 AMD & DreamWorks Animation
How do you make millions of hairs on a furry raccoon come to life? Or thousands of leaves on perfectly manicured hedges sway in the wind, just as they would in a real breeze?
You do it with the revolutionary partnership of AMD and DreamWorks Animation, where animation artists tapped into the ground-breaking force of AMD's dual-core processors to bring their spectacular vision to the screen.
Over the Hedge is an extraordinary movie experience brought to you by the talent of today's leading animation team, DreamWorks Animation, and the technology of AMD and HP.
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Partner Insight
After the release of the runaway hit Madagascar in 2005, Over the Hedge is the second film to benefit from the processor technology partnership between DreamWorks Animation and AMD.
Audiences have come to expect more sophistication from animated films. In order to continue to innovate, DreamWorks Animation is always in search of better and faster technical resources. The sheer processing power needed to produce animated films like these is enormous, and DreamWorks Animation relies on technology partners that are up to the task. Enter AMD.
Thanks to AMD's pioneering dual-core processing, DreamWorks Animation has been able to consistently push the envelope when it comes to animation. The AMD processor-based servers, workstations, and laptops from HP used in the making of Over the Hedge enabled the digital artists at DreamWorks Animation to render their images quickly, with the ability to make modifications easily, and ultimately to enhance their creativity.
From making suburban hedges seem real, to making the hairs on Hammy's neck stand up, AMD technology is the engine behind the cutting edge animation in this summer's Over the Hedge.
And with many new DreamWorks Animation animated features already in the works, you can bet that AMD will be helping DreamWorks Animation animators create another splashing good time. Watch for the rousing Flushed Away, coming soon to a theater near you!
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How AMD was used
To make Over the Hedge, DreamWorks Animation artists and technicians relied on over 200 AMD-powered state-of-the-art HP workstations. They worked tirelessly on these cutting-edge, dual-monitor HP xw9300 workstations outfitted with an enormous compute capacity at their fingertips.
And, in a first for the DreamWorks Animation team, production teams used HP's new 6125 laptop computers—powered by AMD Turion™ 64 mobile technology—which provided a significant processing power boost over previous technology, potentially up to 40 percent in some cases.
What does processing power mean to the artists? In short, more raw processing power allows DreamWorks Animation artists to render images quickly. And rendering is a process that takes up the bulk of artists' computing time; it involves converting millions of various graphic elements involved in telling the story—transforming light, color, texture—into a visual form. In simple terms, complex renderings make the images look more realistic than you would ever think possible.
It's similar to touching up a photograph on your home PC when you remove red-eye or add brightness.
Now imagine the kind of computer you would need to render thousands of images of long-haired, complex, furry characters, dense woods, and detailed interior and exterior settings! For DreamWorks Animation, that meant connecting its workstations to the uniquely powerful and versatile array of AMD Opteron processor-based HP servers.
The additional processing cores, memory, and disk space in this array enabled an environment where DreamWorks Animation artists could effectively work on multiple shots simultaneously. It's a little like uploading tracks to your digital music player; touching up your photos; and using the web to listen to music, pay your bills and read the news—all at the same time!
This impressive capability also enabled a unique virtual environment that allowed teams of artists at both the company's Northern and Southern California facilities to work together for daily review sessions. Directors and producers, storyboard and visual development pitches, artistic collaborations meetings, and many, many training sessions all worked together on a robust computing environment powered by HP and AMD.
To learn more about AMD & DreamWorks, play cool online games and more, click here.
To get your own AMD-powered PC, click here. |
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To learn more about AMD & DreamWorks, play cool online games and more, click here .
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