disney rendered its new animated film on a 55,000-core ......and street layouts from the real san...

5/7/2015 Disney rendered its new animated film on a 55,000core supercomputer

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Disney rendered its new animated film on a55,000-core supercomputer

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Disney's upcoming animated film Big Hero 6, about a boy and his soft robot (and a gangof super-powered friends), is perhaps the largest big-budget mash-up you'll ever see.Every aspect of the film's production represents a virtual collision of worlds. The story,something co-director Don Hall calls "one of the more obscure titles in the Marveluniverse," has been completely re-imagined for parent company Disney. Then, there'sthe city of San Fransokyo it's set in -- an obvious marriage of two of the most tech-centric cities in the world. And, of course, there's the real-world technology that not onlytakes center stage as the basis for characters in the film, but also powered the onscreenvisuals. It's undoubtedly a herculean effort from Walt Disney Animation Studios, and onethat's likely to go unnoticed by audiences.

"We've said it many, many times. We made the movie on a beta renderer," says HankDriskill, technical supervisor for Big Hero 6. "It was very much in progress." Driskill isreferring to Hyperion, the software Disney created from the ground up to handle the

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/18/disney-big-hero-6/




film's impressive lighting. It's just one of about three dozen tools the studio used to bring

the robotics-friendly world of San Fransokyo to life. Some, like the program Tonic[3]

originally created for Rapunzel's hair in Tangled, are merely improved versions ofsoftware built for previous efforts, or "shows" as Disney calls them. Hyperion, however,represents the studio's greatest and riskiest commitment to R&D in animationtechnology thus far. And its feasibility wasn't always a sure thing, something Disney'sChief Technology Officer Andy Hendrickson underscores when he says, "It's the analog tobuilding a car while you're driving it."

"We've said it many, many times. We made the movie on a beta renderer," says HankDriskill, technical supervisor for Big Hero 6.

For that reason, Hendrickson instructed his team to embark on two development pathsfor Big Hero 6: the experimental Hyperion and a Plan B that hinged on a commodityrenderer. It took a team of about 10 people over two years to build Hyperion, duringwhich time Driskill says resources were being spread thin: "We were running with abackup plan until around June of last year ... [and] we realized we were spending toomuch energy keeping the backup plan viable. It was detracting in manpower ... frompursuing the new idea as fully as we could. So we just said, 'We're gonna go for it.' Andwe turned off the backup plan."

Hyperion, as the global-illumination simulator is known, isn't the kind of technologythat would excite the average moviegoer. As Hendrickson explains, it handles incrediblycomplex calculations to account for how "light gets from its source to the camera as it'sbouncing and picking up colors and illuminating other things." This software allowedanimators to eschew the incredibly time-consuming manual effort to animate single-bounce, indirect lighting in favor of 10 to 20 bounces simulated by the software. It'sresponsible for environmental effects -- stuff most audiences might take for granted, likewhen they see Baymax, the soft, vinyl robot featured in the film, illuminated frombehind.That seemingly mundane lighting trick is no small feat; it required the use of a55,000-core supercomputer spread across four geographic locations.

http://youtu.be/Yeb8D3DF3ns?list=UU_976xMxPgzIa290Hqtk-9g



Disney Animation CTO Andy Hendrickson demonstrates Hyperion's real-world lightingsimulation."This movie's so complex that humans couldn't actually handle the complexity. We haveto come up with automated systems," says Hendrickson. To manage that cluster and the400,000-plus computations it processes per day (roughly about 1.1 million computationalhours), his team created software called Coda, which treats the four render farms like asingle supercomputer. If one or more of those thousands of jobs fails, Coda alerts theappropriate staffers via an iPhone app.

To put the enormity of this computational effort into perspective, Hendrickson says thatHyperion "could render Tangled from scratch every 10 days."

If that doesn't drive the power of Disney's proprietary renderer home, then consider this:San Fransokyo contains around 83,000 buildings, 260,000 trees, 215,000 streetlights and100,000 vehicles (plus thousands of crowd extras generated by a tool called Denizen).What's more, all of the detail you see in the city is actually based off assessor data for lotsand street layouts from the real San Francisco. As Visual Effects Supervisor KyleOdermatt explains, animating a city that lively and massive simply would not have beenpossible with previous technology. "You couldn't zoom all the way out [for a] wide shotdown to just a single street level the way we're able to," he says.

"This movie's so complex that humans couldn't actually handle the complexity. We



have to come up with automated systems," says Hendrickson.

Beyond the supercomputer cluster and software tools devised to make the movie, BigHero 6 leans heavily on cutting-edge technology for its visual majesty in one other way:its characters. Both Baymax, the aforementioned, lovable robot sidekick and the

microbots, swarm-like mini-drones[4] controlled by telepathy, are steeped in some veryreal scientific research. That decision to ground the world of Big Hero 6 in near-futuretechnologies led Hall and co-director Chris Williams on research trips to MIT, Harvardand Carnegie Mellon in the US and even to Tokyo University in Japan.

