06 - DreamWorks and HP: Creation of the Croods Family
Four cities. Eighty million render hours. Numerous workstations, the most powerful blade servers, the best specialists in the field of animation and computer graphics, the network architecture of HP FlexNetwork , 2166 copies in Russia and the best in the history of the cartoon in hire in our country. What is this about? About the "Kruds Family" cartoon from DreamWorks Animation studio, in the creation of which HP took the most direct part.
The production of modern computer graphics takes a truly huge amount of computing modules, consumes kilowatts of electricity at terrifying speeds, drives traffic to tens of gigabits across networks. In each frame - many millions of triangles, polygons, forming character models, landscapes, objects and everything, everything, everything you see. For the creation of special effects are responsible for the most complex shader programs that recreate ultra-realistic water, fire and dust. Creating five minutes of video takes many weeks of hard work, and, despite the progress in both algorithms and application software, everything depends on the computing power of computers, network bandwidth and ruthlessly ticking time.
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How did the 90 minutes of the cartoon, which fit into eighty million render-hours, fit together in a few years of development? The first sketches, working drawings, storyboards, ideas and characters appeared in 2005. In early 2007, DreamWorks began to work on the ideas, reworked the script and characters, breathed new life into the project, and work directly on the graphics began in 2009. Development of models, textures, scenes, special effects and other materials took several years, the final rendering, film assembly and editing took place in 2011 and 2012.
DreamWorks has been working with HP for many years in software and hardware solutions to achieve the highest performance results, and this cartoon is no exception.
The main workhorse of artists, animators, specialists in special effects and installation were Z820 workstations .
Two server Xeon'a, up to 512 GB of RAM, multi-layered sandwich from professional video adapters, high-speed disk subsystems, reliable cooling system - all for working with super-complex scenes in an interactive environment.
Sound processing was carried out on the HP Z800 , a time-tested workstation equipped with an efficient and silent cooling system.
Some sounds are born very simply, some - as a result of difficult and painstaking work, and the creation of a three-dimensional sound stage, which will take into account what is happening not only on the screen, but behind it, from all sides, with all the obstacles, the environment model and geometry space, its materials and their properties in the field of reflection and absorption of sound waves - the task is no less difficult than creating realistic-looking wool, hair and skin. Professionals in the field of sound and special effects worked hard, and now you hear the roar of a prehistoric beast, the rustling of leaves, the sound of water and fire as if they really exist and are near you, but our workstations helped them in this.
It is difficult to imagine an office that would accommodate all the employees of DreamWork Animation and gave them the opportunity to work on the same project within the same premises. Artists and animators are located not just in four different buildings, but in four different cities: Glendale, Redwood City, Las Vegas and Bangalore. Working on one project at such long distances is not easy, but working at the same time, in real time, on one scene, one character and one frame seems to be a task beyond the real world. But the task is real, and most importantly, its solution is just as real as the need for such a technology.
HP Remote Graphics Software has brought together three cities in the United States and one in India into one effective work environment, providing people with everything they need to work together and create.
Awesome network technology that allows you to “be present” behind another computer, being hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, is a reality, and HP’s powerful networking technologies have made it possible to achieve minimal delays in video transmission and feedback.
The stability and uninterrupted operation of the network under the highest load was provided by the architecture of HP FlexNetwork (there will still be a separate material about it later). Work with remote employees, scalability, the transfer of HD-video content in real time, the ability to work with HP Remote Graphics Software technology on such a complex and high-loaded project - the merit of this interesting technology and HP hardware systems that create the very “low level” that provides transmission data and traffic control.
HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (HP IRF) is a technology that works wonders out of the blue. It combines flexible virtualization of server technologies, traffic route management, disposal of unnecessary entities and idle capacities, load and computing power distribution, scalability of network solutions and, most importantly, the use of well-known and open technologies as a basis. The result - a convergent, simple, transparent network with a minimum of losses and maximum efficiency, easy to manage and the possibility of easy expansion of existing solutions.
At the hardware level, the network infrastructure and HP IRF were supported by the HP 12518 , 5820 , 5800 and 6125G / XG switches .
The most delicious iron! As render servers in DreamWorks, our eighth generation blade systems, HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, were used .
Two eight-core processors, 16 memory slots, 10 Gigabit network controller supporting HP FlexFabric (one of the components of FlexNetwork ) - impressive power, and in one “rack” of such kids there can be more than a dozen.
They made it possible to accommodate an impressive 80 million render-hours per year of work, parallelizing among themselves the tasks of rendering each frame.
