No, it does not. The way it works is that a variety of humans painstakingly create the complete digital description of the special effect you need (which might involve 3D modeling, motion capture, creating textures, etc.) and once they’re done this digital description is handed off to the rendering farm which spends some time—from minutes to months—rendering high-resolution movie frames from the digital description.
Better rendering hardware might reduce the time from months to days, but that’s not where the costs are—the costs are in creating the world, not in rendering it to frames.
Sure, better hardware in general will also give more efficient tools to modelers and such, but I don’t think the productivity gains here are going to be large.
You could just give Moore’s Law some more time, and special effects will get cheaper.
The cost of special effects isn’t in the rendering hardware, it is in the expensive human labor to create them.
Better rendering hardware means more efficient tools for the human.
No, it does not. The way it works is that a variety of humans painstakingly create the complete digital description of the special effect you need (which might involve 3D modeling, motion capture, creating textures, etc.) and once they’re done this digital description is handed off to the rendering farm which spends some time—from minutes to months—rendering high-resolution movie frames from the digital description.
Better rendering hardware might reduce the time from months to days, but that’s not where the costs are—the costs are in creating the world, not in rendering it to frames.
Sure, better hardware in general will also give more efficient tools to modelers and such, but I don’t think the productivity gains here are going to be large.
Hmm, I wonder if any studio bothered to calculate, plot and extrapolate the cost of visual effects over time and plan/budget accordingly.