A game changer for game designers

Innovative Artomatix solution rocks the world of the artist with the help of IBM Cloud

The process of creating repeatable details has presented an age-old problem for artists, and it hasn’t evolved much throughout history. Many of the same tools and techniques cavemen used to decorate their caves and Michelangelo employed to paint the Sistine Chapel are still in use today.

Michelangelo used a little wooden stick to create his masterpiece. Today, when artists are making video games, they use little plastic sticks. Modern tools have helped. But fundamentally it’s the same process.

Typically, artists who design games spend huge amounts of time creating background elements, such as landscapes, or figures, like armies. One house could take hours to design and create, and a whole street or village might take days or even weeks to build.

That presents a real problem for all concerned. For the game designer, it means long hours and crunches. For the producer, it means cutting corners and compromising on vision. For the executive, it means risk.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. Artomatix, a startup based in Dublin, Ireland, created a powerful machine-learning platform that makes the process of creating repeatable details simpler and faster. And the Artomatix team has found a way to get that solution to game designers of all sorts, from the small independent to the big studios.

After assessing several leading cloud hosting platforms, Artomatix chose a SoftLayer® hosting solution, provisioning bare metal servers with NVIDIA Tesla K80 dual GPU accelerators in the SoftLayer data center in London. The firm plans to extend its infrastructure to more SoftLayer hosting facilities as business grows.

The big benefit is speed. For instance, one process that used to take as long as 80 seconds can now take just two, representing a nearly 98 percent reduction in content creation time.

Now designers can build and make changes to the environments they create in near real time.

Much like the spreadsheet changed accounting by making it a more strategic occupation than simple arithmetic, the Artomatix solution is transforming the work of the artist while helping the company grow its business.