Slashdot Mirror
Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat
Several readers pointed to the announcement that 3-D Graphics tool Maya will be ported to Linux. Darkfell quotes the release : "Responding to demand from leading studios worldwide, Alias/Wavefront will deliver Maya on Red Hat Linux in early 2001.
story at biz.yahoo.com" The high-end graphics world has sure seen some strange convergences and redirections in the past few years, what with the prematurely announced death of the Macintosh, concerted marketing efforts to replace UNIX with NT, and now ... welcome to the turn of the century, guys.
You can download CorelPaint 9 for free (Linux version only) from the Corel site.
Works great, except a little slow and I wasn't able to get batch processing working without the program crashing..
-- I speak only for myself.
Actually, IIRC, an IRIX port brought Maya to UNIX, before Mac OS X was even announced.
newtek's lightwave6 uses opengl for most of the gui, so it shouldnt be a problem. i dont think it would require changing any of the actual code, so it would be much easier to do than porting to alpha nt. i guess i'll have to say something while i'm at siggraph...
Most likely Redhat cut some Business Development deal with them to make such an announcement in exchange for help in porting or something. This is the kind of PR "spin" that comes out of businesses. It's not about what is the whole truth or waht makes sense, it's about business perception.
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. :-)
Not at all, in fact I understand that it's been in wide beta testing for the last half-year. I assume you were being facetious, but I wouldn't want anyone to get the impression MacOS X, though a while off from release, is mere vapor -- after all, it seems Alias|Wavefront certainly has a functional enough copy...
Another *excellent* package from the Amiga days is beating them (and alias) to it :) As far as I can tell, it's the best 3D package out there, and the port to Linux is complete (in internal beta right now). They have screenshots, too. Check it out... Realsoft's home page.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Because running it on a PC was less expensive, it enabled some of the animators here to buy some NT workstations to run at home (make no mistake, Maya is expensive - but if you know people and work in education or a corporate environment that buys lots of licenses, your salesman will usually cut a deal).
We recently had an influx of new animators. To save money, we bought some NT workstations. Now it's a nightmare going back and forth between the two platforms. To add to the mix, we use 2 four processor linux boxes as renderers. Why? Because you can't log into NT boxes remotely without a lot of extra configuring and extra software. And you can check your render using an X program to display and you can see it on your SGI. It's a bit more work on the NT. Oh, yeah...these animators are pretty saavy, too - they like writing shell scripts to automate some of their work. All the animators who are familliar with Unix are having a nightmare of a time going between Unix and NT. When they run their render scripts on the Linux box, however - no problems.
We'd love to see the modelling and animation portions ported to Linux - and when they are generally considered to be working as well as the Irix versions, I guarentee we will be changing all but one of the NT boxes to Linux. The hold out will be running some Adobe tools - hopefully they'll be ported, too.
Our engineering department, those that know Unix anyway, greatly prefer Linux (or anything) over NT. Unfortunately you've got to work with what you've got available. It took me five years to get a couple of Linux boxes in the mix - hopefully it won't take that long to get rid of NT (or whatever MS is calling it then).
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The Nvidia chips blow away any Intergraph solution - even the ones that are thousands of dollars over priced. The Low end PC graphics market (i.e. gaming market) has all but gobbled up the mid-range market. People buy $10K Maya to put on their $3K NT machine, why not a linux machine? I do agree that maybe this is a plan by SGI to move more Linux boxen. Maybe they should just throw in the box with every Maya purchase. THat'd give Linux some momentum. Doesn't SGI own some of Red Hat anyway?
SGI is reeling. This might be some of the death throws to spawn off Alias like they did MIPS. Their 330 machine is the only machine that comes out of the box OpenGL hardware ready. Even with that niche they still are having trouble making money. This doesn't bode well for Graphics on Linux, nonwithstanding all these new announcements of forthcoming releases. The Fact of the matter is that OpenGL is standing still while Direct X is providing features that developers want. Linux's survival, as a desktop, will depend on whether or not the OpenGL ARB gets off the ass or not.
