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More on LoTR Special Effects
sushi writes: "Another LoTR article: this one focusing on the technology used at Weta Digital (the CG shop). Interesting that they are undertaking "major" R&D into running more Linux, and that Linux "delivers about two times the price performance compared to systems running proprietary operating systems". I've been lucky enough to have seen inside this place, and it's cool to see a render-wall of linux boxen. Full story
from a New Zealand newspaper." We linked to another good article about WETA a month ago.
Large array of boxen...Should one use bootp? Or just mount drives over NFS?
What's this Submit thingy do?
How far along are these guys, as compared by lets say Pixar or some of the other well known CG shops?
This is not news. It's pr0n!!!!
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Don't feel bad HS is a joke
Uno grande catedrale de la Milano!
Hello. My name is Otto. That means eight.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Though they like to mention that they're running Linux in most of these sorts of articles, I have yet to hear what software they're using to do the actual rendering. Anyone know?
there's a way...
Should have Tux holding a wip on the side of each box.
Or Tux with an engraved ring as a "collar" of sorts.
From the article:This time next year, serious consideration of Weta's future will start.
The Hardware of the Rings
Can we call him "Lord of the Penguins"?
I loved this quote most of all:
As the facility's infrastructure becomes complete, being chief technical officer is more administrative and takes up less time, he says.
Certainly can't say the same about the NT boxen I'm in charge of...the Samba and web server on the other hand...
Just a thought.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Linux is free. It deliver's an unlimited price perfomance. The hardware that is running on has a limited price perfomance.
And to really troll: the period goes inside of the quote.
I'll tell you why -- good old fashioned ego. Whereas the low end (kernel developers, compiler writers, etc.) and high end (clustering software, 3D modelling and rendering, etc.) of development is led by strong, well-organised teams of well-trained developers with vision and understanding, the middle ground of the Linux is polluted with warring egos that suffer too much from the problematic NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome. There are a myriad of competing, mutually incompatible yet separately inadequate office suites (Star Office, KOffice, Applix,...), desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, CDE, UDE, ROX,...), and X servers (XFree86, MetroX, XiG). We can't even decide on a printing system! I realize that, according to Eric S. Raymond's famous "Cathedral and Bazaar" text, that open-source software is primarily written to scratch an itch and get peer recognition, but this is taking it too far. If all the man-hours poured into KDE and GNOME were combined into a common vision, we would have one perfect end-user desktop, instead of two poor imitations of Windows.
Don't give me the old "competition" argument either. There is only one Linux kernel, which seems to progress just fine without another competing project nipping at its feet and instigating flamewars. The endless KDE vs. GNOME, Applix vs. StarOffice, and other feuds have wasted more productivity than would be gained by and competitive drive.
I, for one, am somewhat miffed that while my operating system powers Hollywood blockbusters and NASA supercomputers, it still can't fully replace Windows on my office desktop. Linux is growing up; its users need to grow up with it, shed their egos and work towards the common goal of creating an excellent working environment.
The machine room has about 12 terabytes of storage, with about 20 terabytes in total at the facility.
Mr Labrie says working storage needs will probably hit 30 terabytes for the second and third films.
Holy shit that is a lot of pr0n!
Please email all complaints to root@127.0.0.1 and the issue will be dealt with in due time.
A bewoulf clus...oh wait. Never mind.
poundincludegeek
http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/book/book.htm
"So you're going to go through with it, then," Gandalf the Wizard said
slowly.
"I am," Bilbo replied. "I've been planning this for a long time.
It'll give the Hobbits of the Shire something to talk about for the next
nine days - or ninety-nine, more likely. Anyway, at least I'll have my
little joke."
"Who will laugh, I wonder?" Gandalf mused aloud, scratching his
beard idly.
For weeks carts and caravans were coming from all over Middle-earth
to bring provisions for the Grand Old Party, as Bilbo referred to it.
Wagons of food from the Dwarvish mines at Erebor, shiny rocks from the
Sea-elves and fancy seductive packages from southern Mirkwood arrived
daily, making the neighborhood generally more crowded and cluttering up
avenues. Even those who hadn't said anything bad about Bilbo before were
starting to show their annoyance. "Mr. Bilbo Baggins is starting to get a
mite annoying," old Gaffer Gamgee grumbled, standing outside the pub.
"Queer goings-on, and no mistake. Why just yesterday a bunch o' pesky
Wood-elves dragged their cart right acrost my yard and ruined my taters!"
"A bunch of Men from Bree came to my place yesterday and tried to
sell me some aluminum siding," mused Old Noakes of Bywater. "They said it
was because they had extra after building that horrible Quonset hut over
the Party Tree, and they were trying to unload it. Strange folk
hereabouts."
"Yes, but it's good for the economy," sneered Bill Ferny, the local
banker. "A lot more money in circulation. Market's been doing well.
Unionization is down because of all the entry-level service positions
that are being created. Widening gap between the haves and have-nots,
don't you think? Good to find work for idle hands."
"And you don't know nothin' about anythin', Ferny," Gaffer Gamgee
snapped, echoing the popular community sentiment. "Mr. Bilbo Baggins is a
right bastard, as I've often said, and it's small wonder if trouble don't
come of him and his imperialist ways. The Revolution's a'comin', and it's
the likes o'you who'll be the first ag'inst the wall, so sayeth the
Lord." And with that he spat a well-aimed beer-nut into Ferny's glass.
