Time Team - Render farm and SAN for Channel 4's archaeology programme

Background:

Hosted by Tony Robinson, Time Team - Channel 4's popular weekly archaeology programme - has been running since 1994. The programme is produced for Channel 4 by London-based production house 'The Picture House Television Company Limited'.

Problem:

Content for Time Team projects needed to be cut and finished in 7-10 days in order to keep to strict television deadlines. In-house 3D artists were producing content with 3ds Max and rendering on their workstations. Time spent waiting for initial test renders as well as for final scene renders at the back-end of projects meant that a considerable amount of unproductive time was given over to rendering.

The production house wanted its 3D artists to be productive at all times, with the ability to render jobs without interrupting their content creation. Our first brief was simple: cut rendering times.

However, a second key factor here was the requirement to switch production to HD: the studio would have the same number of frames for rendering, but in higher definition, meaning even longer render times and a more pressing requirement to speed things up.

Solution:

Jigsaw assembled a three-man consultancy team with experts covering the three fields of data storage, 3D rendering, and broadcast systems.

Blade systems are a popular solution in large render farms, being compact and energy-efficient. However, the flexibility to temporarily re-deploy render nodes as workstations for freelancers whenever necessary, combined with the large initial cost outlay, meant that blades were not appropriate in this case. Floor-standing workstations were chosen instead.

A backend Storage Area Network (SAN) was identified as the best solution for high-volume, high-performance shared storage between workstations and render nodes. Since the nodes would be running Microsoft Windows, MetaSAN (by Tiger Technologies) was chosen as the best software for managing file access. Backburner from 3ds Max was used to manage the rendering process.

This overall solution was chosen as the best fit with their existing workflow and provides the right level of performance increase, meeting all requirements within budget.

Implementation:

The render farm implementation went well. The Jigsaw team consisted of two site engineers, the three consultants, and a project manager. Picture House staff also installed applications on the workstations in advance of the on-site phase of the project.

Two days were spent pre-flighting the system back at Jigsaw, running performance tests and fine-tuning the SAN configuration. A further two days were spent in shipping and installing the system on site. The roll-out concluded with training and hand-over of the documentation.

Benefits:

Able to meet their production deadlines for Time Team, the 3D artists were impressed with the results of the render farm right from the beginning. In some cases the render farm has given a 930% performance increase compared with local rendering on a single workstation. HD frames can be rendered in seconds rather than minutes. Some benchmark figures are shown at the end of the article.

Render nodes can be re-deployed as 3ds Max workstations very quickly, so additional 3D artists can be accommodated at short notice if needed. With the click of a button these workstations can be switched back into the role of dedicated render nodes: a huge boon in terms of ability to meet changing creative priorities and production deadlines.

Furthermore, the open architecture of the render farm means that performance can be scaled up by adding additional nodes and workstations at any future time.

Summary:

Jigsaw provided a render farm for the production team of Channel 4's Time Team programme. Now, after producing the content on workstations as usual, the artists can send jobs for rendering with no interruption or slowdown on their own computers. Jobs added to the render queue are rendered according to the priority level they are given, and during quiet periods the artists' workstations can be added as nodes on the render farm at the click of a button to increase their rendering power.

"With deadlines like these, a render farm is a 'must have'. These days creative artists demand more and more from their applications. Render farms are a necessity rather than a luxury."

Charlie Hutton-Ashkenny, Jigsaw 3D consultant

To find out more about our broadcast solutions, call us on 03332 400 222, email  broadcast@Jigsaw24.com or take a look at our full broadcast range.