Animators get processing power by hour: utility computing takes hold as studios rent for rendering.

When Threshold Digital Research Lab in Santa Monica was processing digital Borgs for Paramount's "Star Trek: Borg Invasion" attraction, the animation studio turned to borrowed computers for the extra power it needed. So did DreamWorks SKG animators looking to provide extra oomph to donkey in "Shrek 2."

Animation studios, once leery of having digital images fall into the wrong hands, are beginning to embrace the practice of utility computing--farming out work to computer banks run by International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., among others.

"In the past we could do with what we have in-house," said George Johnsen, chief animation officer for Threshold, an animation studio that also has worked on "Spider-Man 2" and "The Flintstones."

"Now, with how sophisticated things are, we need more processors," Johnsen said.

The outside processing power allows studios to create more complex digital animations under tight project deadlines. It is also less expensive than buying in-house processors and allows the studios to pay for only the power they use. Studios say they're seeing processing-related cost savings of up to 50 percent.

But there have been hurdles to get past--starting with concerns that the animated images would leak out. Also, many "render farms"--a collection of processors that take animators' data files and creates images from the raw data instructions--initially did not give the studios the ability to monitor images to ensure there were no errors in the data.

It took more than five years of discussions, plus another year or so of negotiations and planning, before Threshold started using IBM's processors two months ago to supplement the 1,100 processors it has in-house.

Lengthy process

"Shrek 2," which will be released on May 21, was the first project in which DreamWorks used outside processing power, according to Ed Leonard, chief technology officer for the Glendale-based company.

Through an agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co., DreamWorks supplemented its 2,000 processors in-house with another 1,000 processors at HP's remote site in Palo Alto.

"The creative targets on 'Shrek 2' were extremely high," Leonard said. "We wanted to keep making it better, and there were a whole bunch of late artistic changes we wanted to make. With the processing power available at HP, we were able to not compromise."

The entry of Hewlett-Packard and IBM into the utility computing market for entertainment is giving larger studios comfort. These companies, along with Oracle Corp., began seriously testing the idea of utility computing last year.

It can take hours for a computer to process data instructions into a single frame of a digitally animated commercial or film. Considering there are 24 to 30 frames per second, the task of rendering an entire production can be draining on resources.

"Quite a bit of computation has to be done to render complex frames. Lighting especially interacts with each pixel in the frame," said Steve Thenell, system administrator for DUCK, formerly Duck Soup Studios, in Los Angeles.

DUCK, which has created the Wal-Mart yellow smiley character and the M&M characters for commercials, has its own small render farm of processors. But the studio has found that on occasion its processors would take too long to render all the images needed in the time it had to complete the project. In those instances, the studio turned to outside render farms for more juice.

Economically, animation studios say utility computing makes sense because of the industry's inconsistent computing needs. On DreamWorks' large film projects, Leonard said there would be a three- to four-month peak during which the studio needs 30 percent more computing power.

"It's very costly and time consuming to build out an infrastructure for three months," he said.

With utility computing, the studio pays per central processing unit, or CPU, hour. Although HP and IBM would not reveal how much they charge, EFX One Inc., a render farm in Irvine, charges $1 to $1.75 per CPU hour. If a studio were to buy the processors, one node with two processors costs about $2,500, Thenell said.

The studios upload files that contain the data used to render the animated images. The files are then transferred over an Internet connection to the remote-site processors, which render the images. The completed images are sent back over the Internet connection to the studio.

A number of render farms came and went over several years, before studios began to see them as a viable option.

Johnsen said he felt more comfortable with an established company like IBM to take care of the studio's processing needs. Although there were some initial rough spots with transferring files and monitoring the progress of the rendering, Johnsen said IBM has been quick to fix the problems.

"It's the early days in terms of applying utility computing to the entertainment industry," said Gene Becker, program manager in HP Laboratories. "The intention is for HP's reach to be very broad in entertainment."