In the process of working on such projects, one inevitably has to use the help of printers, scanners and copiers. A hand-drawn storyboard, sketches of scenes, characters, objects, elements, landscapes, and just scenes — all this is easier to keep on the wall in front of you, and not in your head or on a computer. He looked away from the monitor - looked at the illustration you were interested in - continued to work. No alttabov or searching material in network folders.
The displays used products from the HP DreamColor professional line. One of the most popular solutions was the monitor HP LP2480zx .
24 inches, 1920x1080, H-IPS-matrix and factory calibration of colors of each specimen for the most complete and uniform disclosure of color space. It would seem nothing spectacular, but the LP2480zx is not an ordinary monitor. It contains an RGB LED backlight that provides the most accurate control of the “white point” of the display, five main preset profiles (sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec. 601 (standard calibration for analog TV) and Rec. 709 (standard calibration for HDTV) and a special color space for standard colors, designed by DreamWorks). In addition, there is full support for specialized software and work with a colorimeter, support for a ten-bit color space, work with a 200Hz signal source. HP DreamColor LP2480zx is deservedly considered one of the best professional displays, and our software allows you to keep dozens and even hundreds of similar monitors in perfect agreement with each other in the displayed colors, brightness and contrast.
The source of such a cartoon can take many hundreds and thousands of terabytes, and such information should be stored as securely as possible. The loss of several models, finished scenes or fragments can cost a lot of time and money. To ensure reliable storage of hard work results, our best solutions were used: HP 3PAR StoreServ . We already wrote about this storage system last year, but, besides it, there are a number of products and technologies that we would like to mention.
This is an array of HP MSA P2000 hard drives and our versatile HP StoreAll Storage and HP StoreOnce Backup data storage and backup systems. Efficient, fast and reliable, they ensured the storage of finished materials, convenient installation work and flexibility in working with backup copies.
As you can see, HP equipment was used at all stages and in all possible aspects of creating a cartoon. From work on the characters themselves to animation and special effects. From drawing finished frames to final editing. From recording sound to creating the most difficult sound scenes, taking into account the environment and graphic scene. From displaying images to screens to storing all parts of the work throughout the entire product life cycle. Many of the most complex technologies provided a simple and effective work for professionals in their difficult task: to hold eighty million hours in a few years, and get ninety minutes of finished film at the exit.
UPD from 22 Apr 2012: We launched a special project on Habré, which was described in the zero post of this season. It is located at: habrahabr.ru/special/hp/commercial and there is a lot of interesting information, the form of feedback we promised, as well as a test of knowledge in the field of virtualization. We are waiting for you and your questions!
Technique and technology
The production of modern computer graphics takes a truly huge amount of computing modules, consumes kilowatts of electricity at terrifying speeds, drives traffic to tens of gigabits across networks. In each frame - many millions of triangles, polygons, forming character models, landscapes, objects and everything, everything, everything you see. For the creation of special effects are responsible for the most complex shader programs that recreate ultra-realistic water, fire and dust. Creating five minutes of video takes many weeks of hard work, and, despite the progress in both algorithms and application software, everything depends on the computing power of computers, network bandwidth and ruthlessly ticking time.
')
How did the 90 minutes of the cartoon, which fit into eighty million render-hours, fit together in a few years of development? The first sketches, working drawings, storyboards, ideas and characters appeared in 2005. In early 2007, DreamWorks began to work on the ideas, reworked the script and characters, breathed new life into the project, and work directly on the graphics began in 2009. Development of models, textures, scenes, special effects and other materials took several years, the final rendering, film assembly and editing took place in 2011 and 2012.
DreamWorks has been working with HP for many years in software and hardware solutions to achieve the highest performance results, and this cartoon is no exception.
Models, animation and special effects
The main workhorse of artists, animators, specialists in special effects and installation were Z820 workstations .
Two server Xeon'a, up to 512 GB of RAM, multi-layered sandwich from professional video adapters, high-speed disk subsystems, reliable cooling system - all for working with super-complex scenes in an interactive environment.
Sound and audio effects
Sound processing was carried out on the HP Z800 , a time-tested workstation equipped with an efficient and silent cooling system.
Some sounds are born very simply, some - as a result of difficult and painstaking work, and the creation of a three-dimensional sound stage, which will take into account what is happening not only on the screen, but behind it, from all sides, with all the obstacles, the environment model and geometry space, its materials and their properties in the field of reflection and absorption of sound waves - the task is no less difficult than creating realistic-looking wool, hair and skin. Professionals in the field of sound and special effects worked hard, and now you hear the roar of a prehistoric beast, the rustling of leaves, the sound of water and fire as if they really exist and are near you, but our workstations helped them in this.
