PGP Grid NeSC Review 18 March 2004

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 environments Propose best practice for Animation Virtual Organisations

Description PGP Ltd GlasgowEPCC WP1: VO Study WP6: Distributed Rendering WP4: Grid enabling S/Correlator WP5: Image streaming WP2: Capture of sequences WP3: Specialisation of software

Status Progress against plan All participants currently on schedule EPCC:  Finished Resource Locator  Working on Remote Rendering Service (due end October) GU has  Parallelised matching  Developed video sequence conforming software  Developed Jpie and integrated this with resource locator PGP has  Bult CGA sequences using material produced by GU  Jointly develop approach to remote rendering of sequences

Status Effort against plan 2 full time staff at GU EPCC has exceeded 15PM budget  WP6 (rendering) underestimated in original plan  Staff made available to finish off work Part of time of technical director of PGP GU has budget for 2 months more work on project, but need permission to extend Modifications to plan (letter to DTI) Java interface to π-Calculus instead of multi- stream GridFTP protocols Rendering on PC-farms rather than HPCx

Deliverables due DeliverableDelivered VO reportYes Sequences captured and delivered to Peppers Ghost Yes Resource locator for JPie – new deliverable added Yes GRID enabling of correlatorYes Image stream protocol developed – extended to JPie Yes Tool for conforming bodies to captured sequences Yes

Response to previous review Reviewers thought there is no Grid content in the project ILS and RRS software are both Webservices They are covered in the Technical Achievements section.

Technical Achievements – JPie The 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. We have just finished the incorporation of the resource locator 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 – ILS Locator Holds a database of resources Hosts web services for updating and querying the database Brokers resource requests Servent (Server Entity) Contacts the Locator with its resource description Updates the Locator with its resource status Initiator Requests resource(s) from the Locator

Technical Achievements – RRS The Remote Rendering Service (RRS) is a webservice which will allow the submission and monitoring of rendering jobs to a remote farm which runs 3D-StudioMax This will involve: A user-interface integrated to 3D-StudioMax Authentication at the remote farm Seamless 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 files RRSJavaGftpClient 5 2

Dissemination GGF-March Presentation to All Hands Presentation to be given to 2nd International Workshop on Middleware for Grid Computing, in Toronto Demonstration given to Pinewood Studios of the animation technique Paper submitted to IEE proceedings subsequent to winning A H Reeve Premium. Sources to go onto Nesc CVS server.

Exploitation Presentation to Pinewood Studios. Possible use in Captain Scarlet. Need better handling of eyes and mouth. We are producing a demo sequence to show them on this.

Future plans Technical work: WP1: update VO report to include:  animation-producing VOs  our experiences WP2:Repeat capture runs under better lighting conditions, incorporate sound WP3: improve stabilisation of skeletal components of the head through pose recovery WP4/5: further testing of JPie in conjunction with resource locator

Future plans WP6: software and images  Deliver Webservices-based Remote Rendering Service by end October  Render using 3DS-Max, controlling the farm from animator site, but routing via Webservices

Future plans Development of CPU time trading protocols for the GRID. Areas of future application of the 3D technology: Virtual stunt performers Virtual actors for interactive applications Virtual performers for 'drama' orientated CGI.

Project Participants PGP Productions Ltd: Carl Goodman Peter Stansfield (Wavecrest) Glasgow University: Paul Cockshott Lewis MacKenzie Ewan Borland Viktor Yarmolenko EPCC: Kostas Kavoussanakis Ali Anjomshoaa Paul Graham Gavin Pringle