[Beowulf] Digital Image Processing via HPC/Cluster/Beowulf - Basics

[Gerald Henriksen]

On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 02:16:30 +0100, you wrote:

>Jim as someone who produced games, this is not how it works for most  
>movies/animations/commercials where graphics work is needed.
>
>Note that most movies get editted as well in the same way (each  
>nation usually has different requirements).
>
>First of all - the budget is rather tiny. So that means using  
>hardware you would probably yourself not consider using at NASA.

Not quite.

Avator - 10,000 square feet, 4,000 machines, 40,000 processors just
for the renderfarm at Weta:

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/22/the-data-crunching-powerhouse-behind-avatar/

Then add in all the machines to support the artists...

You can also get some ideas of the non-renderfarm requirements at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Visual_effects


>Secondly the calculation power required to produce movies is rather  
>limited. Even a graphics card from years ago has more
>capabilities than any artist single handed can design for. The real  
>limitation is the amount of graphics a single person can produce.
>
>Producing a head requires the work of an artist specialized in that,  
>for a full month. Rendering that is a manner of minutes at
>a single core. We speak of a CPU.
>
>A whole animation in full blown HD gets rendered just as quick.

Not quite.  Articles typically mention that the time to render a frame
of film has remainted pretty constant over the last decade, any speed
increases in the hardware being used to execute more complex
algorithms.  The move from 24fps to 48fps (ie The Hobbitt) isn't going
to help matters either.

>You can render the next episodes of the upcoming starwars movies deep  
>at a single socket i7 pretty quick, which includes
>testrun after testrun.

I am sure Disney would like to speak to you if you could accomplish
this, it would save them a significant amount of money.