DreamWorks Animation's 3D film 'Monsters vs Aliens', which opened last Friday in the US, offers a more lifelike viewing experience than past productions. The company attributes this to the HP technology used in the making of the film.
Animation creation and the rendering of animated images, especially for 3D viewing, is computing intensive, and a lot of computing power is necessary for the smooth and timely running of applications and the release of the final product. Ed Leonard, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, says it took approximately 45.6 million computing hours to make Monsters vs Aliens, more than eight times as many as the original Shrek.
New characters, such as the liquid-like blob called Bob, were possible to generate because of the power of the HP workstations, HP ProLiant blade servers and other HP technology, which enabled the increased demands of the new generation of 3D filmmaking.
Says Leonard: “HP's unique ability to deliver advanced technical tools that help to eliminate creative limitations has allowed us to dive headfirst into the exciting storytelling capabilities of stereoscopic 3D.”
The HP technology helped DreamWorks to use the largest number of moving cameras on any of its films to date, and allowed for complete new animation effects, like the most difficult character Bob. Several hundred HP xw8600 workstations were used, along with a large and powerful “render farm” of HP ProLiant blade servers, to process the animation sequence. The movie demanded 120TB of data to complete, with one explosion scene requiring 6TB alone, adds Leonard.
Monsters vs Aliens is a 3D stereoscopic film, says Leonard, “which meant that our pixel push to the render farm doubled, but thanks to the computing power of the HP workstations and ProLiant servers, we could easily manage the process”.
If Monsters vs Aliens would have been rendered on a single computer, notes DreamWorks, it would have taken 4 071 years to render.
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