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).
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.
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.
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!
--
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.
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
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.
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
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...)
---
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
Just hope it won't suck as much as "The Lost World" did!
C-X C-S
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.
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.
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?)
The trailer
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.
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
...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"
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.
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?
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.
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
Actually 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 fail to see how this is an indication of selling out. A/W is pretty independent. The decision to port to Linux was driven by A/W's client demands as Mark Sylvester, A/W World Ambassador, has stated publicly several times.
Here is a quote from Tippett Studios back from a SIGGRAPH 99 press release, when the Maya and Composer batch renderers were introduced:
IF ILM came to A/W and wanted Maya ported to Linux and would convert a lot of licenses to it, you bet A/W would (and indeed) listened to their customer demands. And besides SGI still has an extended roadmap for their highend MIPS and Irix stuff. I doubt Linux would scale to a 256 CPU Origin 2000 machine (at least not in the near future).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
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
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
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 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...
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"
--Andy Hendrickson, director of systems development at Industrial Light & Magic.
Except watch the movies he makes on DVD! (well legally anyway)
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;
...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
"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.
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!
Dr. Spork wrote:
>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.
You sir, are a Mensch. And a fork and a spoon.
And anyway: The counter really does peg at 50, and doesn't care how much more up-modded you get after that, but subtracts just fine. This will at least give me the satisfaction of getting 50 all over again.
--Blair
"Karma whore--with a heart."
> 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.
-----------------
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
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
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.