic visual effects, it’ll be able to harness that power to create, collaborate, and innovate at the cutting-edge of movie production. Powered by ASUS Puget System Workstations featuring ProArt PC components give DNEG high-performance options for accelerating the efficiency of employees with especially demanding workflows. And throughout their process, ProArt Displays will allow DNEG to evaluate high-bitrate HDR footage with professional-grade accuracy.
These ProArt PC components and displays are just a few of the many creator-focused solutions offered by the full ProArt lineup. The ProArt display portfolio includes options fine-tuned for the needs of 3D animators, architects, game developers, HDR color graders, and more. ProArt PC components, including motherboards, PC cases, AIO coolers, and graphics cards, allow you to build a custom PC tailored to your exact needs, while ProArt laptops and prebuilt desktop PCs make it easy to get high-level performance and features for creative work. Click here for an overview of the full ProArt ecosystem.
