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Behind the Scenes
JosefK writes: "Film & Video is running an interesting and fairly in-depth article on the technology that's been used by Peter Jackson's crew and WETA for the production of the Lord of the Rings. From satellite video feeds for overseeing remote shoots, to the development of WETA's Massive program for depicting large scale battle scenes with tens and hundreds of thousands of "agents" (and it runs on Linux!), the article covers the gamut of the interesting things Peter Jackson's been doing Down Under." And Salon is running a lengthy article on the increasing use of Linux in the special effects industry.
"To accomplish the visual effects, Weta has put together an impressive array of computer firepower that includes 150 SGI Octane workstations, as well as 80 SGI dual processor 330 and 230 series Linux workstations. Two SGI Origin 2000s serve as the primary file servers for the facility, and Weta has also installed a TP9400 RAID storage array. "
This is some amount for kit. Would a Beowulf type setup be less costly, or provide more headaches.
Cruise TT
The only thing that could've ruined this movie is if they placed Leo DeCaprio as Frodo.
People who are against human cloning must be bitter they are not good enough to be cloned.
Who says free software is passé? Hollywood's special-effects industry can't get enough of the operating system built by hackers, for hackers.
This story is good news, I'm glad Linux is catching on in popularity, I recently switched to Linux on my personal PC and I'm enjoying every minute of it. The reason for my switch: I used to use it at school, I use it at work, and Windows XP is as crooked as a politician, so I switched to good ol' Linux. Linux is a great OS and the best thing about it is that the more you become a power user, the more powerful you become. It's absolutely the most flexible and tweakable system out there. This public perception however, "by hackers for hackers," is crap, and we need to frown upon it. Linux is built by software enthusiasts, not "hackers." I'm not a Linux history expert, but I have a good feel for the way things are at this moment, and I have to say that nowadays Linux users are a wide range of people, including big businesses, educators, kids, the computer nerds like myself, etc. Linux was built, and continues to be built, by people with a great knowlege of software engineering and the desire to provide a democratic style OS that is both powerful and easy to use, and best of all: free.
~ now you know
Go easy on Jackson when his films are released. He's obviously done close to everything that a director can do to:
1. Maintain Tolkein's vision.
2. Tell the story as truly as possible
3. Work within the confines of the entertainment industry to do so AND make a movie palatable to Joe Six Pack. (If the film doesn't make money, Hollywood won't support it, fact of life here on Earth, and probably MiddleEarth as well!)
These have all been Herculean tasks, and Peter Jackson has devoted his life to them. I would hope that the LOTR faithful are willing to look past minor transgressions that HAVE to be made to bring a story of this scope and scale to the screen.
Obviously, this will be a far, far cry from the embarressing cartoon of FOTR. Let's hope people can forgive Hobbits that aren't quite rotund enough, elves who aren't quite willowy enough, and dwarves that are perhaps a smidge to tall.
This has been said many times, and I am just repeating it. Taco, can we _please_ have a aseparate LOTR category? It more than deserves one!
Call me a karma whore if you like... But this needs to be said often for it to be agreed upon!
Don't Panic
I don't quite understand why the GPL should be a problem, as mentioned in the Salon article.
It doesn't forbid writing and selling proprietary software, as long as said software isn't based on GPL'd source fragments.
And in-house tools are an example of software that isn't meant to be published or sold to the public. So when writing such tools, they can use GPL'd source and mangle it in whatever form they want, since the result doesn't leave the company and isn't sold or distributed, they don't have to publish source.
Or did I get something wrong here?
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You may like my a cappella music
What Quake really did was single-handedly get OpenGL through a critical couple of years. If it were not for Quake, and Carmack in particular, OpenGL would have been relegated to a few very expensive but low performance (because of low volume) cards; and Microsoft would have a monopoly on yet another field of computing.
I develop software for a visual effects company, and I give thanks every day to Carmack, Daryll Strauss, and the Fahrenheit gang for contributing in their own vital ways in keeping OpenGL viable.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
For one thing, Linux is an OS. Linux itself is not making the graphics for these films; the software running on top of Linux is doing the work. Second, I don't see any of these companies pouring $$ into the promotion or development of Linux itself. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
The main reasons these folks are using Linux are (a) it's stable, and (b) it's free. Those do not do anything to benefit the Linux biz. And as for the feather in the cap thing, there are very few graphics houses out there making special effects for movies, and out of all of them only a few are using Linux. Even if they all used Linux, it would still be a very, very, very small user base that we're talking about.
