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Lord of the Rings Media Movies

Weta Prepares to Render LOTR: ROTK 460

Posted by michael from the leave-out-the-surfboarding-elves-please dept.
Dee Arsmith writes "Peter Jackson's special-effects company Weta Digital has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors. Seven racks of IBM blade servers have been added to Weta's existing 15-rack server cluster to make up the largest Intel-based high- performance computer site in the world with more than 2000 linked processors. The cluster will be used to render the frames drawn by the animators to complete the final installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King."
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Weta Prepares to Render LOTR: ROTK More

Weta Prepares to Render LOTR: ROTK

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  • *drool* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Z0mb1eman ( 629653 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:23PM (#6208412) Homepage
    Is this... could this... could this be the mythical Beowulf Cluster talked of in Slashdot posts of yore? Could such a beast truly exist?

  • Here's hoping they don't pull a Titanic! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:23PM (#6208414)
    I hope they don't get through the whole rendering process and discover that something is wrong....like they did in Titanic (James Cameron was pissed that one of the propellers on the ship was spinning when the ship was sinking).

    Could delay release maybe. Get it right WETA! :)

    • Well, in response to rendering mistakes...you pay for both processor time, usually in MHz/minute if I remember correctly, and a certain amount of huma proofing time.

      On top of that, any decent director watches the film in wireframe or a rough-render to make sure it is correct.
    • If you mean not making a movie that basically boring with an egomainiac director then yes, I hope they don't pull a Titanic.

      I mean, why did Cameron have to take an actual sub down to the real ship? Would have been cheaper I'm sure to use minatures. But ok, he wanted to do that. Fair enough.

      But using the same exact rug company that made the rugs of the Titanic? Having the Blue Star logo on the under side of the dinner plates? Why waste money on stuff you'll never see on screen?

      They keep saying it was the most expensive movie to make of all time, but it's all on the screen. That's hogwash. Cameron was out of control. But since all he has around him are "yes men", no one's going to reign him in.

      But it paid off in the end, which is really the true story. How an over-blown expensive movie made by an insane director with a boring storyline made so much money.

      Here's the synopsis of Titanic:

      "Oh, it's so big! It's so elegant! Hi I'm Jack. Hi. Let me draw your picture. Run down to the bottom of the ship, get sweaty in the car, run back to the top of the ship. Hit an iceberg. Run back down to bottom of ship. Get seperated. Run back to the top of the ship. Oh no, forgot the big diamond thingy! Run back down to the bottom. Oh, the water's cold. Hang on! Get in the boat! No, I don't want to leave you. Hang on! Oh, the water's cold. Hang on! I'll never let got. She lets go. Oh, help me, a ship! OH, I'm old now. Let's throw away the diamond thingy and take away my grand-daughters inheritance in one fell swoop. Then end."

      • Re:Here's hoping they don't pull a Titanic! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:16PM (#6208776)
        You've sure picked an odd way to criticize Titanic, considering:

        * They hand-made the weapons and armor for Lord of the Rings, down to invidual armor links.
        * The set directors were told to treat everything historically, so you get everything from accurate Dwarvish runes everywhere that you'll never see to miniature dishes in Bilbo's kitchen to specially made "Elvish" boots with leaf designs that nobody will ever see.
        * In the soundtrack, choirs are singing in Elvish, Dwarvish, and even Entish.
        * ...and much, much more. These are just the ones off the top of my head. I watched just the costume segment alone on the extended DVD and marvelled at all the "authentic" throwaway stuff that nobody will ever, ever see in the movie.

        Sometimes, it's all about authenticity. Maybe you won't see it on screen, but you'll feel it through the actors, who feel it being on the set.
        • This is all true. I agree.

          But you also have to see that they filmed 3 movies for 2/3 of what Titanic cost to make.

          But you're right, they paid a lot of attention to get things right. But they had a reason that Cameron didn't.

          LOTR has a HUGE fanbase. The fans would be all OVER this director and crew if something wasn't right. Some things are changed as it is and they got a lot of flak from it. The Titanic, while popular, didn't have legeons of fans nitpicking over every detail to see if it was right or not. Not on the scale of LOTR.

          But I agree with you about the feel of the actors that feel the authenticity on the set.

