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Linux in 3D
An AC sent in this link about Linux use in the world of special effects and animation. There are one or two errors in the story that make it clear the writer isn't that familiar with Linux, but it's still a good article about the digital effects world taking advantage of a free-beer operating system that runs on commodity hardware.
Good lord no, what would that have to do with render-farms and 3D workstations? nVidia is gamer cards. ...though now that you mention it, I suppose it is possible that nVidia killed off all the other options. Is there a customary higher-end option on Linux boxen, or is nVidia all there is? It's sure not great on image quality.
Thousands of people rely on the film-making industry for employment. Replacing them with a freely distributed software package seems morally questionable at the least.
Please go re-read the article. A lot of the software that's being ported are the in-house tools that the special effects houses created themselves (the exception was the 16bit/channel GIMP). They are just porting it from one version of Unix to Linux. People would still have to pay for the proprietary 3rd party programs once they are ported to linux (this was mentioned in the article). The only people that are really going to be hurt by this is SGI and the vendors that are pushing NT & NT-only software packages. Given that SGI is supporting linux, I'm guessing they saw the handwriting on the wall and decided that if these places are going to replace their Irix machines with linux, it would be in SGI's best interest to have a linux based solution for them.
Now whether it's moral to replace proprietary software with open source depends on who's side you are on. For the user, open source ultimately means control. Control over _your_ own data and systems. You aren't locked into some other company's vision of how you should be using their software. True people have bills to pay, but it's not like every programmer is working for a proprietary software vendor. A lot work for companies where the creation of software for their products or their own use is just a cost of doing business. There will always be a place for proprietary for-profit software, just like there was a place for accountants/bookkeepers after the introduction of the computer. Technology creates and destroys jobs all the time. I don't see how this is all that different.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Of course not. But once you buy it, you don't have to deal with Volvo (or whoever you bought it from) again if you don't want to. A person is free to buy repair manuals and parts from their local auto part store and do everything your self. To make your example fit, the engine compartment would have to be sealed, only special volvo tools could be used on it, and you would only get optimum performance if you bought gasoline at station that was owned by or in partnership with a Volvo subsidiary.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It's also not several hundred or several thousand or several tens of thousands of dollars.
For the price, it's positively brilliant.
**>>BELCH
Call it sacrelidge, but it so much easier to import/export via Windows, edit under Linux. No fuss, end of story.
**>>BELCH
Maya (a very high end modelling/animation package from alias/wavefront) is coming to linux very soon.
s ee /solutions/soln_intro.shtml
Having a better video card will definately make life easier with this beast.
http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/WhatWeDo/maya/
Better have a good GL driver for your card to do this!
Avid bought the company away from Microsoft two and a half years ago, and although I don't think they started the very next day on a Linux port, I'm sure it wasn't too much later...
I think the main problem with Broadcast 2000 is simply the lack of drivers for video capture cards in Linux. Sure, some are supported, but you don't exactly see a lot of them. You don't exactly see "Linux supported" on the front of the video capture card box either, do you? =) Personally I haven't tried Broadcast 2000, simply because my card isn't supported (and the manufacturer says they won't release the specs either) :-(
/* Sesse */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
I found it highly ironic to read this bit:
"As a desktop platform, it works great, but as a server platform, there are things missing," Henderickson notes.
Almost every other person dismisses Linux as being nice for servers, but not ready for the desktop yet...
People have said it before, but the major thing lacking for Linux in Visual Effects is good color management. Mac and SGI platforms have had strong color mangagement solutions for years, and if you are careful; what you see on the monitor screen is very close to what you'll see in the theater. So far, this is untrue for Linux tools, at least as far as I know.
It's a damn shame to see SGI on the losing end of this, but I do think that they've had their day in the sun; and now have to find a new niche or die.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I just got back from a week at Disney World and one of the things that I found most entertaining was the tour of the animation department at Disney/MGM. I didn't see a single Windows machine during the entire tour. Outside of a couple of Apple systems everything else seemed to be UNIX based. The sight of the ``X'' screensaver was quite satisfying.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
yes, there is!
http://mac.divx.st/
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Well, I've been lurking, but thought I should reply. We did the CG images in the article, both print and online(Axyz Animation).
