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).

Comments

This is in the Wall Street Journal Print Edition!

[Bruce Perens]

This isn't just a ZDNet article. It's in the Wall Street Journal print edition.

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

Re:The Software they're using..

[-=Izzy=-]

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.

The Irony is Killing Me

[Greyfox]

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.

Re:article won't persuade most potential users

[rjamestaylor]

That, and high per-seat license fees, compelled my small company to switch to Linux in 1997. We had more than one occasion to meet with top-level engineers from Digital to track down crippling bugs in the Digital Unix. It was frustrating to have to rely on the holy priests to interpret the holy source code. We only have a handfull of people who _could_ make use of the OS source, but we're much more motivated to solve our client's problems than any closed source tool/infrastructure maker. Using closed-source OSes means having to describe problems to another party which may or may not be able to find the cause - and, even if the cause is found, may be embarrassed to admit culpability (remember Sun's hardware problems revealed a year ago?). Every time we've had these meetings (client, VAR, OEM conferences) the atmosphere is not friendly, but full of tension, blame-passing, suspicion and butt-covering. Even getting to the stage of having the meeting meant hours and hours of impasse leading to escalation of the problem. Very acrimonious. (Note: we've never had such a meeting with Microsoft, so I have no idea what that would be like).h

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".
--

Someone finally understands

[null_session]

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.