At last the day of the Big Party arrived. Everywhere there was too
much to eat, and by midafternoon there were broken presents lying all
over the Shire attesting to the low quality of their manufacture. Gandalf
set off a series of fireworks later on in the day, including great
skywriting missiles and little flaming butterflies who took to wing,
sailed off into the Eastfarthing and burned all its trees to the ground.
The last firework sent up a great black smoke which took the shape
of a giant mountain of fire. A flicker could be seen of a giant dragon
sailing about its peak; after a moment the great dragon went sailing over
the heads of the crowd, causing great panic and consternation and six
outright heart attacks before imploding somewhere over the
Sackville-Baggins' neighborhood, causing considerable property damage
which was never properly repaired for generations afterward.
"That is the signal for supper!" Bilbo cried out to the survivors,
who were only partly mollified.
Later on, in the specially-designed quonset hut which Bilbo had
built especially for the occasion, all his friends and neighbors were
helping themselves to their third helpings of macaroni and cheese and
potato salad (the latter laced liberally with what Bilbo called the
"traditional secret ingredient", which while not actually a narcotic
still had unusual effects, the sum of which were still under scientific
inquiry in some circles), Bilbo stood up and motioned for quiet. "A
speech! A speech!" some of his neighbors cried out in fear.
My dear Hobbits! Bilbo began. There was much cheering at this,
as Hobbits on the whole are a rather egocentric lot, and anyway the
latest round of potato salad was beginning to kick in.
My dear Bagginses and Bracegirdles, Boffins and Borfledebees,
Casmits and Cantankerums, Fassbinders and Fazoolas, Wombats and
Wafflefoots. "WaffleFEET!" cried out an irate old man at the back, in
fact the very man who had earned the name when Bilbo's nephew Frodo had
accidentally dropped a hot waffle-iron on his feet some years ago. He had
borne the Bagginses no ill-will, since the settlement was quite generous.
Wafflefoots, continued Bilbo, oblivious. This is my nine hundreth
birthday! And though one million years is too short a time to have spent
with you all...
There was some muffled conversation throughout the hall, which Bilbo
took notice of. Well, on bad days it seems like a million years, he
explained. Anyway, though ten billion years is long enough to endure
from all of you, this is IT... I am GOING... I am leaving NOW...
GoodBYE! And with that Bilbo leaped up, tore all his clothes off,
scattering them about the astonished guests' heads, and ran from the
great Hut screaming and flailing his arms.
Young Frodo looked on in bemusement, refusing to answer questions
from the astonished crowd. Everyone knew, of course, that Bilbo was a big
man in the community. But - and Frodo looked at the crowd, particularly
noting the astonishment on old Lobelia's face - until now, nobody knew just
how big.
"Well! That's done!" Bilbo laughed, emerging from the bedroom at Bag
End freshly dressed. "You know, Gandalf, I've been wanting to do that for
as long as I can remember. Now I think this would be an excellent time to
leave the Shire, at least before they can all find their torches and
axe-handles. Everything stays with Frodo, as we promised."
"Including the Ring?" Gandalf asked.
"Well, yes, I suppose so," Bilbo replied. He pulled the Ring out
from under his cloak, where it hung on a fine golden chain Bilbo had
stolen of old from the Brandybucks. "Still, though, I kind of hate to get
rid of it."
"This seemed to me to be the only thing worthwhile about your whole
stupid plan," Gandalf said uncharacteristically. "Put it on the mantel
and walk away from it. It has got far too much hold on you. Let it go!"
"It's mine! And I shall keep it, I say!"
Gandalf raised himself up to his full height. Bilbo's hand reached
quietly for the hilt of his sword. "It will be my turn to get angry
soon," the wizard intoned. "Listen to me: you must give Frodo the Ring!"
Bilbo suddenly laughed. "Oh, that?" he grinned. "Well, of course
I'm giving him the Ring! I thought you meant the chain." Slipping the
Ring off the chain he set the circle of gold on the mantel without a
second thought. Then he slipped the chain about his neck. "I love this
chain. Stole it from old Matuseck Brandybuck back before he went senile.
Wouldn't part with it for love nor money. No, I don't give two flies
about the Ring. Nothing but trouble, that thing has been.
"Well, I'm off, Gandalf! I'm off on the road again, and not a moment
too soon by the look of that crowd down there." And taking an old
walking-stick from the stand by the door Bilbo went outside, taking a
path around the back of the Hill so he could leave unobserved, and as he
left he began singing a song quietly to himself:
While often by the door I lie
And look upon the mountains' feet
And think of rains and hikers' pains
And sleeping wetly in the sleet,
When darkness' cry does terrify
And wilderness encircles you,
And being food for goblins' brood
Is one choice, and starvation two;
Then staying home instead of roam
Will have a very great appeal!
Forego the Quest! And have a rest!
Let Dwarves and Elves and wizards squeal!
But since the Shire is filled with ire,
And all my neighbors fevers grip,
It's plain to see! I must agree!
The time has come to take a trip!
Hours later Frodo returned to Bag End, a little glad to have thrown
off the pursuit at last. He started at first to discover someone waiting
for him in the living-room, but sighed with relief when he saw it was
only Gandalf.
"Did he get away?" Frodo asked.
"He did," Gandalf replied. "And just at the last, for they were
getting ready to set after him with dogs. Luckily he doubled back at the
Three-Farthing Stone, as I recommended, or there would be a special
bonfire in Tuckborough tonight. Are you well?"
