Corbel 3D and Pixel Light Effects' Leap to Simple, Fast File Transfer Brie Clayton February 20, 2025
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The Setting Corbel 3D, located in Vancouver and Beijing, is known for its expertise in photogrammetry. It uses self-engineered multi-camera arrays to capture high-quality, high-volume 3D and 4D for applications ranging from motion pictures and video games to emerging markets like AI, metaverse, and potential medical applications. Their brand, Pixel Light Effects, attracts media and entertainment clients like Marvel's Deadpool 2 and Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
The Challenge Corbel faced significant challenges transferring large amounts of data, particularly with 4D scans, which generate as much as 36 GB of data per second. This was exacerbated when working with their office in Beijing, where they needed to zip and unzip thousands or millions of small files, causing lengthy delays at each end of the process.
The Solution Corbel began exploring better file transfer delivery options, eventually adopting Signiant in 2021. Signiant Media Shuttle is a crucial infrastructure element for Corbel, streamlining their 3D and 4D transfer operations by reducing the time it takes for them to work, eliminating the need to zip files, and saving them almost a whole day for each transfer.
The Value The Signiant Platform provides Corbel and Pixel Light Effects with more reliable and faster file transfers, saving hours, if not days, of data handling and processing time. Using an industry-recognized, secure file transfer solution augments Corbel 3D's industry credibility with potential clients and strengthens its reputation in the media and entertainment sector.
It's the Waiting That Grinds You Down Sometimes, it's not a single big moment that pushes customers toward Signiant - not a client crisis, corrupted files, or the need to reshoot an entire day's work - but rather the accumulation of waiting from countless little delays. It's the waiting that grinds you down.
Pixel Light Effects Mobile On-Set 3D Character Scanning Unit
Sometimes, it's not one disaster but lots of small, relentless, frustrating delays keeping you from your work that make you realize a change is needed. That's exactly where Corbel 3D found itself.
Capturing the Future Founded in 2014, Corbel 3D and Pixel Light Effects provide industry-leading 3D and 4D scanning hardware and services, specializing in the digital capture of people, objects, and environments. They utilize state-of-the-art photogrammetry scanning equipment, which they manufacture in-house.
Photogrammetry involves capturing an object from multiple angles using single or multiple cameras. Specialized software then reconstructs these images into a detailed 3D model with texture by triangulating the camera positions and creating a point cloud. While static objects can be scanned with a single camera and turntable, Corbel's expertise lies in using multi-camera arrays to capture hundreds of images simultaneously - particularly for moving subjects - enabling the creation of intricate 3D or 4D models.
Corbel's services and equipment have been used by AAA game developers, major Hollywood studios, social networking platforms, and more. With offices in both Vancouver and Beijing, Corbel operates globally, capturing and processing data, with CEO Jingyi Zhang overseeing the entire process.
Corbel 3D's Challenge of Transferring Millions of Small Files Working with millions of small files presented significant challenges for Corbel 3D and Pixel Light, especially when transferring data across large distances. The specialized scanning hardware and software they developed could generate as much as 36 GB of data per second. For a typical 2 to 10-minute capture, this could mean between four and 21 GB of data for a single shot.
Corbel 3D CEO, Jingyi Zhang
The Beijing office [does] all the capture. All the post-processing team is in Vancouver. The files aren't large, but there are thousands or maybe millions of small files. Each JPEG file is only one megabyte, but there are tons of them, explained Jingyi Zhang, Corbel's CEO.
The sheer volume of small files made transferring data a lengthy and complex process. Corbel relied on various client-provided services, including Box, Dropbox, WeTransfer, Google Drive, and even physically mailing hard drives to get the files where they needed to go. However, these solutions were inefficient. The need to zip the large volumes of files before transfer and then unzip them on the other end could take up to 10 hours per step, significantly delaying access to the data and slowing down the post-processing work.
As Corbel's 4D scanning operations expanded in 2021, these inefficiencies became more pronounced. With larger file transfers and higher data demands, the delays grew longer, making it clear that their existing transfer methods could no longer keep up with the increasing scale of their work. This drove the need for a faster, more reliable file transfer solution to support their growing operations.
Corbel Fixes Delays with Signiant Media Shuttle The need for a faster, more efficient solution became clear, prompting Corbel to look at Signiant Media Shuttle to streamline its workflow. During a testing phase, they found that it significantly improved their file transfer process, particularly by eliminating the need to zip and unzip files.
Having point-to-point directly into our server, we don't have to zip [the files]; we just stack the folder and then transfer, Zhang said.
Media Shuttle, part of the Signiant Platform, is designed to efficiently transfer both large files and data sets containing millions of small files. Unlike legacy tools like FTP, which slow down by pausing to send each file individually, Media Shuttle uses advanced technique
