Slashdot Mirror
Kaydara Announces FiLMBOX Support For Linux
Chicken can run writes: "Kaydara announced Thursday in a press release the port of FilmBox to Red Hat Linux V6.2. FilmBox is a real-time character animation and motion capture system and was the software behind the groovy slow-motion camera fx in The Matrix. What is interesting is that it is the first such system to be available on Red Hat Linux, opening further the door to major 3D production oportunities on the OS."
Personally, I think that it's stupid to port this stuff to Linux as long as it sags in the areas multimedia and real-time. This port would be better served for BeOS, where the latency for multimedia operations is much lower (and much more predictible). This isn't a flamebait against Linux, just a statement of the facts. Obviously they're looking for hype first before technological feasability.
Does this mean that we will see dirty, bearded, smelly, GNU hippies doing impossible feats like kung fu fighting, bullet dodging and absorbing, and jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper?
and the most important thing to me in production will not be the actors, nor the script, nor locations, talent, creativity, or anything else. I'm just excited that I can do rip-off Matrix-like visual effects under LINUX.
Uh, did SLASHDOT read this article?
We'll see impossible feats like dirty, bearded, smelly, GNU hippies avoiding caffeine and moving teir eyes away from the screen. If the special FX budget can stretch to it, we'll see them eat food that isn't Pizza.
They download a copy of RedHat Linux 6.2. They port their software to RedHat Linux 6.2. They test only on RedHat Linux 6.2. They release RPMs.
Now that the product is out the door, they will likely test on other distros, doing porting where necessary (different libs or locations, for instance). Anyway, that's what my company is doing.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Maybe when they say RedHat they mean it'll be bundled in the 2 zillion cd pack :) that they redhat sell for a few $
As someone who has used FiLMBOX on NT before, lemme tell ya.. WOOHOO!!!!! For as much as they claim that the deformation engine is threaded nad should be scaled over multiple processors, the looking I did revealed very little of that.. Though of course its hard to parallelize a deformation that's based on linear time data from a MoCap source. The point is that NT just didn't like FiLMBOX at all (BSOD's, driver crashes, odd OGL glitches) I blame part of it on the threading, part of it on NT and part of it on FiLMBOX.. Now that's it's ported to linux I have more control over the non-kaydera stuff and that makes me happy. Now, all I need is for them to support PVM and get large Beowulf with Myrinet interconnects...(Sorry.. It had to be said)
Gladly. Loki Setup is here. I'm attempting to propose that vendors of Linux applications shouldn't make any claims whatsoever about distrobution support and simply distribute their product in a distro-independent manner, much like Loki does. Nobody ever question's Loki's support of all distros, because they're not written to a specific one.
I see. So it's Red Hat's operating system now. Not Red Hat's distribution of _our_ operating system. Riiight.
In fairness to RH, since there's no 'about RH' paragraph this isn't a joint press release and RH may not have had a chance to correct the text.
On the other hand, some might say that this kind Linux^H Red Hat publicity != good.
-----
"I'm attempting to propose that vendors of Linux applications shouldn't make any claims whatsoever about distrobution support..."
Try all you like, it's not going to happen. Example: RedHat switched to glibc before other distros did (at 5.0, I think). So if I released a product for RedHat 5.0, I MEANT RedHat 5.0. It wouldn't work on Slackware 1.2.
You could argue "well, they should say 'glibc' not 'RedHat'"--and that's exactly what my company does. We say "RedHat 6.0 (or greater) OR any 'equivalent' distribution", where "equivalent" means "libraries blah, foo and bar".
But that STILL leaves aside testing. One of the absolute musts to do real testing is to have a baseline to compare against. So port your software to Distro X and test it. At that point you might as well release it. Then you can use that release the baseline for further tests.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I don't know much about Filmbox, but it's contribution to the Matrix was minimal. Primary tools for the Matrix were things like Maya, Softimage, Renderman, Cineon, Shake. Maya, Renderman and Shake are already on Linux. Cineon is dead, and Softimage is on the ropes. Most of the tools used to create movie vfx are being ported from SGI/Irix to Linux/FreeBSD/MacOSX since SGI has fallen way behind in the price/performance curve, and Microsoft hasn't been able to make NT the Unix killer they promised.
Just to straighten the record a bit- saying that this was *THE* software behind the Matrix is not telling the whole story. The BulletTime sequences were shot using a large number of stills cameras, fired electronically. Unfortunately, each camera had its own trigger to shutter delay, resulting in hugely jerky images. Before anything could be done with them, they had to be smoothed, and extra frames inserted. This job was done by UK based Snell & Wilcox (for whom I worked at the time), with their technology called FloMo, which can very precisely measure the motion between frames and allow very sharp temporal interpolation. It was this that made the motion smooth, before any other effects, backgrounds, etc. were added. For the geeks amongst us, it is notable that Mr. Reeves' leg would pass through one of the pillars in the subway station if it was on screen at the time.... EtF.
Not that this isn't a cool bit o software. Just don't run out and buy it thinking it does things it doesn't.
This is a major step forward for anyone who has done film or video motion capture work. The fact that is runs on Linux just makes it all that much easier to bring into a production environment where you already have SGI's, Suns, etc.
FiLMBOX is a great tool...as with all effects work it's just another piece that makes the whole. You can't think in the box of "one computer/one software package does it all"; use the best of each to make the image on the screen. Use a Mac, use a PC, use a Linux box, use a BeOS box, then render it on an Alpha. As long as it works well, you can spend your time on the creative part of the image...and that's what people will remember in the end, not what you used to make it.
It is redhat's OS. They chose exactly which tools to include, which versions, and what configuration. Same as Slack is an OS, Mandrake is an OS, Suse is an OS, Debian is an OS, ... Linux isn't an OS, it's a kernel.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll