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I worked at dneg when this very shot was being rendered. From what I remeber there were a few steps to this being rendered, the first part was a massive partic

I worked at dneg when this very shot was being rendered. From what I remeber there were a few steps to this being rendered, the first part was a massive particle sim. I was a systems engineer, so my job was to keep the system running. That particle sim ate at least 7, if not more hard disks. What ever it did, it destroyed 8tb HDDs. The worst part was we couldn't take that file server offline, as the render needed to finish. But, not only was the render hammering and eating disks, the raid array was desperatly trying to rebuild the groups at the same time. As soon as the group was rebuilt, another disk would fail. so much joy. As soon as we had some slack, we migrated away from that server and gave something less stressful to do.

mschwaig 8y ago
AFAICT the parent comment is referring to Double Negative (dneg). The visual effects company responsible for the black hole shots in the movie Interstellar.
matachuan 8y ago
I so love this kind of behind the scene story
xabuq 8y ago
Sometimes I think about what kind of yak shaving it takes to put together some menial technical detail, and I just throw the idea out, if it doesn't feel like the implementation is clean enough. If someone told me that in order to take a picture of some natural landscape, I'd have to throw 7 brand new 8TB hard drives in the garbage, in order to capture a 64 megapixel image, I'd say "not worth it." It challenges one's natural disinclination towards waste. I think that's a pretty normal gut response. Gifted with an a priori awareness of certainty of return on investment, it makes sense dive in, get knee deep, ignore the intuition that wells up around thoughts of sunk cost fallacies, and push through the hard parts. But when you're not a fortune teller, that risk aversion tends to help, more than harm. But, you know, maybe that's the kind of thing that separates people like me from true success.
- KaiserPro 8y ago
  To put this in more context: at the time there were 32 file servers, each with a 60 disk array attached. Thats almost 2000 spinny disks. At that scale we'd expect about one failing disk every two weeks+. We were covered by a 24/7/365 4 hour warranty. This means that a replacement disk will appear within 4 hours, anytime of the year. From what I understand the old disks are taken back, examined, refurbished and sent out again. I've heard that its often head alignmet, and or track setup issues that cause the most problems. But yeah, there is waste.... +in practice we had a lot more disks than this, as we needed fast online backup. so we'd normally have at least two failed disks a week.
ghusbands 8y ago
You're talking about a different black hole render. This is an original project that runs on consumer hardware.
- KaiserPro 8y ago
  ....yes, yes I am.

mschwaig 8y ago

AFAICT the parent comment is referring to Double Negative (dneg). The visual effects company responsible for the black hole shots in the movie Interstellar.

matachuan 8y ago

I so love this kind of behind the scene story

xabuq 8y ago

Sometimes I think about what kind of yak shaving it takes to put together some menial technical detail, and I just throw the idea out, if it doesn't feel like the implementation is clean enough. If someone told me that in order to take a picture of some natural landscape, I'd have to throw 7 brand new 8TB hard drives in the garbage, in order to capture a 64 megapixel image, I'd say "not worth it." It challenges one's natural disinclination towards waste. I think that's a pretty normal gut response. Gifted with an a priori awareness of certainty of return on investment, it makes sense dive in, get knee deep, ignore the intuition that wells up around thoughts of sunk cost fallacies, and push through the hard parts. But when you're not a fortune teller, that risk aversion tends to help, more than harm. But, you know, maybe that's the kind of thing that separates people like me from true success.

KaiserPro 8y ago
To put this in more context: at the time there were 32 file servers, each with a 60 disk array attached. Thats almost 2000 spinny disks. At that scale we'd expect about one failing disk every two weeks+. We were covered by a 24/7/365 4 hour warranty. This means that a replacement disk will appear within 4 hours, anytime of the year. From what I understand the old disks are taken back, examined, refurbished and sent out again. I've heard that its often head alignmet, and or track setup issues that cause the most problems. But yeah, there is waste.... +in practice we had a lot more disks than this, as we needed fast online backup. so we'd normally have at least two failed disks a week.

ghusbands 8y ago

You're talking about a different black hole render. This is an original project that runs on consumer hardware.

KaiserPro 8y ago
....yes, yes I am.