Slashdot Mirror
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.
Pixar probably pushes more ultra-high resolution CG than any other house, and therefore they own one hell of a farm, athough they don't use much in the way of OSS. You can read about their latest hardware (purchased this spring) on Sun's site, basically they have 250 SunFire 3800's, with 8 750MHz SunSparc IIIs, 16GB of RAM, and 108GB of disk space each, plus some addtional disk space, for a total of 1.5THz processing power, 4TB of ram, and 27TB of disk space.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
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.
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.....
According to the article (you read the article?) they are using Linux on 40-50 workstations, primarily for Alias/Wavefront's Maya character animation software and Nothing Real's Shake compositing system.
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.
commercial application developers will never make apps for KDE....at least most of them. Why? because of QT. yes it is a good tool kit, but most comercial vendors do not want to pay out the butt for a licence to make the app usable. hopefully Gnome will catch up to the level of KDE in terms of features an maturity, that way, lots of commercial ISVs will at least look into developing with GTK+
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Given the replaceable nature of the machines involved, they are probably all leased to provide WETA the most advantageous position possible from a federal tax break standpoint, after which they are probably returned to the owner who sells them to companies in developing nations at discounted prices.
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.
Why are you so small-minded and petty that you cry troll at the slightest provocation?
They tend to do that when you make points that they can't refute logically.
Why are you so small-minded and petty that you cry troll at the slightest provocation?
Possibly, because the link between 'suitability of Linux in Office aps' and 'use of Linux as a render farm for LOTR' was fairly tenuous.
And after you see so many Slashdot Stories turn into Microsoft v. Linux for SOHO users falme wars, you get a bit jaded.
Though if you wait about 10, 20 minutes, someone'll post a story about KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, etc. where your post will fit in perfectly.
Also, you forget the rallying cry of the Linux coders (myself not included): if you don't like it, change it!
I'm also annoyed that it does all this flashy stuff while still not getting the basics right
That's an interesting point - many Linux advocates (myself included on this point) would say that Windows is the flashy one, and Linux gets the basics right. Basics like stability, security....
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
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.
--
Evan "Mr. IronyFish"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Fine, I'll bite. That's not slightest provocation. You offer one paragraph of barely on-topicness immediately sequeing into three paragraphs of rehashed rant.
Linux falls on its face for mundane day-to-day productivity work.
That depends on what you use it for doesn't it?
it can't even open a simple Word document without formatting errors.
StarOffice (you did say "simple" Word documents..)
Linux stills falls short of Windows when playing Quake.
Client benchmarks that I have seen are dominated by graphics card/driver combinations and as such are dependent on the card vendor. Indeed in the case of the matrox g200 I could actually *play* qIII linux while matrox sat on their asses and refused to release a working windows opengl driver for the longest time. People generally favor linux for quake servers.
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.
My guess is we'd just have one "poor imitation of Windows" as you call it. The practical weakness in your argument is deciding whose vision should be followed.
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.
*BSD. To a lesser extent, Windows itself. And to a still-lesser extent, GNU/Hurd, which if everybody had swallowed their ego (and worked on it instead of that upstart Linux) probably still wouldn't be ready for prime time.
The endless KDE vs. GNOME, Applix vs. StarOffice, and other feuds have wasted more productivity than would be gained by and competitive drive.
These feuds are generally propagated by users such as yourself rather than the actual developers. As such, little productivity is lost.
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.
Show me one instance where you have properly submitted a bug report/feature request for any of these office programs you need and I'll reconsider dismissing you as an opinionated parasite.
Sincerely, a fellow opinionated parasite
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"
For ordinary home users, in the main centres there is a choice between ADSL or cable modem, depending where you are.
Then there is the cost of labour, they are probably paying about half what they would have to pay in the US or in Europe. There are some countervailing advantages of course, depending on your interests. For instance there is a good surfing beach about ten minutes drive from Weta's site. Then check out the movie itself for some samples of the local scenery.
Incidently the Weta is a large fearsome looking NZ insect that you would rather not find crawling up your trouser leg, although it is mostly harmless.
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.
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
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'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
Where, pray tell, then can I download it and the libraries it depends upon, and what license is they all under? Are you *sure* I can get MFC at no cost? Or do I have to buy products from Microsoft? Qt is avilable GPLed from ftp.trolltech.com, ftp.kde.org, or from the KDE CVS.
--
Evan "Paid member of MSDN till 1999"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Apparently it's a Tolkien Ring network - yuk yuk.
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
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.
