Vancouver is betting stepped-up local cloud computing horsepower will lure the next Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings effects-heavy movie shoot to its backyard.

A consortium of local digital shops under the Vancouver Studio Group banner on Friday unveiled RenderCloud, a computer processing hub to enable the major studios to push more of their animation and special effects work into the cloud, while still completing workshare projects in the west-coast city.

“RenderCloud will help all of us to keep Vancouver firmly positioned as the epicenter for production whether that’s feature films’ special effects, animation, or gaming,” Catherine Winder, president and executive producer of Rainmaker Entertainment, said Friday in a statement.

Rainmaker and local shops like Image-Engine and Digital Domain will be the first to use RenderCloud on an as-needed, cost-per-day model to process their own data-heavy projects.

But the studio group is also looking to lure Hollywood studios to Vancouver, and away from emerging global digital production hubs like London and New Zealand.

After all, the majors can build their own server farm to produce the next Shrek or Avatar franchise, or they outsource to a production centre like Vancouver with its own data centre like RenderCloud by sub-leasing rendering capacity during slow production periods.

The giant server farm is housed on the Great Northern Way Campus, an 18-acre complex alongside the Centre for Digital Media and the future home of Emily Carr University.

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