Slashdot Mirror
Softimage Announces Toonz 4.4 for Linux
Softimage Announces Availability of Toonz Version 4.4 for Linux available at the end of this month. Press release is here. Could someone give a few words about Toonz please? I wonder when Softimage will port their XSI & DS products for Linux.
Those fools! Blame Canada!!
and, yes, i'm just kidding...
Well, I think (I'm not sure) that this is a good chance for some studio's who want to switch from NT to Linux and uses Toonz 4.3 - since the upgrade is for free..
Don't kill me - its just what I think I would do if our company was using NT and Toonz..
Hetz (Heunique)
Why would you choose anything else for your render-farm?
Because frankly, Linux is a pig to do things with.
NOT
What would you prefer, yellow spandex?
Despite the best efforts of terrorist bombers and murderers, and blatant electoral fraud, Quebec remains a part of Canada.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Actually Toonz is a bit easier cause it has an easier install procedure. Animo's install procedure is loooong and cruel.I was there when they were installing it in the multimedia lab at the university and let me tell ya the procedure was NOT something i would want to do..... In terms of features though ANimo is WAY ahead that toonz.
The sad thing is that CGI films are seen as more "adult" so they get the better storylines, (I take adult to mean mature story) and as a result there is a big buzz on about them, just look at Final Fantasy, that movie looks insane and why? not because its CG but because its dark and has mature themes. Theres no reason why you can't make a mature 2D movie thats as dark and as good, and it would do great! studios just don't get it, why do they think Titan did so crappy? just look at the trailer! it smacks of silly kids movie. We are waiting for the next step, mature adult animation ala ghost in the shell. Sigh...
What I think he was trying to say is "More commercial programs for Linux is a good thing, it gives Linux more overall credibility and makes the chances for normal priced commercialware ports higher", not that he keeps Win98 around for things like Toonz and Maya.
--
It looks like it's also being ported to Windows 2000. I found this under the history section.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Put some salt on your printer papers - Wildcat driver will be our RSN (hopefully when XFree 4.0.2 is out). I'm talking about few weeks - up to 2 months
Want some ketchup with it? Oh, if you want a proof - take a look hereHetz (Heunique)
Lots of people here have discussed the port in terms of further penetration of Linux into NT space. This may well happen, but let's not forget that SGI see Linux, not Irix, as the long term OS for their hardware, and are doing some very good work on the Linux kernel and porting JFS. It seems considerably more likely that this port is the first stage for SoftImage in getting their product ready for the day that SGI make the leap.
>Well, looks like the film industry is done with NT and who can blame them?
>Within six months, a significant percentage of 3D work will shift to the Linux platform.
What on earth makes you say that? Having a good linux server with apache is both better and cheaper than NT/IIS, but that has not convinced people to switch anyway.
Solaris has had good OpenGL solutions for years now, and the Unix world is not going to shift to Linux because the XFree team has a beta of version 4 out. (Yes, the XFree versions are to be treated as betas.)
>Why would you choose anything else for your render-farm?
Actually I would choose something else. If I was stuck with x86, I would probably go for FreeBSD. On SPARC I wouldn't even dream of running Linux - choose Solaris. On alpha's Linux would probably be the choice though. Remember that the cost of a renderfarm is so huge that the OS doesn't even have a pricetag. Pixar's renderfarm consists of 96 Sun machines with 14 UltraSPARC 2's in each for instance. Don't even think about running Linux on this.
>With the interactive apps becoming available, this will drive demand for real hardware OpenGL on Linux, which will benefit the casual linux user because games will run well.
In some cases yes. But the professional OpenGL cards accelerate completely different parts of the pipeline than gamecards. Running Quake on a FireGL 1 or a Wildcat is not good, but interactive modelling is a lot faster than the game cards.
>For someone like me, who is already doing all his 3D work in Linux with Blender and Corel PhotoPaint, this news comes as no surprise.
>It really is a better platform for 3D work.