RPM is also the system specified in the current LSB draft
The problem with compatibility is not package formats, but libraries, file locations etc - binary compatibility is much better than what it used to be, thanks to glibc, but is still in need of improvement.
Well, at least this means a 3d app that won't crash. I've tried most of them (apps, I mean) on whatever OS, and inevitably -- hang, crash, here we go again... I was kinda hoping Strata would release a 2.x or 3.0 of StudioPro for OS 9 (hell, I'd be anxious as ***insert proverbial thing here*** if only they said "hey all you users, we're going to release an upgrade once OS X is out"), but ever since C3d bought them, there's been no news. btw DuesEx ala G4 rocks.
I was looking around the Alias/Wavefront site and found this Taste of Maya thing, an evaluation verion of maya. I wonder if they'll offer this for linux? Also, does anyone have any screen shots of this program under any platform?
The last I heard, SGI wasn't planning to drop IRIX anywhere near now. The story I had was that they were going for a slightly bifurcated market -- with Linux on the lower end and IRIX on the higher end. As Linux is capable of handling the higher end, they're (supposedly) intending to let the market scale with it.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
OT: the reason for the change was that the irony no longer applied when they detected the truth quark. The irony was that "truth" was hidden while "beauty" could be seen.
I forgot -- SGI isn't just a prime partner of Alias/Wavefront, anymore. They're now the friggin OWNERS! All the more reason to follow the SGI lead into the Linux(RedHat) world.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Well, I can't wait until not only will the product run on Linux, but they ship the Linux x86, PPC, Alpha, and Mac, and NT (why not?) versions in the same box. Hybrids rock.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If you don't mind the question ... how much do you think it will be on Linux?
D
----
You must not do much coding to be this naive about porting something that large.
-Jeff
Maya on Linux
The time has finally come
Customers rejoice
our fucking idiots? do you have them?
Actually that is a valid concern that has been visited and revisited several times on this forum.
Finkployd
The point I took the original poster to be making was that Linux is not much used in the graphics industry, not necessarily that it has a pretty interface. I was pointing out that, in fact, Linux is used in the industry, and its use is on the rise. Irix's GUI isn't any better than Linux's, but you'll never hear someone complaining about SGI stuff not being "graphical."
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Have you checked with Mesa-3.3 (Mesa-3.2.1 final)?
It passed all OpenGL conformance tests except for antialiased line.
This algorithm would be rewritten, soon.
DRI mature all day long...
-Dieter
BTW I do V5 testing and 3DNow! Glide/Mesa optimization/bug fixing
--
Dieter Nützel
Graduate Student, Computer Science
University of Hamburg
Department of Computer Science
Cognitive Systems Group
Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30
D-22527 Hamburg, Germany
email: nuetzel@kogs.informatik.uni-hamburg.de
@home: dieter.nuetzel@myokay.net
As on Feb 7th 2000, Maya Batch Renderer ver : 2.5 is qualified for RedHat 6.0. And its about time
p port/pages/qualification_charts/QUAL/may a_linux_2_5.html
:). Who knows, they might..
Ref : http://www.aliaswavefront.com/pages/home/pages/su
Could this be the killer app to get Linux on the desktop. wait and see. As for Maya, I saw it on the GDC 2000 and my jaw simply dropped at the awesome visuals. I guess its about time Linux came on to the art/gaming market and captured a fair share. Makes me wonder whether MS would ever release a DirectX version for Linux now
Rapid Nirvana
Surely, you are thinking of Corel, not Caldera. And that is basically Debian with a better installation and a customized KDE-derivative. As I mentioned, RPM is also the packager used in LSB. As for rpm not having the functionality of deb - not the case. The functionality of apt and up2date are not that dependent on the underlying package formats.
Or are you going to demand 3DS Max on Linux before you switch. :) All I can say is (ObAOL): "This is cool!"
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
It find it interesting that nobody thought it was news when it was o rted</A> to OS X a short time ago.
I can't wait when a company announces a product and it is just assumed by everyone that it will run on Linux because it does and because that is what the market wants (the same way its assumed today that it will run on Windows). Maybe then, the actual software will be the story and not the fact that it runs on Linux!
while i have no doubt that most first posts are trolls, i don't see why they need to be moderated down, just browse at 1 or 2 and you won't be bothered by them, plus your page will probably load a lot faster too.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
Hell when I talked to @home with AT&T customer service, and told them I'm running a linux masq gate... not only did she have no idea what I was talking about, but she asked me if I had called linux to see what the problem was.
The problem I was having had nothing to do with linux by the way.
How do you call linux??
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
If anybody is going to do a good job of porting GL code, it's going to be SGI -- given that they're the original creators of GL to begin with (with OpenGL being the Open Source version).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Uh, IRIX was the original....then NT, then MacOS X, then Linux.
Just don't tie those NT boxes into a burlap sack and toss them into a river. Be humane about it, see a vet and have them put down gently with an injection.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
But, look at it from the other perspective - it will benefit a lot of Maya users, because they will be able to run it on Linux. Maya users will become Linux users, not the other way around. With SGI/IRIX boxes no longer a practical option (and too expensive to begin with), it will be a welcome relief to be able to run Maya on an Intel-based platform without that meaning running Windows NT - especially in a multi-user/multi-system environment like I work in.
Hey... can you drop me a line... I am interested in talking with others strugling with the multiplatform hell and Maya.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
This makes me wonder. Does Redhat have extensions so that that product only will run on it?. What about the other Linux dists? People should say they release "for Linux", not for "Slackware Linux", "Debian Linux", "Redhat Linux". Some stuff for thought.
-Stskeeps, http://unrealircd.com
I manage a computer lab at my university which is heavily into 3D, both for CAD and film/video. Since things are Mac-heavy, the OS X port was very welcome. A port to Linux is fantastic, since I can inexpensively set up a server farm for both the rendering and a "sub lab" of cheap PC's for learning the basics (leaving the high-end machines for more accomplished workers).
Good news!
SGI, the pioneer in graphics workstations, is now making Linux workstations, so one would think that this is only natural.
Guess I won't be using this if it's only Red Hat.
It would be much better to see developers produce needing libraries that forced distros to give them vs. distros forcing users.
I guess they won't go open source :*)?
If you use it, apps will come.
--
+&x
(Yes, I know the spaces would prevent it from being parsed that way, just chuckle for a second and move along...)
note to moderators: read the guidelines and try to promote stories rather than waste your points marking first posts as trolls.
Since your UID is smaller than mine, I can only conclude that you're trolling. -s20451 (410424)
Rendering farms (who are the only ones who have the $ to buy Maya anyway) are not going to convert en masse to using Maya. I think it's impact will be minimal at best. Alias|Wavefront announced Maya for the Macintosh OS X will be ready roughly at roughly the same time, and I would suspect the creative professionals are more likely to be familiar with a Mac than with Linux. On top of that, Linux has not been a hit with IT people to the same extent NT has and on top of that, the Linux user base is not very graphically oriented. I really see the impact of this announcement to be very limited for Linux.
Dunno about how easy the port is.
We are talking about a port from an IRIX box with GL extensions and optimizations. That is much harder than porting standard POSIX code.
Maya is a large package and it has its own scripting language. The UI is writen in this language. Having all of this work together as well as the hardware and software render portions of the Maya core is not a small undertaking.
UNIX (IRIX) != Linux (well... not without a bunch of work).
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
That's funny, I can go out and buy WordPerfect for Linux and it runs on every Linux distrobution, no porting needed.
Finkployd
....that Apple was dead in the graphics market. And yes, I've heard constantly that there was no need for Apples anymore for doing graphics.
The people saying it were wrong, but hey, nothing new there.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
(grr, nothing here)
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
You're with Big Idea, home of Veggie Tales?? Man, my kids would kill for me to work there.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Is it already a port or is it GOING TO BE PORTED. It would seem to be the later. Bleh, Slashdot posters have mastered the art of misleading headlines. Also, even Linus's quote in the press release is in the wrong tense.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I think that sometimes when a company is going to invest hundreds of thousands or more dollars in something, they'd like to put a corporate face on it instead of just a couple of guys working on a hobby. Seems logical in the business world. Somebody needs to be accountable, and Redhat is the best choice at this point.