A soft robotic arm developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University."You know, we try to look at, like, five to 10 years down the road at what was coming ... Itseems counterintuitive because in animation you can do anything, but it still has to begrounded in a believable world," says Hall.

Indeed, there's even a moment where supergenius lead character Hiro Hamada uses a 3Dprinter in his garage to create an outfit for Baymax. In discussing the scene, Roy Conli,the film's producer, credits the "maker movement that's going on right now." He adds,"These kids are makers. So it's a little bit the celebration of the nerd."

To put the enormity of this computational effort into perspective, Hendrickson saysthat Hyperion "could render Tangled from scratch every 10 days."

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/swarm-robots-grits-lab/



It was during a visit to Carnegie Mellon that Hall came across researcher Chris Atkeson,who'd been working in the field of inflatable, soft robotics; robots intended for the healthcare industry. Hall says Atkeson pleaded with him to "make a movie where the robot isnot the villain." But Atkeson didn't have to do much convincing -- Hall's vision forBaymax meshed nicely with his research. He'd wanted a robot audiences hadn't seen onscreen before. Hall continues, "The minute I saw this [research], I knew that we had ourhuggable robot. I knew that we had found Baymax."

The team also drew inspiration for Baymax from existing compassionate-care tech out of

Japan[5]. "They're a little ahead of the curve," Hall says. "I mean, [health care robots] areactually in practice in some of the hospitals in Japan. They're not vinyl; they're notBaymax. They're plastic robotics."

The high-tech city of San Fransokyo represents a mash-up of eastern and western culture.Robotics research out of Carnegie Mellon also provided the basis for the unwitting pawnsof the film: the Lego-like, mind-controlled microbots. Of course, the version we see inthe film is a much more fantastical approach to the simple, water-walking bots Hall'steam glimpsed during their visit. That, coupled with a heavy dose of inspiration fromswarm-drone tech, led to the insect-like creepiness of the microbots in the final film.

By design, the electromagnetic microbots move as if part of a chain: Each individual"link" travels from front to back to propel the swarm forward in a circuit-board-likepattern. On average, the visual effects team says there are about 20 million microbotsonscreen in a given shot, and that level of complexity is where Hyperion once againcomes crucially into play. Originally, however, the team didn't think its full vision of themicrobots would even be possible to render.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/28/panasonic-shows-us-its-softer-side-intros-trio-of-high-tech-rob/



In a way, Big Hero 6 is a love letter to technology.

"We thought the technology would never actually be able to handle it happening in all ofthe shots," explains Head of Effects Michael Kaschalk. "And to do that from shot to shot,that takes artists' work to just be able to create the [lighting] cheat. But as Hyperiondeveloped, and we actually built the system, we found that it was handling all of this datajust fine. So we actually built the real thing."

Hiro scans Baymax to create 3D-printed armor.Though tech innovation clearly plays an important role in development at Walt DisneyAnimation Studios, it's not the sole guiding force for each film and, for that matter,neither is the story. The studio's process is entirely collaborative. "We are looking forinput from everybody that works here for storytelling ... there's no doubt that those ideascan rise up from anywhere to become a big piece or small piece of the story," saysOdermatt. There's no one single source of motivation other than a love of research andfunctional design -- key concepts imparted by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter.

"The movie does celebrate science and technology in a way that we haven't really donebefore."

In a way, Big Hero 6 is a love letter to technology. It's a fantasy film that gives audiences aknowing wink toward the robot-assisted near-future, as if to say, "This is exactly whereyou're headed. And it's coming soon." Big Hero 6 also represents a perfect storm forDisney: The subject matter (makers and robotics) and setting (hyper-tech San Fransokyo)dovetailed with the economic feasibility of cutting-edge computational hardware (thatmassive render farm) and the development of advanced animation techniques



(Hyperion). It's a film for, by and from lovers of technology.

That Big Hero 6 has a technological heart and soul is not lost on Hall. In fact, he's keenlyaware of this. "The movie does celebrate science and technology in a way that we haven'treally done before."

[Image credit: Walt Disney Animation; Carnegie Mellon University (soft robotic arm)]

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TomKatt FeaturedOct 24, 2014

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Bob Foster FeaturedJan 30, 2015

LikeReplyDavidDotson FeaturedOct 23, 2014

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Sounds great. I just hope that the script is as great as the tech. Without a great script thetech is nothing

@TomKatt Iam also think that sounds really very good!!!

why no mention this is a DELL



1. http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/18/disney-big-hero-6/

2. http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/18/disney-big-hero-6/

3. http://youtu.be/Yeb8D3DF3ns?list=UU_976xMxPgzIa290Hqtk-9g

4. http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/swarm-robots-grits-lab/

5. http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/28/panasonic-shows-us-its-softer-side-intros-trio-of-high-tech-rob/

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http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/28/panasonic-shows-us-its-softer-side-intros-trio-of-high-tech-rob/


http://youtu.be/Yeb8D3DF3ns?list=UU_976xMxPgzIa290Hqtk-9g

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/20/swarm-robots-grits-lab/

disney rendered its new animated film on a 55,000-core ......and street layouts from the real san...

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