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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
But as (Dungeons & Dragons) we all know (Dungeons & Dragons), special effects alone (Dungeons & Dragons) without good characters and (Dungeons & Dragons) plot development (Dungeons & Dragons) is (Dungeons & Dragons) crap.
(Dungeons & Dragons)
m00.
From the Salon Article:
"At Dreamworks, Leonard laments that the thing that drove graphics card performance on Linux in the early days of the migration was the first-person shooter computer game Quake. Gamers who were fans of Linux and Quake hacked on Linux until Quake ran smoothly."
This once agian proves that the Quake engine was the primary driver of technology over the last 7 years.
What will take us to the next level of computing? Why, Quake 4 of course.
Imagine using that setup and those machines for an ultra-realistic realtime strategygame based on LOTR!
Okay, I just shut up now..
He said that the shoot turned out to be one of the worst of Jackson's career. "We had horrendous weather and all kinds of problems in the production... At one point, production had to be stopped when they were shooting in Queenstown, because there was so much torrential rainfall that the entire crew had to help sandbag the town so that it wouldn't be washed away."
I'd think the ruins of a town washed away would make an excellent set, but hey. Whatever works.
Cheers,
levine
that a PBS station was involved in the production of LoTR. Does this mean that I'll stop hearing them beg for money twice a year?
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Wrong. They're going to do an amazing job. Here's why:
"...we've got some people on the production that are real nut jobs. But they're good to have around. They bring a real passion to the work..."
These nutjobs are going to make sure the film is true to the book and shares its appeal. If those nutjobs weren't there, and this were a purely traditional Hollywood production, I would be extremely afraid. But I think it's in good hands.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
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
Gather round grandpa's ol' rocking chair, and he'll tell you a tale from the Olden Days, when the world was young and innocent, and "hacker" was synonymous with "software enthusiast"... ;-)
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Every time I work for a company we always have a few hundred Windows machines for desktop users, a mix of NT/2000/Netware/Linux/FreeBSD machines for servers, and Macs for desktop publishing and photo editing. It doesn't seem like Windows is *ever* used for anything higher-end computationally, even with the end user.
Wasn't the first movie supposed to be 'The Fellowship of the Ring', the first part of the written trilogy?
IIRC, the Balrog's cameo was definitely in 'The Fellowship...', so what's up with this?
Labrie reported that the most difficult creatures from The Two Towers, and Return of the King include Gollum, Treebeard (an ent), and the Balrog. ?We will be diving into those right after the delivery of film one.?
In depicting a Balrog, Jackson will be forced to offer his own answer to a question that has haunted Tolkien fans since the book was released. In the book, it isn?t clear whether a Balrog, which is described in passing by Gandalf, has wings or not.
Will Jackson?s Balrog have wings?
Fans will have to wait until 2003 to find out.
..a large, nocturnal, flightless insect native to New Zealand. Some of these things can grow as large as 30 grams, making Wetas the heaviest insect on the planet.
Is this the Peter Jackson who made low budget horror movies like Bad taste and Braindead? He's a genius! Bad taste and Braindead are two of the funniest splatter movies ever made.
One very interesting line was burried at the bottom of page 5
In any case, Leonard is pleased with the results. "Today, I'm happy to say, all of these things have succeeded to the point where we feel confident to committing all of our pipelines to be 100 percent Linux for the desktop and the render farm."
Is this the industry that will push Linux onto the Desktop?
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
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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I see in the article on "Linux goes to the movies" that the author doesn't really understand the mentailty behind a good portion of the Open Source community.
It's simply not the case that the driving force behind Linux are a couple of companies (Redhat and VA software), rather it is the case the the driving force behind it are thousands upon thousands of people doing their own little (or big) projects in an attempt to add their piece of what they think Linux needs.
"Over the past year, the information technology elite have started to dismiss Linux as a flash in the pan that tried and failed to dominate in a world owned by Windows. Woebegone Linux and open-source companies are scattered across the landscape like so much shrapnel. The stock prices of IPO high fliers VA Linux and Red Hat currently trade near half of their pre-IPO offering prices. Meanwhile, Windows XP gets the press and the plaudits."
Now don't get me wrong, I understand he's just a lowly journalist, but who are the 'Information technology elite'? Bill Gates? Larry Ellison? The managers posing as technical people you see on the news? Technical stock analysts? Furthermore, Windows XP's "press and plaudits" are just a glorified sales pitch. It's big news simply becuase M$ payed for it through their asses. Ah well, it's not like the media is anything even close to objective anyway.
A different kind of animal
I guess. But there's a big difference between effects houses like WETA or Animal Logic and distributors like Disney and Fox. Effects houses do what they're paid to do. They don't dictate intellectually property policy.
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Jackson has kept the names of the books the same, but altered the story somewhat. He's also keeping the movies more nearly the same length than the books are (go look at your paperbacks and you'll see that The Two Towers is by far the thinnest). There is more background being shoehorned into the first movie than we found in the first book, and to keep the movies relatively the same length some of the action we read in FOTR is appearing in the movie TTT.
