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Also, if I remember correctly, they were some of the first to experiment with particle renders for CG (they used it in the Mask to create some of the storm/tornado transformations).

ILM introduced the concept of particle systems for film. It was first used for the Genesis Sequence in Star Trek 2. William Reeves then presented a paper at SIGGRAPH 83. He was also awarded an Academy SciTech award for it:

Particle Systems -- a Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects
Particle Systems
Particle Systems SciTech Award

Look at all they have done. While some of the stuff on there may have sucked... there is some really fucking good stuff on there.

I have a more complete list and that doesn't even include the hundreds of commercials they worked on:

ILM credits

I have some linked from my site:

ILM technology

You might want to check this one from 2003 which talks a bit about what they were planning for their new network at the Presidio:

10g Muscle

Well Hulk had all sorts of shots including several transformations which meant going between tight/loose/ripped clothing (with sometimes switchovers from real to CG clothing).

As far as Pirates, where do you get the clothes were merged in? Did you think they got some skinny actors and copmed real clothes in ;-). Actually you can see the cloth sims here:

TechTV Segements on T3 and Pirates of the Caribbean Online

In many of the shows I mentioned it was full CG cloth shown.

And just because clothing is tight it doesn't mean it's easy. Just dealing with the self collisions wih the body would drive any normal person insane. If you can get the SIGGRAPH 2001, course 36 notes it discusses some of the technical challenges of creating clothing for Boo in Monsters Inc.

There are other examples like on the Matrix sequels, the Stuart Little films, all sorts of digital stunt doubles, etc.

Very nice! I've had Jensen's original paper on subsurface scattering, and of course the bit in his book for some time now, but I'd missed the papers on accelerating it for practical use in a production environment.

Thanks for posting the relevant links on your site and welcome to my friends list.

Will we now see Photorealistic Renderman come out for OSX and the G5? Hopefully?

Actually around last SIGGRAPH they mentioned that if you were interested on that to email them. If there was enough interest they would probably start a beta test program. Not sure what came of it though. They have already benchmarked PRMan on G5, actually they had them running it at their booth last SIGGRAPH.

PRMan on a G5

Will the rendering farm also be switching to the G5 in the future, ala Virginia Tech?

Well they just switched to Linux RackSaver servers last year.

Pixar switches from Sun to Intel

ILM has won 23 Sci-Tech awards (not counting the RenderMan ones, which while the research was started when Pixar was still part of Lucasfilm , they werfe awarded after they spun off). Pixar has 3 per se, though as td pointed out some stuff they have won when they were still at Lucasfilm (particle systems, math principles of digital compositing, etc.).

I list the ILM award, plus some done by poeple later that left here:

ILM Academy Awards

Many other companies have won. Some of the Sci-Tech awards have been shared, like the DID was between ILM and Tippett Studio, and ILM, the Computer Film Company (now part of Famestore/CFC) and other have won for film scanning and digital compositing, PDI has won for their facial animation system and fluid dynamics, etc.

Also the winner have been known for more than a month:

Scientific and Technical Achievements Honored with Academy Awards

Besides Massive there were 2 other software related. There was the initial subsurface scatteting research done at Stanford (the Henrik Wann Jensen paper from SIGGRAPH 2001), and the first practical application of subsurface scattering by Christophe Hery of ILM and Joe Letteri and Ken McGaugh of Weta (although both were at ILM prior to joining the Two Towers, the initail reserch was done at ILM for Ep. 2). I have two writeups on those:

ILM Wins 2003 Sci-Tech Oscar for Subsurface Scattering
Star Wars Newsletter Discusses Christophe Hery Sci-Tech Oscar Win

Also the winner have been known for more than a month:

Scientific and Technical Achievements Honored with Academy Awards

Besides Massive there were 2 other software related. There was the initial subsurface scatteting research done at Stanford (the Henrik Wann Jensen paper from SIGGRAPH 2001), and the first practical application of subsurface scattering by Christophe Hery of ILM and Joe Letteri and Ken McGaugh of Weta (although both were at ILM prior to joining the Two Towers, the initail reserch was done at ILM for Ep. 2). I have two writeups on those:

ILM Wins 2003 Sci-Tech Oscar for Subsurface Scattering
Star Wars Newsletter Discusses Christophe Hery Sci-Tech Oscar Win

I wasn't even aware that T3 brought anything new to special effects stage.

That's a naive statement on the state of VFX. Not particularly directed at you but a large number of people just go by the looks without knowing what goes on behind the scenes.

T3 was the subject of several SIGGRAPH (the most important conference and organization related to computer graphics) sketches and even one SIGGRAPH paper (one of the highest honors in CG research):

Smoke Simulation for Large Scale Phenomena
Big Bangs
Melting a Terminatrix
The Machines of T3
'T3' -- BETWEEN THE LAYERS
Fight the Future
Terminator 3 Evolves Historic Effect
TechTV Segements on T3 and Pirates of the Caribbean Online
T3: Man vs. Machine
Building a Believable Blockbuster

Not saying that the others weren't outstanding and innovative as well. Thye same point can be made about all the other bakeoff finalists.

Yes this is old news.

