Slashdot Mirror
Linux and Shrek
Delrin writes "This article on Zdnet reports on how Linux is slowly becoming an important player in the high-end graphic design industry. The latest upcoming movie "Shrek" a perfect example. Dreamworks and others are turning to linux for a large portion of their work, turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft." The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).
From the trailers it seems like the movie has a great story and solid acting but I have some problems with the visuals. The lighting looks too harsh. All the characters seem to glow. The actions are too exaggerated , beyond being cartoonish, ie. A smile taking 24 frames instead of 12. The actions just don't seem to flow as well as they should. I was unimpressed by Antz, which had a poor story and bland textures and scenery. The way I'm looking at this one, it will more than likely be a rental for me.
Did you know? Have you heard? Windows media, as well as divx and some others are in fact playable under linux. one tip for ya: >apt-get install aviplay :)
if you don't have debian (tsk tsk :) then you can grab the necessary files at:
http://divx.euro.ru/
"but why is it good that film graphic designers reject SGI in favor of Linux? Political and/or technical reasons?"
First, they aren't generally rejecting SGI in favor of Linux; they're mixing the two for a more cost-effective solution. SGI IRIX/MIPS machines still do a lot of the work, with a cluster of cheap linux boxes chugging in the background as a render farm. There is still plenty of work you can do on an SGI Onyx with Infinite Reality 3 graphics that you can't do on your x86 Linux box.
If you're asking why the Slashdot people think it's good to dump SGI in favor of Linux, it's because they're biased in favor of Linux.
Sorry for double post. I forgot Slashdot defaults to HTML, not text, for submissions.
Alex Bischoff
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Yes, but 1300 x $NT_LICENSE_FEE is still a fair chunk of change. I'm sure it won't really make a huge difference to the bottom line in the long run, but saving (1300x$NT_LICENSE_FEE) is certainly a good thing, perhaps leaving a little extra money to spend elsewhere, making the actors/staff happier, or more special effects, etc.
Looks like the only way I'll see this on my Linux box is to render it myself. Anyone got a Beowulf cluster I can borrow? :^)
Glad someone else noticed, but to me it seemed the story was a word for word duplicate to the one I read in the WSJ.
There was something in Wired about this when SW Ep 1 came out, and on the Macintosh news websites.
Somthing in the SGI licences to ILM makes ILM talk and show only SGI boxes even though there are Macs used for 2 and 3D work and sound editing, and some NT boxes used for 3D work.
But because of the licence, all ILM shows are SGI boxes. However...that said...most of the work is done on SGI boxes at ILM IIRC.
...versus just being sh*t out of luck.
Most people that go to the trouble of customizing something rarely actually WANT to do so. They do it out of business necessity.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why didn't you boycott back when they did the same thing with Aerosmith? This sort of stuff is old news, even on the Simpsons.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well when you stress freedom it applies to everyone. Even people you don't like. Otherwise its not freedom. So yes film producers are going to be using linux if they think it will help them get their product out the door. Just like many other people.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Actualy we do. If the KKK wanted to march down main St in Nashua NH (Where I live) I would be the first to admit that they have every right to do so under the law. And they have done far more to hurt freedom than the MPAA ever has.
Now that being said I would also be busy aranging a major all town party the same day in a park across town so that the Local Paper would put us not them on the front page.
Maybe try to get people to pledge $5 to the Sourthern Poverty Law center for every klansman who shows up. When All else fails employ irony.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
That was until I heard that the whole movie was computer generated!
--
It's ironic that Cameron Diaz is one of those actresses who is actually pretty decent at "subtle nuances of human expression" (see Being John Malkovich)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Pulling for HP... ;)
:)
We have demoed both boxes in house.
I am impressed with both HP and SGI Linux Graphics workstations. I do know that my home grown box has close enough the performance for me (but being a coder, that is not saying it would be good for an animator).
IMHO, I like the SGI systems a bit better because of the NVidia chips, but that is me being a bit biased. As always, it boils down to price vs. performance.
With us looking at going to Linux desktops and render farms (not near the order of PDI or Dreamworks) it is good to keep all of the major parties in mind.
Thanks for the reminder, Bruce...
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
I disagree...
We are looking at it (and in some stages doing it). We have coders in house doing some custom stuff, but we have made 90% of our code cross platform from the get go. C and MEL (Maya's scripting language). My custom code is in perl, so it is just as happy in IRIX world and Linux world. LSF, the other key to our render solution is also multi-platform, so the migration has been painless.
As long as the software is ported by the vendors, there is no reason to stay on NT.
Most companies being happy with Windows may not be accurate... I think they are more scared of change than pleased to use Windows.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
This mirrors (but not to scale) our setup.
We are curently VA only on the Linux side, but SGI Octanes (and Octane2's) on the desktop side.
We have no propriatary modeling/animating/rendering software... pure Maya, which has worked well for us. Our scale has been smaller than Shrek, so we have been able to keep our heads above water.
Our feature, Jonah,(due out next year) will be done on Linux render boxes with Maya with SGI desktops (most likely IRIX... don't want to change mid production) with the strong possibility of rolling to Linux on the desktop for the next project.
We are using LSF (from Platform) to do the load balancing and custom MEL and perl to interact with the database, submit to LSF and keep the renders in order.
Our group of programmers also do production support. I, overseeing the render process, get to play wrangler, architect, sysadmin and programmer. Fun Fun.
We use photoshop and a few other tools, but most of the paintfixes we do is with the GIMP.
Good to see that we aren't far off of the big boys.
Back to my misbehaving render boxes....
Tim Toll
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Good luck getting good support for your debian or mandrake installs.
A|W is a great company, but part of them moving on the Linux scene was to use a single distro.
The notes say to install on RedHat 6.2, not 6.1 or 7.0 as it can cause problems.
This is understandable. They can only have so many flavors to test on... one of the reasons that software vendors love a "real" *nix, like IRIX. One flavor... you only have patches to watch out for.
I agree it is a win/win situation for rendering and desktops... we are moving that direction ourselves.
The only thing that is skewed is the price of the software vs. the OS. When the NT boxes came out, the price of animation software dropped. One of the good things that came out of the temporary Microsoft and SoftImage marriage.
Now with the box price dropping even more, the software will mostlikely follow, which helps everyone but the vendors.
Also, not as many render studios render on Maya (or at least not exclusively) I imagine the PR RenderMan port made more of an impact with the majors.
I also would not consider production houses a corporate environment... mostly artists and geeks... not too many shirts... but... i agree, a step in the right direction.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
This person is confused.
The industry is not moving away from SGI.
They aren't even moving away from IRIX.
A lot of places are getting SGI Linux boxes in house. With an Origin 3000 server and using an Onyx for video streaming, you can have a nice setup using all SGI stuff.
And A|W is an SGI company, but they support intel boxes with RH 6.2.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Toy Story 2 is almost 2 years old. CmdrTaco is just playing the fool when he compares Shrek to Toy Story 2. In those 2 years technology at both Pixar and PDI has move along quite a bit. He should be comparing Shrek to Monsters, Inc., which will be released this year as well.
-dan
Yes, it takes more than merely being able to produce the movie, you need to market it as well. However, modern technology has a cure for that as well. The Internet is the perfect way to inexpensively distribute digital art of any kind. For example, how many of us here on /. have seen CmdrTaco's "Hamster Havoc" (or whatever it is called), and it was certainly not Hollywood material. If your movie didn't have a huge budget, it wouldn't need a huge audience to be successful either. Word of mouth coupled with a web site could easily be enough of a market. You probably won't see something like this in movie theaters anytime soon, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
Most independent movies right now are actually hoping to be bought out by an MPAA member so that they can break into the big time. With inexpensive professional special effects and an inexpensive way to market and distribute the work it might be possible to bypass the MPAA altogether.
