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I don't see them protesting Veggie Tales.

:-P

I'm sure that Veggie Tales would do fine as well. Plus this seems to be their specialty, anyway... animated veggies, that is.

He'll learn about the true meaning of Christmas, anyway. (-: Is that a random enough reply for you? My first idea for a response was "scratch the "more", and probably the "informed", too". :-)

Having worked on it, here is some more information:

3-2-1 Penguins!

Same company as " Jonah a Veggietales movie", which is still in the theaters.

I don't know how Penguins is currenly being produced but the first three episodes were created on SGI Octanes and rendered on Linux boxes. Jonah was created on both Linux and SGI systems as well as being rendered on Linux boxes (500+ dual proc systems).

Not as big or as fancy as finding Nemo, but it also cost 1/10th to produce as Monsters Inc. $12MM vs $150MM. Although not number 1 in the box office, it has been in the top ten every week but one since released.

-Tim

CGI, in and of itself, is not the problem. The problem is George Lucas, and his lack of artistic taste. There are good examples of CG characters that do engage an audience, and display life and personality. Pixar and Big Idea come to mind. CG is just a tool.

Many CG studios have gone through some rounds of lay offs the last year.
And Shrek was not that good of movie. The script was so-so and the character movemnt was only believable on the donkey... and sometimes Shrek.
Monsters, Inc on the otherhand did an excellent job. Pixar does a good job of making things look right.
Also .. another studio making a feature length CG movie is Big Idea doing an adaptation of Jonah. (Got to throw a plug in somewhere ;)

Enter a tall, thin chap in a black cloak and bearing a huge white feather, who sets about banishing you to the IPT.

For those of you who don't have children, the IPT reference is to the Island of Perpetual Tickling. To understand it, you need to watch VeggieTales. They're great! The particular reference is to
Esther.

I agree that most adults consider animated films 'kids' movies, but with that, the movies you mention are about the only ones capable of making people 'sit up and take notice'.

Don't get me wrong, I love animated films, and have seen most of the US released animated films. But until the recent films from Dreamworks, most of the non-Disney animation has been mediocre at best.

But now, with Chicken Run, Prince of Egypt, TS1, TS2, and the wonderful Veggie Tales, "adults" are seeing more high quality 'cartoons' causing them to pay more attention to this genre of film.
-----
D. Fischer

Big Idea made the same decision not too long ago.
I never bothered to figure out what the cost/performance ratio was between the two platforms. I just knew that Linux was a lot cheaper.

The thing that suprises me is that they only have 16 boxes... and that this is newsworthy. We have 42 (with almost exactly the same config) and plan on ordering more in the near future.

One other difference is that they are using RenderMan and we are using Maya's renderer, which has recently been ported to Linux. For the type of work that we do, Maya is more than enough for us. Also, we hardly have any frame times of an hour... if we do, I yell and scream to get it cut down. The difference is that we are only rendering to 724x486. The use a higher resolution for the big screen, we only have to wory about NTSC for now.

The prices quoted in the article seem to be inflated a bit too. Unless they are quoted in the NZ dollar and that is about a 2-1 with the American. Octanes should be about $20k in the States. Linux boxes similarly configured, from VA, which we use, instead of SGI, are in the $5-6k range.

The performance boost that we have got from adding the Linux boxes is amazing. We went from being able to render on 50 MIPS CPU's 14 hours a day to rendering on an aditional 84 Intel CPU's 24 hours a day. The comparison in render speed is about 1-1, slightly infavor of the MIPS chip.

When it is all said and done, a move like this should be a no brainer to any studio. Rendering needs horsepower and system memory, both of which are cheaper in the Intel world. SysAdmins need Unix for ease of administrating and lack of down time... every studio I know considers the render system to be H.A. (high availablity). When things go down, projects get delayed... and that is a big no no in the production world (think of all the billboards you see with release dates on them... months in advance). Linux is a great choice for this.

The only drawback is that the SGI boxes have the ccNuma interface, which is great for single frame renders.

I know that I have posted many times on /. about rendering and Linux vs. SGI. It is great that there is now a story dedicated to it.

FWIW: Our next two videos are the first to use our Linux render farm. Esther is at least 3/4 rendered on Linux boxes and Penguins will be mostly, if not all, rendered on Linux boxes.

-Tim Toll
Render Architect
Big Idea Productions

Big Idea made the same decision not too long ago.
I never bothered to figure out what the cost/performance ratio was between the two platforms. I just knew that Linux was a lot cheaper.

The thing that suprises me is that they only have 16 boxes... and that this is newsworthy. We have 42 (with almost exactly the same config) and plan on ordering more in the near future.