"Yes," Frodo replied. "I managed to convince everyone I was
uninvolved with the Hay Incident."
"Good," Gandalf said. He lit his pipe with a nearby candle and
looked at Frodo evenly. "He left things for you on the mantel. The deed to
Bag End, a signed statement saying you were only an unwitting accomplice
in the Bywater Incident, and-"
"The Ring!" Frodo said, looking at the mantel with astonishment.
"Has he left me that?"
"He has," Gandalf replied, "though you'll have to find a new chain.
But if I may counsel you in the use of your own - don't use it! Now or
later! It may have other powers besides quick and easy seduction."
"I can't believe Bilbo left me the Ring," Frodo gasped. "He used to
say that it and a bottle of Westfarthing Chinook was all you needed for
the perfect weekend."
"Well, lock it up someplace and stay away from it," Gandalf intoned.
"No Took-wives, no Elf-virgins, and no real estate deals. And no political
aspirations! In the morning I'm off to see if I can learn more about it.
In the meantime leave it unused until I return."
"I'll, uh, I'll think about that, all right," Frodo blurted, trying
hard not to think about the Ring and young Cassiopiea Took.
The next morning Gandalf left, leaving Frodo with only his thoughts,
his yearnings and a half-empty bottle of Westfarthing Chinook for
company.
I'm serious. Why are you so small-minded and petty that you cry troll at the slightest provocation? I love Linux, love seeing it being adopted by IBM, the MPAA, Sony, and other big companies, but I'm also annoyed that it does all this flashy stuff while still not getting the basics right. I'm sorry if I offended you, but you need to grow up and be a little less closed-minded.
in the article it says that Gollum doesn't appeat until the 2nd movie?! i know for a fact in the book he was in the 1st part!!! dammit are they screwing around with this great book or what?
With SGI's announcement that they are supporting Linux on the new Visual
PC does anybody know if Alias is going to port MAYA onto the Visual PC
but running Linux ? The MAYA renderer should be easy to port as it
requires no graphics capability.
I am thinking of setting up a MAYA render farm and my preferred
platforms would be the Visual PC running Linux. I am VERY wary of using
NT which has an appalling reputation for unstability, requires far more
support than Linux, is subject to multiple upgrades/service packs and
has VERY poor performance under load. Linux would provide superior
through-put, superb stability/reliability and also integrate very well
and easily into my otherwise SGI dominated setup.
Anybody else interested in a MAYA renderer port to Linux ?
Please do not reply if you are trying to tell me how good NT is - the
growth of Linux in comparision to NT tells me what I need to know - even
with Microsoft spending millions of dollars advertising NT its sales are
only comparable with Linux sales - virtually unadvertised compared to
NT.....
In article on salon.com it says that they use clusters of around 1000 linux boxen, which they replace for every film... it take aprx. 2/3 years to make the film, so by the next film hardware has become more powerfull, so bye-bye old clusters, hello new ones.
:)
What I would like to know is what they do to the old computers... I hope that they do things like donate them to local schools and the such, I know that for most applications it doesn't realy matter if you don't have this year's Pentium 54 with 5gigs of ram, but I would imagine that these machines are tricked out pretty nicely. Does anyone know what does happen to them?
1000 machines x $2000 = $2,000,000
Thats still cheaper than a bigname actor... shocking
New Zealand seems like a strange place to have a computer effects facility - what`s the networking infrastructure like ? What methods do they use to shift their digital movies around the globe - satellite perhaps ?
It seems that since the days of the movie "Titanic", Linux has become
4 80 3.html
entrenched as a major rendering farm OS and is starting to move into the
workstation environment! Get it? Workstations ARE on the desktop! Remember
that it was the workstations were the Winvocates claimed the real work was
done! Seems Linux is continuing on it's course to become of becoming the
dominate OS in computer generated special affects in the movies!
http://www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue88/
A great quote:
"Some wonder how Linux will dislodge Windows on the desktop because leading
desktop applications such as Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Access)
aren't there. But, if you are a motion picture animator most of your
everyday tools are already available on Linux, and the number being ported
or even produced specifically for Linux is increasing at a remarkable rate."
Seems that when the tools are ready, people are more than willing to
switch! Hell, there more than ready, they'll even developed their own tools!
"For character animation, a scan of a paper sketch is done using
ToonShooter. Production software lead Derek Chan explains, ``ToonShooter is
an internal tool we wrote for Linux. It captures low resolution 640 × 480
line art that the artists use to time the film.'' Created more than a year
ago, this Linux capture stand software is deployed in three animation
departments. Chan says, ``Demand was keen for this Linux software, and we
delivered it ahead of schedule. DreamWorks has 60 units in production
now.''
Hmmm, It all sounds like the work that winvocates claimed as the domain for
NT. Departmental changes in OS's. Could this be how Linux takes over the
desk top? One department at a time?
Weta has a "major" research and development effort under way at the moment into running more Linux-based workstations.
Ironic that Linux was used to make this movie & DVD but Linux users would be prevented (in the US) from distributing the software to watch the movie.
Linux is free. It delivery's an unlimited price performance.
That's not true at all (actually you would say the price/performance ratio is zero if it were). I Linux takes time to install and get running. If you're just a student with some free time then it is free. But if you're running a company with pay by the hour, or actually has work for salaried employees, then Installing and running Linux does cost money. It may be less money then the cost of installing and running windows (even without purchase costs) but you can't just say that Linux has a zero price/performance ratio.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Star Wars has a topic, why not LotR? Steve Jackson's already rubbed the Linux community's collective johnsons hard enough because of the special effects developed on your beloved operating systems and for the simple fact that nearly every "nerd" has read Tolkein's saga.