Of course "bad" generally depends on your perspective. It is a very subjective monikker. In fact, many people believe that good and bad are always entirely relative (I personally believe that there is such a thing as an absolute Bad, and an absolute Good, but that's neither here nor there).
I was fishing around for a couple of things that I figured that anyone soft-headed enough to feel that Linux should only be used for medical research would see as "bad." Although, I think that even many Chinese nationals would agree that giving the people in charge of their country supercomputers is not a good thing. America certainly has its share of heavy-handed government, but it is nothing compared to what happens in China.
My point is that Linux is going to be used for all sorts of things, and that can't really be controlled. However, with Linux there is at least the potential that the newest software patch might come as a result of the work of someone you see as "bad." (whomever that might be). That doesn't make the patch less useful, and it might help your causes just as much as it helped whoever wrote the patch.
As for the oil companies using Linux. I personally say "good for them." I happen to think that digging up oil is a useful activity (once again I was just fishing for examples of industries that the original poster might find objectionable).
Anyone who thought that Linux was some sort of communist type class revolution clearly needs to do some re-thinking. This isn't about wealth, power, or fame, it's about source code availability.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Personally I am glad to see Linux being used by the rich and the powerful. You see, I like using Linux, but I enjoy getting paid as well. The rich and powerful tend to be able to pay for expert services.
LOL.
I give up. In the future I suppose I am going to have to use examples from popular science fiction. Although I suppose some people would also get offended if I characterized the Vogons as "bad" as well.
What a fscked up world we live in.
Actually, the movie industry has sponsored at least some work on Linux. I know that Bruce Perens used to work for Pixar. That's the reason that all of the Debian Linux releases have names like Hamm, Woody, Buzz, or Sid (characters from Toy Story).
The fact of the matter is that Linux is useful enough that it is going to get used for all kinds of bad stuff. The Chinese will probably use Linux to build supercomputers, the oil companies are already using Linux to look for oil, terrorists will probably use Linux to encrypt their secret communications. Linux is a tool, and as such it doesn't have any power to say how it is used.
The good news is that the same things that make Linux useful for terrorists also make Linux useful for medical research, and whatever else you feel to be a "good" field of endeavor. The newest patch to improve networking might come from a skinhead neo-Nazi that wanted his hate web site to run a little faster, but it will help your Linux boxes just as much as it helped his.
Yes, but on the bright side Linux is guaranteeing that the tools used to make professional movies become less and less expensive. Pretty soon it will be possible to really break the MPAA by making it possible for struggling artists to produce and distribute their works inexpensively.
When it is all said and done this is the only way to break the MPAA. As long as making a movie is as expensive as it is today the MPAA will control the destiny of entertainment (because they will be the only ones able to produce it). Trying to "steal" their works after they have created them is a losing proposition.
This article wasn't ment to pursuade anyone to do anything. It simply reported on what some people were using to do the jobs they get paid for and why they chuse this particular option.
They also took the tim out to mention what a few others think about the idea.
If you want pursuasion read original articles on RedHat.com or linux.com or samba.org
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I did read the article - in print, in the WSJ this morning, before this was posted to ZDNet and Slashdot. And I read it thoroughly, much like you didn't read my post.
Yes, Pixar and ILM are *preparing* to move their workstations to Linux. That doesn't mean they're already running Linux workstations. That means they're going to run Linux workstations at some point in the future, i.e. in a while.
And I know all about Pixar's SGI/Sun shop - my employer already has other consultants out there, and is currently trying to place me out there, too. It's in Emeryville, about a mile from my house, and they're a total Sun shop for rendering - ironically, they're one of the few major shops *not* using a Linux renderfarm, even though they're preparing to switch their workstations to Linux (but haven't yet).
Anyhow, my point (which was a response to a poster talking about how he saw only IRIX desktops in the "Making of Shrek" docu-plug) is that Linux was not used on artist's workstations for this film, and that you won't see Linux workstations in the field for a while. Rollouts may be planned, but they're not yet executed. I think my point still stands. And I think I know what I'm talking about, so keep the personal attacks to yourself.
Attempting to inform, not to flame,
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
See http://film.gimp.org - You can build 16-bit/channel gimp today, with some patching/tweaking.
Gimp 2.0 will use the GEGL image processing library which has more generalized support for data types and color spaces.
I haven't followed the progress on this in a while (no longer in the industry), but AFAIK development rolls on.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
While this press is nice, there's not much new here. It is true that most of the 3D vendors are working on Linux versions (except, notoriously, for Lightwave), but you won't see Linux replacing SGI and NT on the desktops of CG shops for a while.
The "Shrek" guys (and damn near everyone else in CG) used Linux to build a large, cheap renderfarm. This isn't new - when I worked at Digital Domain in 1999, their much-vaunted Linux/Alpha renderfarm used for some of the rendering on "Titanic" was several years old. (It also wasn't an exclusively Linux farm, contrary to popular belief - every box was dual-bootable to NT/Alpha to run the Lightwave renderer when necessary.)
SGI and NT still own the interactive (i.e. desktop, as opposed to batch rendering) part of the market for 3D software. Nowhere in the article was it stated that the creators of "Shrek" were using Linux on the desktop.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft
I think SGI is one of the reasons why Linux is becoming populair in the High end graphics market. Isn't Alias|Wavefront owned wholy by SGI?
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
You REALLY need to check out the trailer for Final Fantasy. I just saw the latest one in the theater when I went to see the Mummy Returns. It's absolutely incredible and very very very real looking.
-jay
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The interviews were set up and pitched to the WSJ by HP's P.R. department. So, we do have professionals doing Linux P.R. I was interviewed, although I'm not mentioned.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Alpha still 0wnz j00r floating point ops...
Though I bet if these rendering outfits start optimizing for 3Dnow/SSE/AltiVec we might see some tres cool results..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
But, without the ability to change the code, they don't GET quality and features. Why? Because you get quality and features because SOMEONE ELSE had the ability to change the code (and redistribute the changes). And, since you don't know who will be the SOMEONE, you need to ensure EVERYONE has the same rights.
This is /. Off the cuff responses to things that people haven't bothered to actually read, is the rule, not the exception.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I went to see a radio screening. And the movie is PACKED with jabs at Disney. Along with stuff from Matrix, and others.
There is enough visual stuff in the movie, to keep children totally wrapped up in things. But I was with a group of 4 adults, and we were all rolling on the floor laughing. There is so much in the movie, that's just perfectly written. Brilliant movie.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
But doon't forget James Cameron's wisesaying about this:
"People don't pay to see actors - they pay to see stars"
-- need more time?
Agreed.
The Dreamworks animation studio did not choose to use Linux because of imaginary benefits or because of philosophical bias; they most certainly were not jumping on a bandwagon. I want to state, for the record, that when Lans Carstensen (network admin guy at Dreamworks and a friend of mine) started deploying Linux at the Dreamworks animation studio last year (which I mentioned here), he talked about specific, present business needs addressed by the deployment. Amongst them, the story of the network filesystem issue is especially interesting because it shows how the decision to deploy Linux stems directly from the need to protect intellectual property related corporate assets.
