HP PLAYS role in 3D Monsters vs. Aliens

1 May 2009

Hewlett-Packard and DreamWorks Animation SKG worked closely to create the 3D movie Monsters vs. Aliens. Monsters vs. Aliens is the first full-length production from the team in 3D. DreamWorks' 3D movies depend heavily on workstation technology from HP, said Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of the studio.
"I don't think it's an exaggeration that we couldn't do what we do here without the support of HP, " Katzenberg said. "Welcome to what I say is the next revolution in movies."
The movie, which required more than 40 million computing hours to make, is the first full-length digital 3D movie, DreamWorks executives added at a press conference in the company's Glendale, California headquarters.
DreamWorks used HP workstations, HP ProLiant blade servers, and HP's Halo telepresence technology to create Monsters vs. Aliens, said DreamWorks CTO Ed Leonard. The studio has one Halo site for each 75 employees, Leonard said. "HALO for cross-site collaboration is a real necessity," he said.
Over 500 artists and animators worked directly in 2D and 3D on HP xw8600 dual-Xeon quadcore workstations and with HP DreamColor monitors. The centre of activity is a 3,500 square foot room packed full of blade servers. HP provided over 9,000 server processor cores spread across multiple racks of individual HP ProLiant BL460c blades, each rack demanding 18kw of power.

In all, thirty sequences were created, a total of more than 120TB of data and taking over 920,970 man hours. The standout mothership destruction scene alone amounted to 6TB for the single shot. Each is created in multiple versions: both 2D analogue and 2D digital, for the bulk of movie theatres, each of which are taken from a 3D master using the new DreamWorks InTru 3D system.
Every frame is HD resolution, and there are over 100,000 frames in the 2D versions and twice that amount in the 3D film. It required hundreds of blades for each individual character but with this current generation hardware, DreamWorks could render a frame in a few seconds, rather than several minutes with previous-gen machines.
As with previous 3D films, Monsters vs. Aliens requires special glasses to be viewed properly. Along the way, they tested out just about every 3D display, auto-stereo screen and headset on the market, developing their own proprietary system of full-pipeline 3D authoring, not just of individual scenes but of scene-to–scene depth continuity.
Where InTru 3D differs from the older systems is in its use of digital synchronisation: by perfectly matching the separate left- and right-eye images (which are combined into one 3D image by the brain).
Not only are ghosting, motion blur and eye-strain bypassed, but animators have far greater control over the depth of the shot. DreamWorks' animators used depth in front of, and behind, the screen to draw the viewer's interest.
Most of the available systems were either too expensive, too bulky or too individual-user focused to scale up to theatre-size glasses-free viewing. DreamWorks revealed, however, that they are currently in talks with eyeglasses and sunglasses manufacturers regarding building the polarization technology required to view InTru 3D into standard lenses.
Meeting the demands of 3D
Stereoscopic films require rendering separate left- and right-eye images, which meant that rendering requirements for Monsters vs. Aliens doubled those of its non-stereo predecessors. The increased push of pixels to the render farm also doubled the demands placed on the HP workstations of the studio.
To create the cutting-edge 3D effects in "Monsters vs. Aliens," DreamWorks Animation artists used state-of-the-art HP technology to address the following challenges:
• Render nearly 100 terabytes of disk storage.
• Render more than 30 sequences in the movie that would have taken more than 1,000 years to render on a single workstation.
• Create one of the most technically challenging sequences of the film involving a flyover of a town, including houses, hills and trees. In this shot, the background trees had to be broken up into more than 300 layers to render.
• Stage an explosion in one of the battle scenes, which required more than three terabytes of disk space alone.
• Bridge 300 physical miles: The HP Halo telepresence system and HP Remote Graphics Software allowed critical creative collaboration between artists located in studios in Glendale and Redwood City, California.
Hewlett Packard Z800 Workstation
Hewlett Packard's latest version of its Z800 workstations is both highly functional yet elegant in its form.
The rear of the unit features standard computer connections, including six USB 2.0 ports, a six pin FireWire port, two network connections, speaker and mic ports, and legacy mouse and keyboard ports. The front of the unit houses the slot loading DVD drive, an additional three USB 2.0 ports, a six pin FireWire port, headphone and mic port, and the power button.