Disney Renders Its New CGI Film on a 55,000-Core Supercomputer.

Prepare your CPU’s – the new bad boy in computer animation processing has arrived at Disney’s studio – a 55,000-core monster supercomputer, and it’s pumping out over 400,000 high level computations per day. What’s it currently at work at you ask? Disney’s new animated film Big Hero: 6. The film tells the tale of a young boy and his soft robot and is said to be a mishmash of varying super powers (think Marvel or DC Comics) crossed with a technology infused fantasy city called “San Fransokyo”.

The visual workings of the film are staggering, the movie’s been created from the ground up using Disney’s new software engine known as Hyperion. Hyperion accurately analyses and calculates lighting from multiple sources of indirect lighting – allowing artists and graphic designers to create scenes with more realistic and creative atmospheres digitally than ever before. Disney’s offered a few looks into the scenes and lighting that’s being rendered – and we have to say that it’s absolutely stunning. To put the power of Hyperion into perspective Disney’s Animation CTO Andy Hendrickson said that Hyperion “could render Tangled from scratch every 10 days.” The fantasy city of San Fransokyo will feature over 260,000 individually rendered trees, 83,000 buildings, 215,000 streetlights and over 100,000 vehicles. This is on top of literally thousands of crowd extras that have been poured into the animation through a special generational tool called Denizen.

The funny thing about it all is that the extreme envelope pushing technology isn’t the kind of stuff that will ever excite your typical moviegoer. The incredible details and calculations Hyperion deliver are just your typical norms that people associate with the moving pace of technological advancements – however, with that said, the hardware and software powering them is just as staggering and mind blowing as always. With the backbone of the film being rendered via a 55,000-core supercomputer, Hendrickson estimates that most of the fancy effects that will be seen on screen will be taken for granted by most audiences.

Thanks to Engadget for providing us with this information.