The workstations at the Dreamworks animation studio have two or three network cards in them, one of which is a Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Network usage is high enough to warrant this sort of configuration because, amongst other things, the animators' work (which consists of mind-numbingly large graphics files) is stored on the network filesystem. This situation is, to say the least, unusual. In fact, the needs of the Dreamworks animation studio are so special that, at one point, they were even considering developing their own network filesystem! This seems crazy -- until you learn that the Dreamworks animation studio (rightly) considers its computer files to be a primary business asset; in the case of animation frames, computer files are the direct precursor of their final product! With that in mind, try to put yourself in their shoes: if you had to develop your own alternative implementation of important network services, what target platform would you choose? The developers at the Dreamworks animation studio chose an open source, free software product (Linux) as the starting point for their efforts. [If you did not arrive at a similar solution, please read the rest of the article and then try again. :)] Now,
the story of Linux deployment at the Dreamworks animation
studio was not a fairy tale, as many bugs were
discovered that had to be overcome, but this just underscores
why a group of talented IT professionals would choose an open
source product over a closed source product, whether "shared" or not: the latter would leave them at the mercy of the vendor,
whereas the former allows them to help themselves.
Let me summarize. The decision to deploy Linux at the Dreamworks animation studio was not made on the basis of the product's technical merit alone. Responsible IT professionals choose Linux because, beyond providing a solid foundation on which to build a custom solution, it empowers its users and developers in ways that closed source and so-called shared source products never could. The Dreamworks animation studio staff can better protect the company's intellectual assets (which are created in the form of animation frames) by using, modifying, and sharing GPL'd software. Interestingly, the GPL, by virtue of its perpetuity, further protects their assets by guaranteeing that any software they help create will remain available to them.
As a brother of one of the employees at Pacific Data Images (who did the computer animation work for Shrek), I can say that pretty much the entire movie's computer animation was rendered on relatively inexpensive Linux boxes.
It uses a highly-modified version of Red Hat Linux to pull this off; the results of course is quite spectular, and also well-received by the mass media (most of whom said Shrek will have a boffo b.o., to use the Variety lingo).
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Yes, but that was the point of it, or so I tend to think. The whole style of the movie was different from the rest of disney's usual stuff.
'course, that's because they brought in the guy that did "Cat's Don't Dance" (a rather good and yet apparently mostly unknown cartoon movie. Sort of a Gene Kelly musical/dance-meets-classic-Warner-Brothers-cartoo ns kind of thing - I recommend it, anyway) to make it. Mark Dindal is spiffy...
While I'm not planning to line up on opening night to watch Shrek, I get the feeling that it's definitely going to be worth seeing.
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Would it be okay to use God to make Linux?
(I have this sudden vision of Linus Torvalds sending email to the kernel development mailing list saying God just spoke to him, and if he doesn't get 1,000,000 lines of code by next month God will SIGTERM him...)
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Is it just me, or do all of the Scientology-"trained" actors have trouble portraying emotions? If you watch their faces from about the nose up, it seems like the whole area stays the same, other than the occasional squint or wrinkling of the brow, no matter what the emotional content of the scene is. It's actually slightly disturbing. It's almost as if you can tell which actors and actresses are into Scientology by watching for the "deadness" around their eyes...
Or am I just "seeing things"? (The "Is it just me?" wasn't meant to be rhetorical, I really am wondering if anyone else has noticed this...)
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Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Probably true...and hilariously ironic, in my opinion.
When movies were invented, actors just had to look good, but since there was no sound, they didn't have to sound good. Then they added sound. (Everybody's seen "Singing in the Rain", right?) Now we're working towards getting rid of the "look good" requirement...but the actors and actresses more than ever need to sound good.
A more philosophical person than me would probably make some sort of observation about Tao at this point or something...
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
No, "Free if you use it like I say you should and not any other way" is exactly what GNU/Linux and the GPL is all about. "Free" is something like the BSD license.
Unfortunately DD decided to go closed source and no more of their tools were open sourced but the original idea behind FLTK was to provide a GUI toolkit to be used in movie-effect software. Now, it's come a long ways and is a much more generalized toolkit but it was the general idea behind it.
This is a bit off topic, but it's related because it was a Linux GPL'd toolkit that started for doing mainstream 3d effects on unix platforms (Cheap linux boxes, if I recall titanics render farms correctly). Blatant plug for a cool project...
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Just hope it won't suck as much as "The Lost World" did!
C-X C-S
That sounds like a great restriction to place on WildBeastix - I totally agree and I'm going to switch over from Linux to your OS right now. We'll show those money-grubbing capitalist running dog lackeys, won't we!
[looks around on sunsite]
[looks around on ftp.gnu.org]
[searches Google and AV]
[tries wildbeastix.org]
Hmmm, it appears you haven't written a free operating system, and so I'm unable to make use of it in the manner that we both agree is correct. Do let us know when you've written it, and we'll immediately begin using it to shaft motion picture studios. Until then, kindly refrain from bitching about what Linus lets people do with his OS under the terms he selected. Thanks!
P.S. Philosophical discussion: is it worse to use God to make money if you believe He exists, or if you believe he doesn't? What if the money you make goes back to religious causes? Discuss.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Sorry to rake you over the coals, I was in a bad mood before :)
But seriously, the developers chose to use that license, so I don't see how it's so bad that anyone can use it. If you wanted to write an OS and not stay poor, you could easily use an industry-standard license, or even a variant of the MPL, etc. In some cases, Linux developers have profited from their work - Linus, Alan, Ted T'so, etc. are all employed more-or-less directly because of their Linux kernel development work. For whatever reason, open source/free software developers are apparently OK with the potential for others to use their software without reimbursement.
I admit it's a different story if you're starting a new project with your own ideas, rather than submitting patches to someone else's creation. But in the long run, I don't think Linux would be nearly this big if it wasn't so easy for everyone to make use of. Linus chose to gamble for marketshare and take the chance of losing out on any potential profit, but as it's worked out he's gained both the market share and some reasonable amount of profit. Presumeably he's happy with the proportion of those who only take from the community versus those who give back.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"This is a market where Linux is absolutely perfect," says Linus Torvalds, the Finnish programmer credited with starting the Linux movement.
like maybe because he WROTE it.
-k
Hmm. I've never looked at Nicole Kidman's EYES on screen. Of course, she may not count, since it is rumored that her dissatisfaction with Co$ played a part in their divorce.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
As an added bonus, we can stop indirectly funding the Cult of $cientology by paying admission for movies, which will be, after many twists and turns, reflected in how much Tom is paid, which is then passed on to Co$ to pay for more brainwashings.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
A wise friend once told me: "Paris was always better 20 years before. No matter what period of time it is that you're talking about..."
When I started with computers, it was on a printer terminal. No fancy CRT, just reams of greenbar. Though technically a CLI, it made editing long text files *interesting*... Since every mistake probably meant printing out a few pages of relatively scarce paper, (at my school, anyway...) we were more careful about what we typed. No luxury of on-screen editing for us!
My older sister wrote her programs in college on a deck of 80 char cards - Her husband could manually enter the boot sequence of his PDP-something-or-other using the switches on the front of the box.
(I remember a friend of mine who ridiculed me for using PINE as a mail reader - way too graphical! What a waste of resources!)
It's all relative. Each advance represents certain losses and gains and shifts in perceptions; It is exactly because Windows is such a big, gassy, bloated mess that I can afford a 1.2 GHz processor and so much RAM. They've driven down hardware prices for the masses. If I want to use this hardware to run VI and mpg123 while serving pages with APACHE in the background, I won't need KDE *or* GNOME and the performance will certainly kick ass. For this, I have MS and Intel to thank. (Even though mine is Caldera on AMD!)
Don't worry about the next generation - They will soon enough make us all obsolete with their wizardry, no matter which interface they choose...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
I think you underestimate the capabilities of a young mind. I myself am aging rapidly (being of the dumb terminal generation ;), and slowly losing the ability to learn new things. The next generation of hackers may still yet suprise you.
