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Wired's LOTR III Tech Breakdown
rjjm writes "Interesting little logistics piece in Wired about the technology WETA used for for The Return of the King." Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.
Hmm...must be one of those LOTR words
Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere,
I don't think that it just vanished... it turned into something.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Looking at the specs for the rendering cluster... The coolest thing is the fact that power like that will be at anyone's disposal in the forseeable future.
Then all I need is an AI to make up for my lack of skill...
.: Max Romantschuk
Most likely ROTK will not live up to the hype until the extended edition comes out.
And I speak from the experience of two extended editions of the other two films that are both superior to the theatrical releases
I wonder if Return of the King will truly earn it, as it looks like it will deviate from the book even more than The Two Towers, having cut out Saruman and all. I fear I will be seeing more Hollywood-style action scenes that take away from the severity of the original story.
I was hoping it was an article on certain effects and how they were accomplished.
:(
Not a tiny list of vital stats. (that didn't seem to impress me somehow)
Blogzine.net
Fortress of Insanity
clifgriffin > blog
Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees
... 76C, 76F or 76K? :)
...
Well that's specific
If it's farenhite, then that's quite cool. If it's celcius then holy crap that's hot.
If it's kelvin then I think we've found the new overclocking kings
You could assume that they render multiple frames at a time. With all the frames they have to render, at 12 frames a day that requires a few decades to render.
clifgriffin > blog
1,600 Servers............. $640,000
10GB network.............. $378,000
35 IT staffers............ $140/hr
420 Visual f/x staffers... $9,800,000.28
Seeing Gollum bite Frodo's finger off with "Photorealism"... Priceless!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
That sounds like a call for distributed computing and an LOTR rendering client on each PC. One million slashdot readers willing, we *will* render the Scouring of the Shire...
"With their hardware, from the article: "Average time to render one frame: 2 hours" I guess that means slashdot nerds won't be able to make LOTR quality CG for sometime?"
That must be "2 processor-hours". With 1400 CG shots and 240 frames per shot minimum, that is at least 336k frames, and 672k hours of rendering. They would have had to start rendering in 1926. If you assume processor-hours, though, it drops to a much more reasonable 210 hours of total rendering time.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
A lot of us felt quite outraged about Tom Bombadil being cut off from FOTR, and the entire fiasco of Arwen and the river. This was at a time when PJ was an unknown quantity, and many feared that he'd screw up the movies.
But somehow, despite the cuts and the departures from the books, the first two movies worked very well. So I'm going to keep my scepticism in check until I actually see the third.
Go somewhere random
That's how it's being pitched in Wired, not exactly the publication you'd expect most people to read. This article is aimed at the techno-literate computer crowd that can appreciate what went into the making of the film as far as computers go, not people like my mom who want to see the movie but who could care less about the computing aspect of it's creation.
Tom Bombadil and the Witch-king of Angmar are the same person.
1. We never hear of Tom at all during the whole of the First Age. The Nine Rings aren't forged until the Second Age. QED.
2. You never see the two of them together.
3. In the first part of Fellowship of the Ring, the Nazgul are sent to the Shire to look for the wandering Baggins. Interestingly, Tom says to Frodo at the dinner-table: "...I was waiting for you. We heard news of you, and learned that you were wandering... But Tom had an errand there, that he dared not hinder" (Fellowship p.137 hardback, note the fear Tom has of his master, Sauron!).
4. In Tom's questioning of the Hobbits, JRRT notes that "there was a glint in his eyes when he heard of the Riders." (Fellowship p. 144) I think he was concerned that his double-life might have been noticed. Interestingly, Tom immediately changes the subject of conversation! Furthermore, the One Ring had no effect on Tom - which seems consistent with Tolkien's observations about how the Nazgul would have handled the same priceless object (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #246): "They were... in no way deceived as to the real lordship of the Ring."
