Challenging Hollywood hegemony with European HPCN techniques

Almere, 24 November 98 Computer generated special effects in film and video production cost less than traditional methods for complex effects. Traditionally, this is the domain where Hollywood reigns. New HPCN techniques now make the computer power needed to generate special effects affordable for small production companies of which there are many in Europe. A European Commission sponsored project, called VIDEOGRAPH shows some astonishing results in this areas. A high-resolution 10 second standard film clip, that takes nearly 6 days to compute on the high-end machines that are currently used in the computer graphic industry, now only takes 9 hours to produce on a special designed Cycore computer.

When you mention the term "special effects" some people understand what you mean. But it is only when you give examples like dinosaurs chasing people, space ship battles, people turning into liquid metal or giant bugs, blowing up cities, cars, ships and aeroplanes in movies like Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Star Wars, Terminator etc, that everybody gets the picture of what is happening in video and motion film post production. And that is exactly what VIDEOGRAPH is all about: tools that make creating these kind of costly effects a lot easier and let the designer do it in shorter time.

In the industry the software of choice for creating visual effects is a software package called Adobe After Effects and the plug-in packages Final Effects and Studio Effects, that run on Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms.

Instead of inventing a new software and hardware special effects solution, VIDEOGRAPH takes the approach of providing back-end services that can be plugged in the existing environment: hence the work continues without the designers having to learn anything new.

In the 10-second clip example VIDEOGRAPH used a Cycore computer, which in itself consists of 16 processors for the hard work. It is used as a back-end computer engine to the traditional Mac or Windows/NT workstations. The designer does not notice the Cycore: he only notices things go much faster than before.

Hence, the software solution developed within VIDEOGRAPH is fully transparent to the user, no change of platform, no need for learning new programmes or interfaces. It offers a seamless integration with a mixed platform environment of NT machines and Macs as front-ends, using the high performance parallel super computer system as back-end.

Within the Cycore computer, a variety of parallel computer systems can be used, such as Parsytec Parallel machines or work station clusters. Cycore just uses the cheapest hardware parts available to provide a cost-effective solution for production companies. For them, the Cycore is a black box, that just can be plugged into their existing environment. Another advantage is that the platform can be changed, while keeping the software environment the designer is used the same.

VIDEOGRAPH is a European Esprit project of three Scandinavian partners: Cycore Computers of Sweden, the owner of the source code for Final Effects and Studio Effects, FilmEffekt Norway, a post production company for both film and video, and PELAB, also of Sweden, a research group at the Department of Computer and Information Science at Linköping University.

Check in at the TTN web site for more information on the VIDEOGRAPH project and other examples of HPCN technology used in industry and services.

Ad Emmen