The finest visual effects shot breakdowns you are ever likely to see.

[TheANIMAL]

Weta Digital


Until weta do their next massive cgi film :P

[ZitaX]

Thats amasing! Wish i could see how every single piece of the movie was made

I wonder what kind of computers they had to use to render all that. Must all be custom buildt super computers!

[TheANIMAL]

Probably a mixture of workstation IBM /intel processors and i'd hazard a guess at NVidia Quattro GFX cards.

Unlike the processors and graphics cards that most people have which are geared more towards gaming and and less extreme computing, worksation equipment usually has far more memory and is tailor built to deal with supercomputer-ish tasks, like rendering the most complex cgi movie in the world. Such components cost roughly 5-15 times more than what you're used to.

I tell you what though, even with all that horsepower in your pc, you probably wouldn't be able to run a modern pc game on them, because they're just not built to do it.

[Jeremiah]

I just had a thought: wouldn't be nice if, on a special edition Blu-ray/DVD release, they included the entire film, un-rendered, so we can watch the performance capture footage in all its glory? I'd love it.

[na'ring-tirea]

Thats amasing! Wish i could see how every single piece of the movie was made

I wonder what kind of computers they had to use to render all that. Must all be custom buildt super computers!

It took around 40000 processors and 104 Terabytes of RAM.

[TheANIMAL]

It took around 40000 processors and 104 Terabytes of RAM.

You know what is funny? In aobut 20 years or so, home computers could have a similar amount of RAM.

[HaloE6]

Weta Digital


Until weta do their next massive cgi film :P

that's Sargon from "Lord of the Rings"trilogy

[HaloE6]

It took around 40000 processors and 104 Terabytes of RAM.

if you can find it, check out "CINEFLEX" it has a comprehensive article about how James Cameron went about it. it has the painted face of "Neytiri" on it just before the battle. not quite a CRAY supercomputer but more than the space shuttle has.

[HaloE6]

I just had a thought: wouldn't be nice if, on a special edition Blu-ray/DVD release, they included the entire film, un-rendered, so we can watch the performance capture footage in all its glory? I'd love it.

that's what the "extras" are for. a seperate Blu-ray disc just for the "Making Of" James says he has another good 40mins of film he can edit into the film (extended sex scene) jees, go watch your cats in heat, if you're that perverse? right at the end, where Jake awakes in his avatar body, Neytiri whispers "I'm Pregnant"..LOL.

[HaloE6]

You know what is funny? In aobut 20 years or so, home computers could have a similar amount of RAM.

closer to 2-4 years