Exploring Remote and Virtual Solutions for Autodesk Maya

Autodesk Maya is an industry-leading 3D computer graphics application with powerful modelling, rendering, simulation, texturing and animation tools. Used by VFX artists, modellers and animators, the software helps create graphics and visual effects in film, video games, television and other fields of design.

Due to computation and graphics requirements, Maya has typically been run on high-end, dedicated workstations located on or under the artist’s desk. For many Maya artists, this has created several workflow challenges, including delays in transferring model sizes to local workstations, challenges in collaborating across locations, heat and noise issues as well as a lack of remote access for artists or reviewers. With the introduction of the Teradici PCoIP Remote Workstation Card and Teradici PCoIP Workstation Access Software, these challenges have been solved; Maya artists can now work remotely and collaboratively without sacrificing performance. 

In our new whitepaper, developed alongside Autodesk, we discuss the technology options and guidelines for deploying a remote solution to ensure a great user experience and includes test results for both physical workstations and virtualized environments with dedicated or shared GPU access

In Figure 1, we show how a Teradici PCoIP Remote Workstation Card installed on a physical workstation running the Maya application using any endpoint (either a PCoIP Zero Client or an endpoint with PCoIP Software Client installed) to simplify access to project data, without having to replicate or transfer large Maya files or datasets across multiple locations. Better yet, by only transmitting encrypted pixels via the PCoIP protocol, intellectual property is protected and remains safe in the data center. 

In Figure 2, we show Teradici PCoIP Workstation Access Software installed on a virtual machine (VM) with a dedicated GPU or shared access to physical GPU resources (vGPU), which can provide a cost-effective solution to ensure that Maya offers the best user experience. 

In both cases, the introduction of Teradici PCoIP technology helps ensure image quality, frame rate and interactive latency are delivered on a remote workstation with perceptually the same experience as a local workstation. Download the full whitepaper, Exploring Remote and Virtual Solutions for Autodesk Maya, to learn how this was achieved and the results of our benchmarking tests.