Isn't this enough to merit a topic already or will LotR continue to play second fiddle to the increasingly mediocre Star Wars franchise?
The two articles didn't say. Are they using PRMan, or something else? Or are they using their own proprietary renderer, a la PDI/Shrek?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
First of all, I don't think its fair to call what you're talking about 'Linux'. In the strictest sense Linux is just a kernel. But, even if you take the canonical meaning of "all the software that comes with my distro" you still can't really include the 3d software. That stuff is proprietary and expensive. It's well designed for the simple fact that people are paid to make it, and paid a lot of money (and they're a lot of competition in that arena as well)
And lets not forget that there are a lot of competing companies and products out there for high-end graphic synthesis. The difference is that they are in 'traditional' competition with each other, I mean, you could argue using the same logic that if all the major graphic companies merged and worked together you'd end up with something truly amazing, but I doubt that. I think you'd end up becoming stagnant. (and don't forget that these products aren't even Linux exclusives or open source. You can get a lot of these programs for windows or other UNIXs)
And there's another reason that we have competing standards, people have different visions for software, and since they're working for free, they are going to do what they want to do. Who knows of KDE people would be working on GENOME if there was no KDE or vise versa? How do you know it would result in a Super-gui and not some boring half-done shell whose developers are complacent in their lack of competition?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
BTW, the "s" in Photoshop is lower case. And GoLive sucks almost as bad as FrontPage. And since when is MS Office highly productive?
Typical of someone who apparently thinks that web design consists of clicking widgets and drawing pretty pictures. Check this -- Linux is quite often the preferred OS of people who write those nice little pointy-clicky apps you enjoy so much.
[Sorry -- I know I oughtn't be feeding the trolls, I'm just in a pissy mood tonight. Note, however, that I'm not abusing my +1 for this.]
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Aside from the impressive technological feat, imagine looking forward to the day when effects like these are availble for Gaming Engines.
Imagine Quake IX out in an open plane of battle with literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers and other things out there all at once.
I am reminded of something similar to the weekend dogfights/lanparties at the Airforce Academy, but with a much larger field of action.
[smile]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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...)
I was going to say the same thing as ChadN, but it would have been redundant. The post he replied to was redundant (in the context of Slashdot itself) and useless. It was neither interesting nor insightful.
Sorry to point out, but Apache isnt Linux. Neither is it GNU. And you should know better than relate IIs to Apache. When your talking about GNU Linux, vs something, dont brign Apache into it. It's just lame.
Can you tell me, with any certainty, when the next version of GNOME will be thrown together, and what improvements the new version will bring?
They keep an impressive and well-maintained development summary which should answer this question for you.
No, this point is not moot, if you plan on doing any commerical develpments. Qt is GPL which requires that non-open-source developers pay big bucks in order to do development. GNOME libraries are LGPL and can be used freely by anybody.
I, for one, am glad that both KDE and GNOME exist, as one can choose whichever environment they like better. I prefer GNOME cause its freer and better, but KDE is good too.
BTW, The 'p' in Frontpage is in lower case. Sorry to be anal, you started.
I'd quite like to see a walking tree.
Given that the server is being given a good hammering at the moment (and not handling it very well), here's the contents of the article (after trying to retrieve it about 10 times)
Lord of the special effects
03 December 2001
By AMANDA WELLS
Weta Digital chief technical officer Jon Labrie was looking forward to a lull after delivering the special effects for The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
The facility, based in the Wellington suburb of Miramar, delivered the effects shots in early October, with the film's Australasian premiere scheduled for December 19.
But, Mr Labrie says, things are not proving quite as quiet as expected, and Weta's biggest workload is yet to come.
Work has started on key shots for the second film, The Two Towers, and a detailed plan is being drawn up for tackling the sophisticated effects needed in this film and its successor.
Weta will deliver The Two Towers effects by October 1, 2002.
Mr Labrie says the facility has yet to get a clear picture of the workload for the film, which involves animating several key characters.
Gollum, an evil creature bent on retrieving the One ring he once possessed, emerges in the second film, and Weta's graphic artists have begun bringing him to life. Gollum is shown close-up and must appear believable.
Treebeard, an ent or talking tree, also appears in the second film, along with other creatures for which Weta has developed digital fur.
Mr Labrie says Weta will probably have to grow by another 10 per cent to complete The Two Towers, up to about 250 staff.
The trilogy's second and third instalments contain some impressive special effects set pieces, he says.
The third film features "an extraordinary number of battle sequences".
Weta crowd supervisor Stephen Regelous has created software, dubbed Massive, that creates realistic crowds. Every individual in the crowd moves in response to stimulus such as terrain, and to the actions of others.
The battles in The Return of the King will see hundreds of thousands of these intelligent agents in frame at the same time, Mr Labrie says, stretching the software to its limits.
Massive was developed on SGI operating system Irix and has since been ported to open source operating system Linux.
The deadline for delivering the third film's effects has not yet finalised, but could be October 2003.
In terms of the facility's workload, creating effects for The Return of the King will be equivalent to the first two films combined, he says.
Mr Jackson has kept tabs on filming and effects while offshore through extensive use of videoconferencing. He could view the output of a camera remotely, and artists could transfer frames via an FTP connection.