Linux isn't *particularly* a cheap alternative - I mean folks, the cost of the OS pales in comparison to the hardware. We work exclusively on HP Visualize workstations running linux - and they aren't all that much cheaper than NT running on the same platforms(which HP also offers). What you *do* get, however, is Linux! It rocks compared to NT, for all the reasons that most of you know - networking, links, stability, flexibility, free development platforms, etc. Where is hurts is the lack of apps, of course, with some people saying "they won't work without Photoshop", regardless of Gimp. I've also listened to people slagging Gnome saying it "breaks all the rules of a desktop and it's ugly". Sigh. I find out that they tried the gnome distributed with RH6.2, and also expected it to come up completely configured to their personal preferences. They hadn't even heard of helix/ximian. It's difficult to fight prejudice like that.
Anyway, the cost impact in our industry has been the juggernaut of Intel workstations - Linux doesn't herald the "cheapo" 3d Workstation, it simply brings a better OS to the Intel platform. HP ported their HP-UX X windows, and it's damned stable. SGI is in big trouble - their entries into the Intel market have been very poor and plagued with bugs(this includes their Linux workstations), and we won't touch'em. The one thing they have going for them is that their(very expensive) custom hardware has much better management of internal bussing - very good for film work. However, it's becoming more and more practical to have animators working on Intel hardware rather than (very expensive) Octanes.
Yes, it goes without saying that as renderfarms Linux rocks. We use Renderman with Houdini. But not only are Soft and Maya currently beta testing their products on Linux, but both Shake and Rayz(compositing systems) have ported. Fact is, Linux as a 2d/3d workstation is here, and while there are obviously some things lacking like a multimedia standard, we use it everyday in *production*, which is the toughest test of all, and it's amazing.
Don't these people realize that Linux's strongest asset is the fact that it's open source? I read so many articles about Linux being attractive because it is free (as in beer), but most fail to understand that the free (as in speech) aspect of Linux is what makes it attractive to companies looking for an edge.
I'm sure many of the companies listed in the article consider this to be the main reason for using Linux. I just wish more reporters would pick up on this and report on it. These companies all seem to have a large group of in-house programmers. It just makes sense for them to adpot an OS where they have ultimate control.
This is necessary...life, feeds on life...
When I first saw broadcast 2000, I was excited. When I downloaded the source, I was appaled (note, this was a long time ago). The source seemed to contain every lib the software used (most of which I already had installed), which made the source package HUGE. I recall reading some README and the first thing it said was something like "DO NOT COMPILE THIS YOURSELF!!! IF ONLY THE BINARY WORKS, USE IT, DON'T COMPILE!!". (At that time I mostly compiled stuff myself.)
At that I left it alone. It didn't seem to conform to any of the usual GNU/etc. software conventions (and I don't mean any GNU recommendations, but usual habits and ways of doing things). On the contrary, it seemed developper-hostile. So at that time I guessed that it will never become as mainstream as eg. the GIMP.
Recently I got a new version and I must say that the code (organization) looks a LOT cleaner. But it still doesn't look anything like a GNU project (eg. no autoconf usage). We'll just have to wait and see what becomes of it...
What I have to ask is why hasn't it been packaged in Debian? Is there some problem with it? I can't find any reference to it in the debian-legal mailing list...
I doubt, therefore I may be.
a little more research would've been nice. there are a few small errors that people like slashdot readers would find annoying. mainly, the gimp is presented as a product of redhat software.
However, Red Hat's GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) may provide an open-source alternative that will eventually work for Linux-based studios.
I just found it strange that a mistake like that would come with an article that did such a good job of presenting insightful, interesting comments from the interviews. All of the interview content really made it seem like the reporter was someone who reads slashdot and uses linux for fun.
I'll never understand reporters.
-ck
"As a desktop platform, it works great, but as a server platform, there are things missing,"
-- Andy Henderickson, ILM
They must be running that new "Bizzarro Linux" distibution.
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Rare Window - free your photos
1> it sa pussy college student OS
2> its difficult to use
3> it doesn't support SHIT
4> it sucks
5> something based on it must be what 'dylan' likes
of course, if you go to budmosker.com you can see that this is the sort of person who either does or associates with people who wul refer to netscape as 'nutscrape', clearly indicating a lack of class and possibly a preference for 'IE', which is disgusting and indefensible.
Juln
Is this goignt o be posted by some dink in every story slashdot has?
Juln
Remember when they used Linux for some of the FX in Titanic? And this article in LinuxPlanet discusses Linux in perspective with the history of computer-assisted special effects in the film industry--an interesting read.
props to all dead homiez
Bleah. Didn't get to finish that. Let me continue.
