- A Rising Sun at NPS: Visualization with RenderMan on the "Hamming" Supercomputer
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Jeffrey Weekley, NPS and Dr. Jeff Haferman, NPS
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In early 2009, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) brought the 1152 core "hamming" Sun Microsystems blade system online. Concurrently, NPS procured
RenderMan™ software from Pixar Animation Studios.
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In this presentation, we shall describe the hamming supercomputer, the Maya 3D modeling package with Pixar's RenderMan software - used by film studios
to develop popular animated feature films such as "Ratatouille" and "Up" and in visual effects for movies like "Where the Wild Things Are" - and how
NPS used them together to create realistic visualizations in a format suitable for projection on the NPS Sony 4K display and for ultra-high resolution
streaming media over CENIC networks. We shall also demonstrate how advances in Hollywood-style animation and post-production tools have benefited
researchers at NPS who are working on scientific visualization and streaming media in support of the School's academic and research missions.
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