Not all OpenGL implementations are created equal! Today if you want to do *nix GL, IRIX is the platform. There are many many efforts to bring good (meaning fast) OpenGL to Linux. DRI is the free one. Xi has the most cards. Nvidia+sgi are working on one. None of them are finished. None of them run A|W without serious bugs. That statement is a guess based on the fact that I maintain the Linux OpenGL for an A|W competitor, and they shure as hell don't run MY app without bugs!
I guess Lightwave is getting kicked from the machines and will now be learning Maya.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I think those nifty Evans&Sutherland cards are supported, but check their website because I don't know if it's their entire product line or only a few cards...
The Torvalds quote seems a bit odd to me. Linus is not really given to being quoted in press releases and it's hard to imagine him saying things like "This is a historical day for blah blah blah". The thing that seems really odd, though, is the implication that complexity is good. My perception of his philosophy is that complexity is bad. A certain amount is necessary to perform a given function, but to imply that "complexity" and "powerful" go hand in hand just doesn't sound, well, Linus-like.
;-)
That said, applications are always welcome. Go SGI!
-Steve
You missed the second paragraph. I was kidding.
And no, I suspect that library differences between the various BSDs would kill simple cross-platform compatibility.
GUI crossplatform (more libraries) is out of the question.
...wouldn't they get much better performance porting it to BeOS?
I mean, Linux is great for what it does, but for 3d graphics, BeOS in a multi-processor PC is pretty impressive AND stable.
(...unlike Windows, which runs beautifully, easy, and fast... until it crashes and falls like a house of cards.)
these announcements really underscore the need for a standard linux base or something similar.
.deb, .rpm, .tgz, .slp (or whatever format) with some supplied tools. then a software vendor would only have to create a single package, and either convert it, or offer the meta-package which the end-user could convert.
but from what i can tell, the lsb only determines what libraries and such should be installed. perhaps a better solution would be to create a meta-package format, which could be cleanly converted into
in any case, until there is a standardized linux base/package system, this sort of thing is going to continue. it's no different than software houses developing for msft; they are the market leader in terms of number of users. similarly, redhat has a higher percentage of users than any other linux distro. it's all about getting the biggest market possible for their software.
=--- - - .
"Liiiiiiiinux! Where are yoooooooou!?!?!?!?"
Think "Scoobie Doo Where are you?"
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Maybe he'll take about it at SIGGRAPH. He si actually giving a talk down there about free software and graphics. Here is the link: How Free is Free Software makes me wonder why Slashdot has not posted anything about SIGGRAPH (Darryl Strauss of DRI, Titanic, and Linux Glide fame will also give a talk).
One of the arguments against porting apps to Linux has been, "Why bother supporting an OS with a customer base that selected the OS because they didn't feel like paying". The logic is inescapable. The fact that somebody uses NT or MacOS is proof that they will buy software.
Now, if this proves successful for AW, many others may follow. Naturally, if it proves a flop many others will stay away.