Anyway, Cineon uses a 10 bit logarithmic space, where the 10 bits let you capture that extended headroom. To give you some idea:
Anyway, the reason why film people like 16 bits per channel in their paint programs is to capture this dynamic range. Logarithmic spaces are horrible to work with, so you really need a linear space. You pick a reference white and call that "white". Something like 4096 is a good compromise. This corresponds to "255" on an 8 bit display. Then everything above that is headroom.
You might think that picking 255 as reference white is a good idea, since 0..255 is adequate for computer displays. It isn't a good idea. :-) It captures more headroom than you can capture on film, and you pay for it by reduced precision in the range that matters (reference black to reference white).
As an aside, people often quote the statistic that the human eye can only distinguish so many colours. While that's true, people who say that are using the word "colour" in a different way than computer graphics people do. A certain shade of blue is one "colour" to psychologists and cognitive scientists, but it may map to many "colours" under different lighting conditions as far as a computer graphics person is concerned. Plus, in the real world, you can always add more photons. Clamping your range to [0..255] limits the number of photons that you can deliver to the eye, and so it just doesn't look as good. And that, dear reader, is one reason why I prefer going to the cinema than watching films on TV. :-)
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Not as much of it is due to human perception as you think. It's entirely due to the dynamic range of film.
Film has a huge dynamic range. It starts off black and has to be overexposed "mercilessly" (to quote my boss) before it's totally saturated. Naturally, the full dynamic range is almost never covered in a normal indoor scene. Cameras are sometimes calibrated by holding benchmark grey or white cards in front of the lens. These cards are of a known intensity and expressed in terms of a percentage of "reference white", which roughly speaking plays the role of "255" on an 8-bit-per-channel display.
Now on film, the maximum exposure probably gives you 20 times that brightness. That additional range is called "headroom", and you notice it especially when you look at specular highlights on water or chrome on film.
Naturally up in the headroom, you won't notice subtle differences between brightnesses. One of the most popular digital negative formats, Kodak's Cineon format, captures this by using a 10-bit logarithmic space.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Oky doky... once again...
Linux was used only to render the WATER and to do rendering of composites using Nuke, DD's in-house compositing tool.
The ship was done mostly in Lightwave under NT.
The people on the ship was done in softimage, Maya or Lightwave under either NT or SGI I guess depending on the shot. (note at this point Linux renderers for none of these packages existed)
The front end to DD's compositing tool Nuke ran under Irix.
At no point was Linux actually used as a work station.
That would be 65536 shades per channel ;) (apply your own nerdy grin here)
Digital Domain did use Linux for Titanic rendering. I'm pretty sure it was not "entirely" but I don't remember for sure. However, it was just the rendering, and was a pretty much isolated event. I believe DD just ported their proprietary renderer to Linux from IRIX. But Linux didn't appear for interactive 3D (i.e. modeling and animation) until much more recently, and even the renderers for mainstream packages (Maya, Renderman... )didn't appear until fairly recently. So the Titanic thing was just kind of an early blip on the 3D Linux radar screen.
Digital Domain added a bunch of Linux boxes for Titanic rendering to meet deadline because the hardware was cheap. I believe they ultimately had both SGI/IRIX and Intel/Linux boxes in the render farm, and ported their proprietary IRIX renderer to Linux. (It's possible that it was actually Renderman and they got Pixar to do a custom Linux port for them; I forget exactly.)
Since, s/he discusses modellers and animators working with flat-shaded and wire-framed models, it really sounds like s/he is talking about the interactive part of the process. (Since the rendering process definitely does involve textures) oh well... <shrug>
They used to make modelling software as well. Did they drop that?
Apparently. The only current product mentioned on Pixar's website is Renderman (and its accessory tools, such as RAT.) I don't really remember them doing a modeller.
I forget whether it was Softimage or proprietary stuff or a combination. Anyway, I realize every house writes their own proprietary software. I should have used the word "sell" - I was talking about software that Pixar as a software vendor makes for outside distribution, not software that Pixar as a studio makes for inhouse use only.
Obviously whether proprietary inhouse software of the major studios is ported to Linux has something to do with Linux becoming considered a more serious 3D platform; this is already going on. But at this point I think the thing that's really going to make the push is when we see the major commercially available 3D packages available for Linux.
Huh? Most of the animators I know pore over what is the fastest video card for the money at a given moment. (I am one, but I don't pore much -g- ) True, most interactive modeling/animation involves working with flat-shaded or wireframe models. However, working with complex geometry in a scene or trying to view your movement requires as fast a card as you can get. Nowadays, it's practical to work with a $200 graphics card, which wasn't true 5 years ago. However, it's still the case that the faster card you can get the better.
