High-density computing aids animation for movie

The stunning 3D imagery seen in the new movie Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole was developed by Sydney-based animation and visual effects studio Animal Logic. This was achieved with a range of state-of-the-art HP technologies, including HP BladeSystems, HP workstations and HP DreamColor Professional Displays. The movie was released in cinemas across Australia and New Zealand at the end of last month.

“Animal Logic is at the forefront of digital production and our focus is to bring the creative vision of the director to life,” said Alex Timbs, Head of IT, Animal Logic. “To produce the spectacular imagery for the movie, we required a technology platform that provided creative and operational flexibility, enabling us to produce huge volumes of digital content in a fast and cost-effective way.”

“In order to meet the creative demands of the movie, the animators at Animal Logic needed a massive increase in output and rendering capabilities, while maintaining speed of execution,” said Raymond Maisano, Business Manager ProLiant and BladeSystem, HP South Pacific. “By providing a powerful, high-density computing solution without the need for additional data centre space, Animal Logic was able to focus on creating astounding visual effects for this movie.”

Doubling the density of the servers not only provided the tremendous scale in processing required for the production of the movie, but also enabled Animal Logic to minimise its data centre footprint. This delivered cost savings through power and cooling efficiencies, standardisation and ease of management.

The core technology used in the making of the movie included 44 HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures running a combination of HP BL2x220c blade servers, HP DL and ProLiant server blades. This provided Animal Logic with over 1400 physical server nodes. Speed of execution was supported by the inclusion of HP Virtual Connect 1/10Gb-F ethernet modules, enabling Animal Logic’s IT team to wire the servers once and dynamically manage connections without touching the network. HP Insight Control Environment software provided automation of management, allowing the IT team to focus on the needs of the animators. HP Dynamic Power Capping helped to drive more productivity with less power.

In addition, Animal Logic used 250 HP DreamColor Professional Displays in the making of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Colour accuracy was critical to Animal Logic, with its images viewed in studios around the world. With Global Colour Consistency, HP’s top-of-the-line DreamColor Professional Displays were the best choice.

Animal Logic also required the highest level of performance and reliability in its machines to bring the characters to life on screen. As a result, all three models of the HP Z series workstations were deployed at Animal Logic. The HP Z400 workstations were used for core administrative tasks and the HP Z600 workstations were used by the design artists as the default 3-D workstation. The HP Z800 workstations were used for playback and grading requirements when the highest level of performance was required.