HP technology delivers new levels of imagery and power to computer-animated film production

HP announced that DreamWorks Animation used HP technology to develop cutting-edge animation for its latest film, ‘Turbo’. The animated film in 3D start showing from tomorrow (23 October) at cinema theatres in Malta.

HP Converged Infrastructure technology spanning servers, storage, networking, services and management software; HP Converged Cloud; and HP Workstations and printers helped DreamWorks Animation process massive amounts of data, creating new levels of imagery and powering innovative computer graphics (CG) animated movie-making techniques.

“DreamWorks Animation’s strategic alliance with HP ensured that we had the high-performance computing, continuous availability and streamlined management capabilities needed to accurately depict Turbo’s dream of becoming the world’s fastest racer,” said Derek Chan, head of Technology Global Operations, DreamWorks Animation. “HP’s advanced Converged Infrastructure portfolio enabled our artists and engineers to create the highest-quality picture possible.”

HP Workstations, HP Networking enable efficiency

DreamWorks Animation tapped the power of HP Z Workstations to recreate the thrill of the Indy 500, with a snail travelling 220 miles per hour and more than 500,000 crowd characters filling a replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

HP Z800 and Z820 Workstations, powered by Intel® Sandy Bridge Xeon® E5 processors, enabled artists to execute iterations 50 percent faster than previous workstations and develop increasingly complex camera angles and special effects. When not in use by creative teams, workstation processing power was used to run night time rendering jobs, contributing to the millions of compute hours needed to produce the movie.

Integrated with HP Workstations, HP Remote Graphics Software—a free HP Workstation tool—enabled animators to collaborate more efficiently across geographies by viewing ideas and assets on a single display.

HP Networking provided animators with access to a central repository of assets, simplifying collaboration by allowing artists to easily share and retrieve resources across all locations. In addition, the highly reliable network infrastructure allows creative teams to work anytime from anywhere, with production spread across studios from Glendale and Redwood City, Calif., to Bangalore, India.

HP Converged Cloud services and servers boost processing power, scalability

The production of “Turbo” required 75 million render hours to create fully realized images, including 32 Indy 500 race cars and 32 million crowd character instances, the most  of any DreamWorks Animation film to date.

DreamWorks Animation utilized HP Enterprise Cloud Services to provide a robust, scalable, cloud-based infrastructure that offers the additional compute power needed to render the 10 CG films that are in production at any given time. HP Enterprise Cloud Services, part of the HP Converged Cloud portfolio, enables DreamWorks Animation to meet growing business needs while remaining within its existing data centre footprint.