What kind of processing power does it take to create/render a film like Monsters Inc.?

[MichaelD]

Watching Monsters Inc. I'm blown away by the graphical detail..just things like Sully's fur. You can see each strand moving...everything is so fluid.

What kind of rig do they create these things on?

I know the final film is rendered "all at once" by a farm of 100 or more very powerful CAD/CAM type boxes, right? What goes into all this? I'm amazed.

 

[N8Magic]

More than you can afford pal, SGI.

*edit* for the proper link, and the fact that Shrek and Final Fantasy were rendered on SGI hardware, not Monsters Inc.

I can't believe no one caught my Fast and the Furious quote there.

 

[ViperMagic]

Watch the extras on the Shrek DVD. They talk about it a lot, though I dont rember any of it

 

[Utterman]

If you have the 2-DVD version of Monsters Inc. I think they have a behind the scenes of how the movie is made, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Linux23]

AMD!

 

[amnesiac]

Here we go

Sun Microsystems is proudly announcing that the colourful and realistic characters in Disney/Pixar's newest Monster's, Inc animated movie have counted with the company's midrange servers. Sun explained that the rendering (which means, the time- and computationally-intensive process in which the correct lighting, textures and shading are applied to 3D computer models) was completed in the Pixar Renderfarm, which is powered by 250 Sun Enterprise 4500 servers, running the Solaris Operating Environment, each using 14 UltraSPARC II microprocessors, 14 gigabytes of system memory and 196 gigabytes of local disk space for a total of 3,500 processors in production with nearly four terabytes of main memory.

Holy jeez.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: amnesiac 2.0
Here we go

Sun Microsystems is proudly announcing that the colourful and realistic characters in Disney/Pixar's newest Monster's, Inc animated movie have counted with the company's midrange servers. Sun explained that the rendering (which means, the time- and computationally-intensive process in which the correct lighting, textures and shading are applied to 3D computer models) was completed in the Pixar Renderfarm, which is powered by 250 Sun Enterprise 4500 servers, running the Solaris Operating Environment, each using 14 UltraSPARC II microprocessors, 14 gigabytes of system memory and 196 gigabytes of local disk space for a total of 3,500 processors in production with nearly four terabytes of main memory.

Holy jeez.

Yep it's rude. I seem to recall hearing that for monsters inc on some of the scenes - perhaps those with a lot of hair and what not on sulley - it could take an hour or more for a single frame. I don't know how the math ads up on that for an entire movie but suffice to say it will be decades before we can play computer games real time with graphics as good.

 

[Aves]

Anyone remember this?

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: aves2k
Anyone remember this?

Achieving Pixar-level animation in real-time has been an industry dream for years. With twice the performance of the GeForce 256 and per-pixel shading technology, the GeForce2 GTS is a major step toward achieving that goal.

Strictly speaking he is right. Of course it's only one step in a 50 mile journey, but technically it is closer to acheiving that goal

 

[Aves]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: aves2k
Anyone remember this?

Achieving Pixar-level animation in real-time has been an industry dream for years. With twice the performance of the GeForce 256 and per-pixel shading technology, the GeForce2 GTS is a major step toward achieving that goal.

Strictly speaking he is right. Of course it's only one step in a 50 mile journey, but technically it is closer to acheiving that goal

Very true, but the Pixar guys seemed to be quite offended.

 

[MichaelD]

Took another break in the movie (my glass was empty ). I saw this movie when it came out in the theater. Just bought the 2-DVD set yesterday for the express reason of checking out Disc 2. <--Man, I have crossed over to True Geekdom...I like it!

Detail-level aside, just things like the color shading...the movement of "face muscles"...it's too cool.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: aves2k

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: aves2k
Anyone remember this?

Achieving Pixar-level animation in real-time has been an industry dream for years. With twice the performance of the GeForce 256 and per-pixel shading technology, the GeForce2 GTS is a major step toward achieving that goal.

Strictly speaking he is right. Of course it's only one step in a 50 mile journey, but technically it is closer to acheiving that goal

Very true, but the Pixar guys seemed to be quite offended.

I would be too. It was a dumb thing to say. It's kindof like the political ads. None of them are lying strictly speaking, but they sure as hell try to point you towards one version of reality - one that doesn't exist.

Detail-level aside, just things like the color shading...the movement of "face muscles"...it's too cool.

I like sulley's hair. it's freaky good

 

[MaxDSP]

i loved the movie, but didnt have time to check out disc 2 because of a possible late fee. Im considering buying it.

 

[thawolfman]

Originally posted by: amnesiac 2.0
Here we go

Sun Microsystems is proudly announcing that the colourful and realistic characters in Disney/Pixar's newest Monster's, Inc animated movie have counted with the company's midrange servers. Sun explained that the rendering (which means, the time- and computationally-intensive process in which the correct lighting, textures and shading are applied to 3D computer models) was completed in the Pixar Renderfarm, which is powered by 250 Sun Enterprise 4500 servers, running the Solaris Operating Environment, each using 14 UltraSPARC II microprocessors, 14 gigabytes of system memory and 196 gigabytes of local disk space for a total of 3,500 processors in production with nearly four terabytes of main memory.

Holy jeez.

<--------------- :Q

 

[silverpig]

Basically it took a warehouse of Sun Sparcs a few months to render the entire thing.


That quote about the GF2 acheivine pixar level graphics... well, that render was done at 640x480 or something like that on the GF2, and Pixar renders their moves at something like 4800x9600 IIRC.

<--- Wants to work for Pixar later