TORN Staffer Amyd from our Special Effects Page sends in the following article from ‘New Zealand Info Tech’ via Stuff.co.nz:
Weta buys SGI hardware for Lord of the Rings rendering
Peter Jackson’s special effects company Weta Digital has bought 16 SGI servers to help render The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. [More]
Amyd also adds the following:
The computers WETA purchased are worth around $5500 each, that brand is particularly favorite amongst special effects houses (one in particular bought 200 of the same). They will be used in what is known as a render-farm, probably running the Linux version of RenderMan (a rendering tool made by Pixar).