Mr Labrie says that at the start of the project in 1998, it was hard to conceive how much work it would be to complete simultaneously all three films based on the 1200-page epic.
JRR Tolkien's world is hugely detailed, with a vast variety of landscapes and diverse array of creatures.
Elves, dwarfs, hobbits, trolls, orcs, ents, wraiths and balrogs populate Middle Earth, and purists will be watching keenly for a literal rendition.
Mr Labrie says Weta's naivety was probably a good thing.
"Nobody would want to tackle three films again, not at the same time."
Weta grows seven-fold
Mr Labrie joined Weta Digital in 1995, when the company was set up to provide effects for Mr Jackson's films.
Weta is privately owned, with Mr Jackson's 34 per cent the largest individual stake.
Mr Labrie came to Weta from the US, where he had mostly recently worked on effects for science fiction blockbuster Independence Day.
He has overseen the facility's expansion from 30 to 230 staff.
Weta has created effects for previous Jackson films Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy far outstrips these in complexity and volume of effects.
About 1500 effects shots will be created in total.
Mr Labrie says if he was doing it again, he would spend more time up-front on planning for growth and "less time reacting".
Planning of this kind is underway for films two and three at the moment.
In terms of technology, "there's not a lot I'd do differently," though getting digital asset management up and running was problematic.
"There are still issues to be addressed, but for the most part we have done it right."
The growth of the facility has been "far greater than we anticipated". Originally, Mr Labrie thought Weta would need between 80 and 90 graphic artists to complete the trilogy's special effects.
But artist numbers hit 167 in August, at the peak of The Fellowship of the Ring production, with 225 staff in total.
At the moment, the facility has about 205 staff, with some people leaving to work on other projects or heading home to other countries after the first film was completed.
Numbers will ramp up again in the New Year to hit between 230 and 235 in April or May.
Finding graphic artists for the project is not a problem, Mr Labrie says.
"Everybody wants to work on Lord of the Rings."
Just under 40 per cent of the artists are Kiwis, 31 per cent from the US, 11 per cent from Australia, 5 per cent from Britain and the rest from countries as diverse as Japan, Egypt, China, Germany, Korea, Russia and France.
Weta has amassed substantial world-class talent, he says.
"In terms of pure technical infrastructure, we are one of the three largest facilities in the world.
"We consider ourselves, at the moment, to be one of the top five visual-effects facilities on the planet."
He says Weta staff are focused on the work remaining during the next two years, with the future of the facility after that yet to be decided.
Weta will not be able to support existing staff numbers when Lord of the Rings work is completed without securing another project of the same magnitude, which seems a tall order.
Effects artists tend to be nomadic, Mr Labrie says, and will head off to the next project in which they are interested.
Mr Labrie says the business could become more broad-based, tackling interactive gaming or commercials. "It's hard to make a profit out of visual effects."
This time next year, serious consideration of Weta's future will start.
The Hardware
of the Rings
The facility's technological infrastructure has mostly coped well with its exponential growth, Mr Labrie says.
Adjustments are being made at the moment to network switches and data distribution systems to ensure Weta's technology will scale up again when facility growth peaks for The Two Towers work.
The machine room, housing the processing power at the heart of the facility, will probably be enlarged, and work will be done to increase electricity flow and the Uninterruptible Power Supply service into the premises.
Mr Labrie says Weta will probably look at buying more hardware in February or March to meet The Two Towers' requirements.
Between $20 million and $30 million has been spent on Weta's IT infrastructure so far.
The total is "a little more than we expected", because of some unanticipated costs near the end of the first film's work.
A "rendering crunch" of last-minute work meant more processors were needed to complete the final six weeks of visual effects production, partly because of some late additions to the cut.
Mr Labrie says he has probably exceeded budget estimates made three years ago by about $1 million.
Weta does not have formal hardware agreements in place, but has developed strong relationships with vendors SGI, Auckland-based DVT, and Infinity Solutions, and Mr Labrie says he would go to them first to see if they could supply the hardware he needs.
About 90 per cent of the company's systems are from SGI.
The machine room has about 12 terabytes of storage, with about 20 terabytes in total at the facility.
Mr Labrie says working storage needs will probably hit 30 terabytes for the second and third films.
But adding storage is not as difficult as it used to be, and prices have come down.
By the time the effects for the third film are finished, between 70 and 80 per cent of the hardware will be out of date. These systems will be written down.
Some PCs will be able to be used for the company's next project, along with a StorageTek tape robot which has a long lifespan.
Mr Labrie says Linux is gradually replacing Irix as the operating system of choice in the effects world.
Weta has a "major" research and development effort under way at the moment into running more Linux-based workstations.
Mr Labrie says the facility is running a substantial amount of Linux at the moment, on processors in the machine room that are "the core of the rendering wall".
Between 40 and 50 workstations run Alias/Wavefront's Maya character animation software or Nothing Real's Shake compositing system on Linux.
He says he is looking at "making a more determined move" into Linux for the second film and will probably at least double the facility's number of installed Linux systems.
Linux delivers about two times the price performance compared to systems running proprietary operating systems, he says. Unlike several years ago, sophisticated animation applications are increasingly able to run on the free operating system.
The project has brought with it huge public and media interest.
Mr Labrie says he is receiving a couple of interview requests a day at the moment, from New Zealand and offshore media.
"I thought maybe we'd be able to keep a low profile for a bit longer."