I hope AW doesn't price the Linux version any differently than for other OS's. That will make this a fair test. Also, if they priced it lower, people who view it as their killer app would start migrating to Linux for that very reason, thus decreasing AW's profits.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You have a good point; while I would love to see good ole Photoshop ported, I think Adobe would really help Linux in the "killer app" category by pushing the same vast font support on to Linux that other platforms have enjoyed. While I'm out of the typesetting game, so I don't sweat the fonts too much anymore, I do have to say that XFree86 could definitely benefit from having something like Adobe's ATM and 3 gazillion fonts to choose from. Which is really a pisser, because Adobe really wouldn't have too much holding it back from just porting over Pagemaker as well and really help to get the niche markets flowing in to start a bigger flood of Linux support. That's all this Maya port is really going to do; its used by very few people, really, but it is a kickass, high profile app that will make other companies stand up and take notice. And the fact that SGI is A/W's daddy doesn't hurt, either. :)
Deo
No, people buy $10000 maya to put on their $7000 (the price of a high end Visual Workstation) NT workstations. The Intergraph WildCat series is that fastest 3D hardware available on PCs. It outperforms SGI's VisualPC hardware by 126% (according to a MaximumPC review) in awadvs (a viewperf test) In real world rendering, the Intergraph machine could handle complex scenes in MAX that the SGI simply choked on. If you look at the tests on intergraph's website, you'll see that the WildCat consistantly outperforms the Quadro based Elsa card by 40-100% plus has 256 meg of memory, a number even the new SGI VPro cards can't touch. Even Carmack loves Intergraph. Second, Intergraph seems to be doing quite well. Since when did they sell off to 3D Labs? Third, I agree that SGI and the ARB have to get off their ass. Direct3D is coming and seriously whopping OpenGL in terms of core features (and soon speed. Direct3D 7 comes close and D3D 8 may just go over the top.) However, my point wasn't about that. The VisualWorkstations failed at the high end and midrange of the NT workstation market. Maya is definately a high-end product, but as it stands, the supporting technology around a Linux-based SGI machine would be mid-range to low end. (GIMP in place of Photoshop, not as many high-end support tools, lower power hardware, etc.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Then apps won't come, and you know how apps gets when he doesn't...
Deo
You know the reason that this is happening has mainly due to the fact that there are a lot of things on Linux that need to be standardized still like library locations, etc. That is the real problem here. Specifying exactly where libraries go does not hurt the "diversity" of the distributions, but it sure makes it easier for application vendors to port their product to "Linux" as opposed to Red Hat or Suse. How long is it going to take for RH, SUSE, Caldera etc. to realize this?
iirc .. a few programmers at a|w ported maya to linux back when maya 1.0 was released.. being that SGI (a|w's parent company) was in bed with microsoft at the time.. the project was shelved and never released to the public.. alias did eventually release the rendering engine under the linux platform however.. it was inevetible that the whole application would be ported eventually.
I wish more companies would do this. I saw on a Lightwave (another 3D app) newsgroup someone said newtek (the company that makes it) would never make a port of lightwave to linux, linux people aren't the type to buy lightwave. But with software like this, everything else revolves around it, the OS, the hardware, input devices etc. So the question is, not will linux people run lightwave, but will lightwave people run linux? I think the answer is yes, because of many different factors, especially memory management and stability. I hope this encourages many companies to do the same thing, then many hardware vendors may jump on and make drivers for linux to support video capture, graphics tablets and a host of other stuff ( not even to mention better 3D support which everyone wants!). This could really be where linux picks up quick if the right people want it to.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Correct me if I'm wrong (but be damn sure I'm wrong), but doing OpenGL on IRIX is just like doing OpenGL anywhere else; You include the includes, link the libraries (Which on Win32 are DLLs and on UNIX are .so, but other than that...) and then call the standard OpenGL 1.2 functions.
Considering that there ARE OpenGL implementations on Linux (last I checked) how is this a difficult port? They'll have to make any changes necessary for threading and/or libc variations, but the OpenGL code itself should come over just fine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
.. then there are some other steps to overcome.
One thing is clear though. Linux is gaining ground in the game area, and, after all these years of hacking kernels and nifty unix clone tools, it is in fact a surprise that it's beginning to happen only just now. Maya will certainly boost game development under linux, but let's not get over-excited here.
The big question will be whether this comes a bit too late or not. Microsoft practically converted the PC into a game console with it's X-BOX specifications, and though I think that was a most remarkeable, if not hilarious marketing push (one wonders why MS should reserve the rights to be the only one to build X-boxes), they're betting on a safe horse that's even an easy target for most game companies.
But then the even bigger question is: who will buy an X-box, which is in fact an overly expensive functionally degraded PC with multimedia cards on steroids ? How long-lived is the X-box concept, given that the step-up factor of hardware in general is very high ? Will it perhaps freeze the general consumer markets chip evolutions as we see them today ? Or can I stay with my linux/nt box instead and have close to the same perfromance ?
