Pixar Render farm
Have you ever wondered how many computers it takes for Pixar to render their new film
The Good Dinosaur animated film
for release in November 2015 USA? I understand this area of filmmaking might not be of interest to everyone, but I find it fascinating as having our own render farm and understanding the amount of work that goes into the final render must be staggering so the full set up at the campus has a 13,500-square-foot data centre, which houses a render farm, file servers and storage systems. The set-up includes more than 3,000 AMD processors, proprietary render-management tools, allowing desktop workstations to be added to the render farm pool after hours, expanding the processing capacity to more than 5,000 processors.
Here is some more information about the impressive tech employed at Lucas Film’s Letterman Digital Arts Centre:
• A state-of-the-art high-performance data network/Render Farm with more than 300 10-gigabyte ports and 1,500
1-gigabyte ports — the largest Render Farm in the entertainment industry
• Fibre-optic cable pulled to every artist desktop, enabling Lucas film to deliver high-resolution images
to each digital artist
• 600 miles of cable throughout the four buildings on the campus
• Raised floors throughout the building, opening the layout of the studio and enabling the workspace to be
reconfigured with each new project
• Render farm storage (at opening) of more than 100 terabytes
• A Media Data Centre to host custom-designed media servers to deliver high-resolution images to the on-campus
digital theatres, screening rooms and desktops Systems for image and sound editing, colour management and
correction, and high-speed compositing
• A Media Control Room that manages media input, output, format conversions and duplication
New Films by Disney Pixar
Finding Dory
U.S. Release Date: June 17, 2016
Director: Andrew Stanton
Producer: Lindsey Collins
Toy Story 4
U.S. Release Date: June 16, 2017
Director: John Lasseter
Producer: Galyn Susman
Coco
U.S. Release Date: November 22, 2017
Director: Lee Unkrich
Producer: Darla K. Anderson