          I guess I just didn't "get" Titanic. But that's ok, it's only my opinion...which is harmless.

          • Re:Here's hoping they don't pull a Titanic! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by littlerubberfeet ( 453565 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:35PM (#6208898)
            Speaking of funding...The relativly small 100 million they spent on something like K19 would yeild my mom over 500 hour-long documentries. She works at national geographic. Infomercials have higher budgets then her films.

            As many film school thesis projects have demonstrated, some brilliant, stunning things can be done with less then 50000 dollars
          • LOTR has a HUGE fanbase.

            True, but so does Titanic (the ship, not the movie). Perhaps you've never heard of the Titanic Historical Society [titanichis...ociety.org], but it's been around since the Sixties. Titanic enthusiasts are every bit as rabid as LOTR ones. I know, I fit into both camps. I went to see the movie to see the re-creation of the ship. I didn't give a flying you-know-what about the story.

            At any rate, I understand the "not getting it" part. I have trouble explaining to people that neither X-Files nor Buffy interested

        • "...and much, much more. These are just the ones off the top of my head. I watched just the costume segment alone on the extended DVD and marvelled at all the "authentic" throwaway stuff that nobody will ever, ever see in the movie."

          Those things might not be seen in the movie but they're still important and worth big money because of exhibits. I remember going to the Lord of the Rings exhibit in Toronto before TTT came out and getting to scrutinze up close the witch-king's gauntlets, the Sting dagger, Eo

      • Plans for a sequel? (Score:5, Funny)

        by pb ( 1020 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:19PM (#6208798)
        Here's my dream for a sequel to TITANIC; it's also a love story, and could also pave the way for an awesome TITANIC 3:

        Start like the first movie, panning around underwater, until you find Jack's dead, bloated corpse. Play some heart-rending music, pan around, whatever. Then, just like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the corpse WAKES UP.

        He rises up and starts walking. Then feel free to add whatever adventures or misadventures with sharks, undead pirates, giant squids, whatever, etc., etc. As much fun as that is, it is secondary to our main focus.

        However, as the movie goes on, Jack's appearance should get more and more gruesome, with decomposing bits of flesh that fall off or get eaten, barnacles, sea weed, whatever. By the end he should appear to be part zombie, part skeleton, with some debris thrown in for good measure. However, he should also be totally grotesque in appearance, and therefore still be recognizable as Leonardo DiCaprio.

        Finally, our (anti-)hero gets close to his goal. He looks up, and sees a ring falling through the water. He grabs the ring, floats/swims upward, looks up at the old woman leaning over and staring down, and says in his best boyish Leo voice "Hey, you dropped this!"

        She then has a heart attack, falls into the water, and dies. And they're finally together, forever! Cue triumphant romantic music.

        THE END
        • What we need for a real cool movie is to combine the LOR and Star Trek fan base together. We can have a really cool intro that would resemble this. [mac.com]

        • I think this would do better as Evil Dead 4:

          It's set in the present day. James Cameron is exploring the Titanic shipwreck when his sub accidently bumps DiCaprio's waterlogged corpse. This causes him to wake up and become a zombie. He then infects the entire expedition's crew, including Cameron, and they run around Hollywood raising hell. Ash comes in and kicks major ass, and the world rejoices and names Ash their new king. The fucking end.

          Seriously, who the fuck wouldn't pay to see Bruce Campbell kick th

      • Re:Here's hoping they don't pull a Titanic! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:53PM (#6208993) Homepage
        You mean like LOTR:FOTR:

        F"rodo's been stabbed! He's going to die!
        No... wait, he'll be fine.
        Frodo's been skewered with a spear! He's going to die!
        No... wait, he's fine.
        Gandalf fell down a big pit! He died!"

        Or LOTR: TTT

        "No... wait, Gandalf's fine. And white.
        Aragorn fell off a cliff! He died!
        No... no wait, he's fine."

    • Re:Here's hoping they don't pull a Titanic! (Score:5, Funny)

      by doi ( 584455 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:20PM (#6208802)
      I just found a story about that, and it seems Weta DID accidentally insert a shot of the Titanic, spinning propellors and all, with Gollum falling into them and being mangled. But, Peter Jackson said it wasn't true to the book, so they did cut it out. I guess he did enough of those shots in Braindead. :)

  • The One Rack (Score:5, Funny)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:24PM (#6208420) Homepage
    One rack to rule them all,
    One rack to cluster 'em,
    One rack to render them all,
    and in the darkness draw them.