Actually WETA is pretty old. At least the worksop (now in charge of doing things like swords and armory for the film) was started by Dan Taylor around 1986. WETA Digital was started around 1993 ( one interesting trivia is that some exILMers help set that up).
They have worked in several Peter Jackson movies most notable Heavenly Creatures and the Frighteners. But they have also done other work like most of "The Ride" sequence in Contact.
The only question left is what will WETA Digital be like after 2003. For the time being they are concentrating almost exclusively on LOTR.
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.
Not at all, they are running PRMan from the looks of it. One guy from WETA digital is a frequent poster at the renderman newgroup and has even posted job openings for shader writers. besides Maya and Shake they are also running things like Houdini which has a great RenderMan connection. Weta does indeed have propietary software like Masive, but as most other places they have a mix of in house built and of the shelf stuff.
Most old timers in the CG arena have in house tools because there wasn't any off the shelf stuff to buy. Besides Rhythm and Hues, you have places like PDI, Blue Sky Studios, Pixar (though they decided to sell their renderer most of their other tools are propietary) and others. Most FX studios run on a mix off commercial and in built software. Most places run mostly SGI but many are switching or at least experimenting with Linux. Rhythm and hues is even helping develop the Film version of the Gimp (for 16 bit work, tha's 16 bit per component).
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.
The comparison probably isn't fair because Pixar and Weta do very different jobs. Weta does visual effects and Pixar does character animation. They are superficially similar in that they often use the same modelling and rendering tools.
VFX houses generally have to produce "elements" to match existing photography (matching camera motion, set lighting and so on). That's actually where most of the trouble happens: getting things to match. So a VFX house's best friend is not necessarily the modeller and renderer, but the compositing system (Cineon, Shake, Avid, After Effects etc).
OTOH, Pixar has to build characters and worlds from scratch, like in traditional 3D animation (e.g. that of Aardman). Every prop and every piece of set decoration needs to be modelled, placed and rendered. Their best friend is the animation system (in Pixar's case, often incorrectly referred to by marketroids as "Marionette", but known to everyone inside the company as "Menv").
Note that this skips over a lot of detail (and I'll no doubt be corrected/chastised for oversimplifying things), so take this with the appropriate sodium chloride.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
yeah but for what tool kit? Windows and Mac I bet ;-)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Fine. Send me a licensed copy of Windows for free. Or, to end this thread and spell it out for you - you pay for it when you *buy* windows. You know - when you slap down your money at CompUSA, or what Dell charges you to cover what they pay Microsoft per computer shipped.
*Sigh*... Plus, as others have pointed out in this thread, MS is even moving away from this, charging seperately for developers for the .NET experience. In the past. they have always charged for documentation, Resource Kits, etc. I've been a developer for ten years, a good chunk of it on Windows, and I have paid quite a bit to Microsoft in that time. Now that MSDN is finally coming together online, they are charging for it. KDE has insanely great documentation for free, and their source is available in CVS, and all their libaraies down to the OS level (and potentially the OS itself) is available for free (and is Free).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
What does this have to do with anything? I don't know any windows users that submit bug reports.
Not to call attention to the devil its self, windowsXP, but now when something crashes (i.e. "the playa" *.divx player) in windowsXP, it asks if you want to send an error report to microsoft.
Also, people submit bugs for mozilla, windows platform all the time, microsoft themselves have a bug submit page... i mean, it does happen, and rather often.
All i'm saying is that not all windows users are idiots. However, all idiots use windows.... or something.
~z
sig?
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."
- 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.
I am completely in agreement. I do a ton of 3D models and animating, for money, even, and I have to tell you that a tool is a tool is a tool. I would go a step or two farther, and say that the application matters more than the OS (by leaps and bounds), and this is precisely why most professional studios write their own.
The competitive edge has got to be who can render the best fur, flesh, crowds, etc. Flock of Seagulls was written to do crowd scenes by one group, and Massive is simply the code written to do the crowds in LOTR. As with FoS, Massive will live on after the 3 films, be refined a bunch, overhauled, and tweaked. But in part, Massive will be why this company is chosen for a project over CompetitorX.
See, in the real world, it doesn't matter what car you drive, as long as it gets you to work. Even in school, the brand of notebook paper has damned little to do with your GPA. The only consideration for what OS to use for a major company is, "will it run the software I want on the hardware I want, quickly and well?"
The idea that the "cost" of Linux having anything to do with the decisions of the directors to use it is really funny. Does anyone really think that a cost of even $500 per box would make or break this deal? That's why you budget, kids. Some elementary business knowlege will quickly show that in the budget for the effects for three films, the cost of any OS on rendering stations is absurdly inconsequential.
