Systems/Enterprise:
SUN GRID HELPS ANIMATION COMPANY
FIND RESOURCES
The world of digital special effects is constantly concerned with the time
and
effort it takes for animators and technical directors to create many versions
of various shots and farm these shots off to be rendered frame by frame for
review. Since "rendering" is such a compute-intensive task, finding the
available computing resources and distributing the work effectively can end up
being tremendously time consuming. "Our scripts had to be manually tweaked for
each and every render to run on various machines," explains John Coldrick,
senior animator/V.P. at Axyz Animation, Inc.. "The available machines and CPUs
were constantly changing and required monitoring. Our process was very
inefficient and error prone--animators and technical directors were constantly
waiting for render tests."
Based in Toronto, Ontario in Canada, Axyz Animation is a small- to
mid-sized
company that produces digital special effects. Unlike large animation shops,
where having a "render farm solution" is a necessity, for smaller shops it's
not an economical option to have a custom-made solution. Unfortunately, off-
the-shelf packages do not typically work acceptably in the animation
environment, therefore most large animation shops have solutions that are
written from the ground up.
"What we needed was a flexible solution that didn't require re-inventing
the
wheel as far as distributed processes went, and yet was flexible enough for us
to implement things the way we wanted," explains Coldrick. After extensive
research, Coldrick read about Sun ONE Grid Engine software developed by Sun
Microsystems, Inc. He continues, "What we discovered in Sun Grid Engine
software was a remarkably robust, flexible, and scalable product that fit our
needs like a glove. In fact, due to the scalability of Sun Grid Engine
software, it would easily work as a solution for the larger animation shops as
well."
Sun ONE Grid Engine Software to the Rescue After switching to Sun ONE Grid
Engine software, Axyz animators could submit any process--animation or render-
-with the same command. "Animators don't have to be concerned about what
machine is available, or massaging their scripts to maximize speed," explains
Coldrick. "Every available CPU in our farm is put at their disposal, and jobs
that typically took a whole night in the past can often run in a fraction of
the time. Bottlenecks are a thing of the past."
Sun ONE Grid Engine software works by enabling companies to submit and
manage
jobs from just about any Linux or UNIX system on the network. It does this by
monitoring the availability of workstations, then deploying jobs to the
available resource. Additionally, the command line utility gives the company
the flexibility to script and automate jobs as well as build a custom front
end. And the GUI provides the business a convenient management tool for
administering the Sun ONE Grid Engine software. "We've been able to implement
application-specific licensing scenarios, such as applications that will run
multi-threaded on one machine without an additional token penalty," says
Coldrick. "This helps utilize all of our CPUs to their maximum. By taking the
significant technical task of managing distributed processing off my plate, I
was free to focus on an implementation that worked for our needs."
Sun ONE Grid Engine software can be set up in three different environments
depending on the company's requirements. The Cluster Grid includes one group
using the Cluster Grid. The company could have multiple Cluster Grids set up
in different locations. The Enterprise Grid includes multiple groups sharing
compute resources. And the third environment, the Global Grid, includes
multiple geographically dispersed groups sharing compute resources. In Axyz's
case, they used the Cluster Grid environment.
"I was able to set up a single group Cluster Grid in approximately two
weeks
of spare time after regular working hours--not very long at all," continues
Coldrick. "I wrote script wrappers that not only allowed our staff to use
language that was familiar to them, but allowed us to adapt to the specific
requirements of the applications that we run." In addition, Axyz was able to
easily write utility scripts that were tailored to its everyday tasks because
of the open nature of the Sun ONE Grid Engine software.
Excellent Scalability Axyz picked up a short-term project to work on a TV
pilot for ABC. For this pilot, they were asked to generate a demanding 120
shots in three weeks. To accommodate this project, Axyz easily developed a
second Sun Grid Engine software group. "I set up a second Sun ONE Grid Engine
software group for that short time, and combined with a powerful production
pipeline that we developed, we were able to bring in quality work, on time, on
budget, and without killing any of our staff," explains Coldrick. "Without Sun
ONE Grid Engine software this could not have been possible, since in such an
incredibly short time having to haggle with managing something as mundane as
render management would have killed the project."
All in all, Sun ONE Grid Engine software has freed up significant amounts
of
time for Axyz animators, and let them focus on what they do best--animate. "In
addition, turnaround time for tests has dropped significantly, allowing for
more refining in the same amount of time," concludes Coldrick. "Human error
has also dropped, as there are far fewer scripts that need to be edited to get
the job done. We couldn't be happier."
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