Case Study: Framestore CFC achieves scalable, cost-effective peak rendering capacity with Google Cloud Platform

Framestore Visual effects with Preemptible Virtual Machines

Framestore is an Oscar‑winning visual‑effects studio that coordinates thousands of artists on complex film and TV projects. As visual effects grew more compute‑intensive, the company needed a cost‑effective way to handle large, unpredictable rendering spikes without overinvesting in on‑premises hardware or risking missed deadlines.

Framestore adopted Google Cloud Preemptible VMs to spin up temporary rendering capacity on demand, deploying its first render node in under a day and integrating custom VM sizes into its pipeline. The hybrid approach (up to a 60:40 on‑premises to cloud mix, with Preemptible and on‑demand VMs delivering as much as 40% of rendering cores) lets Framestore run peaks of ~30,000 cores (12,000 preemptible in London), reduce CapEx, meet deadlines reliably, and collaborate directly with Google on further network and disaster‑recovery improvements.

Framestore CFC

Steve MacPherson

CTO, VFX