In Imagine a company spending millions of dollars to buy workstations, software, servers, networking and storage equipment for everyone working on one large project. Then imagine recycling those systems and buying everything again for the next project.
This may seem like IT overkill, but its a way of life at Glendale, California-based DreamWorks Animation, creator of such highly successful movies as the Shrek and Madagascar series, Monsters and Aliens and the Kung Fu Panda series.
Films are a major driver for data storage in the entertainment sector; one of the hottest sub-sectors within the burgeoning international data storage market. In fact, this sector has its own professional conference to justify its importance. This market category includes all professional creative media, including feature films, documentaries, corporate videos, television shows and music videos.
The escalating use of high quality video such as high definition and super high from start to finish, so the studio gets its return on investment (RoI).
Opportunities for new profits in this sector are substantial, to say the least. A report published last month by Coughlin projects that the media storage market would virtually double in the next five years from $3.8 bn to $6.4 bn in revenue and from 11 exabytes to 62 exabytes in capacity. That is right, exabytes: a million trillion bytes. Digital storage requirements are exploding due to use of higher resolution and stereoscopic content in the media and entertainment industry, lead researcher Tom Coughlin wrote in the report.
Cashing on 3D Films
DreamWorks 2011 movie, the 3D enhanced Kung Fu Panda 2, opened on May 26 and amassed $332 mn in worldwide box-office receipts in the first 17 days. Since the movie cost about $150 million to make (not counting marketing and distribution costs), the producers are already in the black.
Because video quality has improved so greatly in the last decade, 3D feature films tend to be more successful at the box office than standard films and have been ramping up in sheer numbers. Once youve seen good 3D, you get spoilt and its hard to go back, DreamWorks CTO, Ed Leonard, told eWEEK: The expectations go up with each new release. Ive been in this business for longer than I care to admit, and, in that time, Ive observed that every film tries to outdo the last film.
The roots are still in great characters and in great storytelling, of course.
But we want to bring that to life in a way that youre mesmerised ... Youre watching something that is taking you to a different place, and youre forgetting about all the worries of life for two hours.
DreamWorks churns out about three films during a two-year span, so an ambitious schedule is always in the works. Each movie has its own animation staff and HP workstations, which are constantly being updated as new, faster Intel processors become available.
Because every movie is new, we change the tools and technology (based on) what were trying to achieve, Leonard said. Literally, everything is constantly reinvented. For Kung Fu Panda 2, this is the first time were going to see this world in (true) 3D. All the things that weve learnt in our past few 3D movies (such as 2010s How to Train Your Dragon and other films) have led us to enhance the tool set and our creative skill set. You see this come to life in a really big way in Kung Fu Panda 2.
DreamWorks obtains all new workstations every six months as new movies get started, Leonard said, with the hardware and software improving incrementally with each new purchase. The IT shop spends time on performance optimising the software.
A typical four-year DreamWorks movie project coincides with current improvement cycles in IT, Senior Technologist Skottie Miller told eWEEK.
About every four years, theres a quantum leap in computing power and I/O speed, he said. We find that its best to buy new hardware because it will pay for itself in about one year. Thats whats nice about working at a place like DreamWorks you get to use all the new stuff, Leonard said.
During the time of this production, we went from 4-core Westmeres (Intel processors) to six-cores. Every workstation has 12 cores working, so there is a tremendous amount of power (for each artist). In addition, each of those cores has gotten a lot faster. Its kind of Moores Law on steroids. Thats what were chasing, he added.
Advanced Tech, Better Quality
All this new equipment equates to one major thing: the power and efficiency of ever-improving hardware and software platforms that enable animation artists to do more in less time, so that more iterations of scenes and characters can be created. This results in more choices of art for the directors and producers.
On a broad scale, visual richness and interesting literal depth of what you see in the film is what were going for, Leonard explained. At the end of the movie, theres a climactic epic battle scene that takes place in the canals and harbours in the city, with lots of incredible water, fighting and other action. These things are really hard to do in CG (computer generated imagery), but you see them happening here without restraint. Its pretty magnificent.
Leonard said the most important change in the production software for Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably in the character tool set, which gave us the opportunity to rejig our characters (based on the original Kung Fu Panda of 2008) and redefine some of the algorithms that create the motion and key performance enacting, he said.
For this new film, we stored over 100TB of data and used over 55 mn render hours. That level of detail has a tremendous impact on the quality of the animation. Look at the amount of richness, detail and expressiveness and all the things that go into making you suspend disbelief that Po (the panda) is emoting real character. That is a big part of what technology does for the creation (of this movie), Leonard explained.
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