Mathematic and Sohonet pioneer sustainable VFX postproduction

Mathematic, a leading independent VFX and 3D animation studio, is revolutionizing the creative industry through sustainable workflows and a commitment to environmental responsibility. The multi award-winning French facility has embarked on an ambitious rewiring of its global infrastructure connecting 350 artists across studios in Paris, Montreal and Los Angeles on Sohonet and its world class remote collaboration file transfer. The project has taken on renewed relevance post-Covid delivering workflow resilience, productivity gains and substantial energy efficiencies.

“We have positioned the environmental impact of Mathematic at the heart of all our projects,” says Clement Germain, VFX Supervisor at Mathematic. “Thanks to Sohonet, cutting-edge file transfer tools and Qarnot’s revolutionary cooling technologies we are able to increase creative output and dramatically reduce our carbon emissions in all our facilities.”

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The Backbone of Global Creativity: Mathematic’s Sohonet Strategy

Nothing if not foresighted, Mathematic began transitioning out of the legacy IT in its offices in 2015. At the time, Mathematic faced issues caused by a siloed, distributed infrastructure and disconnected production teams. This resulted in delays, additional CAPEX and OPEX costs, and significant complexity as copies of project data had to be continually shuttled back and forth between sites. More importantly, the friction this added to production workflows was limiting the facility’s ability to grow its business and react to rapidly changing demand.

“The rationale was to streamline operational efficiencies using leading-edge technologies running on Sohonet optical fibre,” Germain explains. “Instead of working from existing storage at each site what we wanted to do was to assimilate file metadata in the cloud and tie all our sites together.”

To accomplish this, the facility began by interconnecting its Paris studio with its U.S and Canadian counterparts over Sohonet. By deploying Hammerspace software, Mathematic seamlessly bridged all sites into a multi-site global namespace. In this way, artists spanning Paris, Montreal and LA are able to collaborate on the same files in a live file system, eliminating the problem of wrangling file copies between sites.

“The new infrastructure means all our artists can collaborate on global projects by sharing assets without friction – as if they were sitting in the same office,” says Germain. “It also allows us to deploy a new studio anywhere, rapidly, and then recruit talent, regardless of their geographical location.”

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Gateway to the Global Creative Network with Multiport

At the same time, Sohonet’s Multiport service provided access to the (Sohonet) Media Network, the largest private network for film, TV, and advertising industries. This allows Mathematic to directly connect with thousands of companies including industry giants Disney, Warner Bros. and Netflix, and hundreds of thousands of storytellers worldwide, facilitating smoother collaboration and data transfer.

Moreover, Multiport offered Mathematic the flexibility to scale bandwidth capacity as needed. This agility allowed them to adapt to varying workloads, such as upgrading to higher bandwidth during intensive projects and scaling back down afterwards, ensuring a seamless workflow management process.

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Closing the Gap for Remote Teams ClearView Flex

The company first started working with real-time collaboration platform, ClearView Flex during the pandemic. “We developed a close relationship with Sohonet to keep our productions running by solving the last mile of remote collaboration,” Germain explains. “Previously, our remote teams were isolated from each other, limiting their ability to work effectively.”

Mathematic has since doubled down on using ClearView Flex. “We have boxes in Paris, Montreal and LA and we use them every day to stream sessions. It is fast, robust and the very best experience for clients and artists.”

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Aligned with ‘France 2030’ Objectives

Mathematic’s strategy aligned with France Project 2030, a multi-billion Euro French government-  funded initiative to develop the country’s industrial competitiveness. Centered around next-gen technologies, the France Project 2030 is also intended to drive down carbon footprints.

To meet these sustainability goals Mathematic embarked on a scheme to decarbonize all its VFX renders.  “We decided to decarbonize our historic render farms by placing our old render nodes into Qarnot’s infrastructure. This innovative technology repurposes the heat generated by computing to feed district heating networks, swimming pools, and industrial facilities.” says Germain.     

There’s more to come too. Mathematic is installing new render nodes directly into Qarnot computing cluster, a technology that directly valorizes rendering heat to warm a swimming pool spa complex in the Paris region. This will not only deliver further energy savings but ties Mathematic’s global creative VFX into the circular economy.

Sixty servers were installed in Qarnot clusters at the end of 2024 and another 60 will be added this year. The facility next plans to double that amount to 240 servers and predicts that this will decarbonize 15 tonnes of Co2 per month across its network by 2027.

“Our journey is still evolving but we can already see tangible returns from our philosophy,” says Germain. “We can have artists working on a project in our LA or Montreal studio using the power of the render farm in Paris to decarbonize.”

For example, for the IMAX spectacle T.Rex (2024), the photoreal VFX was designed in Paris and animated in Montreal with rendering in France.

Mathematic has doubled production capacity alongside an 80% reduction in carbon output as a result of repatriating renders to Paris.

“Plus, if we were to open a new office in New York we would just plug it into Sohonet and our global file system and be able to scale up on projects within hours.”

Mathematic’s leadership in sustainability and fostering global collaboration was recognized with a prestigious nomination for a César et Techniques 2025 award.    

Mathematic creative excellence

Having art direction central to its core, Mathematic’s work spans commercial, music video, feature films and series, video game trailers, and entertainment creative content production.

With an average of 200 projects a year, Mathematic has collaborated with notable artists including Ed Sheeran, Lil Nas X, Harry Styles, Coldplay and The Weekend. The studio’s work includes commercials with brands such as Apple, Sprite, Adidas and Tag Heuer; television series such as Parallels from Disney+, and feature films including Vesper, The Whale, Asteroid City, and Les 5 Diables.

Mathematic also creates special effects for shows and concerts, including those by Drake and The Blaze. For its participation in the cyberpunk rock opera Starmania, Mathematic was awarded the prestigious Molière award for Best Visual Creation in 2023.

The studio’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the UK Music Video Awards (UKMVA), the Moliere awards, the GENIE Awards, CLIO Awards, Ciclope Awards, D&AD, EPICA Awards, London International Awards (LIA), MTV Awards, Cannes Lions and The César Award (nominee).