Lu Yu frowned at this information and scratched his head a little distressedly.

Then I checked the special effects software, and the most widely used software on the market is Maya software.

It's not the best in the industry, but it's good enough for most special effects.

In the film and television industry, the first choice for making large-scale special effects software is Houdini software, and realflow, a small and medium-sized fluid software.

Of course, there are many other special effects software that will be used in real needs, such as AE, fusion, nuke, etc.

The biggest benefit of Maya is the control of character animation, so it often needs to be assisted by other special effects software.

These software are basically paid software, or are they paid annually.

For example, Maya software costs $1,470, and Houdini software costs $4,495.

……

A good special effects worker must be proficient in at least one or more of these software.

And it's not just about being proficient in the software, it's also about having a lot of expertise in the special effects people.

As a simple example, if you don't know explosives, you won't be able to do the dream collapse scene in Inception.

If you don't understand material science, you won't be able to make the heavy mecha full of texture in "Pacific Rim".

If you don't understand biology, you can't restore the lifelike animals in "Fantasy Forest".

If you don't understand physics, you can't imagine the breathtaking cosmic scenes and high-dimensional spaces in "Interstellar".

If you don't understand fluid mechanics, you can't show the beautiful ocean footage in Life of Pi.

……

It's true that the special effects are made on a computer, but they are not the ordinary personal computers we usually use, and they also need to be supported by large workstations and servers.

For example, NVIDIA's water-cooled deep learning workstation costs as much as 550,000 yuan, and IBM storage servers, or Huawei storage servers, cost more than 400,000 yuan.

But even with such a top-of-the-line hardware, it would take about 50 hours of continuous operation to render 1 frame of special effects.

And the movie is 1 second, at least 24 frames.

Roughly calculated, a 5-second special effects shot takes 250 days for a machine to render.

Therefore, in order to compress the rendering time and improve efficiency, the number of hardware can only be increased simply and crudely.

Lighthouse Nation Industrial Light & Magic, a well-established large-scale special effects company, has built its own render farm, with thousands of workstations and servers, running day and night.

……

Lu Yu frowned, a mature special effects company needs hundreds of sets of hardware and software, and the cost alone is high enough.

And the production of special effects for a movie costs more than the labor cost.

For example, the special effects team of "Titanic" has 739 people, the special effects team of "Avengers" has 1453 people, and the special effects team of "Avatar" has reached 1855 people.

It took several years of hard work and meticulous craftsmanship of thousands of people to present those truly shocking and magnificent pictures.

It is also these factors that make post-production of special effects particularly expensive.

Bing Xin has a little poem:

"The flower of success, people only envy her current brightness! However, at the beginning, her buds were soaked in the tears of struggle and sprinkled with the blood of sacrifice! ”

Yes, behind all the glamour, there are unknown hardships and sweats.

……

Understanding the entire special effects system, Lu Yu was a little silent, stood up and paced back and forth in the study.

I thought it was too simple, and it wasn't ordinarily simple.

This matter is even more difficult than I imagined.

Lu Yu lit a cigarette, walked to the window, opened the window, looked at the night, and repeatedly measured and pondered.

This can't be blamed on Lu Yu's indecision, it is really too much beyond his expectations.

However, after smoking, Lu Yu still decided to do it, otherwise his thoughts would never be clear.

Thinking of the backward domestic special effects, Lu Yu felt that he should do it more.

After making up his mind, everything became simple, and Lu Yu thought about where to start.

There is no way to solve the hardware needs now, and industry talents cannot do it in a short time, so they can only start with software.

Think about the software that needs to be used to produce dozens or hundreds of special effects, and most of them require annual fees, and there are almost no domestic companies.

Lu Yu was ready to set up a team to develop a set of comprehensive special effects software this time, which is simply a set of main modeling software, with other special effects modules and plug-ins.

Not only that, but he also plans to open source it directly and learn about the Linux system.

He led the development of such a set of digital special effects production software core and some necessary plug-ins, and at the same time, open source more people can re-develop based on this set of software.

This will not only meet the rapid pace of change in the special effects industry, but also attract more people to build, enhance and improve the software.

As for whether this will affect the income of other special effects software companies, or whether it will lead to the bankruptcy of some companies, Lu Yu said that he is not interested in caring and does not care.

What does it have to do with me to destroy you?

……

Thinking about these questions clearly, Lu Yu breathed a sigh of relief, and even a little eager to try.

Changing an industry, the cool point of this, is simply not too exciting.

Suppressing the faint excitement, Lu Yu turned off the computer, only to find that the time had reached the second half of the night.

Shi Zixuan and Qin Xiaomian went back to the room to sleep, Lu Yu twisted his neck that was a little stiff, went back to the room to wash up briefly, and fell asleep on the bed.

When I woke up the next day, it was already half past nine in the morning, and the two girls had already gone out to the company.

Lu Yu dressed neatly and went downstairs to have breakfast outside the community, so he didn't hurry to go to Hewai Nebula Company.

