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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.05 - AUGUST 2000
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WAM!NET at SIGGRAPH 2000 WAM!NET also enables artists to collaborate with others from around the world, even if they don't have a single central headquarters. Another early customer for the ROD! service was GOAT (Gurus of Abstract Techniques), a design collective of people working in different professions. "Everybody does something of a creative nature," said Jake Morrison, one of the founders of GOAT in London.
Morrison has since moved to San Francisco, while other members of the group live in places ranging from Sweden to Hawaii. Although they continue to work together on projects such as a recent music video for the Dixie Chicks, "Cowboy, Take Me Away," they lack some of the resources of a brick-and-mortar facility. "Because we don't have an office per se, we don't have a base of machines," Morrison said. At SIGGRAPH 1999, Morrison spoke with officials from WAM!NET and arranged for GOAT to do some beta-testing. In addition to the Dixie Chicks video, GOAT used WAM!NET for two corporate presentations -- one for Sun Microsystems and the other for sap.com. Morrison has seen WAM!NET evolve over the course of GOAT's productions. "On our first job, we were literally telneting into their machines," Morrison said. Soon, though, WAM!NET established an Internet gateway. "These were simpler FTP sites," he continued. "They now have this whole Web-based system, which is pretty slick, I think. "The most important thing for us was that WAM!NET were extremely responsive to our needs," Morrison continued. "If we had a big render coming up, they would render a file frame and send it back to me so I could quality-check the scene before we started the full render. The only delay for us was in downloading rendered imagery at GOAT via our DSL connection. The people at WAM!NET were actually rendering faster than we could download."
WAM!NET's rendering options vary, depending on clients' needs. "Rendering is a flexible science," WAM!NET's Wagner said. "Sometimes you want it completed in a certain period of time, other times you want to try out different approaches." Accordingly, the price of WAM!NET service also fluctuates. "Cost varies based on a number of variables," Wagner said. "The type of connection and whether the client wants to do tests or an entire film both influence the cost. We also sometimes have special offers to coincide with trade shows and events." The underlying pay structure can even differ between companies. GOAT, for example, hires WAM!NET on a project-by-project basis and is charged per hour of rendering. On Cyberworld, Spin paid for rendering by the frame. "We knew roughly how many frames we would have to produce," Stangl said, "so early on we negotiated a rate with WAM!NET that was sensible and workable to our budget. Obviously, a good deal has to be a good deal for everyone." Although the Mill has not yet made use of WAM!NET's rendering capabilities, Trosh is confident ROD! may prove itself a useful tool in the near future. "We foresee a large demand for rendering in our upcoming projects at the Mill," Trosh said. "We're going through the numbers, so it's a purely financial consideration for us now." Trosh noted that one important financial question when it comes to rendering is the issue of additional license fees. While some software manufacturers offer use of their render engines for free, others charge a hefty fee per render license. As a result, even if an effects facility wants to bring in an extra server for a heavy render job, the expense of license fees may lift the cost out of the viable range. WAM!NET, though, has already paid the relevant fees, so its users can render images using programs from a range of companies, including Alias|Wavefront, Softimage and Pixar. According to Wagner, WAM!NET's mission is to free artists and other creative people from having to spend too much time thinking about their equipment. "All the creative people need to worry about is hiring WAM!NET," she said. "We provide an end-to-end rendering solution." Ironically, the company offers so many options that the biggest problem customers have, according to Wagner, is choosing from among them. "The most interesting issue that I have found is that there are various opinions about the best way to go," Wagner said. "Ten people will want to take this resource 10 different ways. Building a consensus is often the most difficult thing. It's not a technology barrier." Stephanie Argy is a regular contributor to VFXPro.com. Republished from VFXPro, a fellow Creative Planet community Web site, and on-line news resource for the visual effects community affiliated with the Visual Effects Society.
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