Google Buys Zync, Maker of Visual Effects Software

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Zync Render, cloud-based technology for special effects, has been used in movies like “Flight,” starring Denzel Washington.Credit Paramount Pictures

Special effects are awesome. Special effects are also expensive, which is a reason, at least one of them, why budget movies feel like budget movies.
If Google has its way, special effects will continue to become cheaper and more accessible.

The Internet giant announced Tuesday that it bought Boston-based Zync Inc., the maker of Zync Render, a “cloud-based rendering software.” That’s software that helps movie studios take simple, computer-generated pictures of things like a giant robot bashing through a wall and make it look real (or at least kind of real) in movies like the “Transformers” series.

Zync Render has been used in movies like “Flight,” the Denzel Washington picture about a drunk and drugged-out airline pilot, as well as “Star Trek Into Darkness,” which needless to say had a lot of visual business going on, according to an announcement on Google’s Cloud Platform Blog.

Google wouldn’t say how much it paid for Zync. The company will integrate Zync’s data and technology into the Google Cloud Platform, and move off Amazon Web Services.

Cloud computing is the term technology people use to describe systems of networked computers that work really efficiently and have ripped costs out of data storage.

Cloud networks — the biggest being Amazon’s Amazon Web Services and Google’s Cloud Platform — help companies grow quickly because instead of having to buy a million computers to host their data, companies can just rent them from giants like Amazon and Google.

Google has been beefing up its Cloud Platform recently, buying Stackdriver, a maker of cloud-monitoring software, in May.

And while the Google Cloud Platform already had rendering services, Zync, which was spun out of the visual effects studio ZERO VFX, has deep ties to the movie industry. Industry watchers expect Google to continue adding technological bells and whistles to its Cloud Platform — including through acquisitions — in a bid to get more customers and industries to rent space on its cloud.

A promotional video for Zync.

Cloud computing has allowed the lightning fast growth of services like Pinterest, the photo sharing company, by drastically reducing the cost of data storage. The same is true of visual effects.

In the past, studios that wanted to go nuts with special effects had to buy lots of computers and stuff them in temperature-controlled closets, using them when they needed them but not really anytime else. Zync’s rendering system helps smaller studios get in the game by allowing them to rent server space by the hour (and obviously, big studios also like to save money).

With Google’s financial might, it’s a decent bet that the cost of special effects will only continue to fall.

In a statement on its Cloud Platform blog, Google said: “Together Zync + Cloud Platform will offer studios the rendering performance and capacity they need, while helping them manage costs. For example, with per-minute billing studios aren’t trapped into paying for unused capacity when their rendering needs don’t fit in perfect hour increments.”