...three-dimensional models of characters, textures for bodies, trees and other backgrounds, light and shadows, and other individual elements of their worlds. At the end of the process, all of these components and instructions must be "rendered" — essentially a processor-intensive task of combining all of the elements into a single frame of animation.
According to Pixar, each frame — 24 of which flit past a viewer's eyes in a single second — takes about six hours to render using today's technology. Some individual frames have taken as much as 90 hours, the company says on its Web site.
This requires what ultimately amounts to one of animation studios' biggest expenses, both in time and hardware. Big companies like Pixar and Dreamworks have huge "render farms", with servers that amount to hundreds, and typically more than 1,000, individual processors for this task. Pixar has used blade server technology from RackSaver, while IBM xSeries servers are also common.
Now a myriad of technological advances are bringing these tasks down to the level of smaller companies.
The equivalent of computer workstations and software packages that used to cost $100,000 10 years ago now can be purchased for just a few thousand dollars, with high-end desktop machines running Linux and off-the-shelf software. Exponential processing power growth has let artists do their work faster and add increasing levels of realism to their 3D worlds.
The massive rendering tasks can now be outsourced as well. A small company called RenderRocket, for example, has just launched a Web-based service through which animators can reserve time on and send their work to IBM's supercomputing facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, offloading the heaviest computer duties. IBM already has similar relationships directly with individual studios. Big Blue charges between 50 cents and 60 cents per CPU-hour for this time-sharing.
None of this means that the animation business itself is getting easier, animators note.
That's because technology advances cut both ways. Computers do more, so animators have to do more. Audiences who have seen Pixar's best work, many of whom have logged hundreds of hours inside beautifully rendered video game worlds, are brutally critical of shortcuts.
"The audience is too smart for this to get any easier," said George Johnsen, chief technology officer of...
