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Weta Prepares to Render LOTR: ROTK
Dee Arsmith writes "Peter Jackson's special-effects company Weta Digital has just taken delivery of 588 IBM blade servers, each with two 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors. Seven racks of IBM blade servers have been added to Weta's existing 15-rack server cluster to make up the largest Intel-based high- performance computer site in the world with more than 2000 linked processors. The cluster will be used to render the frames drawn by the animators to complete the final installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King."
Is this... could this... could this be the mythical Beowulf Cluster talked of in Slashdot posts of yore? Could such a beast truly exist?
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
One rack to cluster 'em,
One rack to render them all,
and in the darkness draw them.
-------
Damn. Why can't New Line underwrite my company? Better yet, why can't they underwrite me? I'm sure I could put a couple thousand processors to good use.
And what exactly would I use them for? Why, I'd install Gentoo on them, of course. With those suckers, it'll only take hours rather than days to install KDE!
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
It may be able to render Return of the King but I doubt it will be able to deliver 10 fps for DooM 3. Time to upgrade some more, weta!
I think after the movie they should use this type of processing power for something to help the benefit of society (e.g figure out cancer cures etc..) or to promote open source.. it would sure help.. Distrubted computing DOES work.
Can I play Mount Doom on it afterwards? Please, pretty please?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
.. power units, fans, floppy drives, switches ...
floppy drives? They are living in a dream world with pixes, leprechauns and eskimos
... one of Weta's biggest problems was the lack of space, which prompted the move to blade servers - slim units containing processors and memory which slide into a separate chassis containing power units, fans, floppy drives, switches and connections to the other servers.
Why not use a cluster of Cappuccinos then? They fit neatly into the previous description, don't they?
See...
1- Cluster of Cappuccinos
2- ?????
3- Time trip to Soviet Russia (where Cappuccinos cluster you)
4- PROFIT!!!
Now seriously, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!
I think I'll go to sleep.
This is not my opinion. Actually, it's not even an opinion. And I'm nowhere to be seen near it
When I was a boy, we did our rendering calculations by hand. A pencil, lots of paper, and we liked it! These kids today and their fancy calculating machines.... bah, humbug.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
If you mean not making a movie that basically boring with an egomainiac director then yes, I hope they don't pull a Titanic.
I mean, why did Cameron have to take an actual sub down to the real ship? Would have been cheaper I'm sure to use minatures. But ok, he wanted to do that. Fair enough.
But using the same exact rug company that made the rugs of the Titanic? Having the Blue Star logo on the under side of the dinner plates? Why waste money on stuff you'll never see on screen?
They keep saying it was the most expensive movie to make of all time, but it's all on the screen. That's hogwash. Cameron was out of control. But since all he has around him are "yes men", no one's going to reign him in.
But it paid off in the end, which is really the true story. How an over-blown expensive movie made by an insane director with a boring storyline made so much money.
Here's the synopsis of Titanic:
"Oh, it's so big! It's so elegant! Hi I'm Jack. Hi. Let me draw your picture. Run down to the bottom of the ship, get sweaty in the car, run back to the top of the ship. Hit an iceberg. Run back down to bottom of ship. Get seperated. Run back to the top of the ship. Oh no, forgot the big diamond thingy! Run back down to the bottom. Oh, the water's cold. Hang on! Get in the boat! No, I don't want to leave you. Hang on! Oh, the water's cold. Hang on! I'll never let got. She lets go. Oh, help me, a ship! OH, I'm old now. Let's throw away the diamond thingy and take away my grand-daughters inheritance in one fell swoop. Then end."
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
After ROTK gets mastered, there'll be one hell of a lot of processing power laying idle.
"Your conviction was brought to you by WETA Productions, proud suppliers of counter-encryption solutions to the law enforcement community"
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
No, to please the fans this movie will actually be shot on location in the real live Mordor...
WTF?!
