Slashdot Mirror
DreamWorks Switches to Linux
tal-home writes "Newsforge has a story about the decision Dreamworks made to port ALL of their front-end servers and workstations to Linux.
Their new movie, called 'Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron' which will hit the theaters in late May, was created in a 100% Linux enviroment, unlike older movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings that used IRIX servers as a rendering farm. It's a good time to mention that this move by DreamWorks also includes porting the artists workstations to Linux, in addition to the servers.
Redhat and HP helped out in the switch." Word has it that Adobe may be pursuing unix versions of it's toolset as DreamWorks isn't the only shop switching.
available by phone at toll free 800-544-3746 or local 818-882-2878. Call them and find out the details, and tell them your support!
The article summary is wrong. IRIX was used for frontend modelling. But Shrek WAS rendered finally on Linux -- indeed Shrek was distinctive as it was the first major full-length film to be totally rendered on Linux.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Weta digital used a bunch of linux boxes as well as irix (and some other OSs too I believe) in producing the cgi stuff for LoTR (Weta Digital is Peter Jacksons digital effects company). check here for their website
Reasons for the switch (from the article):
1. Reliability
2. Scalability
3. Capable of high performance on the deskto
4. Cost-effective to maintain
5. Uses commodity, Intel-based hardware
The transition to Linux required that PDI/DreamWorks port all of its own tools from SGI. Few of the high-end commercial graphics tools supported Linux out of the box. Together, HP and PDI/DreamWorks worked to convince Alias|Wavefront and others that they needed to port their applications to Linux. Ultimately, HP and PDI/DreamWorks were successful, and DreamWorks has fully integrated Linux versions of all of its major tools including Maya and Wacom's Cintiq interactive pen display.
The future isn't what it used to be.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not to quibble or anything, but Shrek was rendered on a Linux farm, a Red Hat Linux farm. The success and quality of that movie is the reason that large firms like Kodak have started looking into porting thier now SGI image and digital film apps to Linux.
About all the Adobe links here, GIMP!!! Manipulate your images with Gnu Image Manipulation Program. I've switched several formerly psychoticly addicted Photoshop people over to it and they are exceedingly happy. Given, it doesn't have ALL the features of Photoshop, but it's really close and most of the graphic artists that I've worked with use the features that are available in both GIMP and Photo, Photo only features; not so much.
-Runz
1. Crappy multimedia support in the form of DVD software, mpeg4/divx and other video codecs, sound drivers, etc.
:( ), and less popular formats like iD's CIN format (Quake2 movies) and VIVO formats (only used for pr0n AFAIK)
Try MPlayer... this is the best video player i've seen, it supports DVD's, DivX, a number of windows AVI codecs, Quicktime (no Sorenson though
Mplayer homepage
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Not many people are going to get this reference, i.e. Ben Franklin.
Clearly this guy didn't do his research, as others have pointed out Shrek was rendered on Linux, and Weta used a render farm of SGI 1200 Intel Linux boxes for "Lord of the Rings".
2 001/011 56783.html
See here:
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/linux/
Weta used mostly SGI Octanes for 3D and compositing workstations so whats new about dreamworks is that they are switching all the artists workstations to Linux because already for several years now most big VFX houses have been using SGI and NT workstations and Linux render farms.
"Do you pirate expensive software? If not, you have no reason to fear the DMCA."
Not true. The DMCA prevents me from doing legitimate things, such as backing up a DVD I bought. Since I need DeCSS to do that in a useful manner, I'd be violating the DMCA because it circumvents copy protection.
The DMCA takes away a number of our freedoms, even if we're working legitimately. THat's why we're fighting it.
"Derp de derp."
In this case it was the word "sweatshop" which started it off. Here's the webpage that started it all.
---------------
I sig, therefore I was.
"You could always try it on OS X..."
Want to hear something interesting? LW 7.5 (and 7 I think..) has a license that explicitly lets you change between Mac and PC. I have a USB dongle with LW 7, so If I had a Mac around I could install LW on it. (I need the Mac disk, though...)
I am sooooo happy with Newtek about this. I will be buying a new laptop within the next year, and I'm really having a tough time deciding between a PC Laptop and a Mac laptop. Now that I can run LW on either platform, I really don't have a whole lot of reason to not get a Mac. Now I can spend more time worrying about the color of the casing... *G*
"Derp de derp."
If G was for Gatesberg, I might have believed you. ;-). However, G is in fact for David Geffen.
-Paul Komarek
Dreamworks SKG is Spielberg, Katzenberg and G=David Geffen, as in Geffen Records.
Are you following the CDTBPA? That's just the SSSCA under a different name....
No. The "G" in SKG is for Geffen, not Gates.
Pooty tweet
CBDTPA, actually. If he searches for what you said I doubt he'll find anything. One wonders if they deliberately gave it an impossible-to-remember name. :P
DNA just wants to be free...