END USER INSIGHT
Eric Bermender , Head of Data Center and IT Infrastructure , Pixar
ART PUSHES TECHNOLOGY : HOW VAST DATA ’ S SOLUTIONS ACCELERATE PIXAR ’ S CINEMATIC MAGIC
Pixar ’ s innovative productions have redefined the boundaries of technology integration in visual storytelling . Its collaboration with VAST has set the foundation for AI-powered cinematography while allowing quick adaptation to evolving artistic needs . Eric Bermender ,
Head of Data Center and IT Infrastructure , Pixar , discusses the data centre ’ s capacity for artistic growth .
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AST Data , a data platform company for the AI era , has announced that Pixar Animation Studios , a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company , selected VAST as the key data platform collaborator for the company ’ s data-intensive feature animation production , including its Elemental , which hit US theatres on June 16 2023 .
Pixar began working with VAST in 2018 as it first pioneered new animation techniques using volumetric rendering for their acclaimed 2020 film titled , Soul . One of its latest features , Elemental , required a new way to scale these detailed volumetric characters and environments . Unlike the geometric surfaces and materials used in earlier Pixar projects , the broadly applied volumetric animation methods used in Elemental created six times the data footprint and computational demands for data than that of Soul .
To meet the technical requirements of the Pixar creative team , Pixar turned to the VAST Data Platform to power the demanding render pipeline for Elemental as well as Pixar ’ s other ongoing and future productions . By moving 7.3 Petabytes of data to a single datastore cluster that is managed across one high-performance namespace organised from low-cost flash – VAST provides real-time access to keep Pixar ’ s render farm www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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