Unless that little Gollum thing is in every scene, why does he need more?
um, ya read the book? he makes more than a cameo.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Yeah, there I was thimnking I had an enjoyable few hours. You're right, it was such an awful movie.
Nothing happened, the special effects were shite, the acting was unconvincing (did anyone really believe there was two of those little weird guys, you couldn't get two guys that ugly).
All in all a complete waste of $10.00 for 6 hours of mindless entertainment. I really should be doing something more worthwhile. What do you suggest.
Nothing happened, the special effects were shite, the acting was unconvincing
Of those three things, two actually were satisfying. Namely, the special effects and the acting.
As for nothing happening, I think I can sum up FOTR in a couple sentences for you.
"Frodo gets a Ring that is really bad and must be destroyed in some special volcano which is really hard to get to. After that, lots of fighting."
I will call a spade a spade and say that yes, nothing happened.
I have been pwned because my
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows 95 on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows 95 CD. To my surprise he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned on the oven. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:
0 E510CC98D444AA08E1324
12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE8209450920F923A40EE1
'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said.
'No but I can,' he said. 'The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
ref
Yeah. Here's some summaries of other equally shitty pieces of literature:
Romeo and Juliet: "Romeo and Juliet love each other, but their families hate each other, so they kill themselves."
Les Miserables: "A criminal escapes, and an inspector tries to recapture him."
And one that our readers may be more familiar with, Cryptonomicon: "An internet start-up tries to make it big with help from an employee's dead father."
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Here's my dream for a sequel to TITANIC; it's also a love story, and could also pave the way for an awesome TITANIC 3:
Start like the first movie, panning around underwater, until you find Jack's dead, bloated corpse. Play some heart-rending music, pan around, whatever. Then, just like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the corpse WAKES UP.
He rises up and starts walking. Then feel free to add whatever adventures or misadventures with sharks, undead pirates, giant squids, whatever, etc., etc. As much fun as that is, it is secondary to our main focus.
However, as the movie goes on, Jack's appearance should get more and more gruesome, with decomposing bits of flesh that fall off or get eaten, barnacles, sea weed, whatever. By the end he should appear to be part zombie, part skeleton, with some debris thrown in for good measure. However, he should also be totally grotesque in appearance, and therefore still be recognizable as Leonardo DiCaprio.
Finally, our (anti-)hero gets close to his goal. He looks up, and sees a ring falling through the water. He grabs the ring, floats/swims upward, looks up at the old woman leaning over and staring down, and says in his best boyish Leo voice "Hey, you dropped this!"
She then has a heart attack, falls into the water, and dies. And they're finally together, forever! Cue triumphant romantic music.
THE END
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I just found a story about that, and it seems Weta DID accidentally insert a shot of the Titanic, spinning propellors and all, with Gollum falling into them and being mangled. But, Peter Jackson said it wasn't true to the book, so they did cut it out. I guess he did enough of those shots in Braindead. :)
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
Well, New Zealand's not a big country, you know. Not to mention they have to fit in all the sheep as well as computer clusters.
Tony Williams
You mean like LOTR:FOTR:
F"rodo's been stabbed! He's going to die!
No... wait, he'll be fine.
Frodo's been skewered with a spear! He's going to die!
No... wait, he's fine.
Gandalf fell down a big pit! He died!"
Or LOTR: TTT
"No... wait, Gandalf's fine. And white.
Aragorn fell off a cliff! He died!
No... no wait, he's fine."
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That's just a cover story. PJ really wants to be able to play Simcity 4 at a decent speed.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
But using the same exact rug company that made the rugs of the Titanic? Having the Blue Star logo on the under side of the dinner plates? Why waste money on stuff you'll never see on screen?
In a few years on eBay, said plates will fetch 100x their production cost.
cheers- raga
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Slow down, that's way to much acronymization!
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
... spare cycles before rendering began have been applied to the SETI @ Home project.
One week into this endeavor, alien life was successfully created (and beautifully rendered).
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.