Fans will be keen to check that technology has brought Middle Earth to life correctly.
Mr Labrie says visual effects in The Fellowship of the Ring are "all over the film", with audiences not going for long without seeing footage that has been manipulated in some way.
"There's always some kind of trick going on."
But these are seamlessly integrated into the film's background.
Weta is gathering material from its archives for use in The Fellowship of the Ring DVD release at the moment.
The DVD, which is being produced by New Line, will contain information about the making of the film.
American software company Electronic Arts is creating a Lord of the Rings game, for which Weta is supplying images and models.
The facility has a fulltime staff member dedicated to finding material for the game, though has no involvement in its production.
Mr Labrie is setting up a games company at the moment, with details under wraps for another couple of months.
He has written film scripts in the past, and says he will write storylines for the interactive games the company will produce.
The company will probably launch early next year, and Mr Labrie will continue in his Weta role.
As the facility's infrastructure becomes complete, being chief technical officer is more administrative and takes up less time, he says.
But his focus will remain on the enormous project till it is completed, sometime towards the end of 2003.
-- No, no gems to be found in this sig.
i dual boot and i do belive that quake 3 arena plays quite a bit better on linux than on windows, just an observation
BTW AFAICT from the guarded comments he's let slip, the film - the FX at any rate - is going to absolutely rock. My local fleapit is taking bookings now, oddly enough it's on my to-do list for tomorrow.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Redundant? I don't believe I've read a post like that in this discussion. And besides, the slashdot moderator guidelines clearly state that mods should concentrate on moderating up good posts instead of wasting points on silly crap that the editors auto-downmod anyway. I say, this whole discussion brings up good points and should be modded up accordingly.
It's much easier to blather on mindlessly about Star Wars, since it has no real substance behind it. Tolkien is *way* too deep for /.
I can't see any post in this thread that would make good cut-and-paste fodder. Which one did you have in mind?
I've seen some screenshots and they don't look that hot, have a look for yourself
I vote the guy who made that the least likely to ever have sex...
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Gandalf tells the story to the Council of Elrond. He'll probably be seen, but only from far off, or in very small movement shots. He has to move (and talk) a LOT in the second and third films.
I imagine he should look as good as FF: Spirits within, and since he's practically non-human looking, it shouldn't be too hard to pull off.
Who cares what OS is used to run a render farm? This is about equivalent to saying "I penned my latest novel with a bic blue medium point ball pen!" WHO CARES! What did you write?
Does anyone really think that the OS used contributed in any way to this?
Price: Ok, price helped here. But any other free OS that can read and write files, probably with a little NFS support, would have done just fine. *BSD? QNX? VxWorks? I bet with a minimal of effort they would have done the exact same thing. The major cost savings were in the cheap-o PC commodity hardware, not in any OS costs.
Performance: Nope, nadda. Zippo performance gain for this type of application. It's all a userland process with some occasional disk IO to read in the config/render data and write out the fininished frame.
I'm getting really tired of all these Linux zealots. Unix is unix. They're all pretty much exactly the same. I've got stuff I wrote from 10 years ago that compiles with very little effort in "modern" unixes. Most if it is tweaking socket stuff to get it up and running. Most tarballs you download these days are pretty much the exact same code for each unix platform, with minor tweaks to account for the differences between them that are handled by the autoconf package.
This makes for great PR for the Linux meme. Everyone who likes Linux buys into it without thinking it through. It's a simple management problem: How much does it cost to produce X amount of work in Y time. That's PC commodity hardware, all the way. The OS used is irrelevant. Change the parameters, to say high reliability, and I wouldn't buy PC hardware anymore. Once you're off that, you're typically into vendor unixes. Big vendors boxes are much easier to maintain in a high uptime enviornment. And again, unix is unix. I've taken lots of my apps, developed for Solaris, and 'ported' them to BSD in a matter of hours.
Proof of Anal Traveler trolling:
2 753
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24379&cid=264
Nuff said. Look at his comments. This guy has been getting his panties in a wad for 4 days straight now. What an asshole.
Apparently it's a Tolkien Ring network - yuk yuk.
Mr Labrie came to Weta from the US, where he had mostly recently worked on effects for science fiction blockbuster Independence Day.
Finally...
"Anal Traveller"? How creative! Did you think of that all by yourself? Are you going to set up me the bomb now? You, good sir, are the troll. That link doesn't even work. Go back to your cave.
People mess with me because I run token ring at home. I agree that it's probably not the best choice, but hey, it was free. However, on a huge network like this, (did I see 1000 boxes?) Token ring would clearly outperform ethernet, and Token ring is quite reliable. Not to mess with your +2 funny though.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
It's a shame people are dumping on IRIX.
Sure the initial cost for SGI hardware is expensive. But I believe they are bringing down
the price on alot of their systems.
PCs are fine for rendering frames, the processors
are cheap and fast(thanks to AMD) and they and use NFS to pull the textures and such from a SAN. But if you look at total cost of ownership, I hope alot of the facilities will look at machines like the SGI Origin 300. Scalable, compact, fast.
I realize the linux kiddies see all commercial
platforms as some sort of enemy, but really SGI
hardware and IRIX is awesome. Its expensive new, but if they plead their case to SGI maybe SGI will
drop the price. SGI doesn't move as much
hardware as Sun, because their marketing stinks.
