Exponential-e has announced that it will be working with Microsoft to deliver its new Render-as-a-Service offering.

The partnership, built through the Azure platform, will enable Exponential-e to deliver hybrid render services to a variety of industries that utilise 3D modelling. Potential customers highlighted by the team include manufacturing, architecture, medical providers and scientific research organizations.

“Due to steadily rising image resolutions, rendering is requiring more and more computing horsepower,” said Mukesh Bavisi, Managing Director at Exponential-e. “Also the limitations of power, space and cooling for in-house render farms means they are increasingly more expensive and complex to run.

“Exponential-e’s unique collaboration with Microsoft Azure solves the headache of restricted resource on maxed out internal render nodes.  It provides an on-demand, scalable solution that enables seamless hybrid integration of on premise resource privately connected to the raw compute power. The service is managed as one environment via a single self-service pane of glass.”

3D modelling has been growing healthily in recent years as the technology becomes more affordable and accurate. Analysts have estimated industry revenue will increase from $1.9 billion to $17 billion between 2015 and 2020. Current applications vary widely from the healthcare industry, foetal monitoring and ultrasound scans of pregnant women, to engineering, 3D computer aided design (CAD) programs, to 3D imaging in the entertainment industry.

While the software has become increasing accurate and detailed, the compute power required to run such programs on a consistent basis is also increasing. The success of Exponential-e’s product does rely on the demands of rendering becoming too much of a burden for organizations to run in-house, though it believes the market is heading that direction.

“Render-as-a-Service will alleviate the key pain point for businesses that utilise render processing across the globe,” said Bavisi. “Marrying our network with the Microsoft Azure cloud means greater rendering efficiencies than ever before, and provides us with the opportunity to take this solution to new sectors. By alleviating a key challenge in rendering, our customers can instead focus on driving innovation in an increasingly competitive landscape.”

The RaaS solution is currently in the beta testing stages, though visual effects (VFX) studio, Jellyfish Pictures is already utilising RaaS to flexibly scale resources on demand.