They may be weened on playstation, Windows, and coinop's but I guarantee you the BRIGHTER ones will soon look for more challenging things.
Who cares about the trailer....I've seen the movie!!
It's the funniest movie I've seen since the Toy Story 2 Outtakes.
:wq
Perhaps not for Shrek. But you will see Linux desktops at Dreamworks and PDI if you visit us today. Both studios are moving almost exclusively to Linux on the desktop. I say almost, because there's Photoshop which is one stubborn app that refuses to go to Linux. (Yes, we know about gimp, but where the heck is the support for 16 bits per channel?)
I completely agree. The trailer for FF was the best special effects I've seen in years - maybe ever. Just the trailer. It may not be linux, but it's gorgeous.
Not to disagree with the whole linux thing, I'm all for it. That thing. Any "Non-M$" thing.
Even so, when comparing Toy Story & Toy Story 2, it's obvious how much better the sequel looks than the original.
Anyway, I have to say that I'm not really considering seeing Shrek, because I'm past the point of seeing films just for the CGI or special effects. A fairy tale story just doesn't interest me too much.
Doesn't the G in SKG stand for "Gates"? I thought he was one of the founders or something.
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory;
This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act II. Scene II
The trailer
That's what I'm waiting for.
http://www.dansjp3page.com/samintrouble.jpg
Quicktime trailers available here:
http://countingdown.com/movies/jurassicpark3
Dunno if it uses Linux (I do), but who cares!
"Then they added sound. (Everybody's seen "Singing in the Rain", right?)"
Hmmmm. Not sure how 'Singing in the Rain' fits in just here. If you are meaning the first film with sound, then the film you are after is 'The Jazz Singer'
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Get a grip.
"Free" in this case (Linux) means "Free", not "Free if you use it like I say you should and not any other way" like you are espousing.
That would be Apple's or Microsoft's or Sun's definition of "Free".
Who the hell are you to dictate who as to pay and who doesn't? Who appointed you Linus (or Richard)?
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
first, that's got to be the loudest i've groaned at a dept. title in months.
second, following a commented link on PDI's rendering statistics, you can see that they render at (approx.) 1880x990. film can take approximately 2000 pixels top to bottom. this is what scares me about digital film: the loss of picture quality. i don't know about you, but i could tell the scene in phantom menace where it was digital, because it looked grainier.
i see no need to take a step backwards to a quarter of the resolution that we have today, when in 10 years computers will handle a full 4000x2000 frame easily. does anybody know at what level pixar renders its films at?
--
stored on computers from birth to the grave
I'll have to check that out - I've been waiting to see the Mummy Returns until I can watch The Mummy... the last couple times I went to rent it, it was out (the 'Buster only stocks a couple copys on DVD now, and I wasn't motivated to drive the few miles to Hollywood Vid). With running all over the country this and next weekend, it looks like it will be a while...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Yes, but when the clothes are moving, the hair blowing, and the head moving/face talking..... does that look as real as a still shot? A static picture is easy... a bunch of static pictures rendered and progressed is easy... to capture the dynamics of real life-like motion is very tough.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
From the article:
"Ten years from now, maybe we don't need actors like Tom Cruise anymore, because we've reached the stage where we can render them so well," Fink says.
Funny thing is, we don't need actors like Tom Cruise now... or Hugh Grant, for that matter...
As for the reality of it, there are those certain characteristics that are rapidly improving, but still have quite a ways to go: hair and clothing. I've seen some of the longer previews for "Shrek" and they look quite a bit more real than any previous movie effort, but there is just so much that still hasn't been captured. Subtle facial expressions are another thing that are tough to do... after watching the Shiny Things Network (MTV) for so long, many have lost their sensitivity to the more subtle nuances of human expression... the best actors can do a lot with very small movements. Modeling the expressions isn't as hard as figuring out what they really are, and what muscles of the face are involved.
I wouldn't be surprised if we are only a few years away from some amazingly real looking stuff though. With the ever decreasing cost of processing power and storage bandwidth, we can continue with more complex models and really have something to show for it.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
TV resolution is not really good enough to judge. On the other hand, repeated viewings can bring your attention to things you hadn't noticed before - like on my 12th viewing of The Matrix I noticed one of the shots where Neo's mouth is covered over with skin isn't that great, and the movement of the elevator door away from the explosion seems a little stiff and unrealistic. It might *be* realistic, but it doesn't look "right". But those effects were rendered on FreeBSD, so the trolls should be out soon.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Well when you stress freedom it applies to everyone. Even people you don't like. Otherwise its not freedom. So yes film producers are going to be using linux if they think it will help them get their product out the door. Just like many other people.
We do not grant freedom to those people who would use or have used it to take others freedom away. What do you think jails are for? By "our" values, hollywood are guilty of real crimes, so it is not necessarily immoral or hypocritical of us to want to take the software freedoms which we have worked hard for away from them.
Did you see Tom Cruise in Magnolia? I wasn't expecting much, but I thought he was really excellent in that movie. Probably the best performance in the film.
--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The main reason Linux is successful in this industry over similar priced alternatives (ie NT/2k) is the simple fact they can modify it to suit their needs.
It seems most of the studios are writing their own software to add on to the base Maya/Alias/SoftImage/Max package in order to get the exact effect they need. I remember seeing a documentary on what ILM was doing in "The Mummy" that described a lot of the custom stuff written to achieve those effects.
With 'close source' products you don't have the option of getting down into the guts of the system and ripping out code that is just slowing you down (probably there for a normal user or something). You can customize the hell out of your OS to make it sing on the 3D rendering pipe and nothing else!
With cheap hardware (so other Unix vendors can't compete) and full OS customisability you really have a great combo that no one else could come near - after all, I'm sure these guys aren't exactly the types to be calling tech support for anything much.
Linux sounds like it's gonna be huge in the movie industry. Doesn't necessicarily translate anywhere else though - otherwise we'd all be running Irix and SGI on our desktops right now.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I doubt Linux would scale to a 256 CPU Origin 2000 machine (at least not in the near future).
I believe linux already runs on the o2k -- I seem to remember a slashdot article on it at some point in time.
They're using Linux. They hacked on the kernel. What else is there? Minesweeper, perhaps? I mean, my grandmother is a kernel hacker--this is the 21st Century! Who needs apps?
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The cost of software is a drop in the bucket compared to salaries for 250 people working for 4 years (roughly what Pixar or PDI or Disney deploys.) Here's a good guess at the numbers:
Operating system software for 250 computer animators at $1,000 per station is about $0.25 million. Loaded salaries (i.e. salaries plus benefits plus pro-rata overhead) of 250 people for 4 years, at $200,000 per year, is $200 million. Nobody in the business cares what the system software costs. (In fact, the places that don't write their own application software in-house don't even care what that costs -- $25,000 per workstation for Maya and Renderman is still peanuts.)
Linux is taking over because the previous market leader was SGI, not Microsoft. The programmers that write the software are naturally less interested in switching to Win32 than Linux, when presented with the inevitability of an Intel future. If Microsoft were a real player in this market (and, oh do they wish they were!) the outcome would not be so clear.
-Tom Duff
Are you mad? That _is_ the point.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Hrmm Dreamworks could be shifting away from using Irix and Irix based programs on SGI machines, but odds are they're using Linux based programs on SGI hardware. FYI for those who don't know too much about the graphic design/3-d industry, SGI used to make the top of the line machines for the tasks along with Irix running the programs some of which costed over 40k (most of the times it did) so to say they dropped SGI is somewhat false.
Dreamworks and other shops are likely using Linux on their existing SGI hardware as well, since their production machines are not your run of the mill eBay like SGI machines, they're likely highly stacked up SGI boxes, and I'm sure they wouldn't toss them out.