As far as the leading edge I guess having the biggest R&D dept. doesn't count, or having another paper (besides other presentations) atthis years SIGGRAPH doesn't count. Much of the technique for Gollum's skin (sub-surface scattering) came from an idea ILM made public at a RenderMan Users Group Meeting a few years ago. I guess those Sci-Tech Oscars a couple years ago, or something like the release of OpenEXR, were just figments of our imagination ;-):

Smoke Simulation For Large-Scale Phenomena
RenderMan, Theory and Practice
Creatures, Critters & Clones: Styles and Techniques Unique to Industrial Light + Magic
Academy 2001 Sci-Tech winners
ILM Sci_Tech awards

No need to apologize, I didn't find you rude or anything, except maybe passionate. As I said on re-reading my first post I think I didn't do a good job of expressing my ideas. It's not that I don't think Carmack will be right eventually (I just disagree on the timeline) or that many FX are rushed (I sure know several examples), I just couldn't find the right words :-).

As far as people from ILM I've met plenty at SIGGRAPH (attendee since 95), usually I've spoken with a few of them for a few min. I've got an acquaintance there but we only email evry so often since he is to busy. Heck I interviewed once there but I didn't get the job, oh well. Also I've inherited a page about ILM, The Unofficial ILM website:

The Unofficial ILM Website

Because of that I now have a relationship with ILM PR and they are sometimes very gracious in providing info and scoops. They even introduced me to a fwe people where I almost had a heart attack but that's beside the point.

My best suggestion is to get involved with SIGGRAPH (if you have a local chapter). If not, start saving and go to next year's SIGGRAPH, in San Diego. That's the most important event for VFX and the biggestrecruitment event for ILM and other houses. You can certainly makes losts of contacts ther and actually talk to all these people and they can give you great advice. First time I went my eyes opened, I really didn't know how much was FX all about. In case you haven't gone to one I have a primer on the conference:

SIGGRAPH 2003
SIGGRAPH Primer

If not you can contact me at the site forums.

No need to apologize, I didn't find you rude or anything, except maybe passionate. As I said on re-reading my first post I think I didn't do a good job of expressing my ideas. It's not that I don't think Carmack will be right eventually (I just disagree on the timeline) or that many FX are rushed (I sure know several examples), I just couldn't find the right words :-).

As far as people from ILM I've met plenty at SIGGRAPH (attendee since 95), usually I've spoken with a few of them for a few min. I've got an acquaintance there but we only email evry so often since he is to busy. Heck I interviewed once there but I didn't get the job, oh well. Also I've inherited a page about ILM, The Unofficial ILM website:

The Unofficial ILM Website

Because of that I now have a relationship with ILM PR and they are sometimes very gracious in providing info and scoops. They even introduced me to a fwe people where I almost had a heart attack but that's beside the point.

My best suggestion is to get involved with SIGGRAPH (if you have a local chapter). If not, start saving and go to next year's SIGGRAPH, in San Diego. That's the most important event for VFX and the biggestrecruitment event for ILM and other houses. You can certainly makes losts of contacts ther and actually talk to all these people and they can give you great advice. First time I went my eyes opened, I really didn't know how much was FX all about. In case you haven't gone to one I have a primer on the conference:

SIGGRAPH 2003
SIGGRAPH Primer

If not you can contact me at the site forums.

Pretty please don't slashdot me ;-). Too bad I didn't mirror the article, didn't expect it on Slashdot. I also collected the other articles that came out yesterday. Probably the other two inetersting ones are from VFXPro and CGW:

Episode 2 VFX Work Discussed Around the Net

Not the official ILM site but has good insight and has been following the ILM ports.

I saw Davey Goelz (Gonzo, and others) at Siggraph this year, at the Henson booth on the show floor.

Henson booth? I think you meant the Pulse3D booth on which they have appeared the last 2 SIGGRAPHs, probably one of the most popular booths thanks to the Henson presentation and the nifty collectible. Unless I was really blind, drunk or sleepless while at the Exhibition floor ;-) (and not too difficult when it was in New Orleans). I got a smallish picture of them:

Jim henson Cretature Shop guys at the Pulse3D booth during SIGGRAPH 2001

Pretty nifty stuff.

Actually ILM is indeed making moves to Linux. Surprisingly they said the Linux was more ready for desktops than servers for them. There were a couple of srticles about this, one in CGW (requires free registration):

Linux Invades Hollywood

But here is the relevant section for those that don't want to register:

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is still porting its code and will begin using Linux on its next movie after Star Wars, Episode II (release date May 2002). Director of research and development Andy Hendrickson says, "We're on schedule to replace about 20 percent of our 600 desktops and 20 percent of our renderfarm with Linux PCs in October. We'll be supporting both Irix and Linux to keep from shocking the system. Right now we're doing a lot of spring cleaning, looking at five million lines of existing code to decide what should be ported and what to retire." ILM uses both its own tools and commercial programs such as Maya and SoftImage.

For flipbook playback of high-resolution movies, ILM has ported its Irix Quicktime-compatible player to Linux. Generally speaking, the players that are available for for Real, Quicktime, MPEG-1, and AVI don't do well above 320-by-240 pixels. But with Linux, says Hendrickson, "we've got flipbook playback of movies working at 1280-by-700 pixels and 24 frames per second-as wide as the typical monitor. We're hoping to bring that to full 2K-by-1K soon." ILM plans to release its flipbook movie player, internal file formats, and batch job scheduler as open source.

You can find a couple more references at the website I help mantain:

ILM and Linux

If the statements are correct, that would probably make MIB2 the first ILM project completely done in Linux, but I still have to check. Still you are right for the most part ILM is an SGI house, though don't forget about the Rebel Mac Unit.

In response to the parent of this, while Maya might run under NT and PCs, there is still software that doesn't like Infernos, ILM in house compositing system, Sabre, is based on Inferno. And there are other examples though are probably very specialized apps.