Intel ® Visual

AS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WATCH PO THE
PANDA RESCUE THE KUNG FU TRADITION
FROM A SUPER-VILLAIN PEACOCK IN Kung Fu
Panda 2, cutting-edge cloud computing might be
the furthest thing from your mind. Yet for the
DreamWorks Animation team, cloud computing
played a vital role in bringing to life this exciting
animated feature film and a host of others.
Cloud computing enables development teams to
access a large, flexible pool of compute resources
as needed. This helps DreamWorks Animation
gain the extra compute performance required
for rendering during intense production periods.
“Dealing with spikes in processing demand has
always been a challenge,” said Derek Chan, head
of digital operations at DreamWorks Animation.
ANIMATION
BRINGING
TO LIFE THROUGH
CLOUD COMPUTING
DreamWorks Animation relies on cloud computing
environments based on Intel® Xeon® processors to
handle peak rendering loads for its blockbuster films.
“When working on feature films, we often need
tremendous processing power for short durations.
It doesn’t make sense to maintain more servers
in-house to accommodate that short-term need.”
With up to 12 films in production at any
given time, each with its own ebb and flow
of processing demands, precisely anticipating
rendering requirements is all but impossible.
“Production schedules are totally driven by the
creative process,” said Ryan Granard, director
of digital operations at DreamWorks Animation.
“There will always be needs that we haven’t
forecasted. The goal of the technology group is to
provide the capabilities and capacities needed—
when they are needed—without adding millions of
dollars in capital costs.”
By adopting a cloud computing model, the
DreamWorks Animation team can better
accommodate those dynamic workload levels.
“Cloud computing provides the flexibility to
marshal resources on demand,” said Chan. “We
can quickly scale up to meet peaks in rendering
demand and then scale back as we complete
projects to avoid excess costs.”
Enriching the 3D Impact
Escalates Compute Demands
The journey into the cloud began back in
2003, when the studio was working on Shrek
2. “Hewlett-Packard had just begun offering
rendering services through one of its data centers
so we tapped into those resources for just a few
months to meet our burst demand,” said Chan. “In
the end, HP processed approximately 1 million
of the 10 million CPU hours required for Shrek 2.
That service helped us complete the work quickly
and economically.”
The need for supplemental compute resources
has grown appreciably over the years as
DreamWorks Animation filmmakers create richer,
more exciting visuals. “With each film, the creative
aspiration grows,” said Granard. “Artists want
to add more characters to scenes, improve the
detail in background atmospherics, increase the
translucency of a character’s skin, and enhance the
fluidity of character motion. That drives our overall
compute resource demand higher and higher.”
The move to 3D filmmaking has also had a
significant impact on rendering demands.
intel visual adrenaline no. 10, 2011 11