Movie production and Rendering

Science fiction movie production parallels that of the motion picture industry totally. Although it took quite a lot of decades before genre was taken seriously. Major science fiction films have succeeded from 1960s in pulling in large audience shares and movies of this genre have become a regular staple of the film industry. Now, science fiction films have led the way in special effects technology and also used as a vehicle for social commentary.

In early 1900s, science fiction films appeared as a silent film era.  At the initial attempts were short films of typically 1 to 2 minutes in duration and shot in black and white, sometimes with color tinting. These usually had a technological theme. In 1902, Georges Melies created “Le Voyage dans la Luna” which was considered as first science fiction film. Then in 1916, “20,000 Leagues under the Sea” was the first feature- length science fiction films. In 1920s, “The Lost World” was one of the earliest examples of stop motion animation and also introduced several now- famous science fiction concepts like monsters, dinosaurs and hidden worlds.

In 1979, Walt Disney Productions’ venture into the science fiction genre with “The Black Hole” which was poorly received but praised highly for its special effects.” In 1982, Disney’s “Tron” had a unique visual style and being one of the first major studio films to use extensive computer graphics. Later the decades saw the growth of animation as a medium for science fiction films. As the decades progressed, computers played an increasingly important role in both addition of special effects and the production films. As a result, large render farms made of many computers in a cluster which were used to detail the image based on three- dimensional models known as 3D movies.

Render farm, which can also be rendered online, namely online render farm is known as a highly performable computer system by a computer cluster, built to render computer- generated imagery (CGI) , typically for film and television visual effects. Now in science fiction movie production, rendering farm is contributed largely. Over the decades, advances in computer power would allow an image to take less time to render. As a result, the increased computation is instead used to meet demand to achieve state of the art image quality. While simple image can be produced rapidly, more realistic and complicated higher – resolution images can now be produced in more reasonable time. The time used up producing images can be reduced by production time-lines and deadlines and the desire to create high-quality work drives the need for increased computing power.

So in this modern world every people want to see high tech graphics. Sci-fi movie production need technology and some leading render service providers are there for it to create the sci-fi movie world.  

3D Render Server can easily achieve 75 Million Hours for Rendering Projects

People who can make roundabout go straight are smart people, because they find a shortcut. For rendering projects, three-dimensional rendering server is undoubtedly one of the shortcuts to seek. Sometimes we spend much more time waiting can not save rendering time and the truth that no matter how much time you spend, the more achievements you will gain may not apply for rendering, and we all know that the more three-dimensional rendering servers we have, the stronger the configure is, the less time we spend.

Render can’t be apart from server, which is true for small projects, even is far more demanded for big projects. Recently, the render time of "Turbo” which is produced by DreamWorks achieve as high as 75 million hours. Just imagine that how long the audience will have to wait to see the film on the screen if there is no support of render server?

Do not be scared by such figures, as the number of vehicles and characters of "Turbo" is very large, which needed to be rendered is not only the pictures in large size, but also the quality must meet the requirements of large areas of production, so it is not surprising that the rendered time reaches 75 million hours, which is very normal for animation production in Hollywood. But we all know that the number of 3D render server is not a problem for Dream Works since it is such a competitive company. And these equipments allow Dream Works to render 500.000 jobs every day and that is how a huge project is being done.

Many individuals who are interested in the render farm will often try to build a render farm. They often ask a question that what kind of server is the best and how many numbers of servers is appropriate? In fact, from my perspective, I think that should be decided by their economic power and realistic needs. Of course, if your financial resources are enough to support you to buy more render servers which your projects need and will not be idle after buying them, the more render servers the more time you will save for your project. By that time, render time will no longer be a problem.

LEARN FROM CG/SCI-FI MOVIE: “TEARS OF STEEL” AND EXPERIENCE THE VISUAL AND EMOTIONAL JOURNEY OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE

CG industry is regarded as a Community for Designer. CG industry was founded to help Creative talent across the work to interact with each other. To share their work, and take benefit of latest industry news update and many more features. A computer-animated film commonly refers to feature films that have been computer-animated to appear three dimensional on a movie screen. Traditional 2D animated films are now done primarily with the help of computers. The technique to render realistic 3D computer graphics (CG), or 3D Computer-generated imagery (CGI), is unique to using computers to create movies.

In film, many techniques are used to set the mood. Establish scenes and convey the emotional state of the characters. Dialog, music and film techniques are all used for these reasons. In science fiction, film angles can help establish unreal situations and landscapes and establish characters. Camera angles can impart information about characters and scenes in subtle ways. There are movies that have been theatrically released .they are entirely computer-animated and rendered in 3D. These are sometimes referred to as CG films.

The latest CG/Sci-fi movie is Tears of Steel. It is a live-action/CGI short film produced by Ton Roosendaal. The film was made using new enhancements to the visual effects capabilities of Blender. A free and open source is for all-in-one 3D computer graphics software package. The movie is about a group of warriors and scientists who gather at the “Oude Kerk” in a future Amsterdam to stage a crucial event from the past in a desperate attempt to rescue the world from destructive robots. What does it take to come up with an epic and unbeatable Sci-fi Artworks? When it comes to science fiction, it should bombard your eyes with extremely sublime and striking graphic, grabbing your attention within milliseconds but that alone can’t determine its success. A great Sci-fi artwork can make you dwell into the world that is illustrated by the author. Visually and emotionally experience the journey of action and adventure that have been prepared for you in the movie. With such great work, you will be dragged into its dimension, wanting for more.