Most definately not! The OpenGL drivers for SGI machines running IRIX, Sun boxes and even Windows are much faster and more reliable than the Linux ones. The only descent drivers for Linux are the nvidia ones, and they're not open source. (Matrox drivers are an exception here. The Windows OpenGL sucks so much it's hard to believe, where the oss Linux drivers are good.)
>After suffering through the frequent crashes and general wierdness of Windows, my apps run rock-stable on linux, perform better and i...
Wether or not your app is running more stable on Linux is a matter of programming it correctly. This has nothing to do with the unstability of Windows. As for performance, even the fastest OpenGL drivers for Linux are smoked completely by their Windows counterparts. Nvidia are very close (just a couple frames slower with Quake), and Matrox is the exception.
>... couldn't be happier that its cost me nothing (well, if you count a couple of years slaving away figuring all this stuff out 'nothing')
Exactly. Saying Linux is free means nothing for businesses who have to pay their sysadmins.
All in all, I generally disagree with you completely. That being said, I develop an OpenGL program on Linux and Solaris, and after all the trouble of setting it up on Linux, I have no problems here. And development on Unix is definately a lot nicer than on Windows. The Redmond guys make a shitty OS, but they make catastrophical API's.
While I usually share your view that many Linux users want too much for free, in this case I think you are the one that can't see in the right perspective.
How many animation studios/customers do you think there are for such a program, or worse, for Animo that costs UKP 10.000? The animation software/hardware system price tag for an animation shop with say 10 animators is in the $65.000 - $100.000 range, depending on which kind of hardware, O.S. and software you decide to use: this cuts out a very large number of people, myself and friends included.
Since I can't afford a commercial program but I'd like to try producing something, I'm considering writing an animation program, and releasing it under the GPL: this allow me to save *years* of development thanks to the many tools available for integration in my programs (think for example Autotrace), and to have other people working on the project for their own interest.
Since my goal is to sell animation and not to sell software (which is and should be considered as a tool), animation is where I'll earn the money to pay for food and bills.
As I see it, producing a good show thanks to the program will make me much more money than selling the program and support for it, mainly because the *market* for animation gives you many more chances that the software market.
Ciao,
Rob!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
I really don't think so, since at least Japanese animation industry is still very strong in that kind of animation.
;) versus suckers like Bill Mechanic that gives a sci-fi movie already started to Don Bluth, who did animated mice for his whole life.
:)
Obviously, introducing new technologies such as 3D models, particle effects, digital FX and so on helps a lot, but it's not 3D or 2D, its *good* writers with something to say (or at least a clue on how to write on something they don't care for
Too bad good writers usually have to agree to the decisions of the Bill Mechanic do-jour.
Ciao,
Rob!
P.S.
Are you the heroine behind Broadcast 2K? If so, good job!
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
BeOS's first biggest drawback for this sort of thing right now is no hardware OpenGL support. That should be fixed by the end of the year, if not sooner.
The second drawback is the perception of support. If you set back the clocks 12-18 months you'll find a whole raft of commercial companies pledging support for BeOS, most of whom still haven't pledged support for Linux (although some are coming around). Why? Because Be was out there doing serious evangelizing and making their developers accessible for support to third parties. When Be announced their "focus shift" at the beginning of this year, the evangelism for desktop and media applications completely stopped, and the developer support became... spotty, at best. And the support from companies that needed a corporate face behind the OS evaporated.
This is a kind of alien mindset to the Linux world--but it's the explanation, I think, for why a lot of commercial software does specify a distribution, particularly Red Hat. It's because Red Hat is out there doing that evangelism, and provides what is, for practical purposes, a developer point of contact for the operating system. (I think HelixCode and Eazel both may develop into other such points of contact--the key is the aggregation of informed developers who actually influence the kernel or an API under one roof.)
So: yes, this sort of thing would be right up Be's alley. But a port from Irix to Linux isn't as much of a stretch as a port from Irix to BeOS. Linux provides hardware graphics support that BeOS doesn't yet, which would make developing such a port now impractical. BeOS has maybe 5% of the installed userbase as Linux does, and probably doesn't have the vertical market penetration that Linux does in A/V fields, simply because the applications aren't there.