Pixar has not, however, released modeling, or animation tools.
That's because they don't make any for any platform, or at least nothing major. They are known for Renderman, their renderer.
In fact, as far as I'm aware, Houdini and Blender are among the very few 3D 'suites' out there for Linux. No 3DS Max, no Lightwave, no ElectricImage... not much is being done on the 'graphics workstation' side of the equation.
Yes there is. Maya, the most popular 3D app used by high-end studios, is in the process of being ported to Linux, as well as to OSX. (I believe the renderer is already released for Linux.) Softimage XSI, another highend app, is also in the process of being ported.
When the Maya port is fully there, 3D on Linux will really start to be more widely usable.
"GIMP is 8-bit only. The Hollywood is planning a 16-bit version".
OMG. MPAA FUD against the evil Linux hackers?
Maya's out too, though right? And what else do you need? Well, except for a second mortgage..
toeslikefingers.com - because
the source forge says that it's gpl.
i've noticed that debian is missing a couple of fairly cool gpl video editing tools... shocking but true.
Just exactly how does 16-bit/channel rendering help when compared to the 8-bit/channel rendering we're all used to? As far as I'm aware, the human eye isn't even capable of distinguishing even 1/4 of the 16M colors provided by 8-bit/channel graphics.
Does it have to do with the actual rendering process is unable to 'finish' with the proper 8-bit color unless a 16-bit color is inputted?
I know most of this is human perception; but fascinating nonetheless.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Of course, this is a fair chance to point out some of the differences between types of 3D, and how Linux is used on it.
Most users know of 3D as in the type that Gamers expect - real-time, hardware-accelerated, high-framerate polygons.
However, Houdini (and similar software) is nothing like it at all. None of it is real-time; not even close, really. A 'faster' video card won't help much here, as modelers and animators typically work with flat-shaded or wireframe models-- not fully-rendered scenes like in Quake III.
As a workstation, Linux offers an inexpensive workstation solution for the artists to work with. Many who work with 3D are already familiar with IRIX. With the multi-million dollar budgets these shops are used to having, they go with what works; not necessarily what is cheap. As far as the animators' needs go, they just need a stable, reasonably-performing system and some imagination.
But when it comes to rendering - that is where Linux has really begun to shine. Linux can cluster wonderfully and inexpensively - which has been used to great effect by animation shops (such as the famous Titanic example). Even Pixar has released their RenderMan rendering software for Linux.
Pixar has not, however, released modeling, or animation tools. In fact, as far as I'm aware, Houdini and Blender are among the very few 3D 'suites' out there for Linux. No 3DS Max, no Lightwave, no ElectricImage... not much is being done on the 'graphics workstation' side of the equation.
But rendering tools - from the lowliest student's hobby to Pixar's RenderMan abound in Linux. Again, the vast majority of what is being done in 3D on Linux is a clustered number-crunching supercomputer; not as a Desktop OS on a graphics workstation. But the time is coming.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Anyone with a clue would realize they meant 8 bits per channel where a channel is red, green, blue, or alpha.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
then you could like show it off to all your friends and fellow LUG members
troll
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
they're still using Amigas? thats cool.. wonderful machines they are :) (I've got three, that I pretty much never use)
Others posted the link, but it's for Irix 5.3 ONLY
BTW, that's what I thought too :-)
Black holes are where God divided by zero
This info about Broadcast 2000 is one of the reasons I visit /. regularly. Good post and thanks for the pointer. For every thousand crap posts here, you find a golden nugget. Maybe it's not news to everybobdy but some of us - at least 1 - appreciate the insght.
doesn't something similar to that interface exist for *nix?
SGI makes awsome machines, most of them being used in 2 industries: oil (exploration, GIS, etc.) and media (film, TV, etc.)
At least 2 of the 10 biggest oil companies in the world, Shell and Amerada Hess, use Linux clusters for their oil exploration stuff. Others are likely to follow them, considering the benefits this brings them (zero licensing costs, commodity hardware, terrific scalability of Beowulf clusters, etc.), so what remains is the media industry. If you have the likes of ILM going the Linux way (ILM is to the FX guys what Daimler-Chrysler is to car, or Shell to oil industry), I wonder how long will it be before Linux becomes the de facto standard - something that SGI enjoyed for all these years.
SGI's reaction to these developments will be interesting, as they already committed themselves somewhat to Linux, with XFS and the like. Recently they abandoned their participation in Apache project, so this could be symptomatic.