    -------

    • In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:10PM (#6208735)
      Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows 95 on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows 95 CD. To my surprise he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned on the oven. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

      12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE10 E510CC98D444AA08E1324

      'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.

      'No but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'

      One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
      One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

      ref [usyd.edu.au]

  • Imagine a... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sn00ker ( 172521 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:24PM (#6208424) Homepage
    movie industry based around the following ideal:
    Unlike most post-production houses which bid for work and pay for equipment out of that price, New Line Cinema bankrolls the technology Weta Digital needs to complete its task.
    CGI would probably have progressed even further than the current state-of-the-art. New Line's management obviously need to be given a +5 Insightful mod :P

  • Sure it sounds like a lot of processing power, but have a serious think about how much rendering is involved here. The article says at least 1200 special effects shots, I'd say way more than that. The animators probably want to draw each scene more than once.

    So although it seems like a lot of power, I'd still be wanting more. But then who wouldn't? :)

    • Re:Is that really enough? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by malducin ( 114457 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:39PM (#6208530) Homepage
      Shot here refers to standard movie terminology, that is what is between 2 edit cuts. I mean shots of just the New Zealnd scenery, like some of Rohan, require no VFX. Sure one VFX shot may go through different iterations but in the end it's still one shot.

      And yes 1200 is very high. I usually consider anything above 400 VFX shots to be high. The Perfect Storm had less than 400 and Pearl Harbor and Ai had about 200 and they still feel VFX heavy. Asylum VFX, a small but very good boutique shop can only handle about 200 shots per project on average though they grew and upgraded so they could handle 400 for Master and Commander. When the makers even doubled that it was a bit too much for them.
      • I mean shots of just the New Zealnd scenery, like some of Rohan, require no VFX.

        I seem to remember PJ being interviewed during the lead-up to FOTR, in which he explained that pretty much every shot in the movies would be altered anyway to ensure that the colour saturation is even throughout the three movies, mostly because the colours of the backgrounds had been altered to make Middle Earth feel different to our world by making the colours a fair bit darker and richer than those you can see around you. I

        • Yes but I don't consider the digital color timing part of the VFX. Before the digital era and even before Star Wars, there were/are jobs called colorists which would time (that is color correct) the whole film. They didn't have anything to do with VFX, if anything they have to work with the finished VFX shots to match them to the surrounding shots. Now grading is becoming more digital and it has some connection with VFX as it's sort of related to compositing since you have to match elements.

          The LOTR tri

    • That's just a cover story. PJ really wants to be able to play Simcity 4 at a decent speed.
  • "New Line understands Peter's vision and understands it is bound by technology, so it makes sure technology is not a bottleneck," Houston said. "In the big scheme, a few million dollars for a couple of thousand processors will pay dividends."

    nice... good to see that attitude more pervasive than in the past.

    • Re:A few million (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dswensen ( 252552 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:47PM (#6208579) Homepage
      Well, they "understand" that the last two movies made huge bank to the tune of more than three times what they cost to make. I don't think they'd have much "understanding of his vision" if they'd tanked.

      It all still comes down to the bottom line. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

  • mmm... computing power (Score:5, Funny)

    by carambola5 ( 456983 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:28PM (#6208455) Homepage
    "New Line understands Peter's vision and understands it is bound by technology, so it makes sure technology is not a bottleneck," Houston said. "In the big scheme, a few million dollars for a couple of thousand processors will pay dividends."


    Damn. Why can't New Line underwrite my company? Better yet, why can't they underwrite me? I'm sure I could put a couple thousand processors to good use.

    And what exactly would I use them for? Why, I'd install Gentoo on them, of course. With those suckers, it'll only take hours rather than days to install KDE!

  • Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarthVeda ( 569302 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:28PM (#6208457)
    It may be able to render Return of the King but I doubt it will be able to deliver 10 fps for DooM 3. Time to upgrade some more, weta!