BeOS is where Linux was three or four years ago. A year ago, I'd have said BeOS was on the track for surpassing it in these vertical markets, but Be, Inc. pretty effectively derailed it. And, without either a commercial company actively developing the API for those markets (how likely is hardware support for high-end OpenGL cards from Be?) or a development model that allows third-party developers to propel the kernel and API themselves (i.e., more open source than it is now), I'm not sure I see it getting back on those rails.
Slashdot - News for Nerds. Not Linux News.
Programs like this is just what Linux needs. The lack of graphic programs for linux is what's keeping win 98 still on one of the particians of my computer...With this and Maya Linux is looking better and better to completely switching over.
Did you even -look- at the article?! This is a 5-digit price-range professional animation package and it doesn't even -dream- of running on Windows98. It runs on Irix, NT, and now Linux. I do -not- think you're going to install this for fooling around at home, or that whether it is ported to Linux will make one bit of difference in either direction as to whether you kill the Win98 partition.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
You can also set fill points for your drawings that fill in closed areas such as a characters body or face, etc. These fill points can be animated over time via keyframes.
This won't be a cheap product, BTW. Expect to pay SGI prices.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I've used toonz (4.0, not 4.4).. Its for 2d (cel) animation.. A package of tools to scan or shoot drawings, composite them, with FX, etc and out put for film or video -decent software, but I prefer 'USAnimation' by toonboom, because it is vector-based. You scan your original art in, and it is converted to vectors for ink & paint, and compositing - The cool thing about this is that its not resolution dependent, you can take your original work and output to a small flash-vector file, or to a huge IMAX size film frame, without getting pixelization.
air and light and time and space
and who can blame them?
Within six months, a significant percentage of 3D work will shift to the Linux platform.
Why would you choose anything else for your render-farm?
With the interactive apps becoming available, this will drive demand for real hardware OpenGL on Linux, which will benefit the casual linux user because games will run well.
For someone like me, who is already doing all his 3D work in Linux with Blender and Corel PhotoPaint, this news comes as no surprise.
It really is a better platform for 3D work.
After suffering through the frequent crashes and general wierdness of Windows, my apps run rock-stable on linux, perform better and i couldn't be happier that its cost me nothing (well, if you count a couple of years slaving away figuring all this stuff out 'nothing')
Where are you, Hash's Animation Master?? I want to run your software on Linux too!!
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
woopty fucking doo daa. How if the software costs a fortune, then you are really not opening it up to a broader base of animators, as the animators who know, use, and can afford your product already have NT or IRIX at their desk, and could care less if it is ported to Linux.
Free Beer isn't the only reason to choose Linux. They may be able to afford IRIX or NT at their desk, but they might WANT Linux.
For 2D animation, Linux is actually a good choice. You don't need all of the graphical power and IO bandwidth of an SGI box for that, but NT is just a pain.
A typical Linux distro also has some nice features that IRIX lacks. The last time I worked on an SGI, I ended up grabbing a fair number of source packages off of a Linux source CD and compiled them for IRIX.
And all of what you just said concerns an article about a 2D cel animation software package exactly how?
Excuse me, I don't get it...
You say that there will probably never be a soft|3D because there is too much old GL code in it...
Although only NVidia comes today with OpenGL driver - I'm sure that higher end cards will comes with OpenGL driver also, so what exactly is the problem??
Also, can you tell us if the XSI will use the DRI or OpenGL libs? (Wildcat driver will use DRI if I understood Intense3D people correctly)
Hetz (Heunique)
This guy wrote the book...
Toonz is a 2D animation paint / composite program. Good stuff and used it alot before moving to Retas Pro (mucho cheaper AND SoftImage was sticking a Toonz logo on all rendered materials on the educational version). It's an extremely functional, super thorough piece of code that gave me little problems less having a large learning curve.