5. It's also interesting to note that Tom could see Frodo clearly while Frodo was wearing the Ring (Fellowship p. 144 hardback) - just as the Witch-king could see Frodo clearly while he was wearing the Ring at Weathertop! (Fellowship p. 208 hardback)
6. Perhaps most damning, however, is the incident with the Barrow-wights (Fellowship pp. 151-155), where Tom - with nothing more than a few simple words (p. 154) - commands the Barrow-wight to leave. And it does, without argument. Why would the Wight be so completely under Tom's control? Because in his alternate guise as the Witch-king of Angmar, Tom ordered the Wight to inhabit the barrow in the first place! Turning to Return of the King, Appendix A, p. 321, "evil spirits out of Angmar... entered into the deserted mounds and dwelt there." Obviously the Witch-king was reponsible for sending the wights there; just as obviously, the Witch-king (disguised as Tom) would be capable of ordering them to leave! (This is related to another passage, which has since been brought to my attention. On Fellowship page 158 hardback, Tom is guiding the Hobbits back towards the Road when he gazes towards the borders of Cardolan. "Tom said that it had once been the boundary of a kingdom, but a very long time ago. He seemed to remember something sad about it, and would not say much." Since Tom, as the Witch-king, was the one who destroyed the kingdom of Cardolan, it's little wonder that he wouldn't say much about his involvement. Perhaps his remembering "something sad" reveals some remorse at being the instrument of Cardolan's destruction...?)
...Yep: I think we have an airtight case here. :)
...It's worth noting that, after the Witch-king was dead, Gandalf said he was "going to have a long talk with Bombadil" (Return of the King, p. 275). Curiously, he never tells anyone about the meeting later... and he's right there at the Grey Havens at the end of the book, undelayed it seems by long conversation. I think we can therefore theorize that Gandalf made it to the Old Forest, but that Tom (once the so-called "Witch-king" had died) was nowhere to be found!
...Of course, all this brings up the curiosity of motive. What would make the Witch-King of Angmar sport such a double identity? I suppose that the Witch-king, once of proud Numenorean ancestry, felt trapped by the guise of evil which Sauron had tricked him into, and in the fullness of time forged this alternate identity for himself so that he could occasionally feel happy, helpful, noble, and more at one with himself and his lineage. The situation is perhaps analagous to a crossdresser who, feeling trapped in a man's body, would occasionally assume the identity of a woman. It therefore makes sense that the Witch-king's other identity would be so peculiarly enigmatic, and perhaps sheds light on JRRT's observation
except of course, he doesn't. the books have been out for 50 years, maybe you should try reading them.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
There's a series of books that were out years ago that were packed full of spoilers for all three films. They even had most of the stuff that's in the special edition DVDs and some of the stuff that didn't even get filmed. Now that's a spoiler.
That Tolkien dude sure had some sweet movie biz contacts. Harry Knowles eat your heart out.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Firstly there is no sign of the Rangers of the North in the trailer even though there is a scene that obviously shows them entering the pass of the dead.
As a representative of the 95% of people who will see this movie that have not or will never read the books, who the hell are the Rangers of the North, what is the pass of the dead, and why are your firstly and secondly reasons that I will be dissapointed by this film?
imo the Tom Bombadil part is boring and pointless.
I don't know why people are so obsessed with it following the book perfectly. if you want what's in the book, then read the fucking book. I think the films are fantastic so far, but then I judge them by how much I enjoy watching them, not by how similar they are to something which has already existed for a very long time.
No Rangers of the North?!?! I'm outraged! Well that's it...I'm boycotting this movie!!
</sarcasm>
He's not rewriting the book. If you want your Rangers, you can pick up the damn book...I can assure you that they'll still be in there. I'll let you in on a little secret... Movies based on books generally serve as COMPANIONS to the books, not replacements.
It's one person's interpretation of the story. He's under no obligation to stay completely true to the books. The man has done an incredible job with cinematography and I've uttlerly enjoyed every second of the first two movies.
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
Wired.com is a tech-savvy news website. What did you think they are going to write about? I mean, unless you think Wired is suddenly going to STOP writing tech-savvy articles about movies, and instead, focus on reviewing movies like "She's All That", and talk about the inner struggle between lunacy and sanity.