Strata Pro Studio which is actually a kick as 3-d program for Windows may have ported something to the Nix community as well but I'm not sure, its been about 4 years since I worked in the GD/GA field.
Want Root?
You MUST be kidding me!
Shakespeare wrote sex and violence enough for 3 or 4 rambo movies. He wrote to appeal to the lowest common denominator as much as possible, he had to write this way because his main competition was bear baiting across the river.
The only reason everyone thinks he was so great is because we still enjoy sex and violence in our entertainment today so his work withstood the test of time. I garauntee that American Beauty will stand that test of time just as well.
Shakespeare was nothing more than a 2 bit hack that wrote crap to appeal to the masses, just like any sitcom writer today, he just happened to do it in imabic pentameter so everyone thinks he's a god...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The thing is, that language was nothing special for the time. It was poetry, yes. But it wasn't exceptional poetry for the period. And the subject matter was the same as many hollywood crapfests. Especially Hamlet. The cast of characters is just as inane as anything coming out of lalaland today.
I'm not saying his plays aren't great to read and watch, but they just aren't automatically better than anything the modern world turns out simply because they are old.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Guess why those characters are in there? Because the audience can relate to them! Shakespeare did the same thing with his characters. You try to make them familiar to your audience. Shakespeare was good at making money off of his work, but he was writing for money, not for the artistic love of it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Bah! Apologies for the self-reply. Got a little overanxious to hit the submit button.
In the end, it's just an ad to draw a crowd. They want the largest possible crowd. That's why the names are there.
I've seen trailers that made their movies look amazing when they really sucked eggs and vice versa. It's that whole "can't judge a book by it's cover" bit applied to modern entertainment
...must obviously suck. When a trailer for a CARTOON trumpets all the flesh-voices as the reason it's a "must-see", you KNOW a dog is waiting to bark off its reel.
Not true, methinks. Face it, most of the Joe Sixpacks in the world still view animation as material for children. Recognizeable names will interest those that would have passed it by, no matter how good the plot and story line looks
Also, your average parent gets bombarded with "I wanna see Shrek!!" or whatever the new pretty animation is. Most of the parental units I know would answer with "huh?" A quick pop to the Net, local advert, or movie poster will reveal 4 very recognizeable adult actors's voices.
Either way, it'll come down to "Let's see that movie with, um...what's her name? Oh yeah, Cameron Diaz!" Not, "Let's go see that cartoon with the ogre and the princess about the fairy tale, etc"
<B>"This is a market where Linux is absolutely perfect," says Linus Torvalds, the Finnish programmer credited with starting the Linux movement. "But it's not a driving market." </B>
<P>
Linus is right in saying this in the context of the whole OS market, but this statement should be refined. This market, along with CAD, is and always has been a driving market for 3D workstations. Having these leading edge graphics and art fanatics on Linux workstations will have a major, positive impact on the quality of OpenGL drivers, application software, desktops and all things visual available on Linux.
@de_machina
It's still impossible to play downloaded vids (mpg, avi) or my VCD's in an acceptable way. That means... without skipping half of it. (p166mmx and 64Mb, 2Mb videocard,... no problem with Windows).
Home users will be impressed with this story but will find out they can't play their pr0n with a nice framrate.
Softimage *was* owned by microsoft.. they are now owned by Avid.
a quote from their website.
About Softimage Co.
Softimage Co., a division of Avid Technology, Inc, is the industry leader in 3-D animation, 2-D cel animation, compositing and special effects software, designed to address the demands of the film and commercial/broadcast and games/interactive industries. SOFTIMAGEÒ|XSIÔ, an integral player in Avid's Make, Manage and Move MediaÔ strategy, is the flagship product offering from Softimage. XSI is the industry's first truly nonlinear animation (NLA) system that gives animators and digital artists the freedom to Make professional animation, visual effects and games - from major motion pictures, to cartoons and commercials, to animated content for video games and Web sites. The Softimage product family is designed to help users innovate, create and collaborate throughout the production process.
With your reasoning its just a matter of perspective.
Chinese perspective:
Linux has already been used for bad stuff: The Americans have built supercomputers with it!!!!!
I hope most chinese have more clue than you.
btw. I hope oil companies stop doing simulations. Thats BAD! I hope they just start drilling blindly they will certainly do less harm that way.
I'm glad that our product can further add to the profit margin of the MPAA, which has been nothing but hostile to this community.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
She's featured in the bonus material offered in the news stand version of Maxim magazine. I check ed it out and while the 3D graphic girl is VERY real looking, a careful eye will be able to tell which one is computer generated and which one is not.
Rangers Lead the Way!
Just like things have been compared to Star wars for so many years, Toy Story 2 kind of stands out in the animation industry as something that you end up getting compared to. It's not a matter of pitting them against the movie, but more of a tribute to how amazing Toy Story 2 was in it's day.
The main selling point of course was the bottom-line. The cost of migrating very large bases of in-house developed software and systems to Windows from UNIX was just too much. Apart from retraining admins (well actually re-hiring then because none of us would stand having to use Windows based systems) and retooling the production pipelines which were often implemented in UNIX shell scripts, perl, C, and C++, Windows didn't make any sense. Has anyone ever succeeded at building a manageable render-farm using Windows PCs?
Another selling point here was one that Microsoft and PC vendors used to push their products over the like of SGI: "The PC hardware is so much cheaper, you'll save so much money." So with this, we were able to add: "But with Linux, the operating system is free, so you'll save even more." The hardware vendors were happy with this. They can still sell their PCs. And we were happy because we were able to use Microsoft's very own selling point of being cheaper to eat their lunch.
In the case of Shrek, I really think PDI should be given the greatest amount of credit for getting Linux in house and in use. DreamWorks was closely partnered with PDI but it was only later, after PDI had begun much of its Linux initiative, did they end up merging with them. PDI's success with Linux in turn help fostered the adoption of Linux being used at DreamWorks... along with, I might proudly add, a lot of pushing from myself and some of my fellow sysadmins--some of whom worked on Titanic at Digital Domain.
Another modest coup for the Open Source movement. The Gimp was no stranger to the DreamWorks digital efx and background departments. Adobe stopped supporting Photoshop on the SGI/IRIX platform, so a lot of our people turned to using Gimp under IRIX for various tasks. It was easier than switching over to one of the Macs to use Photoshop there.
The reality of Linux benefiting independent productions is also real. I'd invite people here to see the website for Major Damage, an independently produced 3D cartoon. It's a "spare-time" collaborative project being worked on by employees from a number of large and competing animation studios.
Ultimately, I think we're going to find that the movie industry will help legitimize the use of Linux in other business areas. Much of Craig Mundie's recent mud-slinging against the Open Source movement seems rather unfounded given the success Linux is finding in Hollywood.
Note that the 'G' in 'SKG' stands for Gates. Seems a bit ironic that they're using Linux, doesn't it?
Sorry. Bill Gates is one of the major investors, so I thought the 'G' was for him. But you are right; it does represent Geffen.
Alias/Wavefront, an animation software unit of SGI, in March adapted its flagship Maya program to run on Linux.
Yet more proof that SGI is selling out. Pretty soon they'll be nothing more than another VA Linux that happens to have a couple extra products. Yes, they've done some cool stuff with software and with PCs. No, that doesn't make it okay to stop making high-end Unix workstations and servers.
Other visual effects companies such as ILM and Sony Imageworks use much more off the shelf software so for them to make the transition to Linux is much harder (although they are trying to). Many visual effects companies are happily using Windows - especially the smaller companies that have very little custom software or whose software is generally in the form of plugins rather than entire applications.
