When creative deadlines meet technical limitations, production stops—and revenue disappears.
A leading animation studio specializing in feature film and high-end commercial work faced exactly this challenge when their aging server infrastructure couldn’t keep pace with increasingly complex rendering demands.
The Challenge
The studio’s render farm had become their biggest bottleneck.
Their existing infrastructure—a mix of five-year-old dual-processor workstations and previous-generation storage arrays—was buckling under the demands of modern production pipelines.
Artists were spending 6-8 hours waiting for single-frame renders on complex ray-traced scenes, project timelines were slipping by weeks, and the team was turning down high-value contracts because they simply couldn’t deliver on time.
The technical constraints were severe:
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Insufficient CPU core density for distributed rendering workflows
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Storage I/O bottlenecks causing render queue backlogs
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Limited RAM per node restricting scene complexity
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Aging GPUs unable to handle real-time viewport performance for intricate particle simulations
Traditional bank financing would have required 20-30% down payments and 60-90 day approval processes—time and capital they didn’t have while competitors were winning the work they had to decline.
The Lion Tech Finance Solution
We structured a 100% equipment financing package that removed every barrier to immediate expansion:
Hardware Package ($1.63M total):
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45 dual-socket render nodes with latest-generation AMD EPYC processors (128 cores per node)
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512TB NVMe-based network-attached storage system with 40Gb/s connectivity
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Redundant 10Gb networking infrastructure to eliminate data transfer bottlenecks
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GPU render nodes featuring NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada cards for hybrid CPU/GPU workflows
Financing Structure:
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Zero upfront payment required—100% asset-backed financing
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Custom 60-month payment structure with seasonal flexibility aligned to their Q4 revenue peaks
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Tax-advantaged Section 179 deduction structuring to maximize first-year benefits
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Streamlined approval process completed in 72 hours
The Results
The impact was immediate and quantifiable:
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30% increase in total render capacity—from 3,840 to 5,760 effective CPU cores
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Frame render times dropped from 6-8 hours to 45-90 minutes for typical complex scenes
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Storage throughput increased 4x, eliminating render queue bottlenecks
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Artists gained real-time viewport performance for scenes with 50M+ polygons
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Zero production downtime during the hardware transition—new infrastructure deployed in parallel
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Studio immediately began bidding on feature film work previously beyond their technical capabilities
Within 90 days of deployment, the studio had secured two major contracts totaling $4.2M—projects they couldn’t have executed with their old infrastructure.
By preserving their working capital and matching payments to revenue patterns, the studio maintained financial flexibility while gaining the technical infrastructure to compete with top-tier facilities.
Technical ROI: The expanded render farm reduced outsourcing costs by $180K annually and enabled the studio to increase project throughput by 40% without adding artist headcount.
Ready to scale your technology infrastructure without the capital constraints?
Contact Lion Tech Finance today to explore financing options tailored to your business cycles and growth plans.
We specialize in financing mission-critical production equipment, from render farms to post-production suites.
