(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — As the special-effects-driven blockbuster AVATAR stuns audiences with its lush computer-animated fantasy scenes, a data center in Wellington, New Zealand, has played a backstage, but vitally crucial role.
New Zealand-based visual effects company Weta Digital (www.wetafx.co.nz) was able to manage the intense streams of data required to render the cutting-edge 3D animation used in movies like I, Robot, and X-Men: The Last Stand, and it latest, AVATAR, has been perhaps the most challenging yet, according to a report from trade journal Information Management.
While James Cameron’s directing and fine performances by Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and others help, the immersive experience of AVATAR comes from the many hours or days of attention to each of about 240,000 frames that go into the final product, each requiring 12 megabytes per frame.
Weta operates a 10,000-square-foot facility that uses HP BL2x220c blades to process the effects for AVATAR and other films. The computing core contains some 40,000 processors and 104 terabytes of RAM.
The heat generated is dissipated using enclosed, water cooled racks, Weta data center systems administrator Paul Gunn told Information Management. Hot air is sucked into a radiator and cycled back through the front of the machines. “[W]e run the machines a bit warm, which modern gear doesn’t mind, and the room itself is fairly cool,” Gunn said, noting that they save tens of thousands of dollars changing the temperature by as little as a degree.
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