Madagascar 3 is made with HP technology
Combining HP technology with the creativity of DreamWorks, the studio’s latest 3D animated film, Madagascar 3, has been screened in domestic cinemas from June 14th.
DreamWorks animation experts have used HP technology to create the third film in the popular Madagascar series. Fans can now see Madagascar in three dimensions for the first time. The first film was made in 2005 and, with the sequel in 2008, generated $ 1,1 billion in gross revenue for its creators.
DreamWorks Animation uses HP technology at every stage of filmmaking, from day-to-day tasks to creating the most detailed animation scenes to rendering tasks that process an hourly amount of data. Over the years, HP has played an important role in several breakthrough cartoons from DreamWorks, including the “Shrek” series, “How to Raise Your Dragon? , ”In“ Kung Fu Panda, ”“ Kung Fu Panda 2, ”and“ Boots Boy. ”
Several HP technologies have been used to create "Madagascar 3":
With more than two hundred HP Z800 workstations, the artists have created a highly detailed natural environment, thanks in part to the exceptional performance of HP workstations with multi-core processors. With them, they designed every element of the film - from the characters of the zoo fugitives to digital effects like the display of the fire or the highly elaborate close-ups.
HP DreamColor technology has guaranteed accurate and consistent color reproduction on prints, monitors and movie screens throughout the manufacturing process.
At critical stages of production, the required peak performance was provided by HP ProLiant BL460c blade technology distributed across four U.S. and Indian server rendering farms. The blade servers processed an incredible 200 terabytes of data and operated for more than 65 million render hours.
Among HP Networking solutions, the HP 12500, 5800, and 6120 Series switches, the HP Networking Intelligent Management Center, and the HP Intelligent Resilient Framework supported film production and provided high levels of network performance and unified “one-stop” network management in the studio with scalable 10G WAN / LAN environment as a whole. With the HP IBRIX X9720 Network Storage System, DreamWorks can handle unstructured data requirements well, while also being ready to meet growing future needs.
HP Enterprise Services' Flexible Hosted Rendering solution now provides scalable, dynamic capacity for the production of multiple computer-generated film. During production, 3 percent of Madagascar’s 12 data was rendered in the cloud.
Interesting facts about Madagascar 3:
More than 120 computer-generated frames were used to make the film.
In the circus adventure, we see the most detailed mass scene in DreamWorks history to date - with more than 5000 individual characters. There are several special effects in the scene: e.g. fog, sparks, fire and rain. It took 1,6 million render hours to create.
The flashback scene shows fire effects and a detailed mass display. It was produced in 2,8 million render hours.
The Manhattan cityscape originally did not include the new World Trade Center - it was included in the film at the suggestion of a DreamWorks fellow from New York City who was already impressed with the building when it was half-finished.
Gia's eyelashes consist of 96 movable elements.
Alex’s figure consists of more than 2000 separately controlled elements so that filmmakers can adjust the character to any conceivable position.
In the mass scenes, everyone has three types of bodies, six types of heads and several types of costumes for a total of more than 19 million unique combinations. By comparison, the population of the New York agglomeration reached 19 million this year.
The Monaco scene features 2393 buildings created from 42 models with 3-3 variations each. Many buildings have also been combined with other environmental elements (e.g., chairs, vegetation, flower boxes, etc.).
Source: Press release
