From Management Information Systems $4$th Edition by RAINER $-$ PRINCE $-$ WASTON

Case Study: Disney Animation Develops Software to Make Big Hero $6$

Opening Case

POM, Disney Animation Develops Software to Make Big Hero $6$

At Disney Animation $($www$.$disneyanimation.com$),$ technology is essential. The Disney animated motion picture Big Hero $6$ centers on a robot $($Baymax$)$ and a robotics prodigy $($Hiro$)$ who form a superhero group and take on a villain in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo. This city, a mash$-$up of San Francisco and Tokyo, is located on a large bay and has many skyscrapers and flashing neon lights.

MIS, The hero of Big Hero $6$ is not necessarily Baymax, but, rather,

the artists and software engineers who developed the tech$-$ nology behind this hit motion picture. This animated film is the first ever produced with Hyperion, a software package created by Disney that simulates the behavior of light. That is$,$ the software attempts to create light the way we actually see it in the real world. The software must mimic the many obstacles the sun's rays encounter in our atmos$-$ phere and then diffuse the light the same way natural light does.

The software, which took two years and $200$ million comput$-$ ing hours to develop, is what provides Big Hero $6$ with its cinematic imagery and depth. Until Disney developed Hyperion, the company had never been able to use light in such a way. For example, the soft$-$ ware gives Baymax a transparent glow by allowing light to bounce around inside him.

Before Hyperion, the process of simulating light was tedious, because each ray of light's trajectory had to be individually tracked. A single frame of animation could contain several light sources, and each ray of light could bounce off multiple surfaces, making the calculation of those individual pathways computationally intensive.

Disney engineers spent so much time creating Hyperion because they were simulating $10$ billion rays of light bouncing around in each scene. Hyperion provides a softness, a depth to shadows, and lifelike highlights in every scene.

Disney needed huge amounts of processing power to produce the film. Three Disney server farms in Los Angeles and one in San Fran$-$ cisco were connected to create a supercomputer of $4,600$ servers that contained $55,000$ central processing units $($CPUs$).($We describe server farms in Plug IT In $4$ and supercomputers and CPUs in Plug IT In $2.)$ Coda, an automated information management system, integrated the information being processed from the four server farms. Because Dis$-$ ney artists could utilize such a huge amount of computational power to process the images, they could see their work the next morning.

Animated films typically take about four years to produce, and the Disney team was writing the Hyperion software and using it on Big Hero $6$ at the same time. One Disney software engineer explained, "The process was just like building a car while you were driving it$."$

And the result of using the Hyperion software? Big Hero $6$ cost $$165$ million to produce. By July $2015,$ the film had generated more

than $$600$ million in box office ticket sales worldwide. Big Hero $6$ also won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. Disney used Hyperion in its movie Zootopia, which the studio released in March $2016.$

Sources: Compiled from R$.$ Conli and A$.$ Hendrickson, "The Secrets Behind Disney's Latest Oscar$-$Winning Animation," Creative Blog, February $24,2015$; D$.$ Miller, "Software Behind 'Big Hero $6\text{'}$ Pushes Envelope on Computer Animation," The Los Angeles Times, February $20,2015$; K$.$ Costello, "Innovative Light Technology, Algorithmic Swarms, and an Inflatable Robot $-$ Big Hero $6$ Has It All!" Dogo News, December $4,2014$; T$.$ Hammond, "Disney Animation Team Pushes Technical Boundaries with Big Hero $6,"$ TechRepublic, November $28,2014$; S$.$ Karlin, "The Monster Supercomputing Achievement that Lights Up Disney's 'Big Hero $6,"$ Fast Company, November $28,2014$; J$.$ Volpe, "Disney Rendered Its New Animated on a $55,000-$ Core Supercomputer," Endgadget, October $18,2014$; S$.$ Ford, "Disney Creates New Digital Animation Process for 'Big Hero $6","$ Orlando Sentinel, October $20,2014$; M$.$ Seymour, "Disney's New Production Renderer 'Hyperion'$-$ Yes, Disney!" fxguide, October $13,2014$; www$.$disneyanimation.com, accessed July $24,2015.$

Questions

$1.$ Is Hyperion a strategic information system for Disney Animation? Why or why not? Provide specific examples to support your answer.

$2.$ Will Hyperion provide a sustainable competitive advantage for Disney Animation? Why or why not?

$3.$ Look ahead in this chapter. Which one of Porter's strategies for compet$-$ itive advantage is Disney pursuing? Explain your answer.

Note the following to be considered

Table of Contents, Executive Summary, Organizational Profile, Strategies, Technology Involved, Data Management and Identify the Stakeholders