Inside Lucasfilm's Data Center

In a c|net news article, Daniel Terdiman reports on the staggering capacity of Lucasfilm's data center. The article includes some insight into the needs of a large production and visual effects studio.

"If the systems go down here in corporate, you might not have your e-mail for a couple hours," said Greg Grusby, ILM's technical publicist. "If the systems go down in this data center, you lose $50 million."

Utilising such state of the art equipment as Verari twin dual processor AMD servers with 16Gb ram each. Systimax fiber networking, giving 10Gbps rates to the 198 core servers.

Interestingly, they claim that the hardware becomes 'legacy' very quickly, in which case, I have one question; what do they do with the legacy servers?

Read the full article and see some amazing pictures of the data center at ...

http://news.com.com/Inside+the+Lucasfilm+data+center/2100-1026_3-6153647.html?tag=newsmap

I'm baaack!

This blog has been dormant for far too long. I've decided to redouble my efforts to post here on a semi-regular basis.

I'll be posting mostly on things related to graphics and RenderMan as before, tips, tricks, news etc. Please feel free to comment or make content suggestions.

AutoRIB - Renderman Interface Bytestream made usable

Quite often during my many talks with people about Renderman, I find myself asking whether people have tried using AutoRIB to solve their problem, the response is almost invariably "Auto-what?".

AutoRIB is a great little Java based tool that allows you to modify/add to RIB files on the way to the renderer. RIB files are intended to portray detailed information from a modelling/animation tool to a renderer, the fact that they are usually ASCII should not be read to mean that they are an intermediate format that can/should be hand edited and tweaked. Generally it is not recommended to hand tweak RIB files, they are not designed for this, however there are often situations where you may want to make changes to a RIB file without haveing to go back to the modelling/animation package.

This is where AutoRIB comes in. It is effectively an active filter that can be applied to a RIB file, it reads the RIB into an internal format, then processes an instruction file that defines what the user wants to do to the RIB. Some simple actions include, replacing shaders, changing colors, changing options/attributes etc. More complicated actions that would be very difficult to achieve using the normal approach of Perl/Python etc. filtering include, generation of other render passes such as shadow map, occlusion map and reflection maps for use in the main render. These actions can be defined to act on only certain objects/lightsources within the scene, selectable by name (as defined by the common "identifier" "name" attribute).

I recommend anyone who uses Renderman and RIB on a regular basis to look into AutoRIB, in particular it is of great use to those who do not have access to the power tools such as MtoR for Maya that the pro's have. Given a suitable modelling tool, such as Wings3D, and AutoRIB to massage the output before sending to an OS Renderman renderer, such as Aqsis, many people can get excellent results out of free tools while learning and experiencing the details of the Renderman interface.

Recommended Book

I was fortunate enough recently to receive the book "CGI Filmmaking - The Creation of Ghost Warrior" as a gift. I am about 3/4 of the way through reading it at the moment, and simply cannot put it down.

Timothy Albee has not only a great insight into the art and science of CGI filmmaking, but a truly engaging writing style that leaves you inspired and excited. Throughout the book Timothy makes constant references to the belief that anyone driven enough is capable of creating art and CGI films, "I cannot draw" is simply not an option. This in itself is a welcome breath of fresh air, none of the egotistical self-praising techno-babble of other books I've read in this vein. Timothy sets out to not only detail how "Kaze" originated, took shape and was produced, but to show that with the right procedures, drive and determination, anyone can do it.

Ghost Warrior -- Main

AqsisMovieProject

Aqsis Movie Project

Bit of shameless promotion. The AMP is a project to produce a completely CG animated short using just Open Source applications. Centered around Aqsis as the rendering solution, we will be working with many different OS projects to prove that it is possible to create professional quality results with OS tools.

Despite the use of the name Aqsis in this project, I am not heading this effort. I am taking part, but as a technical lead only. The guts of the project is driven by "Igor Sandman", the director/writer.

The project is currently looking for contributors, so pop in and have a look around.

Introductory post

Just something simple to get things going.

About Me: Paul Gregory, UK based
I have a passion about all things related to photorealistic CG, in particular Renderman.
I run an Open Source Renderman project called Aqsis

Why Blog: I feel there is a dearth of information on the Web related to the real use of Renderman, especially outside the big production houses, I want to address that. I'll be posting findings, hints, tips, and 'stuff' about my experiences creating, using and promoting Aqsis as a real option for Renderman based animation.

More soon...