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So they're using a FREE operating system to create a 3D engine that they will sell for hundreds of thousands? Ironic.
Linux has now enough value to be sold instead of being given away to greedy companies.
ha your french sucks
pitoyable
We all know this is may be somewhat unfair, but on the other hand, if Linux was sold, who would the money go to? How could you possibly split the revenue between thousands of contributers, in an efficient and fair way? Does a patch submitter deserve an equal amount of money as Alan Cox?
Linux is based on team work so create somekind of Linux Kernel Society and sell Linux. All the money will go to that society and members vote what should the money be used for, hey with all the money they will be able to buy an island or even give the money to charity.
The people writing/submitting code for Linux and other free software knew that such a scenario was possible, that people could make millions off their labour of love, yet they continued...perhaps that tells you something about their will, perhaps that money isn't always everything?
When you're single you can afford quitting your job to do something you like but when you have a family to support you'll have no choice but to take the job that'll get you more money. Just look at that poor Homer Simpson quitting his job at a bowling club to work once again for Mr. Burns so he can support his family.
Also, these people are creating a 3D engine to sell for a ton of money. So what? It's their right. They arent using any GPL'd code, so they should be free to. And keep in mind, these "greedy" companies consist of hundreds of programmers, software architects and even the studio janitor who have families, homes, cars and all that to pay for.
Let me give you an example a few weeks ago the company I work for asked me to create a helpdesk database management system. So I had three choices, buy a helpdesk management system at about $10,000, create one from scratch or hell download a similar open source project and tweak it for our needs which prooved to be the fastest solution. So the whole thing took me twenty times less time than it should. Open Source projects will save time drastically and companies will not need much developpers anymore hell they'll just need someone without much skills who's only able to do modifications here and their. Voilà, developpers will become poor.
Ok, but how would that make the "geek community" any better than the MPAA? We should be careful that in opposing the "enemy" we do not become them.
Note: When I say "enemy", I am not referring to a group, or an organization, but to an attitude, an outlook. I think everyone can figure out what that attitude is. The task at hand is to figure out how to best fight this way of thinking without succumbing to it ourselves.
OK, I'm done now.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
OK... Since someone brought up Broadcast 2000, I might was well ask. Has anyone been able to convert a quicktime movie they created using broadcast 2000 to an mpeg? Everytime I try, I end up with an audio track that's all static (though the video track is fine).
Ranessin
What a joke. nVidia's Linux drivers are very much on par with their windows drivers.
Ranessin
I work in the R&D group at PDI/DreamWorks and I've put up a rendering statistics page with a description of our renderfarm and some usage graphs. We're rolling out Linux desktop platforms running our proprietary animation software right now. Our animators are getting a 12x performance and 8x memory boost over the SGI O2 machines used on Shrek, our next feature, due out in May.
Daniel Wexlerhttp://www.flarg.com
It was done on SGI machines, running Silicon Graphics' proprietary Unix variant: Irix... Possibly it could run Linux apps and vice versa, but eh, if you can afford a top of the line SGI workstation, why be a piker when it comes to the software that runs on it (other than to prove you can)?
People using older SGI boxen are the exception to the previous statement
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
However, the original question was "I've heard that Titanic was rendered entirely in linux"...
The fact that it was rendered on seperate platforms does indeed mean that they didn't render it entirely in Linux...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
A quick correction (quoted from Time):
Digital Domain; "Titanic": 300 SGI machines running IRIX, 200 DEC Alphas, 160 running Linux, 40 running NT. One hundred SGIs are desktops used for modeling, etc., while the others are all file servers of some kind.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
And you can watch it on any platform, not just Windows and Mac.
Wrong: There's no usable DivX ;-) player for MacOS. If you want cross platform, use MPEG2.
I said "no usable". I tried to play a DivX ;-) video with that player. After 2 sec the sound stopped and it doesn't have a constant frame rate -> that classifies as 'unusable' for me.
Now that Hollywood has adopted linux to save money, and most likely run (or want to run) it on nVidia equipped computers. Maybe nVidia will improve their linux drivers so that they are on par with the Windows ones?
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
It was a good article, I enjoyed reading it. But did anyone else have the problem of being redirected to a dead link every 30 seconds? I found this to be very annoying.
On a note that relates a bit more to the article, hasn't linux been used in CGI for a while now, I've heard that Titanic was rendered entirely in linux. Anyone else have support on this?