The live-action footage was filmed digitally using a Sony F65 Cinealta digital motion picture camera. The finished film is available for viewing and download in HD resolutions, Dolby 5.1 audio and 2.35:1 aspect ratio format. Filming was done in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. All visual effects, computer generated content and compositing work was done within the Blender software package.

For the entire creation pipeline in the studio, free/open source software was used. For 3D graphics, compositing and video editing Blender was used. The new ‘Cycles’ render engine was used in this movie. It included open source projects like Open Shading, Open Color and Open Image. For camera and motion tracking Blender uses Limb.  GIMP, My Paint, Krista and Inks cape were used for imaging and drawing. In Render output and footage the OpenEXR format was used. Scripting was done in Python. Studio database is storage in SVN. The workstations in the studio equipped with 64 bits Ubuntu Linux. They had their own render farm running on Deion and Ubuntu.

Will Architectural Rendering make Architectural Design Divorce from Reality?

Architectural rendering is one of the representations of contemporary architectural design, which is a means of proposing architectural idea, selling and providing criteria for evaluation. However, some scholars have recently proposed a challenge: will the pursuit of perfect renderings be detrimental to what building should have expressed?

When studying a large number of UK thesis project of many outstanding students, Olly Wainwright found that their studies and ideas completely detached from the actual building construction, even if these studies are very content with technology and imagination. This is a common problem for college teaching, which shows the misleading of teaching and also is a mistake that many designers will make. Pursuit of the perfect architectural rendering ideas spread not only through school teacher (this will make students spend too much energy on rendering rather than focus to design a creative work.), and the mainstream media in architectural field always displays works with delicate effects to people heavily, which makes people think the better the rendering is, the more excellent the work is. It is much easier to get realistic rendering as the development of technology, yet the reaction is full owing as well, which in other words, is that many rendering are not realistic at all.

（Rendered by and belongs to schmidt hammer）

As we know, architectural rendering is designed based on client's needs. In my opinion, the real of architectural rendering has two levels of meaning: First, rendering can be close to real life, which is photo-level realism; second, the designing should be workable, which means it could express a truly existing building. If the design divorce from reality, it is only an un-workable and un-practicable scheme no matter how perfect the effect is.

 The answer to the question that whether architectural rendering will make architectural design divorce from reality is diverse. But I think it is very simple: first of all, we should get rid of the “effect-supreme”. Secondly, we cannot ignore the rendering effect; a good architectural rendering cannot be delivered to people in exaggerated forms, yet people still have requirements for its visual effects. So we should pursue the realistic rendering effects based on a workable and practical scheme. We will find that these two are not contradicted if we analyze them dialectically, but complementary. Designing and rendering can be maintained at the same time. 

(Rendered by and Belongs to BIG)

Of course, you will still need a render farm to fulfill both of them.

Better Visual Effects than Ever – “300: Rise of an Empire”

We all can remember the conspiracy, thrill, excitement with the battle of Thermopylae in the year 2007. That was the epic film “300”, based on the comic series of the same name. If you enjoyed that particular masterpiece and great show of visual effects, then the great news is waiting for you. The sequel of this epic saga is going to take the action to a fresh battlefield on the sea. It is another epic story of the Greek general Themistocles, battling an invading army of Persians lead by Xerxes.

The film is centered on three main characters Themistocles, Artemisia of Caria and Xerxes of Persia. They were engaged in the battle of Artemisium that concurrent with the battle of Thermopylae. The film will also cover some back-story to explain how the Xerxes became "the god King".

The Visual Effects of “300: Rise of an Empire”:

Producer Zack Snyder and his visual effects studio are bringing out another visual masterpiece “300: Rise of an Empire”. That has challenged its previous movie “300” in the sense of visual effects. “300” was critically acclaimed by most critics because of its groundbreaking visual effects. “300: Rise of an Empire” just pushed up its visual limit and expanded its capacity.

The challenges for the rendering team are numerous in a sense that they had to shoot the entire film in a dry place. But, there were many scenes of naval battle with lots of ships. With the debut of first trailer we see that the movie is mostly shot on water. But according to director Noam Murro, the movie did not have a single drop of water used on its set. As they had to simulate the waves and the rainfall, they completely used computer-generated imagery (CGI) to make the water realistic. It was a pretty difficult task for the render farm. The boats used in the movie were completely still, but visual effect artists made it moves to the rhythm of CGI wave.

There were also CGI fires to be seen in this film. The fires were rendered so realistically that viewers would never differentiate between real and CGI fire with sparks. There were also some battle scenes in fog. But no fog generator was used. Technology today is so advanced that CGI fog is way better than fog generators.

The idea of this movie is similar with old movies, but the technology used to rendering attractive visual effects are done with modern technique. That makes more appeal to its viewer to watch this masterpiece. This rendering firm is simultaneously doing world class rendering of blockbuster movies, and it has been serving well in this section perfectly.

From the audience’s perspective, "300: Rise of an Empire" is going to be the most technically advanced and attractive movie for the year 2014. In this movie several technologies are used by its render farm to make the effects especial. This CGI-heavy film pushed visual artist and rendering to their extremities. Everyone should look forward to watching this visual masterpiece.

Usually an excellent movie production like 3D animaion and CG movies can't be done without help of render farm. We can even say these movies/animations can't be produced without render farm, which is also called online render farm. It is for sure that the skill of artists is important for CG movie production, while render farm is much more important than it. Artists' creation cannot be realized without render farm. As we all know, each production companyhas a huge render farm which is equipped with top-rank hardware specs. So is Fox Renderfarm. We are not a production company, yet production companies all over the world can benifit from the render service we offer.To contribute to the CG industry we love is the meaning of our existence!