Maya as a tool is cool. Giving it breathing space on a linux platform is a logical thing to do. Whether it can give games and multimedia an extra push remains to be seen, and how linux benefits from this, other than receiving a bit more aknowledgement for it's valuable features, is an intirely different question.
Nevertheless, this is some impressive new player on the linux horizon!
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Yes, MacOS X was the most recent previous new platform for Maya, but wasn't it once upon a time very popular on SGI's unix- IRIX?
Aside from user interface porting and misc platform issues, the unix thing won't be that new for AliasWavefront.
Start Running Better Polls
I agree with GL being GL, but do you think that they coded the whole thing in such a low level?
I imagine that they used some wrapers and libraries instead of native GL calls. So... first you have to get the inbetween working. And... the GL support on the hardware is not at the same level, not yet.
But then again, I could be as lost as anyone on this.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Oh come on, you think they're going to port to a different platform and toolkit at the same time?
Of course it will be Motif. But don't worry, you can always use the "Notif" theme for GTK and everything will match.
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Interesting how only the title of the article actually says Red Hat Linux specifically (and a few other insignificant places) but the rest of the time it's generalized. It's not like that PC magazine article that kept calling Red Hat on their server test Linux 6.2. So it's not that bad.
This is one of those commercial products that would probably do well on Linux, since it's not geared toward the normal desktop users (how many of you are going to make Matrix shots in your spare time?) and instead towards fancy heavy computing industry where they're used to paying tons of license fees etc. So it may outdo Corel's WordPerfect in success and profit since the target audience are not all open-source purists (some may be). Then again they may not charge enough; there are some companies that openly admit they will keep a product free (or cheap) unitl linux gets XX% market share on the desktop.
# debian/rules
There is NO reason whatsoever that an application should be in the slightest way concerned about where in the filesystem a particular library is.
The notion that an app could/would/should be is a WinDOS-ism.
We've all been expecting this for some time. The rederer has been out for some time. About time the GUI followed. Cant wait to come back from siggraph and format our NT render farm and convert it to linux (ok mybe premiture). But soon... Very soon....
You just run a renderer per machine. (Of course, you've got to be able to afford a license per machine, but that's got nothing to do with it's abaility to scale)
yasb-frirwwthsgtiadko2. Sounds like some linux software package.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Maybe Adobe will start porting their products...
Well, the BSD camp (being a relatively recent Linux->BSD convert) I think might have a little of the "second child" syndrome; a certain need to feel superior to Linux. I know it seems that when major payware products are released, they're released for Linux -- that puts a bee in the BSD bonnet I can tell you.
I just got tired of the Linux distro-go-round. FreeBSD IS an OS AND a distro at the same time, so there's fiddle-fsck'n around. Also, as a longtime RH user, I got REALLY tired of RH reinventing the wheel with each version. It was like switching to a NEW distro (startup stuff changes, filesystem changes, ick). At least with FBSD the changes are more incremental between major releases..
Yeah, I have a question about that BSD underlayer. How big a difference is the whole OS going to be from other flavors of UNIX? Will OSX mean that the Mac-Unix community will become tighter software wise (that is more ports between the platforms)? Or does the Quartz stuff present to much of difference and make OSX as alien to other OSs as the old Mac OS?
Newtek cant seem to make the existing ports work properly and consistantly. they need to fix what they have now before they could consider porting anything.
That's why I like FreeBSD. No screwing around to make sure that one Redhat dependency in the program you want to run doesn't ruin your day.
Instead, we spend time wondering why the linux binary compatibility blows up on the program we're trying to run because there is no native Freebsd version or booting to windows to run the version that DOES work...
Why choose one distro? Because it's not a moving target. Many of the people that are the first to bitch about how Slackware, Debian, SuSE (I'm a SuSE user) aren't supported probably haven't ever used an application of this class.
Anyone that's every put any time in a *production* environment, not a maw-and-paw ISP, knows that major application vendors support a very small subset of the possibilities.