FWIW, I use a few different systems in my 3D work. Some use an OS from Redmond. Some don't. It doesn't matter to me in the least. As long as I can maintain a good throughput of work at a decent billable rate, I make money.
The TinWeasle: "Worming Out of Culpability since 1978" - Opinions expressed are mine alone, yadda, yadda, yadda
Why is evolution slower than what? Right now AFIAK, KDE doesn't have an app comparable to Evolution (although I believe the Kompany is doing something in that direction).
Actually, you'll mostly be chastised for getting what Weta are doing wrong - they are doing both what you describe as visual effects and character animation, since a number of characters (Balrogs, trolls, etc) are animated from scratch.
In my experience, and based on what I've read on the mailing lists and newsgroups, Linux has by far the widest hardware support. I've personally installed it on a huge range of machines, only finding one machine I could never get it to install on (and that was a BIOS problem). Conversely, the few times I've tried BSDs have been unmitigated disasters.
On the other hand, a Ford Escort can't haul half a ton of widgets across town to a client's emergency, and even an SUV would have trouble with an emergency sheet of plywood. Fortunately when it comes to operating systems you can, in fact, "drive a cargo truck to work". Sticker price is not the only cost. Adaptation and maintenance dominate, and Linux has significant benefits over many other operating systems. Need Beowulf-style clustering to do your rendering? Linux has excellent tools. Have software written for a 32-processor machine? Use the Mosix patches for Linux to tie together 32 ordinary PCs. Want to be able to rapidly upgrade and reinstall all 1000 machines in a cluster? Network boot Linux using the well-documented tools, and watch the entire cluster reboot in less than 10 minutes. (Try that with Windows sometime.) Big jobs are different in kind from small jobs, not just different in size. A 10% mistake in a small job means you stay late that day. A 10% mistake in a one month, 1000 CPU job means you threw away the company. IMHO, the key to keeping large projects running smoothly is having flexible, adaptible tools, and the Unices come standard with awesome tools of all kinds. Windows, on the other hand, is worthless out of the box and remains inflexible even when you shell out the $$$ for the official tools.-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
I just love the work they do, so I send them money every year.
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Aside : There's no such product as 'Maya character studio'.
But these days a -lot- of companies use Maya in the production chain somewhere -because- its completely extensible; it's written in its own scripting language (MELscript) and it has a very open API.
So if you need to write AI code that controls blending of motion-capture data to provide an autonomous Orc then you can; if you want to have seemless interdependence with your established top-quality rendering system, then you can (ie RenderMan).
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Dictionary.com:
boxen /bok'sn/ pl.n. [very common; by analogy with VAXen] Fanciful plural of box often encountered in the phrase `Unix boxen', used to describe commodity {Unix} hardware. The connotation is that any two Unix boxen are interchangeable.
Check for yourself:
Dictionary.com
Note: I find the word annoying dont get me wrong, but it looks like it has slid its way into the english language..
Zeno
There's still the small matter of the animators and systems support staff. Neither of who come cheap.
They are missing video cards, keyboards, and monitors, (and may be missing floppy and CD drives, though the ones I am familiar with are not) and may not be all that valuable to schools.
Linux is winning the renderfarms because the software used has little or no reliance on underlying system or hardware support and is thus not locked into Windows. Most rendering has to read and write files and do a lot of number crunching, so reliance on Windows-proprieterary libraries and interfaces is eliminated (reliance on Unix is also eliminated, the "Linux is Unix and thus easy to port to" argument is greatly exaggerated here).
In such a playing field Linux wins easily. Linux offers a few unimportant technical advantages (much better networking support, and a lot smaller memory usage when no GUI is running), so I think about 50% of the reason for Linux's popularity is due to cost, and about 50% due to the preferences (biases, if you want) of the IT staff.
Breakfast served all day!
"Memes" don't really exist, now do they? And I've yet to see Dawkins (or Chomsky for that matter) be right about much of anything of any importance. Dawkins is a classic case of, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything *better* be a nail!"
My larger point was simply that using words like "boxen" makes all technical folks look like the jerks that many are...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The last time I checked, New Zealand had a federal government, to which they pay taxes. Believe it or not, the United States is not the only nation on Earth with a federal government, nor is it the only one where it makes more sense to get yearly tax breaks on least equipment rather than tax breaks every couple of years for new equipment that may need to be replaced yearly.