Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Alias|Wavefront Ships Linux Software

Posted by Hemos on from the making-things-look-pretty dept.

NumberCruncher wrote to us from the rendering front, where Alias|Wavefront has announced that it has shipped Maya Batch Renderer for Linux. The software does optimized tile-based rendering and selective ray-tracing.

3 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's just the renderer... by hkon · · Score: 4

    Yes, it's just the renderer, and yes, that's a big deal because the machines that is used for the content-creation are most likely SGI, Intergraph or the like, and Linux doesn't have support for that kind of hardware anyway. At least, not yet. With this software, Content creators can use one machine with $OPERATING_SYSTEM on it and several hundred (assuming he can afford) machines running Linux doing the actual rendering, which is the time-consuming and expensive part of 3D-creation. Throw out the SGI Onyx, replace it with 200 Athlons running Linux, and you have an open, more flexible, and quite possibly cheaper and faster (i won't speculate) rendering engine.

  2. Softimage was there for a long time by Ainis · · Score: 4

    No big deal.

    Softimage uses a very cool renderer called mental ray and it has been available for linux for a long time.

    Also Pixar's Renderman (used in Toy Story) is also available for linux.

    So Maya's softimage is one of the last of the leaders of 3d animation to join linux bandwagon. It's a little a bit strange that it happened so late considering that SGI (owner of Alias|Wavefront) seems to be so committed to linux.

  3. ray tracing by gnarphlager · · Score: 5

    who is Ray and why would we want to selectively trace him?

    --

    Bad things often happen to good people,
    It is up to them to see that they remain good.