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 hyperrealistic rendering of imaginary
environments
Propose best practice for Animation Virtual
Organisations
Description
PGP Ltd
WP1: VO Study
WP2: Capture of sequences
WP6: Distributed Rendering
WP3: Specialisation of software
EPCC
WP4: Grid enabling S/Correlator
WP5: Image streaming
Glasgow
Status
Project completed at end of 2004
Remaining activity since then limited to
preparation of journal articles and final
report.
Achievements
EPCC:
Produced Virtual Organisation report
Built Resource Locator for Parallelisation
Developed a Remote Rendering Service integrated with
3dStudio for PGP
GU :
Developed parallelised matcher based on Pi calculus
Integrated and tested Pi calculus system with EPCC resource
locator
Set up a resource locator server at Glasgow
Developed video sequence conforming software
PGP :
Built CGA sequences using material produced by GU
Jointly developed approach to remote rendering of sequences
Dissemination
GGF-March 2004
Presentation to All Hands 2004
Award of A H Reeve Premium by IEE in Jan 2005
Presentation to be given to 2nd International
Workshop on Middleware for Grid Computing, in
Toronto
Demonstration given to Pinewood Studios of the
animation technique
2 Presentations to ITI Techmedia
Papers published – see subs page.
Code and documents available from website.
Papers published or accepted
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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
The PGP Grid Project, Cockshott, W.P., Yarmolenko, V. Mackenzie, L.
Borland, E. Graham,P. Ju,X. , All Hands Conference, Nottingham, (2004).
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)
Pre-commercial 3D Digital TV studio, Cockshott, W.P., Nebel, J-C., to
appear in IEE Proc. Vision, Image & Signal Processing
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 Goodman
Peter Stansfield (Wavecrest)
Glasgow University:
Paul Cockshott
Lewis MacKenzie
Ewan Borland
Viktor Yarmolenko
EPCC:
Kostas Kavoussanakis
Ali Anjomshoaa
Paul Graham
Gavin Pringle
Technical Achievements – JPie
The versions of GridFTP available do not support memoryto-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 p-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
LocatorDataModel
Database
LocatorResourceRequestService
LocatorRegistryService
InitiatorClient
ServentClient
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 farm
This involves:
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
PGP (Client-Side)
Remote Farm (Server-Side)
3ds max 6
Web Server
RRS-GUI
RRSJavaServer
Animator
Farm
RRSDOSClient
4
3ds max 6
Backburner 2
5
RRSJavaClient
6
RRSJavaGftpClient
1
2
Rendering config & .max files
GridFTP
3