When the young lady at the front desk saw Lu Yu, she got up and smiled and said hello to Lu Yu.

Lu Yu also smiled at her and nodded, walked straight into the company, and knocked on Liu Shichang's office.

Liu Shichang was operating something on the computer, and when he saw Lu Yu, he got up and asked:

"Mr. Lu, why are you here?"

Lu Yu: "I'll see if you're fishing at work." ”

Liu Shichang smiled: "Haha, is the company busy, Mr. Lu, you still don't know?" ”

Lu Yu also smiled: "I just see that you are too idle, come and find something to do for you, otherwise I will be sorry for the salary I gave you." ”

Liu Shichang pouted: "Oh? What's the matter? Mr. Lu, you directly ordered. ”

Lu Yu: "Recently, I want to get something fun, and there are two things that you need to do immediately." ”

"The first thing is to register a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hebei Xingyun, well, I want to think about it, let's call it Yunhan Technology."

"The second thing is to immediately set up a technical department and recruit a group of programmers who have passed the technical test, yes, it is a batch, recruit 30 first, and then talk about it later."

Liu Shichang didn't feel anything after hearing the first thing, but he was stunned for a moment after hearing the second thing:

"So much for 30? Or the first batch? ”

Lu Yu nodded: "Yes, it's urgent, you have to implement the office space, it's best to be nearby, upstairs or downstairs." ”

Liu Shichang nodded and agreed, and Lu Yu walked out of his office to find Zhou Jing.

……

Since Zhou Jing applied for the company, except for the initial acquisition of the cosmetics company, she basically has nothing to do in the company, and she goes to the office every day to watch all kinds of dramas.

Lu Yu went to Zhou Jing's workstation to find her, Zhou Jing was watching the TV series and was fascinated, when she saw someone knocking on her desk, she turned her head to see that it was Lu Yu, and hurriedly paused the video and took off her headphones: "Mr. Lu." ”

Lu Yu nodded to her: "Come to my office." ”

Zhou Jing got up and followed Lu Yu and entered Lu Yu's office together.

Lu Yu sat down in his seat and pointed to the chair opposite: "Sit." ”

After Zhou Jing sat down, Lu Yu continued:

"Seeing that you are so idle, I will find something for you to do, and you will immediately start investigating the existing special effects companies in China later."

"Like the viewpoint pictures and Dianshi Digital that I all know, there is no need to investigate the top special effects companies in China.

"Focus on the investigation of experienced small and medium-sized companies, especially small companies, as long as they are not five-cent special effects, have a certain technical strength, and have some practical experience, they must be given priority to investigation."

"If you don't have enough manpower on your side, you can directly find one or two consulting companies to do it, they are professional after all."

"When the time comes, give me the report of the investigation, and the specific acquisition work will start when I decide."

Zhou Jing wrote down Lu Yu's words:

"Okay, Mr. Lu, does the company want to do the special effects industry?"

Lu Yu: "Yes, this matter should be done quickly." ”

After Zhou Jing nodded in understanding, she left Lu Yu's office and began to arrange work.

……

Lu Yu thought that there was nothing to do, so he simply took out the computer and carefully studied the special effects software on the market.

At noon, I went down to eat with Liu Shichang, and continued to study special effects software after I came back.

In contrast, the name of the illusion software can be translated as particle illusion, as you can see from the name, this is a software dedicated to particle effects.

Its main application area is to create particle system technology, such as fire, explosion, smoke, fireworks and other animation effects.

Because it doesn't have additional filters, it's extremely fast to render, and the intuitive controls make it quick to get started animating particles.

Maya software is a 3D modeling and animation software, and polygon modeling is unique.

Performance is improved with new algorithms, and multi-threading support can also take full advantage of multi-core processors.

To put it simply, Maya software is well-functional, flexible, easy to learn and easy to use, has high production efficiency, and has a strong sense of realism in rendering, which is why it is widely popular.

……

Houdini, on the other hand, is a 3D computer graphics software that can run on operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and MacOS because it is based on Prisms.

In addition to the structure, operation methods, etc., which are different from other 3D software, Houdini's built-in renderer is also very mature, which can render motion blur, depth of field and displacement effects relatively quickly.

And its control over various effects is very strong, especially particle effects and dynamic modeling, which are second to none.

In addition, the other programs focus on one aspect of the special effects, which is different.

For example, Nuke's compositing ability is the most top-notch, and the rest of the software also has its own focus.

Each of these software on the market has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it runs on different platforms.

Some software is not mutually compatible or even compatible.

This is mainly due to the different development environments, but of course, there are also factors in which various companies compete with each other.

This also leads to a lot of trouble for special effects workers when they use these software.

Because the toolset of each software is different, mistakes are often made.

The more Lu Yu looked, the more he felt that the development of a set of open-source special effects software could not only directly help the domestic special effects industry to a higher level, but also indirectly promote the progress of the entire special effects industry.

This is the meaning of Lu Yu's open-source software.

……