One other difference is that they are using RenderMan and we are using Maya's renderer, which has recently been ported to Linux. For the type of work that we do, Maya is more than enough for us. Also, we hardly have any frame times of an hour... if we do, I yell and scream to get it cut down. The difference is that we are only rendering to 724x486. The use a higher resolution for the big screen, we only have to wory about NTSC for now.

The prices quoted in the article seem to be inflated a bit too. Unless they are quoted in the NZ dollar and that is about a 2-1 with the American. Octanes should be about $20k in the States. Linux boxes similarly configured, from VA, which we use, instead of SGI, are in the $5-6k range.

The performance boost that we have got from adding the Linux boxes is amazing. We went from being able to render on 50 MIPS CPU's 14 hours a day to rendering on an aditional 84 Intel CPU's 24 hours a day. The comparison in render speed is about 1-1, slightly infavor of the MIPS chip.

When it is all said and done, a move like this should be a no brainer to any studio. Rendering needs horsepower and system memory, both of which are cheaper in the Intel world. SysAdmins need Unix for ease of administrating and lack of down time... every studio I know considers the render system to be H.A. (high availablity). When things go down, projects get delayed... and that is a big no no in the production world (think of all the billboards you see with release dates on them... months in advance). Linux is a great choice for this.

The only drawback is that the SGI boxes have the ccNuma interface, which is great for single frame renders.

I know that I have posted many times on /. about rendering and Linux vs. SGI. It is great that there is now a story dedicated to it.

FWIW: Our next two videos are the first to use our Linux render farm. Esther is at least 3/4 rendered on Linux boxes and Penguins will be mostly, if not all, rendered on Linux boxes.

-Tim Toll
Render Architect
Big Idea Productions

Well, if you want to work there, then go hit the careers area of their web site. They're hiring -- if you don't mind moving to Chicago.

--willdye

P. S. It just occurred to me that there's something really appropriate about using Linux boxes to do an animated series about space-faring penguins . I guess it's only a matter of time before Tux the penguin makes a cameo appearance. Maybe even a Tux-like regular character? Hmm. They should at least give him the appropriate accent. Remember, Big Idea, it's "Leenus", not "Liinus". Think pickled herring, not Peanuts. :-)

Well, if you want to work there, then go hit the careers area of their web site. They're hiring -- if you don't mind moving to Chicago.

--willdye

P. S. It just occurred to me that there's something really appropriate about using Linux boxes to do an animated series about space-faring penguins . I guess it's only a matter of time before Tux the penguin makes a cameo appearance. Maybe even a Tux-like regular character? Hmm. They should at least give him the appropriate accent. Remember, Big Idea, it's "Leenus", not "Liinus". Think pickled herring, not Peanuts. :-)

I come from a studio of 50+ octanes and 40+ VA Linux boxes and we use Maya exclusively. This announcement has been expected, but it has been a long time in the waiting. I figure that A|W should have done this earlier, but I would rather wait for a stable product than get an earlier release with bugs.
SGI has had a box to support this for at least a month, yet no good products to use on it. This will be a welcome addition to our studio as I am sure to studios everywhere.

A few corrections...
Phil's wife's name is Lisa.
Mike Nawrocki and Phil Visher do about 3/4 of the voices, Lisa does her share as well. The rest are friends and family, employees and a few hired guns.
It is true that we beat Toy Story to the punch, and we have also had tremendous video sales as well. Most of the studio uses octanes for for animating and rendering. We have a few 02s as well.
We currently started using Maya for our new prject, having use SoftImage in the past.
I can try to answer any other questions that you might have: ttoll@bigidea.com

Hey, has anyone here ever seen VeggieTales? Those things rock...They're Christian 30-minute videos aimed at younger kids (I'm not trying to start a religious war here; I just mean to say they're great animation) but they have lots of jokes aimed at adults...and the animation is absolutely beautiful. Quite witty. There's this cucumber named Larry, a tomato named Bob, an asparagus named Junior. All of them are voiced by the creator, Phil Vischer, or his wife, Amy. More information is probably here...

It's absolutely hilarious and very hip. If you like CG stuff, check out Veggietales--it's what really got me interested in computer generated animation.

I am a Christian, and I'm a geek. My brother and sister-in-law don't allow thier two kids to watch TT becuase they are just stupid. The show's mostly nonsense. The kids love to watch VeggieTales, and I really like to watch them, too. Not only do they have good morals, they can be pretty funny at times (imagine "Monty Python" doing Christian children's programming -- if you can). Plus (my favorite part) the whole thing is CG, done in SoftImage. You know there's gotta be some geeks in that company.