If these people want to help promote Linux, they need to throw down $$ for promotion and development for the OS. As it stands, they snag whatever's free, port their proprietary, in-house apps to it, then someone on the team mumbles to the press "there are Linux boxes being used in here" and then Slashdot gets wind of it. From there, lots of folks pat each other on the back even though Linux is only what's used to network the computers together and launch the applications that are doing the real work...
Please, folks, this smacks of desperation. I want Linux to succeed, but if we do this "see, I told you so" thing every time someone throws a crumb our way, we're going to look pathetic.
The problem is when you film two adjacent scenes on different days - it's going to look a bit strange in the final cut if there are clouds in the sky and puddles everywhere in one scene but then it's gloriously sunny and dry two seconds later.
For an (unintrusive) example, examine the Indy Car chase sequence in Charlie's Angels... :-)
What's really weird about Linux in the film industry is that the business / distribution / promotion side of the industry would love to outlaw free software. (SSSCA, DMCA, etc.)
Meanwhile, the production side has realized that it is really useful and is wholeheartedly embracing it.
You have to wonder if sooner or later some pointy-haired boss at the MPAA is going to wake up and go "WHAT! We USE Linux!? We use that communist, anti-American.... Well that had better stop immediately!"
I wonder how the "copyright" industries will try to resolve this - they don't want regular people to have powerful tools like programmable PCs and free software. But they sure want to use free software to make movies.
Maybe they'll go for an approach of requiring "computer licensing" but only if you use "non-approved" software. Most people wouldn't care because most people just run Windows, and they wouldn't need a license. Only Linux users, software developers, and computer science students would have to get licensed.
Kind of like you need a license for a car, but not for a bicycle. (Or continuing the analogy, Windows XP == tricycle...)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Despite its being mentioned prominently, the GPL has litte to do with it.
The issue that article is getting at is the fickle "Goodwill" of the Free community.
If one partakes of the pool of Free stuff but gives nothing back, then the community tends to shun you.
As powerless as we sometimes feel in politics and business, the shun of the majority of Free software afficionados (even those undesirables such as the warez crowd and the black hat kiddies who tend to sympathize with the cause) is not something to be underestimated.
(A DeCss like research effort into undermining your fragile restriction scheme, combined with a kiddie's DOS attack on your webserver all the while RMS is giving a speech about why you are "evil", can really make a bad day for anyone.)
Someone who makes an investment in a new direction will typically want to recieve approval and congratulation for it. The goodwill of the community is desirable. So to gain it, they start down the path of sharing. But its a slippery slope, and a GPL violation can land you with some bad press.
Simply going all out open, the studios think they may lose their edge over the competition.
By staying as closed as possible, they risk ostrasization from the community, and a separation from the process that brang them the foundation that they are building on in the first place.
The real technology coming from Linux and friends is a sociological one, not a computing one. Its a new way, and it has ramifications that extend far beyond computer science.
I'm certainly not a Wintel advocate, but there is a tangeable increase the in the use of Windows in the engineering and graphic arts industry.
I can talk a little more authoratatively about the engineering space. FEMAP, an FE Analysis tool, is widely used from small shops to Lockheed, and is an NT-only product. Nastran, Abaqus, and all the other FE solver companies have big NT sales. All of the MCAD packages you mentioned, I-DEAS, Catia, ProE, Autocad, have equal or greater sales in the Windows space.
Alias Wavefront, 3D Studio Max, and many of the other rendering packages are getting hotter on the Windows OS's, too.
I think it comes down to hardware cost. Hopefully Linux will continue to grow in the engineering and effects space, because big companies are just growing sicker and sicker of paying tens of thousands of $ for Unix-native boxes like SGI (check their stock lately?). Luckily it looks like the art industry is adopting Linux ( Maya has a RedHat release), and I'm seeing some of it in the engineering space (Nastran has a cool distributed-process solutions package), but don't think that the non-PC *nix packages are going to continue to thrive. WinNT+cheap Intel hardware is MUCH cheaper than Irix+Octane.
I can think of a few counter-examples. Catch-22. Slaughterhouse Five. A handful of others.
Now granted, the movies were not as rich as the original novels, but then again, in most people can't read novels like those in 2 hours or so (and if they did, their experience wouldn't be as rich as if they worked through thoughtfully).
Given the constraints of the format, movie version of novels can be every bit as good or better than the original, albeit different.
Although usually they aren't.
Umm, actually, if you've been paying attention at all you'd know that the project didn't choose the director, the director chose the project. It's his baby, New Line is giving him complete authority, and that's what's going to make it work.
I can see the fnords!