:P
Morale of Story, use Retas and Photoshop plug-ins
-f0rge
He who rules the penguins, rules the world...
No, there aren't.
actually, I'd suggest checking out blender, which is kind of fun...www.blender.nl (actually, it's not gnu, so i guess it must be completely worthless)
yes, this is very cool. especially, considering redhat sucks so much. :)
while not completely whiz-bang, blender does a nice job of providing animation in the linux realm of things...
tagline
... hi bingo
I think that's where this comes in?
--
"You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
- CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.
"Chiswick! Fresh horses!"
One could potentially acheive the same results that Toonz provides using Gimp and some custom scripts. Many Animators on a budget do that (well, they generally use photoshop instead of Gimp). Essentially, the first thing you need is a script to automate scanning in hundreds of hand drawn cells. Then you use a gimp script to bring all those cells into a different numbered layer in one XCF file. Then you can use the animation tools that the Gimp already has. Granted, this isn't as powerfull a setup as Toonz, but then when it comes to graphics, free software is seldom as powerful.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
They (AVID owned Softimage team) can't even port their newest "Next-Generation 3D Animation" effort to the once SI|3D Native IRIX. Softimage|XSI 1.0 on IRIX is actually the NT version running under emulation, causing horrible slow-down and a considerable ammount of bugs. Many under valid support contracts who got their XSI "upgrades" have been most disappointed by their IRIX performance.
:)
While TOONZ for LINUX may seem like a step in the right direction, take into consideration that TOONZ is actually developed by an R&D Company called DIGITAL VIDEO. I take this directly from the softimage.com toonz legal type:
Toonz is developed in Italy by SBP S.p.a, Itaca S.r.l. and Digital Video S.r.L. and is distributed by Softimage Co. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
So if you're expecting the Montreal team to put out anything other than buggy and non-production ready software i.e. XSI 1.0, don't hold your breath. You might get lucky with Mental Ray though, as that is also developed by a seperate company, MENTAL IMAGES.
I for one hope that Softimage can get their colletive heads out of their collective butts and jump on the cross-platform compatibility bandwagon a'la A|W's Maya. Otherwise they (or at least their 3D division) face a rapidly growing dissatisfied and defeated user base who have had enough of their lies, bull and empty promises.
-not bitter
^nA! Creatures in my Head
Err, there are numerous other cards that have XFree drivers, like my spiffy new Voodoo3, or the Matrox G400. And the two cards I just mentioned have open sourced drivers. Nvidia's drivers are binary only.
:) (my school has one. Only downside is that it's NT).
XSI will use OpenGl. Any card that is going to provide decent performance is going to use DRI though. Softimage has a nasty habit of using GL for everything. For instance, in Softimage 3D, all the buttons are done in OpenGL. Worse, they somehow write their code so that it stresses many cards that you would think would be up to the task. Softimage 3D on a Wildcat system sure is nice though
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
A portion of Titanic was rendered in Mental Ray, but the vast majority was rendered using Pixar's prMan (Photorealistic Renderman).
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Darn it, I'm getting so ansy waiting for BeOS 5 with OpenGL. I have a box ready to have BeOS 5 and a second processor inserted as soon as it ships.
BTW, is it possible to get GL hardware support to work under BeOS 4.5 with a Voodoo3 card? I know that the Voodoo2s are supported, but I can't find any info on the Voodoo3. Oh well.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
Line Animation is dead. That is exactly why line animation from Japan is increasingly popular in the US. Because we all know that dead things are the most popular.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
MentalRay isn't from Microsoft. It is from a company called MentalImages. Their URL is http://www.mentalray.com/.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
That helps to a degree, but guess what, OpenGL accelerators are much more homogeneous than Linux distributions, standards guides or not. And from a company that certifies specific OpenGL accelerators to use, I'm not sure that that document is going to change their stance on supporting multiple distributions.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Oh, I were under the impression that Softimage contained a lot of OpenGL code that was really old and maybe not standards complient. I'm pretty sure there's no IrisGL code in there, because SoftImage's main platform was WindowsNT for awhile (and actually still is.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Didn't Softimage used to be owned by Microsoft?
zsazsa
According to the article, Toonz is commercial payware. Are there any reliable GNU animation tools?