Even though SGI hardware is better than Sun
(Yes, I said it. I work with both. The new Suns
can be divided up into more domains than Origin
3800s, but are no where as scalable). IMHO, SGI
hardware is superior to Sun, and not just because
it looks funky.
Hit up ebay and pick up a used Octane or O2 and
see for yourself. IRIX is sweet. Nothing like a
30 minute upgrade to upgrade a single footprint
machine that has 196 CPUs in the case of Origin 3800s. Its tight, commercial grade. Good multitasking, and very good memory management.
Another thing, in recent work done at my workplace, a 300mhz MIPS CPU in an Origin was
crunching data as fast as the Pentium 3 800mhz CPUS in the VaLinux cluster. The clock speeds aren't as high as Intel hardware -- but the chips still process fairly quickly.
Another thing, our 1994 SGI systems have no problem driving 30 SCSI-2 Ultrawide channels all loaded with devices, all at once. 1994 kids!
I'm not even talking Origin! I'm talking Onyx / Challenge! I/O rocks the house on SGI hardware.
The main reason not to run a Microsoft OS for a farm of anything is that it's getting harder and harder to turn the resource-wasting crap off.
I just found my own NT application loading Internet Exploder whenever I bring up a file open dialog. As soon as you call for a common dialog, an incredible amount of crap gets loaded and three more threads start up within your app, doing who knows what. It looks like the file browser in the open box uses IE.
I love the GIMP! I am amazed and impressed by it. The "core features" are pretty much the same as photoshop, but I like the UI much better (that's a personal preference of course) and Photoshop can't touch the scripting abilities.
sic transit gloria mundi
Linux isn't exactly a desktop OS. It shouldn't be. Linux wasn't meant to be a "desktop" OS, it's supposed to be a free UNIX alternative. You don't see any other "UNIX" dominating the desktop, do you? (OSX doesn't count.) It's supposed to replace what UNIX did and does. That's high end server and rendering farm and all that enterprise computing stuff. And well, looks like Linux is catching on. That's good. It's doing what it was made to do.
Do you see anybody trying to use Solaris/IRIX/HPUX as an desktop alternative, do you?? Are you complaining because there aren't too many desktop initiative in those area? C'mone, man. If you can figure out how to do all that shit on your Linux, that's cool. If you don't like the crappy quality, well it was never meant to be. Go use Win2k. I tried it. It's plenty good.
And contrary to what everyone thinks, IRIX is not
strange. It has good memory management, and
very well written man pages. The desktop is fairly
good for out of the box, although rumors are future versions will ship with Gnome.
As far as security, the most published holes are
very lame -- lp is the one that got the attention. Looking at the number of exploits, IRIX has held up well -- considering it is a commercial OS. It doesn't hold a very large portion of the market, but the hax0rz do have the source code to IRIX 6.5 trying to find holes (could this be where the telnetd exploit came from?).
Its weakness is commercial applications. Since everyone buys slower, equivilently priced Sun hardware SGI/IRIX has lost out on the applications. If you have a SGI, freeware.sgi.com has quite a bit of freeware software compiled and availible in Binary form, but it tends to get dated.
SGI & IRIX (NOT LINUX SGI HARDWARE!) has a moderate underground following. If you like SGI / IRIX alot, or are interested in dumping your made in hong foo hardware for quality, properly designed Silicon Graphics goodness -- just visit #sgi on Efnet. There are quite a few people there that would love to help newbies get started on the greatest, overlooked platform. Tell them telmnstr sent you -- and don't ask for IRIX warez, and don't ask about Linux on MIPS hardware.
Remember, IRIX is forever. IBM might learn about what a mistake it is to tell your unix workstation crowd you want to bolt for linux.
Personally, I think Weta have bested Pixar... though they certainly had a more interesting palette.
crusty boner? WTF? you wanna get that looked at
That was classic intercourse!
You could have all the rendering boxes in the world. If you have high-school hacks, you're going to end up doing hack-level work.
Directors at Pixar once said that they hire artists that can use computers, not computer people who claim they are artists. This movie would have been just as impressive if it was made without the technology.
And let's not forget the artistry involved in writing the book, which required millenia-old technology.
How is GNOME designed for more advanced users? Because it's more poorly designed? Because its GUI seems to throw out the past 30 years of user-interface research? Because it crashes on a regular basis while consuming 75% of your CPU time?
The Massive software they wrote for dealing with crowd scenes has a certain amount of AI built in so that you can get realistic looking crowd scenes without animators getting nickle-and-dimed to death on animationg thousands of figures seperatly.
According to one of the Weta guys speaking at a function, this had some downsides, not least of which was semi-autonomous soldiers running away from battles. Not quite the look they were after.
is the answer to this problem:
:-) 20,000 ft. and adjustable wait times beat out 100baseT ethernet everyday.
>Assuming an average of 1ms between nodes, that's a full second for a complete traversal of the ring
Really, it is.
If you believe me I have a box of Arcnet cards to sell you. Well, two or three actually. But not 20,000 ft. of Arcnet cable. Your telephone company may be able to supply that.
Technically speaking, token-ring has had the ability to do 100Mb speeds for some time now. There is even a spec in existence for Gb token ring, though I dont know if anyone makes equipment implementing that spec. The technical shortcomings that you cite dont exist. The marketing shortcomings, on the other hand are very real. With no-one wanting to invest in token-ring because it is percieved (and rightly so) as losing share to ethernet, the manufacturers are less and less willing to invest in new research in that area.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Hrm, I still have my orginal FP97 CD -- it makes a nice coaster and serves as a reminder of what was a fairly costly mistake ($US169.95) for me at the time. It's festively adorned with the words:
:-P~~~~~~~~
FrontPage 97
Exactly like that.
