Time-constrained Animation Rendering on Desktop Grids

Abstract

The computationally intensive nature of high-fidelity rendering has led to a dependence on parallel infrastructures for generating animations. However, such an infrastructure is expensive thereby restricting easy access to highfidelity animations to organisations which can afford such resources. A desktop grid formed by aggregating idle resources in an institution is an inexpensive alternative, but it is inherently unreliable due to the non-dedicated nature of the architecture. A naive approach to employing desktop grids for rendering animations could lead to potential inconsistencies in the quality of the rendered animation as the available computational performance fluctuates. Hence, fault-tolerant algorithms are required for efficiently utilising a desktop grid. This paper presents a novel fault-tolerant rendering algorithm for generating high-fidelity animations in a user-defined time-constraint. Time-constrained computation provides an elegant way of harnessing desktop grids as otherwise makespan cannot be guaranteed. The algorithm uses multi-dimensional quasi-random sampling for load balancing, aimed at achieving the best visual quality across the whole animation even in the presence of faults. The results show that the presented algorithm is largely insensitive to temporal variations in computational power of a desktop grid, making it suitable for employing in deadline-driven production environments.