Yeah, because an article is written about how something is made == whatever is made will obviously suck.
Jason Lotito
For those people who think that ROTK is only about F/X.
/Soren
I can't remember the amounts but around the time #1 came out they talked about the fact that in a normal picture they shoot about twice or three times more material and then cut it down to what you see.
I LOTR they shot about ten times as much. That is for every minute of finished movie they've shot 10 minutes of film.
So sure there is a lot of CGI going on, but there is still plenty of old fashioned moviemaking involved.
But off course with gollum and a giant orc army (what 100.000 orcs?) they have to rely on CGI.
there was a /. article where weta pledged to open source its maya to renderman gate called "liquid".
it's been quite a while ago, and i still don't find it anywhere. did they lie?
The hype surronding the LOTR: ROTK is a different Hype than that of the Matrix. Everyone has read LOTR many times over and everyone knows that Peter Jackson just has to follow the storyline of the book and people will be generally happy. Your comparison to the Matrix hype was not a good one.
The Hype surrounding The Matrix was that of unknowing. The story was in a form that this was a first time for everyone. I have to admit I was one of the few that thourghly enjoyed all three episodes and admired them for there story and cinematics. For lord of the rings I already know the story is good, I am just here for the cinematics.
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
Well yes and no.
If you'd seen the featurettes on The Two Towers, you'd know that they didn't start working on the CG for TTT until Spring following the release of The Fellowship of the Ring (including entirely redoing all the work they had already completed on Gollum). That being said, they probably didn't finish the CG work long ago, and Jackson will likely be tinkering with the editing until a week before release.
When drafting your headlines, please consider that some of the older residents around here have high blood pressure and a low tolerance for extreme panic.
When I read the headline "Wired's LOTR III Tech Breakdown", my first thought was "Aw, crap! ROTK has been delayed because their servers crashed! ARRRRRRRRGH!"
Now I have to go to the restroom to clean up.
A better, LESS INFLAMMATORY headline would have been something like "Wired Breaks Down the Tech Behind ROTK".
My underwears (and my cardiologist) thank you for your consideration.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Nazgul: Describe Sauron for me. ...and he's tall...
Saruman: Well, he's dark...
Nazgul: And?
Saruman:
Nazgul: Does he look like a bitch?
Saruman: What?
*thud* *scream*
Nazgul: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH!?
Saruman: No!
Nazgul: Then why'd ya try to fuck him like a bitch?
Can you please stop handing out Karma to that unfortunately large body of people who don't yet realize that books and movies are not the same media, and that you can't expect the same story to work equally well on both.
I don't know how it's possible that they haven't yet learned this basic fact, as it's been discussed to complete death by everyone and their grandmother for the past 10-20 years.
Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible. In some places his story telling is actually subpar. Peter Jackson has(for the most part) done a truly excellent job of culling the important elements into a theatrical release that the public can enjoy. His idea of releasing a very different version on DVD for the book fans is sheer genius. He recognizes that you can't please everyone with one version. Why can't you? It's not a hard concept to grasp really.
And if you really have issues with the job Jackson has done, suggest someone else who would have done better. Peter is the perfect choice IMO, as he doesn't have the ego that big producers do, an ego that would have turned LOTR in "Spielberg's LOTR".
... I wonder how they came up with the numbers here.
A blade chassis full of dual PIII's similar to what they showed in the "render wall" photo will, in my experience, pull 300 to 600 watts of power depending on CPU load and configuration - the maximum power use is 850 W. At least a third of that is turned into heat.
This puts the minimum heat load at around ((1600 servers / 6 servers per chassis) * 150 watts average heat output) = approx. 40,000 watts.
While I've never heard of "farenheit weight" before, "tons refrigeration" is pretty common in the air conditioning world - 40,000 watts heat load = 136,500 BTU/hr = 10 tons of refrigeration (in UK units, 11 in US). It's amazing how well that 1/2 ton air conditioner is operating!