So there.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Why oh why does this have to be from my school!?! There goes my Bruin pride...
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Cool, but where is the GPL license? ;)
- Loaded 'C:\WINNT\System32\ntdll.dll'
Invoking an open dialog then brings in:Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\USER32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\KERNEL32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\GDI32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\COMDLG32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\shlwapi.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ADVAPI32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\rpcrt4.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\COMCTL32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\SHELL32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\msvcrt.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\OPENGL32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\glu32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ddraw.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\dciman32.dll'
Loaded 'D:\local\bin\glut32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\winmm.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\serwvdrv.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\umdmxfrm.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\Sxgb.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\psapi.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\Sxgbsys.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\mmdrv.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\nvoglnt.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\mcd32.dll'
- Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\OLE32.DLL'
and starts up three additional threads within my application which continue to run after the dialog has been dismissed. (If anybody knows what they're doing, let me know.)Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\clbcatq.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\OLEAUT32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\cscui.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\cscdll.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ntshrui.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\atl.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\NETAPI32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\secur32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\netrap.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\samlib.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ws2_32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ws2help.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\WLDAP32.DLL'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\dnsapi.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\wsock32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\browseui.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\shdocvw.dll'
And if you actually click on a networked file, you get, in addition
- Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\browseui.dll'
Understand, this is a skeletal app I'm writing. It isn't even doing anything useful yet. And it's not using Microsoft GUI tools; it's built on OpenGL.Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\shdocvw.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\msieftp.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\urlmon.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\version.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\lz32.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\wininet.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\mpr.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\ntlanman.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\netui0.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\netui1.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\WINSPOOL.DRV'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\mstask.dll'
Loaded 'C:\WINNT\system32\USERENV.DLL'
I can see why if you're building a dedicated crunch system, you might want to move away from Microsoft, just to get the irrelevant dreck out of your software.
That said, I eagerly await the release here.
Computers are just another tool that skilled artists can choose to add to their kit. Take Photoshop or Gimp. You can create stills and put them on film. Or, you can use them to choose your effects and processing methods and cut your time in the dark room to a small fraction. Either way, it's up to the artist to create something that grabs you.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Here is another article from the New Zealand Herald about using Linux on Sgi 1200 machines for Lord of the Rings. Interestingly, the motivation for using Linux was cost and reliability. They rejected the latest high end stuff because they favoured uptime over having bleeding edge technology.
Yeah, it sure changes the world.
I just love the work they do, so I send them money every year.
Best Slashdot Co
[Sorry -- I know I oughtn't be feeding the trolls, I'm just in a pissy mood tonight. Note, however, that I'm not abusing my +1 for this.]
Dude, who the hell gives a fuck about your karma...?
I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but it is possible that some of those DLL's are already loaded by the OS. Just because you see them being loaded by your app in the debugger doesn't necessarily mean that an entirely new image is being brought into memory.
Your whine sounds like sour grapes to me. The name of the game is standardization. Industry has standardized on Linux. It is not only the Linux, but the standardization that makes it important. Could some other OS have been used? Possibly, but you'd lose the industry standard in Free Software, and that is where the real savings are to be found. Standardization makes it easier in purchasing hardware, software, and engineering talent. It's one less variable, one less problem to worry about.
THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS "BOXEN"!
/. think trying to change the plural of box to boxen is "3L337", I don't know. I do know that using the word "boxen" simply makes the writer look like an imbecile. One "box". Two or more "boxes". There, that's not too hard for someone that can figure out how to get a dozen buggy Linux apps sort of working together, right?
/. has been taken over by pimply script kiddies and can no longer claim to be a place where any serious and thoughtful discussion takes place. (Of course, I suppose that was a foregone conclusion once the /. editors made a regular feature of the perpetually sophomoric Jon Katz and his whining victimization rants...)
Why people on
(And yes, I've been around long enough to remember when this started - when those trying to be cool used "VAXen" as the plural of VAX, but it made the speaker (no one would have used it in print!) look idiotic then, and I don't know any of those people that use "boxen" as the plural of "box" today.
Seriously, folks, this is not an off-topic rant, since it's a response to Michael's headline posting. Insisting on using such cheesy language as "boxen" and warez-speak only reinforces the streotypical image of the technically competent as antisocial and out-of-touch.
I suppose this is just another sign that
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Just saw the movie today at a press screening. :)
..
Amazing effects combined with well played characters made it a joy to watch.
The effects behind "shrinking" the hobbits were maybe the most amazing, as they are in virtually every scene..
Not only that, the hobbits appear to be short people, also in the way they move and behave.. Extremely well done.
The orcs were properly horrible, the elves pretty, the balrog & troll very well executed and Gandalfs fireworks amazing
All in all I'll give the effects 5/5, and the movie 4.5/5
Not much could have been better, though it's impossible to make it "perfect" because the perfect version is in my imagination !
Still, go see it, and expect a very enjoyable 3 hours of movie !
denis
life+universe+everything=42
Whatever. Customers will vote with their dollars. Someday Linux developers will figure this out.
sulli
RTFJ.
I just find it interesting that when I mentioned they were using Linux in the last LotR story, I got modded down as off-topic and got a "who cares?" response, but then we have a whole story devoted to it...