Boss Film Studios has installed an IBM Corp Power Visualisation System at its Los Angeles visual effects studio, becoming the first in the industry to use the high-performance visualiser to generate high-resolution special effects. The eight-processor they’re 80860 RISCs – Model 1 Visualiser is linked to a 21Gb IBM Disk Array Subsystem that delivers a sustained data transfer rate of 55M-bytes per second; the Visualisation Video Controller also provides real-time resolutions up to 2,048 by 1,536 pixels including high-definition television format. Input-output connection is via High Performance Parallel Interface channels capable of 100M-byte per second transfer rates. Boss Film, which has provided visual effects for epics like Batman Returns, Alien 3, Ghostbusters and Diehard, believes the new installation will prove to be a major turning point in the way Hollywood produces special effects. The company spent several months examining both high end workstation and parallel technologies and chose the system because of the data rate of the HiPPI which enables the rapid assembly of effects, speeding up the production process by up to 50 times and reducing it from days to hours. The system can be used for composite effects work, to create the kinds of images such as duelling spacecraft, disintegrating planets and cyborgs emerging from liquid metal for which Boss reckons that it is famous.
Compositing
Compositing, which involves layering of different images, can be done quickly with the visualiser with little or no difference in image quality when juxtaposed with live action shots, says Boss boss Richard Edlund. Since the system is programmable, other techniques can be added without the need for new hardware. Boss, which has a special interest in realistic image quality, anticipates that the system will eventually help to facilitate the complete digitalisation of image generation. Digital techniques are expected eventually to be applied not only to special effects but to create scenery and backgrounds which can be generated at will and manipulated creatively.
