Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 2, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Since the end of 2009, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, the singing and rocking Chipmunks, have been back in cinemas with Twentieth Century Fox’s sequel “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”. This film also sets new standards in visual effects. As with the first instalment, “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, multi-award-winning studio Rhythm & Hues (R&H) was responsible for creating the visual effects. And as in the past, R&H also relied on NVIDIA’s Quadro solutions to realise this project.
Task
R&H’s task was to develop hundreds of shots for “The Squeakquel” and six film trailers - making it the largest project in the company’s history.
The complexity of the task was increased further by the required combination of the computer-animated Chipmunks and their live-action counterparts in games such as dodgeball and football or in everyday situations. An additional challenge was that the project had to be completed within just 28 weeks.
Solution
To meet the requirements of “The Squeakquel”, R&H had to run its production pipeline at full speed and at times use almost 1,000 workstations with NVIDIA Quadro GPUs at its Los Angeles, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kuala Lumpur locations.
“NVIDIA’s solutions cover the entire spectrum of digital film production and are used by texture and 3D designers as well as in the screening room,” emphasises David Perkins, Technical Support Supervisor at R&H.
Nathan Cournia, Software Engineer at R&H, adds: “We use NVIDIA Quadro for real-time 2K playback with full colour correction. Real-time colour views allow designers to see in the studio how their shots will later be displayed in the cinema.”
Alongside using Quadro solutions for 2K projection, R&H uses Quadro-based Linux workstations for its proprietary studio software: Icy for compositing, Voodoo for animation, Wren for rendering and Eve for playback. NVIDIA’s Quadro solutions also accelerate the Autodesk Maya and Houdini applications from Side Effects Software.
Benefits
Perkins emphasises that NVIDIA technology is highly important to R&H and its digital-film pipeline. “In production, it is scarcely possible to keep operating systems and graphics drivers constantly up to date. That is why we rely on NVIDIA’s Quadro solutions, which have delivered the performance we need for years.” Cournia adds: “The high geometry throughput of Quadro solutions allows designers to visualise high-resolution models in real time and thus make artistic decisions more quickly.”
Outlook: in view of the increasing use of 3D effects in film production, R&H is currently examining the use of NVIDIA’s stereoscopic 3D drivers in its next film project, a 3D feature film.
