Hyderabad is soon going to be the hub of VFX and animation in a big way. Some time back, there were stories of how the animation and VFX segment was developing at a fast pace in the city. Now IT and MA & UD minister KT Rama Rao has announced that IMAGE Tower will be ready for inauguration during the first quarter of 2023. So, in short, Image Tower will be to animation, what T-Hub is to start-ups.

The state-of-the-art IMAGE Tower will house six studios, including one large studio with a typical studio floor of 120ft x 100ft. A similar-sized motion capture green matt studio will also be part of the Tower. The 1.6 million sq ft facility will have a Digital Intermediate (DI) suite, editing labs (audio and video), data management labs, a dubbing suite, and even a data center on its premises, along with an auditorium and two theatres for screening.

On the other hand, the virtual infrastructure will comprise a render farm, data center, bandwidth (internal and external), and shared licensing for gaming and animation occupiers. The render farm will have applications for post-production, sophisticated 3D, visual effects (VFX), animation, and finishing.

Incidentally, the building will be in ‘T’ shape, reflecting both Telangana and technology. With the new Tower, Hyderabad will become the hub of animation, visual effects, gaming, and comics (AVGC). Since the data will be humungous, dedicated data centers are being talked about along with round-the-clock maintenance.

All animation studios will be provided with four service providers as they rely on superhighways for transport. Gamin occupiers will have access to shared software licenses, including Unity Game Engine, Nuke, and GameBryo. Animation players will have access to the likes of Autodesk 3DS MAX, Maya, ZBrush, Motion Builder, Stop Motion Pro, V-Ray, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere T, Eyeon Fusion, and cloud services such as Amazon webserver, IBM, Google, Microsoft.

With so much happening and with such support, the industry leaders feel Hyderabad will be ready to handle new-age projects.