ANGS.OB - Down on the Rendering Farm
Each day more and more technically advanced, special-effects enhanced movies are released. In the beginning of the special effects wave, all of the effects were done via miniature modeling and clay shooting. The monsters were made in clay approximately the size of a GI Joe, and its movements were filmed a few frames at a time. Finally, the film editors would splice the scenes to run in sequence, and we’d get our scary movie, complete with monster. Unfortunately, this monster often seemed a bit unrefined and its movements “herky jerky”.
When digital special effects came on the scene, two things became stunningly clear. First, the improvement over the original film recording was incredible, and second, it was abundantly clear that the industry was not equipped to deal with the storage and “rendering” problem that creating all that digital content required. So, what’s rendering? Better yet, what gets rendered?
Computer-generated imagery (also known as CGI) is the application of computer graphics, or more specifically, 3D computer graphics, to special effects in films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation. In a simple production, this computer generated imagery can be stored and shared on a small hard drive-type disc. But, what happens when you have dozens of computer artists working on a feature length film such as Star wars, or one of the follow up episodes? Then you need a “render farm”.
A render farm is a cluster of servers on which these animation artists can store and retrieve their work. This render farm is far beyond the simple computer hard drive, as animators often “overlay” an image a hundred times, each enhancement (like “skinning”) adding another layer of pixelation, or detail. This takes an enormous amount of computer processor power, and requires a way to keep those power-hungry processors running cool and efficiently. This is where Angstrom Microsystems shines. They have years of experience with the leading special effects companies, including Industrial Light and Magic, a subsidiary of LucasFilm. In fact, Angstrom supplied their Titan64 SuperBlade™ rendering servers at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to render the special effects for Star Wars Episode III. In a visual effects-laden film such as Star Wars, nearly every minute of the 140-minute film included work by ILM.
How much work? To produce the final shots, compositors combine several layers of rendered elements for each frame. A 100-layer shot is not unusual; most shots include at least 20 layers. It took 6,598,928 hours of aggregate render time to produce the shots in Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith.
All the while the “render farm” has to offer up these snippets as fast as possible, requiring incredibly efficient servers to battle the energy demands and the heat that’s produced. Angstrom Microsystems came through in that type of heavy industrial use like a champ. In fact one could argue that a more intense application of render technology had never been seen before.
Angstrom Microsystems is an engineering and computing firm that can meet and exceed the needs of a LucasFilm and ILM production. It is no wonder that, in the “less intense” commercial applications, Angstrom has proven to be a leader. The wide range of problems in distributed computing requires innovative solutions to computing requirements. At Angstrom, they take an application-oriented approach to developing server technology for their customers. They analyze the computing and storage needs of an application and combine this information with the customer’s price/performance criteria to build a total solution that provides a highly-reliable system that performs well at a competitive price.
As the incidence of special effects and high technology, high definition film evolves, rendering will take more and more high-level computing, and Angstrom is the optimum choice to solve these computing problems. Investors would be wise to consider this company as the digital revolution advances.