---- SIGFPE
HP was pitching this? Wow, how the world has changed, HP..Agilent, Bell Labs..Lucent. Hell that Carly is doing a great job!
I certainly wouldn't make that assumption. MIPS is hardly in the same category as Intel when it comes to rendering. But isn't it great that there is an OS that's not completely architecture dependant. Ok, try to forget that NT can run on non-intel systems. But who would prefer to work with IRIX over Linux, it's just a terrible OS.
Anyhoo, comparing Toy Story 2 to Shrek ends up being a useless comparison, because their subject matters require different levels of realism for effective story telling. (A better comparison might be A Bug's Life to Shrek, where at least the bugs are supposed to be organic.)
Alrighty I think I'm going to just reply to everyone at once.
You have to realize the types of equipment that the studios are using Linux for. For the most part their big use of Linux is probably in huge rendering farms for CGI work. You get some nice FP hardware, tons of ram, and a good hard disk and slap linux on it. Similar concept to a beowulf cluster but different application. Price point is already a proven winner.
This is not bringing down the cost of tools for the independent film maker. Their software is almost guaranteed to be proprietary and expensive. Their main workstations may run linux, but may also be SGIs or Suns. If they are using Linux on them its only because the they can build a PC workstation for so much less than SGI would charge.
In short, linux is a good thing for the movie industry. This does not mean linux is a good thing for the independent film maker. People are not making Shrek with Blender after all.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Yes, they are. :) Or at least a few of them are. Final Fantasy 7 and 8 were ported.
Well not quite a surprise considering recent happenings in the last few SIGGRAPHs. Of course there is that recent article in Millimeter magazine, and for specific you can check the rendering statistics from Daniel Wexler, PDI's renderer architect:
Linux and the FX industryPDI's Rendering Statistics
Yeah but you get to the point where any increase in resolution wont matter. At least stuff from CG animated movies get mostly done on computers so there is less degradation of quality as opposed to live action films. For comparison here is a post by Tom Duff at Pixar from the RenderMan newsgroup:
Well just check my previous post about PDI's rendering statistics. But while it is true that these companies are not dumping their SGI's in huge numbers they are indeed putting up x86 based machines up. And besides, remember that SGI sells x86 based machines. Here is a quote from the rendering statistics:
ProductCPUs
OS
Description
SGI Origin200
406
IRIX 6.5
Dual R10000 180MHz, 512MB SGI RAM, 3U + 1 rackmount, 9GB HDD
V/A Research
292
Linux
Dual PIII 450MHz, 1GB PC-100 SDRAM, 2U rackmount, 39GB HDD
SGI 1200
324
Linux
Dual PIII 800MHz, 2GB PC-133 SDRAM, 2U rackmount, 39GB HDD
Atipa
270
Linux
Dual PIII 800MHz, 2GB PC-133 SDRAM, 1U rackmount 39GB HDD
SGI O2
190
IRIX 6.5
Single processor O2s, R10000 , 256-512MB SGI RAM, 9GB HDD
Total
1482 cpus
836 boxes,
443 dual processor Linux boxes, 203 dual O200s, and 190 O2s.
Here is my previous post:
Rendering StatisticsActually M$ sold Softimage to Avid quite a few years ago, in 1998. At last year's Softimage User Group Meeting at SIGGRAPH 2000, they showed at the end a beta port of Softimage running under RedHat 6.2.
Just check their website:
Softimage Corporate infoAvid Corporate History
I'm not trying to say "we're there now." I'm just saying "look at where we are now, and project forward 10 years." Producing a lifelike still picture may just be a first step, but it's an important one.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
In 10 years, processing power will probably be some 32-64 times faster (to be on the conservative side of Moore's Law), and that by itself will allow almost unbelievable improvements in detail. I think his prediction is perfectly reasonable.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
What makes this interesting is that they're not just using Linux to build cheap renderfarms, but they're also using it for the original animation work, implying that Alias/Wavefront et al see Linux as a viable platform to port their high-end tools to.
I wasn't trying to pick on Digital...SCO Unix suffered from mystery crahes, too, in our experience. Actually, the fact that Digital (now Compaq) met with us and our (albeit, much larger) clients at this level was a good sign of Digital/Compaq's willingness to solve our problem. It's just that the closed-source model has its flaws, inherently, and one of them is the adversarial relationship fostered by withholding mission-critical system source code.
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Thanks, Bruce, good to hear this news.
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Two years ago we ran into a limit of ptys on an older Linux server. We searched the message boards and, not finding a solution, went through the source and found out what we were doing wrong. I'm not sure if we tweaked anything - that was a while back - but we solved our own problem without any acrimony.
Cost is an issue, but, with a little effort, the best benefit of Open Source is opened source. Maybe that's why it's called "Open Source" and not "Cheap Software".
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Hmmmm... What about that whole "all your base" craze that was circling around and around the net a few months ago? There were no corporations promoting Zero Wing or anything of the sort, but I guarantee you that millions of teenagers were walking around inserting badly translated Japanese video game quotes into their everyday conversation whenever possible.
Now what if some underground, independent animated cyberpunk flick got the same exposure? OK, so demographically, the internet is self selecting, but at the very least, most of the "wired" high school and college students would see it, and that' pretty good exposure.
Don't underestimate the internet. There's more people on than you think, and even if they're on AOL, they are still reachable.
this seems to be a huge chance for linux to get some lime-light in places it won't normally ever be heard of.
...
if the younger generation can see what "cool" things can be done, hopefully some of them will take a larger interest.
now if they only made a Linux version of Blue's Clues
_f
i feel the major snag to getting more people (read younger) exposed to linux is that 99.99% of a child's first exposure to a computer is either with a MAC or Win system.
...
...
...
this situation is going to get worse not better! most of us growing up only had the option of a text-only interface, so when we were first exposed to a *nix operating system (a day i hope we all remember well) it was almost second nature.
flash forward, and every kid today is growing up with some form of GUI. this presents major snags when you try to take these kids and get them to use an interface which lacks big-shiny-clickable "things"
am i wrong? i hope so
_f
of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most
atleast hackers was good for one quote
Good point. The point i don't understand is how people comparing them come up with the idea that Shrek blows anything away (except for maybe the good character design guidlines;) I mean the gee whiz factor is one thing (which I don't see) but the look and design of those characters is boring. And I noticed some "foot sliding" in the trailer. You know, when the digital character's feet don't move realistically with the ground or background and seem to slide(ie the first scene with JAR JAR in Phantom Menace). Also, the detail of sleeping "Newman" character's face from Toy Story 2 looks way better than the human faces in Shrek(which is what I'm assuming the fanboys are drooling over).
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
but you won't see Linux replacing SGI and NT on the desktops of CG shops for a while ... My employer thinks my opinions are crap
... preparing to replace nearly half of its 1,300 SGI workstations with a variety of Linux-based hardware ... Pixar Animation Studios, which helped bring Walt Disney Co. into computer-generated animation with "Toy Story," is also converting its workstations to Linux.
Your employer is right. I quote:
Both of these quotes specifically say that they are switching their workstations to Linux. In regards to Pixar I'm quite sure that this means the machines the animators are using as they (according to the Toy Story II credits) previously used SGI workstations for animation and Sun servers for rendering. Doubt that one? Once again I quote:
Sun Microsystems Inc. gloats about Pixar's longtime use of its servers for features that include the coming "Monsters Inc."
As if that isn't enough, I'll close with:
But Linux is being used on an increasing number of animators' workstations, as well as the rendering servers that apply shades and textures to images that the artists create.
Please read the article before posting.