Pavlov's Dog ate the bell, and now he's barking at Schroedinger's cat all the time... -Me
> IT staff: 35 & Visual f/x staff: 420
:-)
Are these people temps or do they have full-time jobs? Must be a real challenge to find that many people with experience in this sort of thing. I imagine they do alot of training? Anyone know?
> Servers in renderwall: 1,600 Processors (total): 3,200
Anyone know what these are? Dual Xeons? Do they take advantage of fast graphics hardware to speed up the rendering?
> Processors added 10 weeks before movie wrapped: 1,000
Making for a total of 4,200? About 30% more capacity 10 weeks before the end. So they added 1000 processors just to save about 3 weeks!
> Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees
Assuming farenheit, that actually seems high.
> Fahrenheit Weight of air conditioners needed to maintain that temperature: 1/2 ton
This seems low...
> STORAGE Near online: 72 terabytes
What would this be? Robot DVD archive or something?
> Digital backup tape: 0.5 petabyte (equal to 50,000 DVDs)
What kind of tapes are these? Last I checked, IDE-RAID was a better bargain than tapes and DVD archives.
> Number of f/x shots: 1,400
> Minimum number of frames per shot: 240
This is confusing -- so a minimum of 1,400x240 frames = 224 minutes of shots but the screen time of F/X shots is quoted as 120 minutes...
> Average time to render one frame: 2 hours
Is this on the whole farm? If so, that's 76 years. If that's on a single processor, then the farm should be able to render the whole movie in 160 hours -- and you hardly need such a big farm. Must be rendering a frame uses several processors?
In all, very confusing...!
-Bill
Does anyone else smell a Wired shill on slashdot? This must be the fourth or fifth "I saw a really neat story in Wired" article in the last two weeks...
You make a good point, and I'm sure one which it seems "impossible" for readers here on /. to comprehend. For those who have never read the books, never even heard of the story line or the characters the movie is amazing. My best friend falls into that category and enjoys the standard versions moreso than the extended cuts, the story line flows better, and the movie itself has great continuity. He didn't care when I tried to explain to him about Saruman. It wasn't even that critical of a part of the movie for him.
Hell, try explaining the significance of Saruman, without revealing the seeing stone and without including the destruction of the shire, which we know is cut. Place yourself within the mindset of these blissfully ignorant few and you'll see why LOTR has such great appeal. We're just the precious few that have enjoyed the rich world so much that anything missing is a travesty.
I still want Bombadill.
***SPOILER****
The Rangers of the North... are the remenants of the people of Gondor, from like, way back in the day. If you want to get really into it, they're a group of a more sturdy, higher class of Men, and their bloodlines run fairly pure back to before men even came to Middle Earth. So, like, they're described as tall, grim, dirty, good fighters, etc. And they live longer than regular men.
It's revealed that Aragorn (who is refered to as Strider) is the heir appearant to the throne of Gondor. Remember Boromir, the dude that got killed in episode 1? Yeah, his dad is the "Steward" of Gondor, meaning that he's not actually king, but he's like, holding down the fort while the king is away, which has been for like a thousand years or something.
So, the true king has been hanging out with his kinfolk, the Rangers, until such time as this and that prophecy can be resolved, and then the heir can take back the throne. It's been like that so long that few people in Gondor even know the king's bloodline still exists.
Anyway, the paths (not pass) of the dead... Back in ep.1 when they went into the enchanted forest, Galadriel (cate blanchett) in the book makes mention of something to the effect of "if you're in a hurry, aragorn, remember the paths of the dead". As it turns out, in book 3, Aragorn is hanging out by Edoras (the horse people - the guy who was possessed by Saramaun before gandalf hooked him up), and he discovers that he has to get to gondor, like, yesterday. He remembers what the chick said, and realizes that, even though it means certain death, it's a shortcut.
So, he goes up a hill behind Edoras, and he enters this valley, known as the path of the dead (or mabey paths of the dead, plural). Gimli and Legolas are with him, as are his ranger folk. It's really creepy, and Gimli is freaked the hell out, even though it's like partly underground and he's a dwarf.