We all know this is may be somewhat unfair, but on the other hand, if Linux was sold, who would the money go to? How could you possibly split the revenue between thousands of contributers, in an efficient and fair way? Does a patch submitter deserve an equal amount of money as Alan Cox?
The people writing/submitting code for Linux and other free software knew that such a scenario was possible, that people could make millions off their labour of love, yet they continued...perhaps that tells you something about their will, perhaps that money isn't always everything?
Also, these people are creating a 3D engine to sell for a ton of money. So what? It's their right. They arent using any GPL'd code, so they should be free to. And keep in mind, these "greedy" companies consist of hundreds of programmers, software architects and even the studio janitor who have families, homes, cars and all that to pay for.
I've noticed Broadcast 2k. It is great that it works on linux, but it looks really clunky. I wish a reliable source (say a non-geek who spends all day behind Avid, Discreet, and Adobe editing packages) would do a review of it. I downloaded the binaries, but I wasn't able to get it working. Linux Media arts (http://www.linuxmediaarts.com/) sells systems preloaded with Broadcast2k. I might buy one sometime, but for now my next purchase is probably going to be an SGI 02 with video options. Currently Broadcast2000 doesn't run on anything but linux.
I do appreciate the mpeg2 and quicktime libraries though. I plan to use their quicktime library in a project I'm working on. Initially it is an effects program, but I might expand it to be a full blown editor someday.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
of course they fail to mention that Amigas are still in use in a lot of the places too. :-)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Hmmm....that was an educated response.
1) So?
2) In-house tech-people.
3) Most of the software is custom.
4) hmmmm
5) I'll give you this one.
-Ignore this post, please- NoOneSpecial
A large blow to the economy?
A small percantage of a special effect house's budget is the software and hardware. Most of the costs is Artists.
Most of the costs for any business is people.
The only industry hurt by free software is the software industry. Programers are not hurt. Instead of working for Micro$oft, they work for ILM or Ford or some other company that produces a real product. Consumers are not hurt, instead of paying for a shrink-wrapped good, they pay for support.
Open source advocates are not communist. They do not seek to change the nature of business. What they want to eliminate is software companies making money in a way that hurts their customers.
Now ask yourself, is Micro$oft powering our Economy . No. They are a bug company, making lots of money, with tons of capital, but our economy would not be hurt if they fell of the face of the earth tomorrow (leaving thousands of out-of-work programmers who go to work for Ford to support the NT boxes they still have).
-Ignore this post, please- NoOneSpecial
http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html
Wroot
Jeremy McNaughton
------ Live simply so that others may simply live.
I mean, maybe they don't want the help or something, but the source code is available, and I think it's an opensource license. And it's being bundled with professional systems too. But you hardly hear anybody ever talking about Linux as a serious semi-professional or indy-film alternative to expensive alternatives like Adobe Acrobat.
Kudos to the Broadcast 2000 developers, they deserve way more recognition than they recieve. Linux can do not just 3D and animation, it's already a decent system for non-linear video editting too.
Jeremy McNaughton
------ Live simply so that others may simply live.
"Control over _your_ own data and systems. You aren't locked into some other company's vision of how you should be using their software. "
So if you buy a Volvo and don't get the blueprints your rights are at stake?
But it's not Premiere, Speed Razor, or the in-house DPS system.
I know the sgi onyx 2 can display 16 bit, and the octane can display 12 bit. Other than that I dont know of anything in the pc or mac world that can display anything above 8 bit. I havent used the sun elite3d, or hpux graphic boxes, so I wouldnt doubt that some of them might display higher than 8 bit.
The 16 bit "hollywood" version of gimp has been available for about 2 years.
http://film.gimp.org/
The GEGL library that was written to support 16 bit images and it will be integrated into gimp 2.0.
To answer the above question about what 16 bits refers to, it means that an image has 16 bits per channel of color, 16 red, 16 blue, 16 green, equaling a total of 48 bits, but in film it is refered to as a 16 bit image.
We have to render all our images out in the 16 bit format(although many get away with 8 bit images). Also all the texture we apply in cgi have to be 16 bit for film.
How long have you been on this planet? GROWTH and CHANGE are inevitable!
Gee, let us SAVE the BUGGYWHIP MANUFACTURERS! Maybe it will be time for those people to LEARN SOMETHING NEW! HEAVEN FORBID people have to get TRAINING or learn a new skill.
How about, um, I don't know, LEARNING LINUX if it will be needed in your job?
This is the attitude that is holding us back. We need to advance and that is EVERYONES job if we want to survive on this planet as more than mushrooms.
my $.02