HP empowers 3D

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Yan Bergeron says the HP xw8600 series has now been replaced with the Z series that has high specifications and improves rendering speed further.

Several hundred HP xw8600 workstations were used on site for simultaneous processing.

“These workstations use the latest Intel Xeon Quad Core processors while graphic acceleration is provided by Nvidia and ATI. Some of the scenes were so complex in details, shades and camera movements that a single scene could use 100 of gigabytes in storage space. This is where the super fast SAS HDDs 15krpm comes very handy, as well as the large RAM memory capacity featured on the xw8600,” explains Bergeron.

Last month, however, HP replaced the xw series with the Z series — “an even higher spec machine that improves rendering speed by a further 30 to 60%”, says Bergeron.

This project also saw Dreamworks Animation use the largest and most powerful render farm to date.

“The final rendering scenes were exported to a large pool of HP ProLiant blade servers, where hundreds of CPUs were connected in parallel to create a super computer. These systems were able to virtually break millions of parts and compute them in parallel, saving hours of computing,” explains Bergeron.

In Monsters vs. Aliens specifically, DreamWorks Animation artists rendered nearly 100 terabytes of disk storage; it rendered more than 30 sequences in the movie that would have taken more than 1000 years to render on a single workstation, created one of the most technically challenging sequences of the film involving a flyover of a town, including houses, hills and trees; and also staged an explosion in one of the battle scenes, which required more than three terabytes of disk space alone and bridged 300 physical miles (the HP Halo telepresence system and HP Remote Graphics Software allowed critical creative collaboration between artists located in studios in Glendale and Redwood City, California.

Bergeron explains that the HP Remote Graphic software, which comes bundled with these high-end workstations, is an application that allows artists working from different locations to collaborate during production. “This tool enables multiple users to connect and share the content of their screen in High Definition on low bandwidth with each other, instead of having to physically meet. It allows users to comment on each other’s design and ensure standards are applied all across the production process. It also helps users to generate new ideas and speed up their project. Artists, production directors, photography directors and scenario writers can now be connected and be on the same screen where they can continuously give their feedback on work in progress. This was used extensively on the Monsters vs. Aliens project as the teams were sitting in separate locations.”

Bergeron adds that the HP workstations now allow artists to decide which OS they want to work on and use them simultaneously for different jobs. “Previously, if you needed to do one job on Windows and another on Linux, you’d have to wait till the first was finished, shut the computer down and restart it in the new OS. Now, you can simultaneously operate both operating systems on the workstation and pass different jobs to each OS. Plus, we can now dedicate on graphics card to each operating system,” explains Bergeron.

With the entertainment industry seeking machines that can render faster than real time, IT manufacturers are seeking to cater to this demand. It won’t be long before the two industries collaborate on projects and customise workstations to suit the need of each film, if need be.

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