Politics, Culture, Food?
even though they're preparing to switch their workstations to Linux (but haven't yet) You say you are "in the know" about the situation, and I have no basis on which to argue that, so I won't. I will, however, quote the article once again:
...
Pixar Animation Studios, which helped bring Walt Disney Co. into computer-generated animation with "Toy Story," is also converting its workstations to Linux. The studio was in the process of switching from SGI technology to Microsoft's Windows NT platform, but shifted to Linux in midstream
I can't read this any other way than they were converting to NT, but are now converting to Linux. If this report is accurate, there are some techs at Pixar right now (or at least there were during working hours) switching users over to Linux based machines. I make this claim because 1) they were in the process of switching to NT - past tense; 2)they sre converting their workstations to Linux - present tense. If this report is in error, you have my apologies.
As for personal attacks, I did not make one. I only stated an opinion in regards the personal attack that, according to you, your employer made.
Politics, Culture, Food?
I just happy to see sombody finally stop squabbling over price and cite the TRUE benifit of Free Software :
"Although we're a shop of 1,300 people, we don't have the clout to get Microsoft to change their operating system," says Andy Hendrickson, director of systems development at Industrial Light & Magic. "With Linux, we can do it all ourselves."
It's refreshing to see somone tout the value of freedom.
Politics, Culture, Food?
A non - tech reporter who understands the difference between Free Beerand Free Speech. And in the Wall Street Journal, of all places! This is a great day for Linux -- has any checked the for snowballs in Redmond ^H^H^H^H^H^H^HHell?
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
I agree that movie will suck from the clips I've seen, and no increase in pixels will improve the obviously banal story and atrocious overacting. I'm sorry about all the Pokemon-fan-mentality lusers who modded your post as flamebait. Sounds to me you're just telling it like it is.
I wish they had got into a little bit more detail about the rendering servers. I remember when Titanic came out that Compaq ran an add about the use of Alphas for the rendering. Think that's what they used for this movie? Or did they just cluster a ton of x86 machines together. It'd be cool to own a farm of dual alpha machines, I just wouldn't want to see the power bill.
...but the tie in game is going to be released on the Xbox...and who makes the Xbox...I can't remember. All I have to say is GameCube anyone (unless they have Nintendoitis--releasing only a handful of games and systems the first few months)?
the deacon...that's all you need to know for now
Microsoft vs. Hollywood...who would win... Hollywood would. They have better PR. Or you could be like me and hope they both lose, like Gore and Bush should have. (damn right I voted for Nader)
the deacon...that's all you need to know for now
I was fishing around for a couple of things that I figured that anyone soft-headed enough to feel that Linux should only be used for medical research would see as "bad."
Well, the Humans Off Planet loons would see medical research as bad, so there you go...
Debian-Jr. is going a long ways towards making this happen you might want to take a look at it. I do agree though. That and it would be really nice if some of the bigger sites for young children www.pbskids.org www.playhousedisney.com and www.nickjr.com would be more nix friendly. Oh well my so loves tux racer and I'm converting him but in households without nix you are %100 right.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
A LOT of big render studios are using linux boxes or moving over to them now that Maya is released for it. This will mean a lot of people wont have to shell out $$$ on top of the maya soft just for more SGI irix or M$ boxes.
This can only be good for the adopting of linux in the corporate enviroment meaning more money and reasearch being put back into it for us all to enjoy =).
Maya will also make this a LOT easyer for the 3D world to change to linux as the interface and command lines are all the same as the irix and Windows versions so it wont require any special training to switch over. Not to mention linux is a LOT more stable that NT/2000 when your rendering and also a lot easyer to admin remotley.
Also the Maya for linux comes in RPM (its made for redhat) so it should be easy to convert into deb's or just use on mandrake ect ect or your current favorite distro.
another Good Thing(tm)
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Your one stop science news and discusion site.
That is sort of what has made a movie star or artist important. If there are no copyrights for things like this, then why would anyone want to be an artist?
or do we get to run the acting characteristics of actors of the past 100 years of film history through an OOP randomizer to slice and dice and get whatever we want? Who would own those rights?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's damn wrong for profit hungry companies to use a free operating system such as linux. They never gave something away for Free so why should they deserve a free OS? Remember, this is Hollywood we're talking about, movie studios have no problems using and benefiting from Linux, but when Linux users want to use the technology(DeCSS) written for the sole purpose of viewing legally obtained DVD's, those same movie studios turn around and file a lawsuit. So tell me how are they giving back to the community?
Linux should be used for non-profit, medical, etc. research. If a company needs Linux, it should pay for it.
Using Linux to make money is almost as bad as using God to make money.
haha
That's such a poorly stated comment. The full reasons is because:
:P
1) Free
2) Open Source
3) Fast, stable, complete, easy to work with
And yes, you can profit from things you make with open source software, otherwise it'd be awefully useless, eh?
...isn't making a movie. Someone touched on one part of the problem with tackling the MPAA - marketing. The other part is distribution. It doesn't do any good to make or market a movie if you can't get it to each and every consumer out there. Yeah, yeah, there's the internet, but by relying on it, you've already excluded a large portion of society. You can't take the MPAA on unless you can get a movie projected onto screens and stocked in Blockbuster.
--Andy Hendrickson, director of systems development at Industrial Light & Magic.
Except watch the movies he makes on DVD! (well legally anyway)
"The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).
Yeah, except no. Did you SEE Toy Story 2? Or Dinosaur? Shrek might be fun and all, but the quality of the CG in the trailer did not impress me at all. Wait for Square's Final Fantasy movie - if you've checked out any of the new CG technology they've pioneered for that feature, it'll blow your mind. Shrek might be of acceptable quality, but for heaven's sake it doesn't have anything on the last couple of Pixar releases. The textures need work, the human modeling fall short of the mark, and the faces look like they're molded out of plastic. (Which, yeah, I guess they did in Toy Story, too, but they had an excuse.)
For specific statistics regarding our Renderfarm and how it was used on Shrek, check my website www.flarg.com. I work in R&D at PDI, and these are live stats on rendering performance along with some other interesting tidbits.
Daniel WexlerYou are right, we didn't use Linux boxes on the desktop for Shrek. However, the first desktop Linux boxes are now in production use at PDI.
I have some slightly out-of-date information about the actual composition of our renderfarm and some rendering statistics for Shrek on my website at www.flarg.com.
Daniel WexlerUnh? When did they make a Linux powered vibrator?
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*shoots himself*
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Oh yeah great, replace one plastic actor with another, just what we need :-P
Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
The quote about being able to modify the operating system makes it seem like that's the big selling point of a free-software OS.
Have you missed the whole "Open Source" marketing campaign for free software? Quality and features make a big difference, plus the absence of vendor lock-in. Users benefit from free software whether they want to change the code themselves or not.
I think a lot more people would find your story relatable than a quote from someone in a niche field. The quote explain why they wanted to change the source code, and there's no discussion of the advantages of having access to the source even if you don't change it, as in your story.
Some of the HP stuff later on in the article is good PR, but this isn't an article that I'd post on my cube. The most important part is the headline; the second most important part is what appears early in the story, before you lose most readers.
I'm in an NT shop, and post Linux articles every so often. The last one was WSJ Interactive's "Linux gains corporate respectability" on April 9.
...must obviously suck. When a trailer for a CARTOON trumpets all the flesh-voices as the reason it's a "must-see", you KNOW a dog is waiting to bark off its reel.