  • wow.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Falconpro10k ( 602396 ) <jmark2&gmail,com> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:33PM (#6208494) Homepage
    I think after the movie they should use this type of processing power for something to help the benefit of society (e.g figure out cancer cures etc..) or to promote open source.. it would sure help.. Distrubted computing DOES work.

    • Re:wow.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dylan Zimmerman ( 607218 )
      They already DO promote open source. They GPLed the plugin that they used to go from Maya to RenderMan. Pretty cool of them, isn't it?

      The plugin is here:
      http://www.nomadicmonkey.com/tools.html

  • Really the top? (Score:5, Informative)

    by cly ( 457948 ) <myspampot@@@yahoo...com> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:35PM (#6208501)
    If you look at top500.org, you see that the current top Intel-based cluster is #5, the one with 2304 procs in LLNL.

    The article says their cluster has 'more than 2000 processors'. So presumably they mean 'more than 2304'?

    • Re:Really the top? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by glrotate ( 300695 )
      The LLNL cluster is of 2.4 Xeons, these are 2.8's. Combine that with the 2000+ number and it very well may be the top.

    • Re:Really the top? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rangek ( 16645 )

      But how are they connected? 100/1000 Mbps Ethernet? Weta's cluster might be bigger, but without high speed interconnects (e.g., Myrinet) is is just a pile of CPU's, not a supercomputer.

      • Re:Really the top? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Copid ( 137416 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @12:30AM (#6209423)
        Indeed. The LLNL clusters use Quadrics interconnects. They're phenomenally fast, and they're what really separate loose clusters and useful general purpose supercomputers. However, Weta doesn't need too much cross talk between the nodes (like a physicist doing fluid dynamics calculations might). Rendering separate frames is basically a perfectly parallel operation. Send some geometry data and a single machine can render the frame without needing to send anything to any other nodes. Big advantage.

        There are a lot of big machines out there that are loosely connected like this one is. I suspect that's why they don't end up listed on the Top 500 site. They're not nearly as useful for the types of calculations done by most of the scientific computing sites out there as a really expensive cluster with a bitchin' interconnect.

  • Play Mount Doom (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:36PM (#6208506)
    Can I play Mount Doom on it afterwards? Please, pretty please?

  • floppy drives? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RV.eq.VFG ( 609123 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:36PM (#6208509)
    .. power units, fans, floppy drives, switches ... floppy drives? They are living in a dream world with pixes, leprechauns and eskimos

    • Yes (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes these things have floppy and CD-ROM drives. One set of these for every 14 blade servers (14 blades maximum per bladecenter chassis).

      You can select using a button on the front of each blade which of the 14 blades in the BladeCenter chassis has ownership of the 'MediaTray'.
      Of course this switching can also be done remotely over Ethernet using the management interface (which also provides power, reset, remote video and much, much more).

      From the OS viewpoint the Floppy and CD-ROM drive are USB devices,

  • Question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by boatboy ( 549643 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:39PM (#6208533) Homepage
    OK /. How far away is a system like this from real-time photorealistic rendering? I've always wondered why somebody didn't throw enough hardware together to render film-quality CG at 30 frames/sec. What are the technical limitations preventing this?

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:43PM (#6208561) Homepage Journal
      Because for what they are doing, it takes a long long time to render... i think industry standard is still over an hour a frame.

      And it has stayed pretty linear as machines get faster... because quality is always improving as well. They will always push the specs of the systems...

      No real point in doing it real time... it still needs to be animated. And most of the animation has complex solvers on it to do all the itsy details that takes up time...

      -Tim

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:52PM (#6208610)
      Not sure -- but probably not.

      It's more likely that they want to do more COMPLEX shots in the same amount of time it used to take to do a simpler version of the same shot.

      Think about it this way -- it took the same amount of time to create Toy Story as it did to create Monsters, Inc. (roughly).

      But, Toy Story doesn't spend a whole lot of time dealing with difficult to render stuff like fur. Sully walks into the scene on the other hand, watch the rendering have to keep pace with all that hair.

      The trick isn't really to get it to photorealistic real-time, anyhow, for what Hollywood needs. The trick is to balance the following things:

      1. Renderable in a decent time frame (e.g. a couple hours to render a 10-minute or so scene). The main point here is to get it rendering quick enough that (a) you can fix bugs and (b) you can fix bugs in time to meet the deadlines.