4 cities - one company
It is difficult to imagine an office that would accommodate all the employees of DreamWork Animation and gave them the opportunity to work on the same project within the same premises. Artists and animators are located not just in four different buildings, but in four different cities: Glendale, Redwood City, Las Vegas and Bangalore. Working on one project at such long distances is not easy, but working at the same time, in real time, on one scene, one character and one frame seems to be a task beyond the real world. But the task is real, and most importantly, its solution is just as real as the need for such a technology.
HP Remote Graphics Software has brought together three cities in the United States and one in India into one effective work environment, providing people with everything they need to work together and create.
Awesome network technology that allows you to “be present” behind another computer, being hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, is a reality, and HP’s powerful networking technologies have made it possible to achieve minimal delays in video transmission and feedback.
Networking and HP FlexNetwork
The stability and uninterrupted operation of the network under the highest load was provided by the architecture of HP FlexNetwork (there will still be a separate material about it later). Work with remote employees, scalability, the transfer of HD-video content in real time, the ability to work with HP Remote Graphics Software technology on such a complex and high-loaded project - the merit of this interesting technology and HP hardware systems that create the very “low level” that provides transmission data and traffic control.
HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (HP IRF) is a technology that works wonders out of the blue. It combines flexible virtualization of server technologies, traffic route management, disposal of unnecessary entities and idle capacities, load and computing power distribution, scalability of network solutions and, most importantly, the use of well-known and open technologies as a basis. The result - a convergent, simple, transparent network with a minimum of losses and maximum efficiency, easy to manage and the possibility of easy expansion of existing solutions.
At the hardware level, the network infrastructure and HP IRF were supported by the HP 12518 , 5820 , 5800 and 6125G / XG switches .
Servers and render farms
The most delicious iron! As render servers in DreamWorks, our eighth generation blade systems, HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8, were used .
Two eight-core processors, 16 memory slots, 10 Gigabit network controller supporting HP FlexFabric (one of the components of FlexNetwork ) - impressive power, and in one “rack” of such kids there can be more than a dozen.
They made it possible to accommodate an impressive 80 million render-hours per year of work, parallelizing among themselves the tasks of rendering each frame.
Color, Displays and Printing
In the process of working on such projects, one inevitably has to use the help of printers, scanners and copiers. A hand-drawn storyboard, sketches of scenes, characters, objects, elements, landscapes, and just scenes — all this is easier to keep on the wall in front of you, and not in your head or on a computer. He looked away from the monitor - looked at the illustration you were interested in - continued to work. No alttabov or searching material in network folders.
The displays used products from the HP DreamColor professional line. One of the most popular solutions was the monitor HP LP2480zx .
24 inches, 1920x1080, H-IPS-matrix and factory calibration of colors of each specimen for the most complete and uniform disclosure of color space. It would seem nothing spectacular, but the LP2480zx is not an ordinary monitor. It contains an RGB LED backlight that provides the most accurate control of the “white point” of the display, five main preset profiles (sRGB, Adobe RGB, Rec. 601 (standard calibration for analog TV) and Rec. 709 (standard calibration for HDTV) and a special color space for standard colors, designed by DreamWorks). In addition, there is full support for specialized software and work with a colorimeter, support for a ten-bit color space, work with a 200Hz signal source. HP DreamColor LP2480zx is deservedly considered one of the best professional displays, and our software allows you to keep dozens and even hundreds of similar monitors in perfect agreement with each other in the displayed colors, brightness and contrast.
Data storage
The source of such a cartoon can take many hundreds and thousands of terabytes, and such information should be stored as securely as possible. The loss of several models, finished scenes or fragments can cost a lot of time and money. To ensure reliable storage of hard work results, our best solutions were used: HP 3PAR StoreServ . We already wrote about this storage system last year, but, besides it, there are a number of products and technologies that we would like to mention.
This is an array of HP MSA P2000 hard drives and our versatile HP StoreAll Storage and HP StoreOnce Backup data storage and backup systems. Efficient, fast and reliable, they ensured the storage of finished materials, convenient installation work and flexibility in working with backup copies.
Results
As you can see, HP equipment was used at all stages and in all possible aspects of creating a cartoon. From work on the characters themselves to animation and special effects. From drawing finished frames to final editing. From recording sound to creating the most difficult sound scenes, taking into account the environment and graphic scene. From displaying images to screens to storing all parts of the work throughout the entire product life cycle. Many of the most complex technologies provided a simple and effective work for professionals in their difficult task: to hold eighty million hours in a few years, and get ninety minutes of finished film at the exit.
UPD from 22 Apr 2012: We launched a special project on Habré, which was described in the zero post of this season. It is located at: habrahabr.ru/special/hp/commercial and there is a lot of interesting information, the form of feedback we promised, as well as a test of knowledge in the field of virtualization. We are waiting for you and your questions!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/177473/
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