Cloud Computing Democratizes Digital Animation

kenekaplan writes "John McNeil is the chief creative officer and founder of a digital arts and communication company based in Berkeley, CA. After turning to Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing service for the first time to finish animation under tight deadline, he was impressed by how it would let him compete with bigger studios. He said, 'Cloud computing is the first truly democratic, accessible technology that potentially gives everyone a supercomputer...it's a game changer. I could never compete or be able to deliver something at the level of a Pixar or a Disney, given what I have at my disposal inside the walls of the studio,' McNeil said. 'But if I factor in the cloud, all of a sudden I can go there. And then the limitations of whether or not I can deliver something great will be on my own talent and the talent of the people that are part of the studio.'"

Comments

gives everyone a supercomputer... right

[Anonymous Coward]

"And then the limitations of whether or not I can deliver something great will be on my own talent and the talent of the people that are part of the studio." ... and also how much money I can put. Using a massive computing power on a cloud requires a lot of money.

Re:gives everyone a supercomputer... right

[SerpentMage]

Really? You can do everything that say a studio can do? I am going to sound very cynical, but this is a typical techy answer to why they are not as popular as Pixar or Disney.

1) So you want to purchase computing time? To get something like Pixar you are going to digging deep into your pockets. Not just a little deep, but very deep. I am giving a talk at a developer conference on the merits and usability of the Amazon cloud. Granted it is an enabler, not going to debate that. But to say that it will put you on equal computing power as Pixar is a little navie.

2) Yes Pixar and Disney have oodles of techy's all running around using the computer. Lest it be known that Pixar and Disney employ's a whole bunch of writers, producers, musicians, and so on. The reason why CGI is so cool and neat is because the people (read actors, writers, producers) are professionals and they know how to BUILD a STORY! I have seen short movies done with Blender and let me tell you while it looks good, for the most part the movies are pure and utter rubbish!

I am not saying it can't be done, I am saying that just because you have the cloud does not mean you actually have a movie worthy to be compared to Pixar or Disney.

Re:gives everyone a supercomputer... right

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. Your first point illustrates a common error among amateur artists: Photographers always say that they'd take better pictures with a better camera, or put another more illustrative way: "If I only had Hemingway's typewriter I could write like him."

Your second point is the more important. Any production is about the story, not the technical expertise. To mirror your comment about Blender, I've seen crap done with it too, but on the other hand, I've seen great work done with it. And with pencil and paper. I've also seen great work with lousy animation. No matter how big or small your studio is, like Brad Bird of Pixar says:'It's the story stupid!"

Re:gives everyone a supercomputer... right

[SerpentMage]

Let me clarify my point... Let me put it in the context from my world which is trading:

If I only had the computers like Goldman Sachs I could make money like Goldman Sachs. With cloud computing I am now able with a couple of good traders to make money like Goldman Sachs.

The fallacy of the argument is that Goldman Sachs needs the computers to make money. The reality is that Goldman Sachs needs the traders not the computers. For Goldman Sachs the computers could be hamsters running in a wheel, as the important key are the traders.

Thus by him saying that now with cloud computing he is on equal plane with Pixar is completely missing the point that it has never been about tech. It has been about how story writers use tech! Thus cloud computing will neither enable or disable you. Anybody can create a Pixar type story given enough computing time. Remember Pixar needs to pump out a movie in a year. Who is to say that you cannot create a short story in a year using plain vanilla computers.

My case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOgYOD5S8gk This guy was a sensation because what mattered is that he had good enough animation with an incredibly good story. Or how about the numa numa guy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtzQCSh6xk It does not get any cheaper and simpler than that! Yet this guy has 18 million views and featured on South Park. And while I am on this thread, how much real computing power is needed for South Park?

Understand my point? Understand why the GP is incorrect?

Re:potentially gives everyone a supercomputer

[justforgetme]

Rendering projects tend to be quite small in their models form. When utilizing a render farm you really don't have that much I/O after the initial project upload. granted a big project (a movie) might have gigabytes of texture data but still nothing that can't be uploaded in half a day or so. After that it's all internal I/O (which in ec2 is very fast), the control server telling the nodes what to render and providing render assets and the nodes just returning rendered products and requesting new tasks. After the task is complete you just have to download the rendered products and you are good for post processing :-)

Also, I don't think your argument stands. It is very affordable if you are in that line of busyness. Hell if you are a hobbyist and have a couple hundred € to burn, you can run a mini jaguar for the weekend, just to get a feel for it.

Re:What a load...

[wisty]

Let's not forget, you can render a really nice smooth teapot for peanuts, but you can't tell a good story, choreograph a chaotic rescue scene, or draw the expression on the protagonist's face when a little old lady kicks him in the nuts. You also have no chance of getting Jack Black or Angelina Jolie as voice actors.

Pixar is not just a render farm. It's also a studio. The South Park guys showed you can still beat a studio if you are willing to target a new demographic (people who liked The Simpsons, and want sex jokes as well as fart jokes) and have talented actors and writers, but it's not easy.

Re:Hmph.

[ByOhTek]

Yeah, but they don't need to maintain the systems for all the time they don't use them, which the big boys can afford to do (usually because, with multiple projects, they'll be able to have much less downtime).

Ex: You need about "100 units" of CPU time per year. A computer that does this costs $500. Now, lets say, you have about a month from sufficient data to start, to the deadline. Now, you need a computer that can provide "1200 units" per year. This will probably be closer to $6000. And part of that money goes towards having it for 11 months where you don't need it. You might pay more ($1000 maybe?) to get the job done in a month, than with a computer that, given a year, could do it, but you get it done on time, which is probably worth that extra $500.

It may not be ideal for everyone (or even most), but for a smaller player to move up in the world, when they can't afford to have enough projects simultaneously running, that would make maintaining their own desired system financially viable, then this kind of CPU timesharing, is not a bad idea.

Re:Bandwidth ?

[partiklehead]

The problem is not getting a video file from one computer to the next, it's the rendering. One single frame of a high end 3D animation film can take days to render even on a supercomputer. So the fact that transferring the result takes say 5 minutes instead 1 minute is negligable compared to the gains in rendering time.

Let's say I work for Disney or Pixar

[Mateo_LeFou]

If I'm afraid you're going to "compete or be able to deliver something at the level of a Pixar or a Disney", couldn't I just get your ISP to block you off from the cloud because I don't feel you're doing enough to prevent Pixar/Disney intellectual property from being incorporated into your work?