Chris Preimesberger, the author wrote an aritcle about the ever-advancing animation studio DreamWorks and the advancement of technology used in the process of making animated movies such as Kung Fu Panda. The author begins the article by telling a little about DreamWorks and the equipment they use on each project. DreamWorks is one of the biggest animated movie companies out there. DreamWorks work on such films as Shrek, Madagascar, and the Kung Fu Panda series. When the company begins working on a new big project or movie, they have to buy new workstations, servers, networking, software, and storage equipment for each of their employees that are working on the new project, spending million of dollars. With 500 artists and supervisors working on a movie; it takes four to five years for them to complete the movie whether the movie is in 3D perspective or in 2D.
Chris explains how important data storage is in animated movies. They are so important that “the films are also a major driver in the entertainment data storage sector, one of the hottest sub-sectors within the burgeoning international data storage market.”(Preimesberger 14) It even has a professional conference for data storage: the Coughlin Associates' 2011 Creative Storage Conference. The author further explains data storage in the market by listing different professional creative media such as feature films, television shows, and music videos. The high-quality videos like HD (high-definition) takes more than double the amount of data storage as regular video, which is the cause for the high increase in the data storage market. A report published May, 2011 by Coughlin projects “the media storage market to virtually double in the next five years – from $3.8 billion to $6.4 billion in revenue, and from 11 exabytes to 62 exabytes in capacity.” (Preimesberger 15) Exabyte is a million terabytes, which a terabytes is a thousand gigabytes and a gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. An exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
Chris explains how important data storage is in animated movies. They are so important that “the films are also a major driver in the entertainment data storage sector, one of the hottest sub-sectors within the burgeoning international data storage market.”(Preimesberger 14) It even has a professional conference for data storage: the Coughlin Associates' 2011 Creative Storage Conference. The author further explains data storage in the market by listing different professional creative media such as feature films, television shows, and music videos. The high-quality videos like HD (high-definition) takes more than double the amount of data storage as regular video, which is the cause for the high increase in the data storage market. A report published May, 2011 by Coughlin projects “the media storage market to virtually double in the next five years – from $3.8 billion to $6.4 billion in revenue, and from 11 exabytes to 62 exabytes in capacity.” (Preimesberger 15) Exabyte is a million terabytes, which a terabytes is a thousand gigabytes and a gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. An exabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
The author focuses the rest of the article on the improvements and success of 3D films. Kung Fu Panda 2 which is 3D-enhanced; opened May 26, 2011 and in the first 17 days accumulated $332 million while the movie only cost around $150 million, not counting the distribution and marketing cost. Chris continues to talk about the DreamWorks and the 3D films produced. DreamWorks produces about 3 films every 2 years; using a different staff and workstations for each film. “Because every movie is new, we change the tools and technology [based on] what we're trying to achieve,” said Dreamworks CTO Ed Leonard. The workstations are constantly worked on to optimize performance by updating when faster processors come out and various other things.
The new hardware and software bring more power and efficiency to the plate enabling the animation artist to perform better quality work in a shorter amount of time. This allows for the directors and producers to make more choices for the film's animation. “At the end of the movie, there’s a climactic epic battle scene that takes place in the canals and harbors in the city, with lots of incredible water, fighting and other actions. These things are really hard to do in CG [computer-generated imagery], but you see them happening here without restraint. It’s pretty magnificent.” Leonard said the most important change in the production software for Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably in the character toolset, “which gave us the opportunity to rerig 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. “Of course, all the tools we used on the original movie needed to be upgraded to be able to handle [true] 3D. So when our [scene] ‘lighters’ are working, they can now see their work in 3D. That’s new on this film.” The sheer amount of detail in this film has gone way up from the 2008 movie. “The first Panda movie took about 50TB of data generated over the life of the film, and we used a little over 20 million render hours,” Leonard said. “With this new film, we stored over 100TB of data and used over 55 million 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 the technology does for the creation [of this movie].” (Preimesberger 16-17)
The new hardware and software bring more power and efficiency to the plate enabling the animation artist to perform better quality work in a shorter amount of time. This allows for the directors and producers to make more choices for the film's animation. “At the end of the movie, there’s a climactic epic battle scene that takes place in the canals and harbors in the city, with lots of incredible water, fighting and other actions. These things are really hard to do in CG [computer-generated imagery], but you see them happening here without restraint. It’s pretty magnificent.” Leonard said the most important change in the production software for Kung Fu Panda 2 was probably in the character toolset, “which gave us the opportunity to rerig 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. “Of course, all the tools we used on the original movie needed to be upgraded to be able to handle [true] 3D. So when our [scene] ‘lighters’ are working, they can now see their work in 3D. That’s new on this film.” The sheer amount of detail in this film has gone way up from the 2008 movie. “The first Panda movie took about 50TB of data generated over the life of the film, and we used a little over 20 million render hours,” Leonard said. “With this new film, we stored over 100TB of data and used over 55 million 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 the technology does for the creation [of this movie].” (Preimesberger 16-17)
In 2011, a hour and a half length 3D film required over 100TB of data storage, but because of the needs for Kung Fu Panda 2, “DreamWorks added a cloud services center to the mix for added storage and more agile operations. About twenty percent of the movie (10 million render hours) was processed through the cloud. In the near future, DreamWorks is hoping that most of the rendering will be done through the cloud. This would result in lower production costs. The artists are now able to collaborate with their work, dealing with massive data and complexity much faster.
The author explains more on why and how production is becoming faster and less expensive. “Most CG workstations have 12-core machines capable of 24-thread computing. Where it once took eight hours to render a single frame of a 3D movie, it now takes only several minutes. That is huge in terms of time and cost savings. The HP Z-series workstations offer about 50 percent more cache than previous versions (up to 24GB), which helps speed processing in a big way. Intel Xeon 5600 Westmere processors inside the workstations also run cooler, require less power and cooling energy, and have improved security features.” (Preimesberger 20) To be an artist in this kind of field takes a special kind of personality. The artist have to take steps to model a character; modeling the basic shape, smoothing the edges, hair -fur, clothing, then the coloring. When modeling the character, everything is planned out from the actions the character is going to make, what elements will affect the character and how it will interact with other models.
The author explains more on why and how production is becoming faster and less expensive. “Most CG workstations have 12-core machines capable of 24-thread computing. Where it once took eight hours to render a single frame of a 3D movie, it now takes only several minutes. That is huge in terms of time and cost savings. The HP Z-series workstations offer about 50 percent more cache than previous versions (up to 24GB), which helps speed processing in a big way. Intel Xeon 5600 Westmere processors inside the workstations also run cooler, require less power and cooling energy, and have improved security features.” (Preimesberger 20) To be an artist in this kind of field takes a special kind of personality. The artist have to take steps to model a character; modeling the basic shape, smoothing the edges, hair -fur, clothing, then the coloring. When modeling the character, everything is planned out from the actions the character is going to make, what elements will affect the character and how it will interact with other models.
Images on this page was taken from the article written by Preimesberger, Chris. "DreamWorks: Advanced Technologies Bring Movies to Life." eWeek. 20 Jun 2011: 1-7. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.