Toonz is a 2D cel-animation program. Perhaps a discussion of how or why this story matters to more than 1% of Slashdot's readers would be a more interesting read than this crap.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
A great deal of programs have been announced for RedHat Linux, and I think it's great that this company is not saying that you have to run it on a specific distribution.
Geez. And here I sit watching my favorite Bat Man or Animaniacs cartoon and think of all the effort that went into their creation. Soon computers will do everything.
I mean if no effort goes into the creation of a thing, just how much effort should I put into watching it?
"A sample size of one is really just statistical masturbation."
Quebec based, to be EXACT
The failure of Titan AE, the 360 layoffs at Fox Animation had most everyone in the industry calling it quits for line animation. What audiences want is computer animation.
Alot of us had fun as kids playing with Mario Paint. Are there any open source 2D animation programs out there? A quick search yielded only lame shareware programs that didn't really cut it, and were intended to be used on making animated GIFs.
A) You're six month figure is ridiculous. Maybe in time, but nowhere near six months. /. story and eat it. GeForce support is nice, but without support from the big guys (Evans and Sutherland, 3Dlabs, etc) Linux GL will have a hard time.
B) What does a render farm have anything to do with it? And you MIGHT choose BSD, since it supposedly does better under that kind of load. Either way, the 3D modeler part won't actually ever run on the render farm, just the backend renderer.
C) If Intergraph supports the WildCat on Linux within 6 months, I'll print out an entire
D) I'll argue the better platform part. For me, NT tends to be extremely stable, and I for one prefer all the great tools available on NT over their less than spectacular Linux counterparts.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Being that I'm pretty ignorant about Be, and you are apparently the "be-fan", I would have thought that this stuff was right into Be's realm. From what I've read, I thought Be was specifically geared towards this kind of graphics processing that you're talking about.
Honest curiousity going on here, so if this comes off as my attempt at a flame, try reading it again. I too find that NT 4.0 Workstation is the client to beat out there when looking at a stability and software availability stand point. A lot of the structure to Be sounds interesting, but much like with Linux I'd be hard pressed to leave the software base presently supporting NT.
Your message just sent flags off in my head as to what all Be has going for it these days in the way of applications since a lot of what you listed would seem to be into Be's realm of hoped for market share.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Hopefully the development of OGL drivers will keep up with all the 3D software releases (Maya and now XSI)... this was always a problem under NT - a driver/card combo that might be great for Quake, Photoshop, etc., would often crash like mad under Softimage... it was always a real trick to find affordable cards whose drivers would work with these packages.
I know, I'm spooling up my printer right now. I posted this, then I looked down the posts, and somebody asked that if the WildCat driver will use DRI or not... But my point about support from other vendors still stands (although is weakened due to the fact that WildCat is the highest performing part and will probably lead to the other supporting it.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What you need, my friend, is a copy of DPaint IV.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Yeah, but it another $12k package?
I don't know about that. Halflife and Quake3 looked pretty darn good on the Wildcat machine I saw it on. 1280x1024 and not a frame drop in site.
-- Superlame http://catpro.dragonfire.net/joshua/
I am nowhere near stupid enough to thinnk that this will be free (free beer?). So I wonder what it will cost. Looking at the Press Release, it looks like some bigger names are using it and are satisfied with it's results.
I myself would love to have a go at animation at that level, just to play around, but in all likelyhood the software costs thousands of dollars, well beyond my price range.
