Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/13405
Storage for VFX As he looks ahead, Kenneth intends to continue with Isilon products. In fact, he’s about to grow the system as IE Effects takes on more “back-to-back 3D projects,” something he didn’t foresee happening so quickly. “I have a high level of confidence and comfort with the products,” he says. “They’re truly plug-and-play.When we ac- Crash+Sues’ credit roster includes recent spots for FedEx, Old El Paso, Famous Dave’s, Culver’s and leading retailers. “A typical job starts in Final Cut offline,” Anderson ex- plains.“The XML goes to the transfer suite where Sue Lakso loads the files she needs for the color session, then I take the XML into Smoke and conform from the graded files out of Digital Vision. “What’s nice is that since we all share the same storage, once Sue has color corrected the files I have instant access to them. I load them into Smoke and send any effects shots that I’m not working on to Flame or 3D.The files return to me for finishing on Smoke.” The company’s busy commercial schedule and growing list of indie features has already seen Aurora’s 122TB fill up quickly.“We did the color and finish on the indie film Prodigal last month whose final storage was over 10TB,” Anderson Zoic, which created VFX for the rookie drama V, uses Isilon storage in tandem with Shotgun and Aspera tools. quire more disk storage the system simply recognizes that more storage has been plugged in, and it absorbs it. If the day comes when we get beyond that capacity, it may be time for me to retire!” CRASH+SUES With the growth of Minneapolis-based Crash+Sues (www.crash-sues.com), the launch of its CS Films division earlier this year and the purchase of a new color cor- rector, the company has been in the market for a new visual effects storage solution. “We were working off local storage for our Autodesk systems, 3D, After Effects and Final Cut suites, and it was running out,” re- ports Smoke artist Mark Anderson. The company selected a Rorke Data Galaxy Au- rora system, a feature-rich RAID and SAN appliance, with 122TB of storage, which it acquired at the same time as its new Digital Vision Nucoda Film Master color corrector. “One of the biggest selling points for the Rorke was their custom integration with our facility,” says Anderson.“Rorke only had a few installations with the configuration we have at Crash+Sues, and we wanted to be sure Aurora could handle our workflow. Rorke engineers came out to see us, fig- ured out what we needed, presented a schematic of what they were looking to put in, we evaluated it, they came back in and hooked up all of our Linux, Macs and PCs into the system via 8GB fiber.We got to try it, and it performed perfectly. Now, I’ve been on it for the last three months and experienced no hiccups really.” 30 Post • July 2010 notes. “We bought three bays of Aurora each with 48TB so we can plug in more 48TB bays until we run out of space. Rorke also has an automated archival system that looks like a solution for us.” ZOIC Zoic Studios (www.zoicstudios.com), which has offices in Los Angeles and Van- couver, recently acquired a 100TB Isilon 5000 SSD series cluster comprised of 20 nodes, more than doubling the performance of its retired Isilon 40TB 1920i storage and gaining the ability to do multiple streams of 2K sequences directly off the production server cluster. “We also needed a way to accel- erate footage playback in the studio. To resolve this issue we added Isilon accelerator nodes which each have dedicated connections to the clus- ter for very fast throughput,” says pipeline supervisor Mike Romey. Zoic also uses Shotgun Software, a project management and collabo- ration system designed for VFX, CGI and videogames. the Isilon accelerator nodes and Tweak Soft- ware’s RV Player.This ensures quick feed- back without the hassle of navigating the file structure and improves performance. With business growing, Zoic has tapped Shotgun to optimize its Isilon storage as well. “Our Shotgun database knows the number of shots and number of frames a project needs to deliver and is able to esti- mate how much storage is needed and relay storage allotments to Isilon Quotas from python,” says Romey. Via the Shotgun API, Zoic has developed custom reporting tools that help producers manage storage, too. “We found that we were running out of storage due to excessive versions of shots that were not being purged from storage,” he notes. “With our cus- tomized reporting tools, producers can pick a project, episode or shot and traverse the file structure for that entity on the Isilon, find all the versions and either review the version via Tweak’s RV player, delete, retire or un-retire footage from the storage.This speeds up the process of making space more available with- out needing to change storage quotas. It’s a great way for producers to manage a project without dealing with the complexities of the file system of nested folders.” Zoic recently completed the first season of the ABC series V whose season finale had more than 450 shots due in about two weeks.“That was a large number of shots and versions, and our artists working in LA and Vancouver needed a central database While creating effects for Special Powers, a spot for Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, Crash & Sues called on its Rorke Data Galaxy Aurora system. “All our renders are logged in Shotgun, and the associated version paths are stored in it,” Romey explains, “so the centralized database can find any path for any version for any shot,” which often comes in handy during a project’s lifetime.The Shotgun API has allowed Zoic to create custom tools that permit an artist, producer or supervisor to play back footage from the Shotgun via www.postmagazine.com and storage system that could be bound to- gether,” says Romey.“We used Aspera to sync together Isilon storage in each location and enable the artists to sync versions as they were published. “Isilon storage with Aspera and Shotgun integration are the key components that make it possible for us to handle the volume of work we do.We often have dozens of jobs simultaneously living and breathing on the same file system.”