Really, what is this obsession with gosh-gee visuals, anyway? _The Simpsons_ is STILL more visually interested (not to mention intellectually challenging) than the latest Burger King toy factory flickering at the cineplex.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
I saw the movie at an early showing. Many scenes were indistinguishable from the real thing. I never saw one 'slip' in the whole movie (and was watching for them). Definitely worth sitting through.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
We dont needed Tom Cruise now either
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One world. One internet. One root. (ICANN policy)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Linux didn't do anything that warrants any more flashy exposure beyond what it is receiving in the present context. It is a tool, just like anything else, and warrants no big gala parties just because it works well in its capacity as a tool. You don't hear a big hubbub that Kodak film was used in a movie; and you won't (nor should you) hear a big hubbub about IBM or Compaq or Va Linux or whoever put together the physical linux boxes, either.
Do you really think that just because the rendering engines ran Linux, the videogames should be available on Linux even if this makes no financial sense ? There is no hue and cry about how the Final Fantasy games aren't available on Windows (are they ?;)), even though I imagine accounting and marketing and executive offices of Sony and Square probably run a lot of Windows products.
Would you be unsettled if the rendering was done on IRIX machines, but no version of the video game came out on IRIX ?
Why did you think it was only the print edition? As a subscriber, you can also find it here.
Well, since we all know that Hollywood never uses hype for any reason whatsoever (especially marketing), we can be rest assured that this story is true.
Well at least what i have seen of it. But i think that the Final Fantasy movie will just blow it out of the water.
n al_fantasy/index.html
Here is the trailer:http://www.apple.com/trailers/columbia/fi
We are almost at the point where all actors will be needed to do is speak with actually have to do any filming.
Forever live the fighters!
Yeah, but the price of Jar Jar is coming down. Slowly. If ILM would free their proprietary software, then the price would really fall.
Character animation is one of my interests. Specifically how to proceduralize parts and add more human control to other parts. I'm thinking of getting a Masters in a related area.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I have debian, but it say's it couldn't find that package. Are you running the stable, unstable, or testing branch?
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
"Ten years from now, maybe we don't need actors like Tom Cruise anymore, because we've reached the stage where we can render them so well," Fink says.
This has to be the best thing ever to come out of the Linux community.
I would love to see a Linux distribution targeted to sound and graphics professionals. Any distribution that I have used certianly wouldn't be capable to make "Shrek" in it's current configuration. Perhaps Pixar or Dreamworks should release a distribution, or at least contribute to the open source community.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
Umm.... think you missed the point here. The whole Linux/M$ line was simply a whimsical statement. Of course Linux is just a tool, yadda yadda and of course no one (ok, mostly no one) thinks the game oughtta be on Linux. In fact, I can't imagine anyone who takes the time to run Linux would even want to play some sissy 'Shrek' game! Don't take things so literally, man!
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
While Linux played a large part in the creation of the movie version of Shrek, the inevitable video game version of Shrek will be made exclusively available on the M$ XBox console. Game development is being done at the Canadian studios of Digital Illusions (check out http://www.dice.se).
I don't why, but I find this weirdly unsettling - Linux does the anonymous grunt work and M$ gets the flashy exposure.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
are awesome. I got to see a sneak preview 2 weeks ago, and was amazed at the visuals throughout the entire movie. I also think it was Murphy's funniest movie in a good long while. Three cheers for DreamWorks!
I saw Mike Meyers on Letterman last night, with his Shrek clip, and what I saw sucked.
It looked and played like a bad cut-scene from a PSX game.
The little bit of dialogue was insipid. The little bit of characterization was banal. (Remember, this is in a clip for a nationally broadcast late-night talk show. Where you don't send your crap and say "work in progress".)
And the visuals didn't look like an improvement on anything. E.g., characters' feet slipped when they walked. Movement looked like puppetry. Environmental elements didn't react to contact by characters. I'll reserve judgment on the graphical quality, since it was a video transfer, but still, for one 30-second clip they should have tried their best to map the digital film format to NTSC or ATSC or whatever Lettoman is using these days.
The only thing the clip seemed to feature well was sarcasm and quirkiness, but it was a weak, stilted, amateurish sort of sarcasm and quirkiness. You want the good stuff, watch The Emperor's New Groove four or five more times.
I may eat my words on this, and I'd eat them gladly, but Shrek may suck, huge. It might also make a zillion dollars, but that won't change my IMDB vote.
--Blair
"I don't even know why we have that lever."
> Microsoft vs. Hollywood...who would win... Hollywood would. They have better PR.
Amen to that.
Microsoft has revenues of $25B/year.
Hollywood--the whole damned feature-film industry, studios, theaters, and all--has revenues of $20B/year (give or take).
Microsoft is a worldwide pariah.
Hollywood is a popular earthly substitute for heaven.
But, if you polled the respective insiders, you'd find that the people who run Microsoft are mostly honest and hardworking (if greedy and arrogant), while the people who run Hollywood are scum and villainy (and greedy and arrogant).
PR rules.
--Blair
Softimage is a wholy-owned subsiduary of Microsoft. I hope Montreal doesn't tell Redmond what they're doing.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Okay, maybe I've been buried under final exams these last couple of weeks, and therefore seldom in contact with the world around me, but why is it good that film graphic designers reject SGI in favor of Linux? Political and/or technical reasons?
The coolest voice ever.
live at the South Pole, and not the North Pole. If they did, maybe Tux and his crew could have been on that iceberg that sank Titanic, to laugh and piss on diCaprio as he was freezing in the water...or maybe to save him. Please, someone tell me Tux isn't like that.
... ice falling all over the deck, and Tux is there kicking diCaprio's ass, and getting some tail for himself from Winslett.
A lot of digital editing for Titanic (the one with diCaprio) was done on linux.
It would have been funny to see the post-production people for Titanic throw a couple of Tux's on that iceberg though. Just imagine
Another article outline the same info is featured in todays Wall Street Journal on page B5. Zdnet may not reach decision makers but the WSJ sure does, this is the kind of press Linux needs to keep making in-roads with CEO-CFO types.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
The only reasons they chose linux is because its
1)Free
2)Open Source
Not because its faster, more stable, easier to work with, or produces better visuals as some have implied thusfar.
Also, can someone tell me if a company can use and modify open source software while profiting from its use?
Now, where have I heard that? Uhmmm...
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I know this won't bring lots of discussion, but, what about BeOS, some years ago was a huge promisse for graphic designers, for 3d animators, and alikes...
I think linux is better for programmers, and windows is better for end user. Why can't we have a OS better for desingers? I think that MacOS does this pretty well.
Is onipresence the linux goal? Is it better for linux comunity? I prefer to have my ye-old slackware (expert friendly), than use winz-mandrake-graph-final-user. If I ever need a friendly interface, I can find it at windows!
Whatever? Here is the question: Is this for the best of linux? or even better: Is this good for linux?
Don't worry, I'm upset [to|every]day
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
I don't see any mention in the article about the use of x86 based machines. It would seem that many people here are making the assumption that all of these companies are dumping their high-end workstations in favor of an Intel or AMD based machine/farm/cluster or whatever. Don't kid yourself. The big issue here is software licensing. The folks who are buying these $20,000 machines don't want to shell out another couple of grand for software. That's perfectly understandable and actually a pretty good idea. Take advantage of the fact that the open-source community has already done a lot of your work.
It should be obvious that I ment "migrate TO Linux" not "mirgrate FROM." So much for proofreading.
TurboChicken
First, Taco had two pron mentions in a 5 hour time span, now 2 mentions of Tom Cruise close together...what the hell is going on here? I want my slashdot back!
Sent from your iPad.
"Ah've had bigger chunks of corn in ma crrrap!"
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-"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent
Yeah, for debian you need to do "apt-get install avifile-player" to get the player. Don't know why it's called that, but whatever. And I think it's only under unstable.... I didn't see it under stable.