....
From TheOneRing.net:
The character of Rosie will be expanded slightly, in order to allow us to see the origins of her relationship with Sam before his departure from the Shire....
Also, events that were told through flashbacks in the books will have to be told visually in the movies, such as the defeat of Sauron during the Second Age, Isildur's death, Gollum's history with the Ring, and Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman at Isengard.
the first film in the trilogy will apparently feature flashbacks that will familiarize audiences with the history of the Ring, and it is safe to assume that any flashbacks of this type will include a summary of the story of The Hobbit.
Gandalf explains Gollum's history at the very beginning of FOTR and describes Sauron's defeat at the Council of Elrond, IIRC, so both of these added scenes will appear in the FOTR movie. The explanation of Bilbo's history with the Ring will probably also occur in Hobbiton at the start, so the movie version of FOTR has lots of added material. No wonder there wasn't room for Tom Bombadil.
Tolkien geek
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.
But Hammel is perfectly correct when he says that Linux was bult by hackers, for hackers. You presumably object because you're thinking of the popular meaning of "hackers", rather than the historical meaning, which was pretty close to the phrase you want to substitute: "software enthusiasts".
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
Americans strong point
EnZed is the Land of the Long White Cloud, and is a good 3 hour plane trip from Oz, which is truly the Land Downunder
But even though I am a skip and not a kiwi, I have to say that it is an awsome place to vist with an astounding variety of scenery packed into a really small place. Pefect for the typical yanks concept of a holiday, as being no more than 2 weeks in duration :-)
Yes I am trolling .. but someone has to do it. :-)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
That a nice feel good story, but there were too many questions left in my mind about the studios using Linux to do their work, and what they contribute back. Some of the things that they found to work or mde to work, I must wonder if they have made it back into the Linux system, or do they fall into the "What's Mine is Mine" mind set? Not to say that IP is wrong or bad, but if these guys get 'it' then are they talking to the higher ups about the DMCA, etc. It's possible that they are, but on the quite side...
Another thing that caught my eye:
And Leonard says he'd still like to see the open-source community look toward entertainment as a partner in innovation, not just in recognition. "One of the hard parts of dealing with open-source is that it's still viewed as a bit of a hackers' world: As long as you're willing to hack at the code you'll get what you want." A reality for the VFX industry is that as a business they need to find a way to channel the talent in the open-source world so that they can get value from it.
Channel talent...so that they can get value from it.
Does that leave a bad taste in anyone else's mouth too?
Henry
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I'm a member of WETA, btw.
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Does this mean if we look close we'll see stupid bots trying to run through walls due to bad waypoints?
The Imagica Imager XE digital film scanner mentioned has a maximum resolution of 4096x3112 pixels. It does a 2k frame scan from 35mm in 4 seconds and a 4k in 6-8 secs, counting speed to a remote disk via Fiber Channel or Gigabit Ethernet. It's about the size of a refrigerator and weighs 400kg. Heavy duty stuff.
How does this apply to Linux in EFX? Simple- people can talk about how it's difficult to get EFX companies to share their proprietary _application_ code, but have you considered the reverse- how easy it is for such companies to get whatever information they need on the Linux code? Hell, they _own_ their own OS code under the same terms as any of us. They don't have to go hat in hand to Microsoft begging "Oh please fix this graphics API optimization that gets the consumers 5 more FPS in quake but hurts our image quality" or something- under the terms of open source/free software, they have total access to anything they need to know- and being specialists, unlike Joe Sixpack they can _use_ that information. And they do- and they are. This genie ain't going back in the bottle.
How do we make them advance the state of free software in general, rather than just using it as a platform for their proprietary stuff? (for those of us who feel this is necessary- some would consider it an imposition!) Simple, but not easy. Beat them. The only way to do it is to find a specific, incredibly narrow area where you as an individual, or a small team of OSS coders, can beat the best the proprietary world has to offer. Then do it- and put the code out as GPL. If you're the sole coder you can strike deals with commercial, proprietary guys to let them use the same code under a different license, letting them off the hook- but keep the GPLed version up to date.
This can be incredibly narrowly focussed. For instance, clouds. Clouds are a fractal phenomenon that are not easy to render volumetrically. To this day, EFX houses will sometimes handle clouds by use of a huge water tank with paints in it, rather than trying to program them. Figure out a way to do perfect CGI clouds fast, and GPL it. Put it out there for use by the great and small. Figure out new ways to do terrains, or raytracing, or to computer-render realistic fabrics- the tough stuff. Do that, and GPL it, rather than trying to persuade someone to GPL _their_ work to suit you.
Works for me (I write dithers and wordlength reducers).
We can turn it around. Gay pride! Geek pride! Hacker pride! Say it loud, say it proud! ;-)
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