      2. Ramp the quality as high as it can go.

      In all honesty, Hollywood won't give us realtime photorealistic rendering. That's being left to the gaming computer companies so we have to wait another 5-10 years.

      Why? Hollywood just doesn't need it. They can render the scene or tape it from live actors, either way they have to go in and someone has to play editor to fit all the pieces together anyways.

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

      by zokrath ( 593920 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:11PM (#6208748)
      Bah, last post was apparently in HTML format and managed to make a single unreadable block of text. That will teach me not to preview...Anyway, reposted in plain text:

      A long, long ways.

      Computer games can run at 60+ frames per second because they are barely doing any work when compared to top of the line rendering engines.

      Raytracing, dozens of texture passes, multiple realistic lightsources; and these are just for a two dimensional surface. Making realistic looking skin requires multiple translucent layers to simulate the complicated appearance of skin.

      Also, there is the size factor. Video games generally run at 1024x768 to 1600x1200. Movie quality shots are rendered at many times that resolution, which greatly increases the number of pixels that have to be rendered. Gollum may only be 800 pixels tall on your monitor, but he's probably rendered at least ten times as large; we'll say 10,000x 10,000 for calcualtion simplification.

      That's 10E7 pixels, so to display it at 24 frames per second you would need to be pushing 24E8 pixels a second. 24,000,000,000.

      Even if every pixel only took a single cycle (which it might, with the right hardware pipeline in the future), you would need 240 terahertz of power (plus overhead) to display it in real time, along with enough RAM to hold the model and texture data for everything that's going to be onscreen within the next minute or so.

      Considering that they have around 2000 x 2.0 X 2 = 8 terahertz available to them, and it still takes ages to render each frame of the complicated battle scenes, I'd say we are going to hit the limit of Moore's law before we could reasonably get hte power to render cinematic scenes in real time. Perhaps with quantum processing we will be able to within the next 20 years or so.

      • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

        by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @11:53PM (#6209265) Homepage
        Also, there is the size factor. Video games generally run at 1024x768 to 1600x1200. Movie quality shots are rendered at many times that resolution, which greatly increases the number of pixels that have to be rendered. Gollum may only be 800 pixels tall on your monitor, but he's probably rendered at least ten times as large; we'll say 10,000x 10,000 for calcualtion simplification.

        This is actually not true. Film resolution is around 2048x1556 and everything is rendered the size that it is needed. For the most part, the difference in rendering speed is because hardware is very fast and very efficient, and takes lots of shortcuts. There aren't many textures, they aren't very high resolution, there isn't any raytracing, there are very few lights, no global illumination, no hair rendering, no volumetric rendering, not nearly as many polygons, no particles or cloth simulations, very few deformations, and lighting calculation is done on vertexes and then interpolated instead of on every pixel (this will change with Doom 3 and Half Life 2 which is the real reason they look so much better). Renderman also subdivides everything down to one polygon per pixel to get perfectly smooth sufaces and good displacement. There is also the issue of motion blur, depth of field, and rendering of composites, which also takes a very long time. Anti-aliasing in every step is crucial for any kind of non-realtime CG, but it not as important for games, and that by itself makes a huge huge difference.

        • Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)

          by sakusha ( 441986 )
          You are wrong. Standard film rez is 4096x3072, usually rendered at least 4x for oversampling antialiasing. The original remarks were correct.

          • Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)

            by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @01:15AM (#6209663) Homepage
            It really depends on what resolution the film scan is done at, and the aspect ratio of the movie. 4k res scans of 35mm are less frequent than 2k scans because they are expensive and not always neccesary. A 3D render should never have to render something above the final resolution it will be displayed as.

    • Re:Question (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Iscariot_ ( 166362 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @11:20PM (#6209114)
      I think a good answer would be to first point out that non-real-time rendering is not yet optimal. Before something goes real-time (for making movies) we'd have to be able to generate 100% photo-realistic imagry. Only then can/should we worry about making that process real-time.

      I'd imagine we're some years, or decades, away from that.

      Why do something in real-time, giving you so-so quality, when the audience expects top of the line cgi that pushes computers to their limits even though the rendering time is still staggering.

