How Orca Studios scaled VFX with AYON
Orca Studios, a powerhouse in VFX and virtual production, was founded by Adrián Guerra in 2016. Based in Spain with offices in Madrid, Barcelona, and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Orca Studios has quickly risen to prominence, specialising in high-end visual effects for both cinema and television. The studio’s rapid growth and success can be attributed to its innovative approach and dedication to leveraging cutting-edge technologies.
Adrián Guerra’s vision for Orca Studios was clear from the start: to create a studio that could seamlessly blend traditional production expertise with the latest technological advancements. This vision was particularly important as the studio was established just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time that required flexibility and adaptability.
“At Orca Studios, our expertise lies in delivering high-end visual effects tailored for both cinema and television. With a dedicated emphasis on leveraging cutting-edge technologies, we’re committed to enhancing productivity and breaking down barriers within the industry,” explains Lorenzo Basurto, Pipeline Supervisor. “Our founders remain integral to our day-to-day operations, ensuring our commitment to excellence endures in every endeavour.”
Orca-strating visual effects
What sets Orca Studios apart from other VFX studios is its unique combination of a fully cloud-native pipeline and a strong association with Nostromo, a leading film production company in Spain. This partnership allows Orca to be involved in VFX development from the earliest stages of film production, using these projects as playgrounds for cutting-edge technologies.
“We believe it’s the mix of different variables that generates our unique combination: on one hand, our fully cloud-native pipeline allows for our teams to be decentralised (with our team being spread around many different countries) while working in our physical offices at the same time. We are also part of Nostromo, a leading film production company in the Spanish market, and this allows us to be involved from the very beginning in the development of visual effects for films,” says Adrian Pueyo, Head of VFX and Virtual Production.
This cloud-native infrastructure is a significant advantage, especially given the global shift towards remote work. It allows Orca to scale its resources up or down as needed, enabling them to handle multiple projects simultaneously without compromising quality.
Flexible as the sea, scalable as the waves
Orca Studios’ ability to scale is one of its most significant strengths. The studio can increase or decrease the capacity of its servers and the number of artist workstations on demand, thanks to its cloud-based infrastructure.
“We are still a relatively young company, so the numbers are just a snapshot in time which is changing a lot, but one of our main advantages is that our infrastructure is extremely scalable. All living on the cloud, we can increase or decrease the capacity or performance of our servers, number of artist machines and so on on demand,” says Maria Tortosa, Head of Production and Virtual Production. “For the last two years, we have been working on an average of 3 to 5 projects at any given time, and our team has grown to over 100 people in peak times, with at least 30-40% being core staff.”
Starting as a young studio, Orca faced the challenge of establishing efficient workflows without the constraints of legacy systems. They explored various pipeline solutions and decided to partner with Ynput and adopt AYON (formerly OpenPype).
“As a young studio, we started with a fresh slate. Still in the process of assembling teams we were exploring various options and solutions, weighing the merits of building our own versus utilising existing frameworks like ftrack connect and ShotGrid Toolkit. Avalon, coupled with Pyblish, caught our attention as a promising foundation,” says Lorenzo. “Recognising its potential, we swiftly embarked on our journey together. At this time we were managing simple shows on our old infrastructure while vigorously developing and transitioning our studio to a cloud-based setup, a decision largely influenced by the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Tackling major projects with AYON
Their first project using AYON was ‘Santo’ in early 2021, which marked the beginning of a successful partnership. The transition to AYON allowed Orca to implement new workflows seamlessly and provided the necessary structure to handle complex projects efficiently.
Several high-profile projects leveraging AYON include ‘Bird Box Barcelona’, ‘Knights of the Zodiac’, and ‘The Witcher’ Season 3.
“We’ve had a couple of projects we feel quite happy about. ‘Bird Box’ involved 800 shots with heavy Comp and CGI work where we used a complex Maya and Houdini workflow,” says Adrian. “AYON allowed us to manage this complexity efficiently, ensuring that all elements were perfectly synchronised and met the high standards we strive for.”
