Behind the Network (BTN): October 28th, 2022 [NASA Spaces Highlights/The Information Top 50]
This week has seen the Render Network highlighted as one of the industries most promising “startup” projects, alongside highlighting some of the network’s most prestigious users in V! Studios in the most recent Twitter space. Let’s dive into the highlights from both:
V! Studios, NASA and the Render Network
On Thursday (10/27), the Render Network’s Edgar Irizarry hosted Render Network’s second Twitter space of the last month, featuring V! Studios. Originally founded in 1993 as a game production studio, V! Studios has seen itself evolve over the years, now serving as an animation studio that works with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board and NASA. Speaking with Co-Founder Troy Benesch and Senior Animator Benjamin Watson, the space dove into their most recent work producing the ISS’s Benefits for Humanity 2022 for the first time as a digital-first production. Typically serving as a coffee-table style book recapping the last year in the ISS, V! Studios was tasked with creating a series of trailer-style videos for each of the 8 chapters for this year’s production, which can be viewed at the link above alongside the full digital book.
Ben detailed how the workload for this project was varied and that in total he created 110 Jobs on the Render Network for it, some as low as 4 frames and others as high as 1600 frames.
“We had done a couple of initial experiments, and for a while there we had our own render farm, but RNDR (Render Network), whenever we did it, the cost and turnaround time was just phenomenal.”
The differences in size, complexity and approach meant that having the ability to change scenes and produce 4k final renders was invaluable, including when a certain part that had been added to the ISS during production needed to be included at the last minute throughout the series of shorts. Experimentation was the name of the game for this most recent project with NASA, which has been a long-standing collaboration since V! Studios first worked on NASA’s “What is a Planet?” animation when Pluto was reclassified. Alongside the re-rendering, different compression methods and textures passes were played around with during the creation of the shorts, allowing Ben to test different techniques that he usually does not lean towards.
Be on the lookout for more from V! Studios and NASA in the future, and check out the ISS’s Benefits for Humanity 2022 if you have not already, to see all of the latest advancements in humanity’s journey to the stars.
The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups
Earlier this week the Information listed the Render Network among its 50 most promising startups of 2022, with the Network coming in 5th among the crypto projects.
Ranking at the highest valuation ($234m) amongst its peers, like Iron Fish, Nansen and Third Web, the Information’s Akash Pasricha and Aiden Ryan included the Render Network on this year’s list in part due to its resilience; in the face of a downward year for most projects, through Q2 of 2022 the Render Network has continued to see growth in frames rendered/per quarter and users on the Network, which the Information attributed to Render Network’s utility giving it a certain “stickiness” over other consumer blockchain projects.
With the promise of further decentralization through the formation of a decentralized governing body in the future to run the Network, the Render Network has positioned itself as one of the stronger projects over the last year.
Best of the Metaverse
This past week was quite eventful for the future of web3, with the largest tech platforms increasingly adopting blockchain technologies:
- Twitter announced that it will enable people to buy and sell NFTs directly from Tweets, providing another sea-change in the way that consumers discover and buy digital assets.
- Google released its Blockchain Node Engine, providing fully managed node-hosting for Web3 development.
- Reddit NFT Avatars exploded in the past week, providing one of the largest weekly expansions in active daily wallets ever recorded, setting the stage for wider adoption of blockchain virtual assets.
- Render Network power user FVCKRENDER released staking for LVCIDIA, an immersive web3 metaverse constructed from his artwork, where collectors can earn unique 3D rendered assets by staking their NFTs.
- Beeple’s new digital art museum he is building in Charlestown, SC was featured in the Wall Street Journal, and which promises to be an extraordinary immersive way to experience the power of NFTs and digital art IRL.
What’s Next?
Tune in on Monday, November 7th at 12:55pm GMT where Jules will be discussing the future of the Render Network, including providing more details on AI workflows on Render Network, as well as Octane X on Render Network that were explored in-detail in last week’s Behind-the-Network.
Join us in the Rendering Revolution at:
Website: https://render.x.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rendernetwork
Knowledge Base: https://know.rendernetwork.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/rendernetwork
Render Network Foundation: https://renderfoundation.com/