  • What does this "massive" cluster run? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:41PM (#6208545)
    Regelous created Massive, the special-effects program behind the colossal battles in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
    See for instance http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56778,00 .html

    Q: What platforms does Massive run on? A: Massive runs under Linux and Irix.
    Many interesting details at http://www.massivesoftware.com/

  • A Beowulf cluster of... wait wait !!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by frs_rbl ( 615298 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:41PM (#6208546) Journal
    ... one of Weta's biggest problems was the lack of space, which prompted the move to blade servers - slim units containing processors and memory which slide into a separate chassis containing power units, fans, floppy drives, switches and connections to the other servers.

    Why not use a cluster of Cappuccinos [thinkgeek.com] then? They fit neatly into the previous description, don't they?

    See...

    1- Cluster of Cappuccinos
    2- ?????
    3- Time trip to Soviet Russia (where Cappuccinos cluster you)
    4- PROFIT!!!

    Now seriously, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!

    I think I'll go to sleep.

  • Pfft. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Braintrust ( 449843 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:47PM (#6208580)
    When I was a boy, we did our rendering calculations by hand. A pencil, lots of paper, and we liked it! These kids today and their fancy calculating machines.... bah, humbug.

  • Dangerous Downtime (Score:5, Funny)

    by heretic108 ( 454817 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:49PM (#6208590)
    After ROTK gets mastered, there'll be one hell of a lot of processing power laying idle.

    "Your conviction was brought to you by WETA Productions, proud suppliers of counter-encryption solutions to the law enforcement community"

  • Thoughts on Shelob (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @09:55PM (#6208644) Homepage Journal
    The article mentioned that the battle with Shelob was one of the two fights requiring a lot of CGI, which is...interesting. And reminded me of two things:

    1. At my next-to-last job, we had a server named Shelob, complete with a little name sticker on the outside. Now, instead of outside the server, Shelob's going to be inside it. ;-)

    2. When I talked to Sauron (aka Sala Baker [imdb.com] after he accepted the Hugo for The Fellowship of the Rings at last year's worldcon, [conjose.org] I asked about Shelob and he assured me that Shelob was going to be "really cool."

    3. Of course, I didn't realize at that point that Shelob had been pushed back into The Return of the King; if it hadn't, 2002 would have been a banner year for giant spider films, since Eight Legged Freaks [locusmag.com] also came out that year. I understand why they moved the scene, but it makes me think that The Return of the King will probably show very little, if any, of the scourging of the Shire. Which is something of a shame, because I rather like John Clute's theory that the scourging of the Shire represents a diminished recapitulation of Sauron's fall, in the same way Sauron's own fall is a diminished recapitulation of Morgoth's. Oh well...

    • For the last time, there is no Scouring in ROTK (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:04PM (#6208699)
      I understand why they moved the scene, but it makes me think that The Return of the King will probably show very little, if any, of the scourging of the Shire.

      How many times does this need to be repeated? In just about every interview with Peter Jackson, cast, and crew since 1999, they have said the Scouring will not be in the movie. It's in the DVD audio commentaries, endless magazine articles, and web postings. They paid homage to it in the Mirror of Galadriel. This has been stated countless times.

      For the last time, there will be no Scouring in the Return of the King!

      • Re:For the last time, there is no Scouring in ROTK (Score:5, Insightful)

        by trampel ( 464001 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:28PM (#6208867) Homepage
        First time I hear this, and it's a real disappointment.

        I always felt the brilliance of the trilogy was in how Tolkien managed to slow down the pace and return the reader into the real world at the end.

        Also, I found it fascinating how the 4 hobbits barely draw a sweat liberating the shire, it reminds me of Neo's final fight with Agent Smith at the end of the Matrix I - one gets the impression that Frodo is half asleep during the "scouring of the shire" because its such a trivial event compared to what they just went through.

  • nope, not the largest (Score:4, Informative)

    by mz001b ( 122709 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:06PM (#6208710)
    to make up the largest Intel-based high- performance computer site in the world with more than 2000 linked processors.

    In terms of number of processors, ASCI Red at Sandia has had > 9000 Intel pentium pro (and them pentium II Xeon) procesors since the late 1990s.