‘Knights of the Zodiac’ presented a different set of challenges, with 390+ shots involving heavy CGI effects and compositing. The project’s complexity was further increased by the need to create a digital environment around a large real location, which was lidar scanned.
“We were tasked with creating a digital environment around a natural and large real location which was lidar scanned. There was a huge amount of data to process, combined with a variety of lenses and sensors with heavy anamorphic distortions and artefacts, so a custom matchmove-compositing pipeline had to be developed,” explains Lorenzo.
Delivering over 1000 shots for ‘The Witcher’ Season 3 with a relatively small team was another significant accomplishment for Orca Studios. The team used AYON to streamline the production process and ensure all shots were delivered on time and met the high visual standards required by the Netflix series.
Navigating rough seas of technical challenges
Throughout these projects, Orca Studios faced numerous technical and creative challenges. The flexibility and robustness of AYON, combined with the support from the Ynput team, were crucial in overcoming these hurdles.
“With the help of Ynput and OpenPype, we were able to quickly ramp up and scale out production. This was largely due to a robust implementation of Nuke and Maya, along with Deadline, in OpenPype,” says Maria. “In our first big show, we scaled from roughly 20 artists to more than 80 in less than two months. It wasn’t all easy, and there were a lot of tweaks, fixes, and improvements needed. Ynput were always quick to respond, and the collaboration was excellent.”
One of the technical challenges involved ingesting plates from different formats and aspect ratios, as well as meeting various client delivery requirements. The Ynput team provided updates and support to ensure Orca could tackle all situations and deliver high-quality results. The Ynput team was also essential in setting up and implementing the ACES colour pipeline for Hiero, Nuke, and Maya, ensuring consistent colour management across different stages of production. Additionally, on projects using Renderman, the Ynput team played a crucial role in making necessary tweaks and integrations, allowing for seamless workflow integration and rendering.
Creative challenges often arose from the need to make radical changes during review iterations. For example, Orca had to deal with Xgen hair instancing in Maya for a photoreal demonic creature, where the client requested significant changes at each review stage.
“It would have been a total nightmare to manage and a waste of resources if we couldn’t control versioning and production tracking. It was tricky at times, but sticking to the solid OpenPype has been a lifesaver,” says Adrian.
Orca Studios has developed several custom tools to enhance their workflow, many of which are integrated with AYON. These include Nuke templates, automation scripts, and a custom Maya layout workflow. The ability to customise and extend AYON has been a significant advantage.
“We have developed custom collectors and validators as well as a whole Maya layout workflow. The integration with AYON has allowed us to streamline these processes and ensure consistency across all our projects,” explains Yukio.
Looking ahead and future prospects
Adopting AYON was a strategic move for Orca Studios, allowing them to build their pipeline for a robust and flexible solution that could support their ambitious projects.
“As a young studio, we didn’t have more than a few scripts, diagrams, and a vision. We were lucky to be able to start with AYON without any legacy constraints or baggage and were able to directly implement new workflows,” says Lorenzo. “AYON was a big help during this time by providing the necessary structure and tools to implement the desired workflows.”
Looking ahead and beyond, Orca Studios is excited about the potential of AYON’s new features and integrations, “We look forward to the switch from OpenPype to AYON in order to give us more agility and speed. Since project settings are totally different and much quicker and the code is more decentralised with the new plugin concept, we are certain that it will allow us to work with more stability,” says Yukio.
Orca Studios also plans to collaborate closely with Houdini and USD implementations to ensure a smooth and rapid transition. Exploring the integration possibilities between Unreal Engine, Perforce, and AYON is another exciting development, aimed at facilitating a more fluid exchange of data between UE and other DCC tools. This integration will enable Unreal Engine to be used more effectively as a VFX tool, enhancing the studio’s capability to manage multiple parallel projects with fewer issues.
“We look forward to using USD and moving a big part of our current Maya workflow to Houdini. All of this will be possible with AYON,” explains Yukio.
With AYON by its side, Orca Studios is leading its journey of innovation and excellence, setting new standards in the VFX and virtual production industries.
