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| It's on the loose at a theater near you: Madagascar, a new computer-animated comedy from DreamWorks Animation SKG. It's about four Central Park Zoo animals who have spent their lives in blissful captivity. When they are unexpectedly sent back to Africa and shipwrecked on the exotic island of Madagascar, these native New Yorkers must come to terms with what it truly means to be "wild."
To create this feature, DreamWorks set Madagascar artists free with high-performance HP graphics workstations. That meant having the tremendous compute power needed to design lush jungle settings, more moving crowd scenes than have ever been put in a computer-generated film, and a cast of characters where nearly everyone has hair or fur.
To manage the beastly IT demands of Madagascar, DreamWorks linked into the HP Utility Rendering Service. This service delivered computing power as a utility — power that could be ramped up or down when DreamWorks needed it, according to fluctuating production demands.
Located off-site in HP Labs, this scaleable off-site server farm completed the rendering process — converting the artists' computer-generated models into finished frames, complete with lighting, textures and special effects that would bring Madagascar to life. For DreamWorks, HP technology on the front and back-end of the production process is all about freeing artists to do what they do best: create. But in the "eat or be eaten" world of entertainment, it's also about having the power to release multiple high-quality 3D computer-generated films each year. This was accomplished just last year by DreamWorks as an industry first, with the releases of academy award nominees Shrek 2 and Shark Tale. | HP's partnership with DreamWorks began in 2001, when the companies worked together on Shrek, the first-ever winner of the Academy Award® for Best Animated Feature.
HP provides the filmmaker's computing infrastructure, which DreamWorks credits with helping it break new ground on several feature films.
In October 2004, DreamWorks announced a three-year extension of its multi-million dollar agreement with HP, designating HP as its sole preferred technology provider. | With each DreamWorks animated feature, HP workstations bring more power to the artists' desktop. Over twice as fast as the workstations used on Shrek productions, the dual-processor, Linux-based HP xw8000 systems used during Madagascar easily handled CPU-hungry animation applications, increasing throughput and productivity. For Madagascar, that extra power translated into a higher degree of "realism" on the desktop. Artists created very complex and detailed models on screen, manipulating more objects at the same time for a greater level of interaction between characters. They were also able to preview long sequences of animation locally on their workstations to check their work. For artists, this meant less disruptions to the creative flow and more time for iterations that improve film quality.
Madagascar offers lush jungle scenes and plenty of fur
As Madagascar's main characters — a lion, zebra, hippo, giraffe and penguins — escape the zoo, audiences will be held captive by Madagascar's superb graphics, such as "squash and stretch" techniques that push and pull faces and bodies into extreme poses. The HP graphics workstations handled it all, including the film's demanding location: Over two-thirds of the feature takes place in a dense jungle, where some scenes show as many as 6,000 unique computer-generated plants. Madagascar also has enough hair and fur to choke the performance of lesser workstations. Hair simulation is a challenging task due to the sheer number of individual hairs needed to create a realistic look. Yet, the human eye discerns the subtleties, readily noticing anything unnatural. For Madagascar, the "mane" issue was the long hair of Alex the lion, along with a large cast of furry friends — creating tremendously complex technology demands. "If someone says, 'These characters need more hair!' that translates into a lot more compute power," says Gene Becker of HP Labs, who leads the utility services program with DreamWorks. "Using HP technology, DreamWorks was able to confidently push ahead on the visual complexity of the film. They could set a higher creative target to produce the best, most cutting-edge visual effects."
A scene from the movie
Artists send finished models, animations and textures to the HP Labs data center in Palo Alto, where rendering servers add light, texture, color and special effects that create the film's exotic setting. HP researchers set up the 1,000-processor-strong rendering farm for Shrek 2, the first time DreamWorks moved the critical rendering process outside its own facilities. There, dual HP ProLiant DL360 servers do the work overnight and deliver it back to artists, who review the "dailies" with editors, producers and directors. An HP ProCurve gigabit ethernet network fabric provides high-performance connectivity within the render farm, and a private optical fiber links the HP and DreamWorks data centers with strong security at every level to protect unreleased film content as it moves over the network. Since Shrek 2 production wrapped over a year ago, DreamWorks has continually tapped into the Utility Rendering Service, ramping power up or down to manage the multiple, overlapping production cycles of on-going features. With two animated features released per year and a typical cycle taking 18 months, something is always in the works. So, when it was time for rendering Madagascar, the right amount of compute power was simply and instantly available. DreamWorks could strike a flexible balance between the use of its own IT resources and those provided by HP. "That's the value of utility computing," says Becker. "If you're an IT manager, one of the things you get measured on is your asset management. If you provision for the maximum usage requirement, you'll probably have a lot of underutilized resources sitting there during the lulls, and a lot of costs tied into those assets. With utility computing, you reduce costs by tapping into those resources only when you need them." In jungle terms, it's capture and release: harnessing the compute power you need now and letting it go at the right time — and doing so on extremely short notice. Becker recalls one instance during Madagascar production when HP was called upon to double compute power with only a couple of hours notice. The same fast-turnaround requests are common when new creative ideas are explored — which often prompt a flurry of activity and a burst of computing power. With utility computing, DreamWorks can respond and adapt to unexpected business events at a moment's notice. This high level of agility ensures every great creative idea can be embraced, while still making highly anticipated release dates. With HP's Utility Rendering Service on tap, DreamWorks has the compute power available to stay on schedule in a highly competitive industry — keeping DreamWorks King of the Animation Jungle.
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