PGP Grid

NeSC Review

May 2005

Description and Aims

Apply real time 3D vision technology to animation production.Apply remote parallel processing to real time 3D vision.Apply remote parallel processing to hyper-realistic rendering of imaginary environmentsPropose best practice for Animation Virtual Organisations

Description

PGP LtdPGP Ltd

GlasgowGlasgowEPCCEPCC

WP1: VO Study

WP6: Distributed Rendering

WP4: Grid enabling S/Correlator

WP5: Image streaming

WP2: Capture of sequences

WP3: Specialisation of software

Status

Project completed at end of 2004Remaining activity since then limited to preparation of journal articles and final report.

Achievements

EPCC: Produced Virtual Organisation report Built Resource Locator for ParallelisationDeveloped a Remote Rendering Service integrated with 3dStudio for PGP

GU :Developed parallelised matcher based on Pi calculusIntegrated and tested Pi calculus system with EPCC resource locatorSet up a resource locator server at GlasgowDeveloped video sequence conforming software

PGP :Built CGA sequences using material produced by GUJointly developed approach to remote rendering of sequences

Dissemination

GGF-March 2004Presentation to All Hands 2004Award of A H Reeve Premium by IEE in Jan 2005Presentation to be given to 2nd International Workshop on Middleware for Grid Computing, in TorontoDemonstration given to Pinewood Studios of the animation technique2 Presentations to ITI Techmedia Papers published – see subs page.Code and documents available from website.

Papers published or accepted

1. 3D Performance Capture for Facial Animation, MacVicar, D.W., Ford, S., Borland ,E., Rixon, R.C., Patterson, J.W., Cockshott, W.P., 3DPVT, Thessaloniki, Greece, IEEE Computer Society Press, (2004), ISBN/ISSN: 0-7695-2223-8

2. The PGP Grid Project, Cockshott, W.P., Yarmolenko, V. Mackenzie, L. Borland, E. Graham,P. Ju,X. , All Hands Conference, Nottingham, (2004).

3. JPIE INTERFACE: A Java Implementation of the PI-Calculus for Grid Computing, Yarmolenko, V., Cockshott, P., Borland, E., Mackenzie, L., Graham, P., Proceedings Middleware Grid Conference, Toronto-Canada (Oct 2004)

4. Pre-commercial 3D Digital TV studio, Cockshott, W.P., Nebel, J-C., to appear in IEE Proc. Vision, Image & Signal Processing

5. Applying the Grid to Cartoon Animation , Lewis Mackenzie, Paul Cockshott, Viktor Yarmolenko, Ewan Borland, Paul Graham, Kostas Kavoussanakis, to appear in Concurrency and Computation : Practice and Experience.

Exploitation

Presentation to Pinewood Studios. Possible use in Captain Scarlet. Need better handling of eyes and mouth. We upgraded the handling of head pose and eyes in response to this.Proposal to EPSRC for follow on project – rated of fundable quality but funds not awarded.Development proposal to ITI Techmedia, this was rejected on the grounds that the world market for digital motion capture too small to justify the investment.

Project Participants

PGP Productions Ltd:Carl GoodmanPeter Stansfield (Wavecrest)

Glasgow University:Paul CockshottLewis MacKenzieEwan BorlandViktor Yarmolenko

EPCC:Kostas KavoussanakisAli AnjomshoaaPaul GrahamGavin Pringle

Technical Achievements – JPieThe versions of GridFTP available do not support memory-to-memory transfer, which is required by our application.Lack of GridFTP server implementations on Windows has been a serious concern, with respect to cross platform use. This is especially the case when more than half the machines available to us are running Windows.Further investigation revealed that the existing GridFTP protocols are not available in pure Java versions. We regard this as desirable to allow our matching harness to have a light software footprint on machines such as teaching lab equipment running Windows. Milner’s π-Calculus provides the ability to transfer communications channels along communications channels in addition to image data itself, which is advantageous to our application for establishing dynamic data-flow graphs in the processing of image streams. Resource locator incorporated into the Jpie system.

Technical Achievements – ILS

As part of its code, each -Calculus node can solve a problem or pass it to other, willing nodes to do it on its behalf

A node can pass its communications channels allowing dynamic configuration of data-flow graphs.Lookup for willing nodes is done through our Resource Locator Service (aka ILS – Initiator, Locator, Servent)

A webservice that allows Servents to register with JPie and Initiators to locate Servents fulfilling their criteria

Technical Achievements – ILSLocatorHolds a database of resourcesHosts web services for updating and querying the databaseBrokers resource requests

Servent (Server Entity)Contacts the Locator with its resource descriptionUpdates the Locator with its resource status

InitiatorRequests resource(s) from the Locator

InitiatorClient

LocatorResourceRequestService LocatorRegistryService

LocatorDataModel

ServentClient

Database

Technical Achievements – RRS

The Remote Rendering Service (RRS) is a webservice which allows the submission, control and monitoring of rendering jobs on a remote, 3D-StudioMax farmThis involves:

A user-interface integrated to 3D-StudioMaxAuthentication at the remote farmSeamless transfer of appropriate files to and from the farm

Technical Achievements – RRS

Remote Farm (Server-Side)PGP (Client-Side)

Animator

3ds max 6

RRS-GUI

RRSDOSClient

RRSJavaClient

Web Server

3ds max 6

Backburner 2

RRSJavaServer

GridFTP

Farm

1

Rendering config & .max files3

4

6RRSJavaGftpClient

5

2