    It's still # 15 on the top 500 list [top500.org]

  • Space? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr@42.osu@edu> on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:09PM (#6208731)
    It's kind of funny that the main factor in Weta Digital's decision on the Blade servers was the space they took up, not the cost. Apparently Weta is running out of room.

    • Re:Space? (Score:5, Funny)

      by honestpuck ( 619842 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:28PM (#6208865) Homepage Journal
      You said :-
      It's kind of funny that the main factor in Weta Digital's decision on the Blade servers was the space they took up, not the cost. Apparently Weta is running out of room.
      Well, New Zealand's not a big country, you know. Not to mention they have to fit in all the sheep as well as computer clusters.

      Tony Williams

  • Clusters for home video production? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Sunday June 15, 2003 @10:59PM (#6209023) Journal
    There have been several stories about these huge clusters used to speed up rendering. Do any consumer level home video apps support offloading to other hosts?

    The available tools are becoming extremely powerful. iMovie and Final Cut on MacOS are great. There are several good Windows options too. But, the conversion from MiniDV to MEPG2 for DVD takes several hours.

    How long before they include an agent to load on other hosts, to distribute processing? It seems like this would be pretty easy to implement. Is anyone doing it?
    • It mightn't be in the "home video production" realm but Shake, now brought to you by your favourite fruit company, can distribute rendering tasks. [apple.com] iMovie can't be far behind...

    • Re:Clusters for home video production? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2&anthonymclin,com> on Monday June 16, 2003 @12:19AM (#6209365) Homepage
      Combustion (a compositing package similar to shake) already does this. Most 3D rendering applications support network rendering now as well. Weta is rendering to an individual file for each frame. Because of the nature of multithreaded processing and the inherent problems of multiple computers writing to the same file simultaneously, encoding to mpeg and to dvd is still time consuming, and typically only involve one machine. Even the pro-level applications (cleaner for encoding to MPEG, and Apple's DVD Studio Pro or Sonic ReelDVD for authoring DVDs) still only use one machine. Rendering 3D scenes is a completely different process than encoding video.

  • Buncha horsepower... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tmack ( 593755 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @12:37AM (#6209466) Homepage Journal
    I know it doesnt scale this way, but its still phun to look at these numbers...

    588 blades
    x 2CPUs each
    == 1176 physical CPU's
    x 2cpus/cpu (hyperthreading on the xenons)
    == 2352 hyperthreaded cpu's
    x 2.8GHz
    == 6585.6GHz
    ~6.6THz

    well... thats a just a bit of rendering power, wonder whats gona happen once they are done with them. Which also makes me wonder, what happended to that somewhat famous renderfarm for toystory? Seems whenever a movie requiring horsepower like this comes out, they just buy new equipment since the stuff used on the last movie is probably obsolete already... ohwell

    Tm

  • LOTR:ROTK...Whoa! (Score:3, Funny)

    by fishexe ( 168879 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @04:54AM (#6210382) Homepage
    Slow down, that's way to much acronymization!

  • Nice to see a business where payoff is appreciated (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nomadicGeek ( 453231 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @07:15AM (#6210883)
    "New Line understands Peter's vision and understands it is bound by technology, so it makes sure technology is not a bottleneck," Houston said. "In the big scheme, a few million dollars for a couple of thousand processors will pay dividends."

    In so many of the things that we do the payoff for the use of new technology is not always obvious to everyone. It must be nice to work in an industry where the relationship between the latest technology and the payoff is so easily defined.

  • Weta as Saruman (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xmbrst ( 465928 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @10:50AM (#6213042)
    Tolkien would surely have been horrified at the idea of a great engine generating his world: "whereas it had once been green and fair, it was now filled with pits and forges." I imagine ents demolishing a wall of clustered machines.

    But then Tolkien was a little bit uncomfortable with the world-creating industry embodied in his own works as well. The root of Melkor's evil in the Silmarillion is his desire to create his own world (when really all he can do is warp the existing one--changing elves into orcs). The conflict between Tolkien's utter devotion to his desire for unreal worlds and his willingness to look at the dark side of that desire makes for both interesting reading and interesting viewing. (It's a particularly relevant theme for geeks, I think.)

    '"White!" [Saruman] sneered. "It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken."'

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