Vanguard Animation Speeds Production on Space Chimps with SGI Altix XE
Servers and PipelineFX Qube! Workflow Management Software
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SIGGRAPH, PipelineFX Booth
#337 -- To successfully create and complete Space Chimps, a computer
generated (CG) animated feature film due to be released in theatres by
Twentieth Century Fox in Summer 2008, Vanguard Animation has purchased
high-performance server technology from SGI (Nasdaq: SGIC). SGI delivered a
proven rendering solution that managed the complexity of handling
multi-megabyte files throughout the process while delivering breakthrough
performance.
Space Chimps, an irreverent and comedic adventure starring three chimps
that boldly go where no man has gone before, is the latest project from
producer and Vanguard CEO John Williams (Shrek, Shrek 2). The film is being
produced through a partnership between Vanguard Animation and Starz Media.
It has been pre-sold to over twenty foreign territories through Odyssey
Entertainment. The production of the 80-minute feature will require between
180 and 200 people in the 30,000-square-foot space on Production Way in
Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Aspiring to deliver the highest quality images, the Vanguard team found
that it didn't have enough fire power from the older server farm to move
and render the large, finely detailed, high-definition files generated by
Renderman, a leading animation rendering software running under the
Linux(R) OS. At Vanguard, the software renders animations created in Maya,
a top-of- the-line animation program. For Space Chimps, Maya files are
typically several megabytes in size and it is not uncommon to have hundreds
of frames in a shot, starting with a 10MB Maya scene file and generating
100 or 200 multi-megabyte image files. To get the most value out of the
Renderman licenses, Vanguard needed to have the most efficient hardware to
render Maya files as rapidly as possible.
Along with PipelineFX personnel and data management specialist Seven
Group, Vanguard tested a number of servers from various manufacturers
running PipelineFX Qube! Render Management software. They found, in a
head-to-head comparison, that the SGI(R) Workflow-Ready Solution for Render
Management employing SGI(R) Altix(R) XE310 servers came out on top in terms
of price- performance. Because of their use of Renderman and Maya, the fact
that SGI Altix servers all run the Linux environment and use Intel(R)
processors, was critical to the studio.
"The Altix XE310 servers deliver the ultimate performance density; they
have given us a 20-30% improvement in speed," said Troy Brooks, on-site
Pipeline supervisor at Vanguard. "That's largely due to the fact that the
SGI server has 3GHz processors, the fastest available versus the 2.2GHz
processors we were using. The two most important things to us are
processing speed and I/O, because the data sets tend to be very large and
the output images tend to be very large. With the Altix XE310, SGI has
taken a dual socket, dual-core Xeon motherboard -- that's 4 CPUs -- and put
two of them in a 1U box. That's actually better than a quad socket board
because it means I have two network interface cards on two totally separate
machines. Rather than having 8 or 16 cores behind one network interface
card, I have two interfaces, and it's still in a 1U package. From my point
of view, it's overall great: I get better throughput and the system is very
size efficient."
The SGI Workflow-Ready Solution for Render Management has removed
production bottlenecks and greatly accelerated rendering tasks. The SGI
solution is designed to integrate with and enhance the performance of
PipelineFX Qube! scheduling and render farm management software.
"The biggest expense in any CG production is the labor -- the skilled
and talented animators, lighting artists and modelers -- and maximizing
their time is key," said Floyd Christofferson, business development
manager, Digital Content Management and Media at SGI. "The way you maximize
their time is turning things around in the render farm as fast as possible.
The more iterations they can do on a shot, the better it will be, and by
having an efficient render farm running on the fastest, most efficient
hardware possible, you get as close as you can to an optimal workflow."
"We are creating an amazing film while striving for excellence on a
very aggressive schedule, and we are thrilled to have SGI as part of the
backbone of our technical and render support," said Tom Jacomb, Space
Chimps Associate Producer. "Qube! alone is amazing at empowering our
artists. With the added speed from the SGI Altix we can constantly refine
the characters, lighting, and effects we strive for and still meet the
production schedule."
Co-Producer Curtis Augspurger added, "It's great to be returning to
SGI, a tried and true company which has proven their ability to support
productions for decades."
Vanguard Animation purchased 10 SGI Altix XE310 servers with 64GB RAM
and four Quad-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors running Red Hat Linux Fedora
Core 5.
The Vanguard Animation project will be featured in the PipelineFX booth
at Siggraph 2007, booth #337, in San Diego, Calif., August 7-9, 2007.
About Qube! and PipelineFX
Qube!(TM) is the leading enterprise-class render farm management system
for film and game production. Qube! is highly customizable, extensively
scalable, can be integrated into any production workflow, and is backed by
24 x 7 technical support. Qube! has custom pipelines for creative
applications like Autodesk(R) 3ds Max(R), Autodesk Maya(R), NUKE(TM),
SOFTIMAGE(R)|XSI(R), Shake(R), Adobe(R) After Effects(R) and many more.
Qube! is database driven and operates in Linux(R), Windows(R) XP, 2000 and
2003, and Mac OS(R)X environments. PipelineFX, with headquarters in
Honolulu, HI, and offices in San Francisco, CA and Vancouver, B.C. was
founded in 2002. Qube! is used by world-class film and game studios and
post houses including South Park Studios, Electronic Arts, Vanguard
Animation, Rainmaker Visual Effects, Disney Interactive Studios, Starz
Entertainment, Reel FX, and Attitude Studio. Qube! is used by schools
around the world including the School of Visual Arts in N.Y., Carleton
School of Architecture, Full Sail in Florida, the University of Advancing
Technology, Pratt Institute, and the University of Hawaii-Academy for
Creative Media. More information can be found on the Web at
http://www.pipelinefx.com.
SGI - Innovation for Results(TM)
SGI (Nasdaq: SGIC) is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI
delivers a complete range of high-performance server and storage solutions
along with industry-leading professional services and support that enable
its customers to overcome the challenges of complex data-intensive
workflows and accelerate breakthrough discoveries, innovation and
information transformation. SGI solutions help customers solve their
computing challenges whether it's enhancing the quality of life through
drug research, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars
and airplanes, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland
security and defense, or helping enterprises manage large data. With
offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and
can be found on the Web at sgi.com.
(C)2007 SGI. All rights reserved. SGI, Altix, the SGI cube and the SGI
logo are registered trademarks of SGI in the United States and/or other
countries worldwide. Qube! is a trademark of PipelineFX, LLC. Linux is a
registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Intel and Xeon
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its
subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks
mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding SGI
technologies and third-party technologies that are subject to risks and
uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to
differ materially from those described in such statements. The reader is
cautioned not to rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which are
not a guarantee of future or current performance. Such risks and
uncertainties include long-term program commitments, the performance of
third parties, the sustained performance of current and future products,
financing risks, the ability to integrate and support a complex technology
solution involving multiple providers and users, and other risks detailed
from time to time in the company's most recent SEC reports, including its
reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.
Contact:
Lisa Pistacchio
PR Programs Team Manager
SGI
pistacchio@sgi.com
tel: 650.933.5683
cell: 650.270.5683
PR Hotline: 650.933.7777
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom
SOURCE SGI
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Related links:
http://www.sgi.com
http://www.pipelinefx.com
CONTACT:
Lisa Pistacchio, PR Programs Team Manager of
SGI, pistacchio@sgi.com, +1-650-933-5683, cell: +1-650-270-5683,
or PR Hotline: +1-650-933-7777
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