I've supported A|W products on SGI, as well as Oracle under Digital UNIX and Solaris - the two products' purposes have nothing in common - but why don't you check out either vendor's support site. On the sites you'll find that not only is a specific version of an OS supported - but *only* with a specific set of patches installed. If you're not running *exactly* the specified rev level, you can kiss your tech support goodbye until you're matching their spec.
When you have something this large and complex, you can't be coding for a moving target. Even smaller applications can be bitten by this. I recall trying Linux Mandrake a while back, and finding that the library set it shipped with was horrid. Netscape would crash just about every time I tried to send a message. I switched to SuSE, and everything worked peachy.
While I'm not a huge Red Hat fan, the reality is that RH holds a dominant position in the Linux world. They've got the capital now to handle liability issues, and they've got the clout to throw around to get things like this done.
I, for one, am thrilled to see Maya ported to Linux.
Can Slashdot ever post some good news like this, and not get a crowd of fucking whiners?
Second, I don't know what the hell timothy is talking about with the Mac statement. Maya is being ported to OS X (again using the previous UNIX version). Photoshop is still around, and kicking major ass with G4 Altivec acceleration.
He was making reference to the mid-90's "apple is dead" media fad, in light of Apple's strong current position.
It was a joke, see?
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Personally, I blame the speed reading course I took awhile back :]
I doubt they care. Only porting to one version of the OS is something that these companies often do. For example, SoftImage even has a list of cards that they certify to work with it. They won't gaurantee that it will work on other cards. When you're laying down $10K for a product, most people just go out and buy a machine custom made for that product.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yea, the whole desktop will look ugly;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Which raises an interesting question: if SGI is dropping IRIX and switching to Linux, won't everyone who make IRIX software need to port it over, and thus make it much easier to port from SGI-Linux to other Linux distributions?
Or am I missing something?
I think they might have seen the 3d driver support for linux, and thought gee that's nice the display drivers are mature enough to handle whatever you can throw at it.
Or maybe they feared competetion moving in on customers wanting linux support. Losing customers going into a growth market can hurt you down the road. Oh, hi SCO! =)
mmmmm... a beowulf rendering farm...
Wait!! Don't mod me down!! umm...
Now that there are some seriously expensive and powerful 3D graphics programs for Linux, could there be a possibility of pirated software like this program springing up on IRC?
An interesting concept considering that the only warez that I ever hear about are either for the Mac or Windows.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
and that's exactly what I saw.
How can people be so dense as to not understand the needs for standardization, and the reason behind not porting every program to every single platform and distribution?
Why won't anyone discuss this instead of crying that anyone who releases a linux application should produce, support, and test 175 different versions of it?
Once Maya is out for Linux, we can switch back to using Linux throughout the company and never again have to use an OS that forces us to reboot simply to change fonts.
-deane
Gooroos Software: plugging you in to Maya
-deane
The above comment was moderated down to -1, Flamebait. As the page refreshed for my reply, it's now at 1.
Can the moderatorS justify why the comment was moved down twice? Should it be as easy to moderate DOWN as it is to go UP? Moderate downs should be reviewed a lot sooner than the MetaModeration stage.There are trolls smart enough to get moderated up, and then they're eligable to be bad Moderators, and do their Troll damage that way.
If anything, the above comment is somewhat informative.
Adding to the authors comments, Adobe also has a UNIX Photoshop for SGI that could quite possibly be ported to Linux, although I suspect Adobe is afraid of good graphics apps on Linux due to their cash cow Photoshop, already cloned by GIMP.
Alright, here I go starting the holy toolkit wars. Does anyone know which toolkit they will be using on Linux? I believe they use SGI look and feel Motif on IRIX, I wonder if this means they will be using Motif on Linux (I sure hope not, it would look ugly.) Or are they using GTK or QT? Would be nice if it integrated with the Desktop Environments. Just wondering if anyone is in the know.
But he got raised on 3DSMax because it was what the school had.