As it turns out, the ghostly inhabitants of the Paths of the Dead are the spirits of men who deserted Gondor WAAAY back in the day, the first time they fought Sauron (remember the arguement to the first movie? Cut the ring from Sauron's finger?). These guys deserted and went over to the other side, and ever since then, they've been cursed to wander this valley for a thousand years, until they can fulfill their oath of service to gondor, which they do in the climactic battle fought in front of the gates of Gondor.
As for why you'll be dissapointed, I honestly don't think you'll be dissapointed. I loved the 1st and 2nd movies so far, and I've only seen the theatrical releases. And I'm a huge fan of the books (read the lord of the rings probably 20-25 times, all the way through, read the silmarillion, the hobbit, and even took a college class on fantasy novels, which included a study of Tolkien's work). I mean, it comes as no surprise that no one can, in 9 hours over 3 movies, represent over 2000 pages of very complex, intricate text.
But there are some things that I like in the books that are being left out. For example, since you'll never read the books - Saruman has a resolution (a lot of people bitch about this, you may have seen it). In the books, after he is stripped of his power by Gandalf, he is imprisoned in his tower by treebeard and the rest of the ents to sit and steam out all his problems, and notice that everything he had built around him (all of his orcs and contraptions) have come to naught. Well, after a while, he gets loose, and makes his way back to the shire, and wreaks havoc among the inhabitants, destroying, pulling down trees, and all this stuff, and there's a battle of hobbits vs. invaders (it's really short). Then Sam marries Rosie Cotton (whom you see in ep. 1, but aren't introduced to - the girl that sam couldn't dance with). They have a daughter, and then like more kids, and sam is mayer of hobbiton, and all that, and frodo is all sad all the time.
All the elves are leaving middle earth because their time was the 2nd age (from the fall of saur
sig?
If you look at the print edition of that WIRED tidbit, you can look closely at the picture to see that it's actually shelves of DLT or more likely SuperDLT tapes with bar codes on them, part of their reported .5 petabytes of tape backup.
The article says "Meet the real star of Lord of the Rings - a 1,600-box server farm." but they dont' have a single picture of the actual boxes. If you want to see a brief glimpse at some of the renderfarm, you can see it at the beginning of the VFX section on disc 4 of the Two Towers extended edition.
I'm really curious if Wired thinks they actually rendered the movies using shelves of DLT tapes. Do they have 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports on them???
On that subject the stats seem to imply also that they have 10gigabit ethernet everywhere, which is a retarded waste of money if that were in fact the case. I imagine that interconnects between their core switches would be 10 gigabit ethernet, but anything beyond gig-E to each node would have a hard time being utilized.
-K
"...Jackson will likely be tinkering with the editing until a week before release."
Close. He worked on it till the last minute, which was in the first week of November. There were in fact some final changes he wanted that didn't make it into the film. It had to shipped for transfers.
Blade Runner largely gets people cranked with its production values. The whole "Why am I here? Why is Rutger Hauer such a tragic figure?" philosophizing side of it fell flat for me even back then in the almost empty theater. We didn't exactly leave the movie talking about the original issues it brought up, and I was, what, young enough not to drive yet... For Harrison Ford it's nowhere near as complete and convincing a performance as Mosquito Coast. The lame narration it was released with, the happy ending thing... It's a cool movie to look at, I guess, but muddled by studio interference and not high on my list of movies to watch again sometime.
Minority Report was maybe the biggest mess I've seen in ten years. The entire Warner Brothers "factory fight" sequence just made me wince, again and again. (One kept hearing that WB music, even -- dump dump dump dump DUMP dump dump dump...) Max von Sydow was no surprise at all, the plotline involving how he avoided detection in the original murder made precisely zero sense (he knows where "the camera" will be for these psychics?), and so on. The movie was maybe a half-hour long, partly owing to the tooo looooong homage to Blade Runner involving the whole eye transplant thing. We left that theater saying Spielberg had overproduced his material in a big way but never answered "What if he kills people inadvertently while he's running away this way?" Pretty basic plot question, you know? It deserved awards for production design and nothing else.
