Duboi

Qt enabled Duboi to port its special effects solution to various platforms in record time.

The Duran Duboi Group, founded in 1984, is widely acknowledged as a pioneer of the digital audiovisual postproduction industry. Serving the film, TV, advertising communities, Duran Duboi Studio offers a full spectrum of services including digital audiovisual post-production, visual effects, 3D animation, previsualization and commercials.

The Challenge
Duboi needed to port Dutruc, its extremely code-dense special effects application, from IRIX to Windows NT quickly to meet a client demand. Porting the complex composite tool application would require a toolkit that was cross-platform, could handle Open GL and Windows NT and was open source. Additionally, because Dutruc would be up for hours at a time with artists working on it from morning until night, the application had to be stable and robust.

The Solution
After looking at competitive alternatives, Duboi found that Qt offered the fastest, most robust cross-platform solution. Qt’s clear documentation, access to source code and a support model in which Qt developers turn around most questions within a matter of hours were all factors in the success of the port.

The Value
Fast development not only enabled Duboi to meet its initial client demand quickly, it expanded the company’s reach to other customers. The stability of the development environment and the ease of use of the product have also saved the company time and cost in addition to increasing productivity.

Qt solves a set of complex problems for us in a cross-platform way. We can now talk to our clients and say, ‘Dutruc will behave the same on Mac, on NT, on IRIX, on Linux’ and so on. We’re addicted to Qt now. We don’t want to hear any more about Motif, MFC or any other solution. - Olivier Tubach, Dutruc Project Manager, Duboi