My current background which he rendered. (It's a bit big, though, you've been warned)
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Side Effect's Houdini is SHIPPING for Linux. Each package has it's own strengths and weaknesses. A|W is particularily strong in modelling; Houdini's strengths include a powerful scripting language and the drag'n'drop "visual procedural interface" (really COOL if you ever get a chance to use it). And of course the most important strength is Linux support today (and not just the renderer).
UNIX (IRIX) != Linux (well... not without a bunch of work).
Nice phrasing. What you're implying is that unix has a long way to go to catch up with linux, which is absolutely true.
Thanks for being so on the ball, now if everyone else would just realize it..
obPort: Linux has pleeeenty of GL support, and, as someone else has said, the rendering engine already works.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
---------///----------
--
I like to watch.
Now, there *is* a reason for such a thing as Linux software piracy.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Oh wait, that would have the new Anime logo... Taco's got bright colors, robots and chicks in miniskirts in my head lately.
SGI and Intergraph to Form Strategic Alliance
I think this would solve most of the current problems. Some people cry because RHAT is thought of as Linux. I can see a future problem with this if RHAT dominates the market completely they *will* act as M$ does, it's the way of the corporation.
Any ways back to my original comment if the Linux Standard Board had the Linux Trademark then distro would pretty much have to bow to thier wishes, or become marginalized in sales.
Maybe it's a bad idea, I haven't really thought about it till now. Of course it's up to one man, Linus Torvalds.
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.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
But they are trolls. First posts have nothing to do with the story, and down right stupid (I still don't get the point..) hence they should be moderated down.
:)...it's nice to have this product ported to Linux...maybe other good apps will follow, though I really hate the "for Redhat Linux" statement. *shrug*
Back on topic
-- queef
My point exactly. SGI is using the ZX10 line to fill its high-end NT workstation position. Also, look for Linux support for the Wildcat to come soon. (Yea, I've got SGI ALL figured out ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
They have versions for NT, IRIX and Mac, and with a completely custom interface, porting would NOT be a problem. No "which GUI shall we use" type problems, since Lightware does all it's own UI.
I encourage everyone who loves Lightwave to take this opportunity to write to NewTek and politely request a port. If you're in a buying position, point this out. They've always ignored such requests in the past, but they can't hold out forever.
I'm betting that the development of Maya for MacOS X paved the way to doing a full (li|u)n[iu]x port.
Three cheers for convergence!
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Of course, you know why this is being ported. As last I remember, Alias|Wavefront is a subsidary of SGI, and this is yet another cog in SGIs plan to take over the world :) Seriously though, the whole thing seems to fit together now. SGI is losing money. Their UNIX business isn't doing terribly well. They tried to get into the NT workstation arena, but got whipped by vendors such as Intergraph. (Nothing beats a WildCat.) However, now SGI is trying to get back into the market with cheaper Linux based machines. By using NVIDIA as their graphics supplier (that's they only reason NVIDIA ported their drivers) they can make a Linux based product to compete with the NT machines. Now, they can get Maya on it to complete the solution. However, I see a major problem. SGI's performance still isn't that good. The reason why the Visual Workstation line didn't do so well was not because of NT (which is a damn good OS for 3D stuff) but because the hardware kind of sucked. It was relativly expensive, the memory was propriotary (and expensive), and the performance didn't come close to that of Intergraph's machines. (In some test the Cobalt chipset's performance was less than half that of the OLD WildCat 4110) The new NVIDIA chips aren't that much faster (GeForce class, check www.intergraph.com for benchmarks.) That's why I think that this Maya port is sort of futile. If they were selling a lower-end 3D package, I could probably understand them using Linux and NVIDIA chips as a mid-range to low-end solution. However, Maya costs around $10,000 and at that price-level, most people can afford a REALLY fast Intergraph machine. Not to mention that more support tools exist around NT (Photoshop and such) than do on Linux.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
testing
To err is human,
To really screw up, you need a computer!
To err is human,
To really screw up, you need a computer!
Maya is by far better known and indeed quite powerful, but have you guys checked out RS4D? The port to linux is almost complete and in many aspects (not all of course), it is superior to Maya. And also a heck of a lot cheaper.
http://www.realsoft.fi
Mind the frickin' laser...