And you're right, the whole "shield surfing" thing and especially the Dwarf jokes got very old in Two Towers... almost as old as the incredibly tedious Tolkienesque declarative language. ("And so.... it begins...") The "Gollum debates himself" scene produced unintentional laughter in both theaters I saw it in. But, you know, I get bashed as a movie snob -- The Third Man, Citizen Kane, the Big Sleep -- and I could bring myself to see Towers a second time, despite all the screaming orcs and so on. The first movie was better, but Towers was okay by me. Not great, but pretty good for what it was.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There's the old saying, "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I once heard an interesting tweak on that, and perhaps more true than the original. "Power attracts the corruptible."
Perhaps Faramir really IS as pure as all that. Perhaps he never sought any greatness or position, only to do his best for his people. In that case, any station he has would be purely as a result of people under him pushing him up. Perhaps those of higher station yet were either born to it, or sought it, the latter implying that they are likely corruptible.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The soundtrack titles have already been released and "The Grey Havens" is the last instrumental piece before the credit music. So we can exect the bittersweet sadness of the books ending. I do kind of hope they preserve the last scene of the book though:
[Sam] drew a deep breath. 'Well, I'm back,' he said.
I've read the books twice. The last time was two years ago, before the first movie came out in theatres. I have completely forgotten who the Ranger of the North are. Somehow, I don't think I'll miss them that much.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Gather round, for the true reason parts were cut from the book to the movie. You see, I read each book to my son before the movie comes out. At approximately 30 minutes a night, it takes a month plus to read *one* of the three books. That's 15 hours per book. Now I grant that a few pages of "majestic mountain description" can be cut down to a flight over some real ones in the movie, but on the other hand, some of the action takes longer on screen than in text (especially describing the inner state of a character, which in film must be *shown* not spoken).
Personally, I don't have the bladder control for a fifteen hour movie. Yes, now you know the real reason for cutting the film to three hours (four for those in the comfort on their own homes). Bladder control. Simple really.
Sig under construction since 1998.
At least quote the real source of the things you say.
:/
Those kids... they think their internet is better then mine
Forced perspective with a moving camera depends on moving parts of the scenery in sync with the camera. The scene with Gandalf and Frodo at the table in Bag End is a good example of this - no post production tricks at all.
Also, tricks where you film one person on a blue-screen, record the camera moves, replay the same camera move somewhere else (possibly with a scale transform) and combine the images. The post-production combining is completely trivial, but the technique is enabled by being able to track exactly where the camera is during the shot and replaying the same moves later.
By the time he returns up the river with the ships, flag of Gondor flying, he is the king. (goosebumps)
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually, essentially all of it is turned into heat in the room (except for the microscopic amount of power that gets sent out of the room as Ethernet pulses). Yep, technically 1 is "at least 1/3", but the second law of thermodynamics is too oft forgotten.
When I moved into my dorm room at Stanford, nearly 15 years ago, I was shocked to discover that the university imposed a surcharge per quarter for the power used by certain appliances -- e.g. if you brought a mini-fridge or a microwave, you were were supposed to pay an extra $10/month or something to account for the power you used. The catch? The dorms were heated with ELECTRICAL HEATERS. Hence it was practically impossible to waste electricity in the cool half of the year -- using your fridge or microwave would just reduce the duty cycle of the elctric heater...
ROTK can't possibly leave you more disappointed than EP1, Attack of the Clones, Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolution. And be thankful that Peter Jackson puts out mind blowing extended editions. No extended edition could possibly save the previously mentioned flicks.
Fear not! "The Grey Havens" and "Into The West" are the titles of the last two tracks on the soundtrack. I don't see how anyone who listens to "Into the West" (as you can do at the official site) can imagine that this is a "happy Hollywood ending."
Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.