Speaking of price ranges the Release mentions that, "The expansion of the Toonz product to these new platforms
increases the accessibility of the industry's leading 2-D cel animation software to a broader base of animators." woopty fucking doo daa. How if the software costs a fortune, then you are really not opening it up to a broader base of animators, as the animators who know, use, and can afford your product already have NT or IRIX at their desk, and could care less if it is ported to Linux.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Is basically a slightly (Perhaps more then slightly) outdated 2d animation compositing package, when I was working at warner bros. it was under consideration but was dropped in favor of Animo, a much more fully featured animation/compositing package. I think animo is easier to use as well, Dreamworks uses it exclusively for all their productions... Tom
Here's the story: "Microsoft sells SoftImage to Avid buyer: Deal worth a total of $285 million"
Microsoft has sold SoftImage to Avid Technology for $285 million, four years after it bought the firm for $130 million. SoftImage specialises in creating special effects for the film industry, and has been bought by Avid to broaden its portfolio. The company makes video editing systems, which also sold to the film and to the TV industries.
The terms of the agreement are that Microsoft will receive $79 million in cash from Avid, will get $93 million of Avid's shares with a ten year option to buy more, and keep nine per cent of Avid's shares. Intel owns seven per cent of Avid shares. The other components of the deal include subordinate notes worth $5 million and sale of stock to ex-Microsoft employees.
cpeterso
I think he meant that Softimage contains too much GL code. Although it still doesn't make any sense.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Programs like this is just what Linux needs. The lack of graphic programs for linux is what's keeping win 98 still on one of the particians of my computer...With this and Maya Linux is looking better and better to completely switching over.
Hooboy! How many times have I wished my computers had an 'animate' button - These tools have been in use for a long time, All those shows use some variety of software to finish up the show -That certainly doesn't mean they don't still need a whole team of animators, clean up artists, etc, etc..
The computer on its own is not going to do sweet fuck-all. And you can STILL tell the difference between a project with a good team of artists, and one where they thought maybe the computer could do more. And believe you me, a LOT of effort still has to go into 'good' animation (come to think of it, even 'bad' animation takes a hell of a lot of effort).
air and light and time and space
GL != OpenGL. OpenGL is the "Open Graphics Library." It is cross-platform, and the API is published. It's the replacement for GL. GL is the "Graphics Library," also called IrisGL. It's still found on SGI machines for programs that use it, but it isn't cross platform, the API is harder to program for, it's old and not developed for anymore, etc. There are wrappers that take IrisGL calls and morph them into OpenGL calls, but they don't always work. I don't know if Softimage contains a lot of original GL code, but if it is any significant amount, the port will be that much harder. I think that was what the original poster was talking about. Just have to know a lot about Irix/SGI stuff.
----
Ryan
Toonz is a complete 2D animation system designed to meet the rigorous production criteria of the modern cel animation industry while preserving the integrity of the animator's work.
Toonz allows artists to capture the emotive quality of their hand-drawn art. It also simplifies and accelerates the production process allowing artists to fast forward through the more tedious steps like inking and painting and focus more on the creative aspects of production. Artists can then augment their work through advanced digital compositing and special effects.
Toonz is used extensively in feature film, commercial, video, and interactive media productions.
Designed by cel animation artists and producers, Toonz is an exposure sheet-driven digital ink and paint program that precisely traces the steps of traditional hand-drawn animation, while giving you all the efficiencies and options of a digitized medium.
Toonz behaves like a traditional toolset, but contains powerful tools that automate time-consuming tasks. Easy to learn, animators can become productive almost immediately. Flexible database management tools provide quick and easy access to your work. Recent improvements include faster render and preview speeds.
Rapid Nirvana
The proper way to say the "Image" in their name isn't like how you'd say "image file". It's "Imahj"
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
The real killer will be if Softimage|3D (and mental ray) are ported to Linux.
It's one of the best modeling/animation tools I've ever had a chance to use, and I'd like to see it ported to a little more powerful of a platform (or if you prefer, something that looks a little more native, seeing as how the SI|3D UI on NT looks totally out of place. It truly is a *NIX app).
Mainly I'd want it on linux cause then no one else would mess with the config! You have no idea how much one person can damage an installation simply because they know how to use Explorer. (this coming from a highschool student about other highschool students...)