Hot solution reaps dividends for Pepper's Ghost Productions

'Tiny Planets', the 3D animated children's series now showing daily on CITV and about to be made available on a BBC CD, has been produced using a combination of Discreet's 3ds max systems and the powerful RenderFarm solution from Freehand.
The 65 x 5-minute episodes of the 'Tiny Planets' series, which is aimed at three to six year olds, focuses on the adventures of Bing and Bong as they travel through their tiny universe on a space-age fluffy white sofa. The series has already achieved huge success, not just in the UK and the USA, but in 80 different territories around the world. It has spawned a wide range of commercial activities, including a BAFTA award-winning website, and a book deal with Carlton Books.
Pepper's Ghost Productions co-produced the series over a four-year period with Sesame Workshop. The company focuses on long-form computer animation and because of this, fast and cost-effective rendering is an integral part of their business model.
Carl Goodman, Director of R&D at Pepper's Ghost, said: "We spent a considerable amount of time evaluating different technology options and there were some interesting alternatives, but when it came down to hard commercial realities, the Freehand RenderFarm solution offered considerably more 'bangs-for-bucks' than any of the other systems we had looked at."
Pepper's Ghost originally purchased a RenderFarm installation comprising 18 modules. As long-term users of Discreet's 3ds max solution, they had a need for a specific, powerful rendering farm of processors to take over the job of managing and rendering big animation scenes.
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